Comment on If you want communism, you can start a commune
zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months agoI’m not well read enough on communism to know smart people’s ideas there, but the way I see it it gives room for any system of experimentation the people want. Maybe you pitch your idea to the government instead of investors, and they give you resources. In a system with small markets, you can start in the market and, if it does well, get upgraded to governments operated. “Communism” doesn’t mean one thing, and there’s a lot of room for variety, do we could we decide to try one of these systems but then switch to another, allowing better adaptation than capitalism where profit is the only way.
I take hormone therapy for transgender people (hi, I am transgender people) and I’m already at the whims of the government. Perhaps a communist government might not make it free for me if the political climate said no, but as long as it’s not outright banned and there is some alternate system to the government’s plan, I could still get it. That’s not far off where I am now, actually (Florida). Perhaps we could write this sort of going around other government to some degree (perhaps by small market) into the constitution as a layer of safety.
I’ve been saying “let the government do [x]” a lot, and if you’re from a neoliberal country you might have heard “excessive bureaucracy”, but that’s a result of capitalism ruining your government. Government doesn’t have to be bad, nor even a monolith. Most forms of communism I’ve heard of have multiple levels, from committees covering broad country-level goals to committees on local-level details, each level getting a fair degree of autonomy. But also, you can talk to or even get on the committees! They’re made of citizens like you, and with no corporate interests or lobbying!
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 2 months ago
First of all, thank you for a sensible and pleasant reply. It really is a breath fresh of air in here :)
I think the small markets only go so far. Many things in a modern economy don’t work well on a small scale. This is actually where many of the worst examples of capitalism come from too. With barriers to entry into areas like mobile phones, medicine, social networks, utilities etc. some companies become near monopolies. But as you say, various solutions could be tried.
Another issue I can see is the difficulty of ensuring power is not too concentrated in a small group. But again, various things could be tried and capitalism has these issues to lesser extent as well.
The thing that concerns me most is how to try them out without driving the economy off a cliff and without violence. If we could try these systems on smaller scale next to capitalism, than I am all for it, lets experiment. But most people here talk about a revolution or confiscating all wealth above a threshold (dismantling the capitalist system). If this is really the only way to try communism, then I think it is much more sensible to work on gradually improving capitalism instead. There are capitalists countries like the Nordics, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc. that are capitalist and are very nice to live in.
zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Seizing the means of production and putting it in the ownership of the workers will, realistically, require revolution or damn well near it. But, workers owning their work doesn’t require an end to our current markets. We can keep them mostly as is, besides, of course, the rich and powerful people who currently do no work and just “own” things. From that state, it can be a more gradual transition.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If you think this, you are likely severely misunderstanding how modern financial markets work. You redistribute the wealth suddenly enough and the great depression will seem like nostalgic good times.
Also, is the difference between what we know is possible without a revolution (countries I listed above) so much worse than communism it would be worth the lives lost in a revolution? I don’t see it.
zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Plenty of people die daily in first-world countries that could have been saved in a different economic system, because saving them was not profitable. Even more die elsewhere, where the first-world countries have outsourced a lot of their miserable jobs. Cobalt mines in the Congo, used for certain lithium-ion battery chemistries for instance, have terrible working conditions and child labor. Another example is climate change: how many people will die this century from famine and water scarcity caused by a changing climate? Externalities don’t factor into capitalist profits, and the governments are usually under their control so they’ll just pay lip service to action or very slowly and reluctantly enact regulation.
Revolution is a one-time cost. It’ll suck, I hate it, but it seems to me like it’d be worth it in the long run. I’d also love to avoid revolution entirely, but that threatens capitalist profit so I really doubt governments (again, controlled by the interests of capitalists) will make it easy.
Another thing worth noting: revolution doesn’t mean financial markets have to immediately change. Companies can still act capitalist (at the start), they’d just be controlled by the workers now. Once workers own everything, and government infrastructure is set up to facilitate the sort of democracy and management communism would need, we can phase in changes. With control of the government, there could also be subsidies set up to help stabilize the market during transitions; for the US at least, there’s about ~$700 billion/year for the military as it stands, that seems like a sizeable fund to pinch from for such subsidies in the short term.