Socialism
A system of government where the country’s wealth is concentrated into a small, ruling class of billionaires, who use the media they own to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money.
Oh wait. that’s capitalism. I don’t know how I got those two systems confused.
Well, people, including political leaders are corrupt, so this would never be practically possible, since people would just abuse the system and hoard resources, as always.
How?
News flash, people have been abusing the system and hoarding resources for a while
I think that’s their point.
The difference is that, in socialism, hoarding resources is illegal and prosecutable, whereas in capitalism it’s legal and encourage. Corruption is only defined when it touches the public institutions. Every behaviour that you’d consider corrupt in the public sector, is obvious common practice and even encouraged in the private one.
In the public sector, hiring an acquaintance or family member based on trust is illegal and punishable. In the private sector I’ll hire whoever I want for my company.
In the public sector, having a service done for your company such as a renovation of the office, if you hire based off friendship or trust, you are punished, you’re supposed to be efficient and impartial. In the private company it’s expected that you’d hire your friend to do the renovation.
In the public sector, lowering the wages of the employees to higher your own, is so obviously corrupt that it barely ever happens at all, and when it happens it’s absolute scandal. In the private sector we just call it “labour is paid based on your replaceability”.
The list of behaviours that we’d find corrupt and morally reprehensible (and legally punishable) in the public sector, and totally fine in the private sector, is endless. Can’t complain about corruption in the private sector when there’s not such thing, amirite? At least I’d want a system in which corrupt people are prosecuted and not applauded.
Well, that is true.
We currently live in a system where the owner class (capitalists) makes several times what you do and horde it, while you can barely afford to live.
I really don’t understand how your main criticism of a system where the workers make the decisions and take the profits, is that the workers might also horde the relatively smaller amounts that they produced. It’s still several times better than what we have now.
I just ment to say, nothing will change, no matter the political system.
Kewl story bro
Trusting pure socialism to not accidentally starve its people through inept and lazy government decisions is like buying a PC with Windows 11 and hoping you won’t see ads because you trust the closed source code.
Yes, you can do this… I guess?
Everything socialism wants can be accomplished with market capitalism, AI, and UBI. We just need to get rid of the idiot religious folks voting against their interest (“oh no! trans people make baby jesus cry!”) and get rid of the liberals who want make government bigger and bigger and bigger (“Let’s put a tax on filling out the form! And make a new waiting period for something!”), and then we’d finally have a functioning society.
Trusting pure socialism to not accidentally starve its people through inept and lazy government decisions is like buying a PC with Windows 11 and hoping you won’t see ads because you trust the closed source code.
To clarify here, your example is what actually happens under capitalism. Literally, not figuratively. F(L)OSS is pretty anarchic/communist in nature.
Everything socialism wants can be accomplished with market capitalism, AI, and UBI.
Hypothetically, maybe, however, the current hyper-commercial capitalism shows no signs of allowing UBI or passing on any benefit from AI and other automation to workers. There’s been a complete disconnect between productivity and worker compensation since the 70s, with the capital class pocketing every penny of the difference.
it’s not a bad point. you would just think with information free because of the internet, the lower classes would vote their economic interests instead of “these rich people ALSO think trans people are from satan, let me vote for them on this wedge issue and fuck myself economically”
Indeed. I really wish that evidence showed that to be the case, instead, it’s the fallacy that Chicago School economics falls for. Humans are NOT rational actors, at least, not all the time. There are also anti-social actors involved attempting to game the system for their benefit at others’ expense. Lots of things to account for where current economic systems abjectly fail to provide a fair and equitable society, often intentionally so.
ooo. i like a lot of what you’re saying, except that i think the market capitalism part should be less vital. i’m more in favor of a resource based economy which is overseen by AI. markets would become more of a hobbyist endeavor. some people need to have a little bit more than others and can’t help but express their type A personalities, so the markets are there for them to feel like they earned a little more than other people, but without the ability to become billionaires.
Also, UBI seems like a transitional phase solution. in a well regulated resource based economy, currency eventually becomes a vestigial appendage. i mean, it’s just a middle man of exchange now, and we’re only exchanging things because we can’t figure out how to distribute necessary commodities and incentivize people. i believe in a resource based economy where almost all needs are met and education in humanities is emphasized, people will be happy to do their 2.5 hours of weekly labor to keep a utopian system running.
We’ve been having market capitalism and IA for YEARS, why are we still having less and less buying power, life expectancy, healthcare access and so on?
Because decay is a natural state of the universe.
The exploitation will continue until people stop believing that the sky god will reward them later for abstaining from anal and toiling all day in the fields.
We just need to elect politicians who provide large amounts of UBI. The problem in doing this is we would need to also limit the amount people could reproduce so that food doesn’t run out in 20 years after people start fucking like rabbits. Doing this would be hard and probably require constitutional amendments since the wealthy have made procreation a constitutional right and the poor are too stupid to realize unlimited reproduction leads to a tragedy of the common in which those that endure the most unhappiness in the rat race are most easily able to reproduce. There would have to be Chinese-style awareness of populations and some penalties for not adhering to reproduction limits if the population grew too fast, and these penalties would have to be sufficient to deter people. Market capitalism and mild green (hampered a bit by UBI) along with huge taxes on environmental externalities is a much better way to allocate resources than just having a government committee benevolently decide things resulting in starvation later because people who are chosen for committees often say what is political rather than the truth of nature.
We just need to get rid of the idiot religious folks voting against their interest
How do you propose doing that? Murdering them en masse?
I am saying if they were all completely and utterly purged from society than the world would be a better place, however.
Why are you saying that?
I am not proposing that, it’s an exercise in futility. You can’t deprogram a cult member easily and even if you killed them all, more would replace them. You have to accept these idiots as a natural part of society, like skunks and porcupines, like an eclipse or a tsunami, and respond accordingly.
Everything socialism wants can be accomplished with market capitalism, AI, and UBI. We just need to get rid of the idiot religious folks voting against their interest (“oh no! trans people make baby jesus cry!”) and get rid of the liberals who want make government bigger and bigger and bigger (“Let’s put a tax on filling out the form! And make a new waiting period for something!”), and then we’d finally have a functioning society.
Why billionaires will let that happens under capitalism if that benefits them? You can’t fix capitalism, it works perfectly for people that owns the capital.
In a democracy people could just stop voting in Republican politicians who say “don’t do anal so you go to heaven” while they fuck the poor and stop voting in big spending Democrats who want to make the government as large, inefficient, and wasteful as possible.
If people are too stupid to vote in representatives because jesus doesn’t approve of anal and Democrats need to expand the size of government, then how the fuck would they be smart enough to coordinate a proletariat revolution, much less enact rules that won’t completely fuck themselves over once in power due to an ignorance of the laws of nature?
These are people who are upset trans people take hormones because it will upset the imaginary skygod, who only created man and woman, since intersex people also literally don’t exist in their idiot pea brains. Do you understand the extreme pea-brain stupidity of the average religious person? They believe jesus lives on a cloud, some of them think the world is flat, the level of moronitude is next-level.
It’s a good point in a dictatorship, but not when a large part of the populace is delusional gullible and stupid.
wtf you talking about the world is bigger than republican and democrats and you have countries where religion is not that big with signs of the problems of late stage capitalism.
You can’t have all people smart in capitalism without free good education, if education is a commodity the poor people become ignorant and easier to manipulate by the people who own the capital and they will manipulate them to vote for what is best for the capital. You can remove religion and the same problem will continue, you only solve people voting with the ass with education and that is really difficult within capitalism, like I said before billionaires will not let that happens.
it’s a decent point, so decent that i have no comeback at all
I wonder if some common pitfalls like too much party control over committees, lying about quotas for financial gain, and the vulnerabilities of a society in revolt could be squeezed in, or perhaps covered in a second image.
Orthodox Marxism isn’t always enough, and is not beyond revision and improvements (hence the many neo-marxists). Critical Theorists have addressed Marxism as well as Capitalism after all.
That said, the post is good and educational as is, and has my up vote.
See you at the first plenary session comarades!
So it’s all nice in theory, but I have questions…
the workers own their workplace
Based on previous discussions, I understand the commonly proposed model here would be a workers’ collective of some sort. People involved in the collective’s production share the proceeds - we made N number of tractors and took them to market and received X value units; we spent Y value units in the production process, so we can distribute (X - Y) value units among the members of the collective. The workers own the equipment and infrastructure used by the collective and share responsibility for production. If a worker moves from workplace A to workplace B for whatever reason, they cease to share in the proceeds and responsibility of workplace A’s collective and take on the responsibilities of workplace B’s collective and share in its proceeds.
(Aside: What if X is smaller than Y? Should members then add back the difference for the next production cycle, so production materials can be procured?)
Let’s look at the (X - Y) part a bit more closely. This defines the benefit that members of the collective derive from the enterprise, so they are collectively incentivised to make the difference as big as possible - to benefit themselves rather than a capital owner. Let’s assume that all collectives can procure production materials equally with no supply and demand market forces (unlikely). Let’s further assume that the market value for the goods produced is fixed (questionable, but OK). So anyone involved in producing tractors pay the same number of value units for raw materials and components and can only ever sell tractors for the same number of value units as everyone else. This means that an individual collective is heavily incentivised to reduce the raw materials needed per tractor (production efficiency), make better tractors than other collectives (market attractiveness), or increase the number of tractors they take to market in a given time period (increased production). Each collective, and ultimately its members, thus stand to benefit from having the most skilled tractor builders, innovative tractor designers, and an all-round hardworking membership. A more successful collective would draw more workers with such beneficial traits and become even more successful in the process. It would also be in the interest of the collective to either push out members that do not contribute according to their full ability, or reduce their share of the proceeds. The former would result in some workers not being accepted into any collective after a while and thus not contributing to any production, the latter in performance-based remuneration that creates societal inequality.
Congratulations! You just created market forces in the labour market that will have winners and losers.
a.k.a the means of production
Can someone explain to me what this means in today’s world, beyond factories making physical goods (such as tractors) using physical machines and manual human labour?
production is then planned by elected committees
There are some details missing here. Who elects these committees - workers, or society in general? What are the requirements for being electable for such a role? How are these committees held accountable for failures? Do they plan production at a society-wide level, each in a specific industry, or down to regions or specific production facilities? Do they serve only a planning role, or are they also responsible for execution?
What checks would be in place to prevent professional popularity contest participants (those we call politicians at the moment) from adopting a facade of ideological purity and getting elected on popularity rather than merit? How would they be insulated from outside influence by those affected by their decision making? Do we really need more tractors, or do they still have friends in Worker’s Collective 631 that makes tractors?
Congratulations! You just created a managerial class (at best) or just the usual corrupt cabal that run things to their own benefit.
increases productivity as workers are more happy and committed
That’s a big assumption. Anyone have any data from wide sampling across multiple industries to support this as a long-term sustained effect?
work to better ourselves and humanity
If you replace “humanity” with “our close community” this might be realistic. I don’t think the “and humanity” has ever happened at a macro level.
Congratulations! You just created market forces in the labour market that will have winners and losers.
Yes. Market Socialism (which would have supply and demand and competing worker-owned firms) doesn’t solve everything. I advocate for it because I think it’s a good, achievable medium-term goal that would be a vast improvement over what we have now. Something we could see in my lifetime. Once we get things there, workers are in a better position to advocate for further changes, like dumping money altogether.
However, there’s plenty of people who think we should jump right past that and into the Anarco-Communist end goal.
One of the ideals of being a cooperative is “cooperation among cooperatives” as dictated by the Rochdale Principles. So by definition worker co-ops shouldn’t be competing with each other. Instead consolidation of corporations to force a sort of cooperation to increase profit we’ll ideally have worker cooperatives working with producer co-ops for example.
Not entirely sure the implications of supply and demand market forces but I imagine its a step up from our current system. We’ll have democratically controlled work places where workers dictact the direction of supply and not necessarily for the sole purpose of increasing profits. In any case what I think we need is a new systematic way of measuring the growth of an economy in conjunction with worker co-ops.
Based on previous discussions, I understand the commonly proposed model here would be a workers’ collective of some sort. People involved in the collective’s production share the proceeds - we made N number of tractors and took them to market and received X value units; we spent Y value units in the production process, so we can distribute (X - Y) value units among the members of the collective. The workers own the equipment and infrastructure used by the collective and share responsibility for production. If a worker moves from workplace A to workplace B for whatever reason, they cease to share in the proceeds and responsibility of workplace A’s collective and take on the responsibilities of workplace B’s collective and share in its proceeds.
This is Market Socialism, not Marxism. Marxism is what is depicted in the above graphic. Marxists aim to satisfy the needs of the whole using the production of the whole, not just competing cooperatives.
Can someone explain to me what this means in today’s world, beyond factories making physical goods (such as tractors) using physical machines and manual human labour?
All Capital, ie everything used in the commodity production process. If your aim is to get into the weeds about what is considered Capital, edge cases can be decided by committees.
There are some details missing here. Who elects these committees - workers, or society in general? What are the requirements for being electable for such a role? How are these committees held accountable for failures? Do they plan production at a society-wide level, each in a specific industry, or down to regions or specific production facilities? Do they serve only a planning role, or are they also responsible for execution?
The society in general is the workers. Requirements can be decided by the people. These committees are held accountable via election, and a recall election can be held at any time. There are multiple rungs of planning, from society wide to regional to facility levels, with committees for each. They can serve planning and execution, as workers participate.
What checks would be in place to prevent professional popularity contest participants (those we call politicians at the moment) from adopting a facade of ideological purity and getting elected on popularity rather than merit? How would they be insulated from outside influence by those affected by their decision making? Do we really need more tractors, or do they still have friends in Worker’s Collective 631 that makes tractors?
Recall elections. Why would producing more tractors in collective 631 benefit that collective if the goal is to satisfy the whole from the whole?
Congratulations! You just created a managerial class (at best) or just the usual corrupt cabal that run things to their own benefit.
Managers are not a class, they are an extension of the workers.
That’s a big assumption. Anyone have any data from wide sampling across multiple industries to support this as a long-term sustained effect?
Yes, across numerous studies worker participation in steering companies has resulted in higher satisfaction and stability.
If you replace “humanity” with “our close community” this might be realistic. I don’t think the “and humanity” has ever happened at a macro level.
You’re arguing against a chimera of random mish-mashed ideas from several different strains of Socialism that argue for different forms as though they are one and the same.
This is Market Socialism, not Marxism. Marxism is what is depicted in the above graphic.
The graphic with the big caption “SOCIALISM”. But fair point on me not addressing the specific implementation suggested with the presence of the Marx and Lenin characters.
If your aim is to get into the weeds about what is considered Capital, edge cases can be decided by committees.
Well yea, the devil is in the detail so it can’t just be waved away. The “commodity production process” still implies physical goods made from physical resources and that it’s the production facilities and resources that should be seized. (Side note: this assumes all the underlying resources are present within the area controlled by the proletariat.) Not seen any ideas proposed beyond that, but perhaps I’m not hanging around in the right places… Hopefully the committees will have people available that can figure it out after the fact?
Requirements can be decided by the people. These committees are held accountable via election, and a recall election can be held at any time. There are multiple rungs of planning, from society wide to regional to facility levels, with committees for each. They can serve planning and execution, as workers participate.
Yea, you’ve clearly never worked in a “design by committee” or “management by consensus” situation. Nothing ever gets done, and when some decision is finally made on anything it tends to be the shittiest common denominator option that thinly and evenly spreads the collective responsibility. Not the best option, but the one that everyone can kind of agree on and thus be collectively accountable for. The exception might be when a very small number of people that are agreed on an end goal and share the same vision for reaching it work together. But I assure you, that does not scale - even if people are in full agreement on the end goal.
Why would producing more tractors in collective 631 benefit that collective if the goal is to satisfy the whole from the whole?
Because human beings.
Managers are not a class, they are an extension of the workers.
Fair point. I guess I was a bit caught in the popular narrative where managers are the enemy of the workers.
Yes, across numerous studies worker participation in steering companies has resulted in higher satisfaction and stability.
Of course, and I’m a fan. I’m not disputing that places where extensive consultation happens with the people responsible for delivering are nice places to work at. But that consultation process is usually very closely managed and the ideas to take forward are cherry picked to give enough “they listen to me” feel good vibes, while also not interfering too much with the business’ priorities. Really taking the inputs of large employee groups seriously on the things that matter cannot happen outside of an adversarial setting, because the interests of the worker and those who benefit most from their labour are fundamentally in conflict. The point I’m rambling towards is that I doubt there are studies that looked at situations where employee inputs in decision making (beyond window dressing) was sustained over very long periods of time at a scale relevant to what you envision. (There are exceptions, but only in small groups of highly-aligned people in a horizontal structure that are deeply vested in the success of the venture.)
You’re arguing against a chimera of random mish-mashed ideas from several different strains of Socialism that argue for different forms as though they are one and the same.
I guess you’re right on that, yes. The thing is that I’ve been thinking about details like these (and many more) for at least 25 years (beyond “edgy teenager” or “social media fad” or “my parents are fascists” stages), since I would prefer that the fruits of my labour (to at least some degree) benefit other people rather than feed a system that heavily incentivises the shittiest parts of human beings and is also inherently cruel. Over the years I’ve also read pretty widely on this topic - from the purist theoretical ideologies to the practical compromises to the counterpoints to the criticisms. (Hell, I even lived in what was basically a workers’ collective for almost a year, but it only worked because it was a small community of ~100 people with close social and familial ties.) So in my mind the lines between specific flavours of socialism are pretty blurry these days, while the common fundamental challenges keep standing out.
What truly frustrates me is the constant arguments about which is the best flavour, while ignoring how to actually realistically practically progress towards something better. Spending the day fighting about which flavour of ice cream to buy instead of figuring out how to get to the ice cream shop on the other side of the city in the first place.
That, and I am yet to see something proposed that doesn’t completely ignore predictable human reactions or result in some degree of authoritarianism. (Nordic-flavour Market Socialism is perhaps the closest to something that might work, but it also heavily relies on a fairly homogenous society with a culture that sees value in the interests of that society over total individualism.)
You’re not liberating literal serfs that never knew personal agency from a literal monarch. You’re trying to get people that are exploited by a system while also benefitting from it to willingly abandon that system for something that might be better (if it worked) or might not be - the plans for the “something” are fuzzy at best so who knows. The details matter, and interrogating the details is not reactionary behaviour.
After reading this, i now understand less about socialism.
What part is confusing?
If people who make things own them, who manages the “big picture” ideas? CEO pay tells me that requires the power of thousands of
peasantsworkers.Elected officials and councils.
This comic makes a ton of logical leaps, by which i mean that it assumes that the reader is already familiar with certain information and leaves it implied. More broadly, it seems to assume that the audience already agrees that communism is the best. I’m particularly annoyed at the second pannel describing a command economy in a very short and unconvincing way, as if the audience already knows and agrees.
I have a rudimentary knowledge of political taxonomy and this is very very confusing.
But you know what, at least it’s written in plain language. A mistake that communists often make is using their vocabulary (alienation, ideology, bourgeoisie) as if everyone knows what it means, i’m glad this isn’t the case here
Is that Lenin or Louis CK in the second panel?
Lenin.
This is really just a very specific type of socialism, as indicated by Lenin being here; an authoritarian who killed other socialists. This is about ML.
The first and last panels are right, but, for example, according to this post Anarcho-Communists don’t exist. They don’t believe in “evolving to a point” as the third panel says, they believe in jumping straight to that point. Also, Libertarian Socialists wouldn’t really be fond of “elected commities” controlling things, as the second panelsl talks about; maybe electing people into leadership positions inside of a company/cooperative, or maybe even having unions make those decisions, but nothing above that.
ML would be about a vanguard party. That kind of elected council with central planning can happen without it. That vanguard party is where ML goes all wrong and tends to devolve into cult-like behavior. Edit: and not just the big one’s in Russia/China/N. Korea. Lots of smaller ML groups devolve into cult-like behavior, too.
I do agree, though, that the second panel is still too specific. There are many ways to organize the workers, and that second panel is far too narrow.
It is very clear that it’s about Socialism, so leaving AnComms out is fair.
Vanguard politics consistently lead to a new different hierarchy that is just as bad as the current hierarchy is my problem. Leninism just sucks. The peers who said he sucked were right. Leninism leads to Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot, etc. When people try to scare the shit out of us by acting like socialism is more dangerous than capitalism we have Lenin to blame for thinking anyone could have the strength to wield power without being depraved by it.
Hierarchical societies just don’t work. And I won’t apologize for saying Bolshevism sucks and isn’t even really communism, its just a more weirdly shaped version of colonialism
This is the conclusion I’ve come to since reading the State and Revolution. The people who are capable of overthrowing the current system aren’t likely to be the same people capable of keeping true to an approach that’s legitimately socialist. There are problems with reformism as well, as it can result in an endless series of small concessions to distract from an equally endless series of measured power grabs.
If I take what I read of Marx and Engels as likely to be accurately predictive, my conclusion has to be that the circumstances they’re discussing haven’t occurred yet. Basically, Lenin jumped the gun with his support of imposing a revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat. The power structure it creates is too centralized to achieve its goals.
This would suggest to me that if Marx and Engels are correct, a spontaneous and universal proletariat uprising is probably still down the road somewhere. Basically, we see hints at this state reflected in the microcosm of revolution, but have yet to see the circumstances that cause an actual change of prioritization and autonomy rather than simply a changing of the guard.
AnComms are socialists, though. As are communists, and all anarchists who are not AnCaps, but those aren’t even really anarchists.
Socialism is just about workers controlling the means of production; how you get there, the styles and forms of leadership, and all other things, are where all subgroups differ. The same way that in capitalism you can have Soc-Dems, Liberals, Libertarian Capitalists, Fascists, etc.
AnComms are under the socialist umbrella, but the comic isn’t delving into every single thing that’s under that umbrella, because it’s not 600 pages long.
Right, instead is it’s delving specifically into ML and making it sound like that is specifically what socialism is; it’s not. And it sounds like you agree, so… I really don’t get what your point is. Sounds like you’re arguing for the sake of arguing.
They included a picture of Picard too, should I assume this is ML-utopianism and just shut down listening completely?
Also, I’m an anarchist and don’t believe in “jumping to the point.” We’re not all teenagers with no concept of how societies work. We’re opposed to the State and any form of imposed hierarchy. That I’m opposed to the State today doesn’t mean I don’t vote or that I’m just waiting around for the spirit of Good Anarchism to posses every person on Earth suddenly.
Like any reasonable person with an ideology, I make plans to spread my ideas to more people over time. The capitalist state isnt going to auddenly collapse into anarchy and if it did it woukd be terrible because other parts of the collapsing state are going to form monarchies, fascist authoritarian fortresses, and many other balkanized microstates. It would be the worst possible outcome for anarchists!
No, our goal is to enact socialism. Then to whither away the state apparatus into communism. Then to whither away the global hierarchy in favor of self-determination and negotiation.
In no universe do serious people think: Step 1: destroy all governance. Step 2: ???. Step 3: Anarchist utopia.
Then it sounds like you’re not really an anarchist, much less AnComm 🤷
Care to explain what the difference between a communist and an anarcho-communist is, then? Communists, such as ML, are the ones who believe in slowly eroding the state, anarchists believe in side stepping the state and growing from grassroots movements. That’s sort of, ya know, the entire difference?
Anarchist groups exist and have existed through history, and they don’t typically believe in “destroy all governance”, they believe in, like I said, growing from alternative, independent, grassroots movements.
Sounds like you are just a communist, which is fine, but you’re not an anarchist.
Also, I’m an anarchist and don’t believe in “jumping to the point.
[…]
No, our goal is to enact socialism. Then to whither away the state apparatus into communism. Then to whither away the global hierarchy in favor of self-determination and negotiation.
Then, by definition, you’re a Marxist, you’re literally summarising Marxist theory. Anarchists don’t believe in going through that middle step.
In no universe do serious people think: Step 1: destroy all governance. Step 2: ???. Step 3: Anarchist utopia.
If you want to see how an anarchist revolution works, go look up Catalonia and the CNT-FAI, Anarchist Ukraine or the Zapatistas.
Good comment. Whether Marxist or Anarchist, goals must be built towards, and cannot be vibed into existence.
(Said the dude from .ml)
I really don’t mean to be rude, but both you and the other user seem to have no concept of anarchism. I mean, what you said straight up makes no sense. Marxists and AnComms both have the same end goal, so what do you think the difference between them is?
Anarchist societies and groups exists and have existed throughout history; they didn’t have to be “build towards” by taking control of the government first.
And please don’t be telling me why you like or don’t like anarchism; I’m arguing about what it is. Whether you like or think is viable is an entire different conversation.
Marxists and AnComms both have the same end goal, so what do you think the difference between them is?
They do not. AnComms want horizontalism as the end goal, Marxists want central planning and elected councils. Anarchists believe all hierarchy to inherently be an issue, while Marxists don’t, and rely on central planning as a core concept for economic organization. I read both Anarchist and Marxist theory, despite being a Marxist, because Anarchists do make good points from time to time that can be adapted and learned from.
Anarchist societies and groups exists and have existed throughout history; they didn’t have to be “build towards” by taking control of the government first.
Anarchism doesn’t just happen or fall into place. How do you believe the US, for example, will arrange itself into horizontal networks of Mutual Aid? By building them up. You seem to have no concept of Anarchist praxis in the modern era, you can’t vibe Anarchism into being.
And please don’t be telling me why you like or don’t like anarchism; I’m arguing about what it is. Whether you like or think is viable is an entire different conversation.
Absolutely, I don’t intend to engage in dogmatic sectarianism. Anarchists are my comrades against Capitalism and Imperialism, and if an Anarchist movement was spearheading the revolution, I would fall in line and support that mass movement, because only a mass movement can enact change.
They do not.
Marxists are communists, for whom the end goal is a stateless, moneyless, classless, society. What do you think stateless means?
AnComms want horizontalism as the end goal
And as the process. Which is what separates them from other communists.
Anarchism doesn’t just happen or fall into place. How do you believe the US, for example, will arrange itself into horizontal networks of Mutual Aid? By building them up. You seem to have no concept of Anarchist praxis in the modern era, you can’t vibe Anarchism into being.
Building them up through grassroots movements. They don’t happen by taking control of the government and creating “elected committees” who then “plan production”, which is what the comic talks about doing (even adding a picture of Lenin), and which the other user - and you by extension - defended.
Marxists are communists, for whom the end goal is a stateless, moneyless, society. What do you think stateless means?
Good question. Marx specifically referred to the State as the mechanisms within government by which one class asserts its power, not the entire government. Engels elaborates on this, and explains the “whithering away” of the state:
“The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not ’abolished’. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase ’a free people’s state’, both as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called anarchists’ demand that the state be abolished overnight.”
This is not the Anarchist definition of the State, best described as a monopoly on violence. For Anarchists, elected councils are examples of vertical hierarchy that ought be opposed, as compared to Marxists who see it as a necessary tool for administration. This is the transformation from “the government of people” to the “administration of things,” ie government and councils and committees exist to fulfill managerial roles, while Anarchists seek full horizontalism and avoid managerial roles as they believe them to lead to corruption and coercion.
Think Star Trek vs. The Disposessed.
And as the process. Which is what separates it from other communists.
Yes, I am familiar with Means/Ends Unity. I may disagree with the importance of it, but I am not here to promote infighting or sectarianism, I am here to explain Marxism.
Building them up through grassroots movements. They don’t happen by taking control of the government and creating “elected committees” who then “plan production”, which is what the comic talks about doing (even adding a picture of Lenin), and which the other user - and you by extension - defended.
Yes, you build up Anarchism, a network of horizontal structures, from the bottom up. You build up Marxism by building dual power via councils, unions, and other democratic structures that can replace the Capialist state. These are separate concepts with similar but distinct goals.
Yes, you build up Anarchism, a network of horizontal structures, from the bottom up. You build up Marxism by building dual power via councils, unions, and other democratic structures that can replace the Capialist state. These are separate concepts with similar but distinct goals.
Right, but so it seems we agree? This post’s explanation of socialism excludes anarchism, among other forms of socialism, which was my criticism. It only focuses on ML, but titles itself “What the heck is Socialism?”
Perhaps I expressed my self wrong at some point, or misinterpreted something, but that’s the point I was trying to make from the start.
(Said the dude from .ml)
I really don’t mean to be rude, but both you and the other user seem to have no concept of anarchism.
Downvotes are likely because of both of these statements. Judge people by their actions, not by where they come from. I’ve seen Cowbee consistently acting civilly and in good faith here and elsewhere, including interactions that I’ve had with him. And that’s in the face of frequent ad hominems, like the thinly veiled one that you put in parentheses.
I don’t see eye-to-eye with him or other M-Ls on a lot of things, especially as I’m roughly an anarcho-syndicalist. But that’s really no reason to be rude. Try some positivity and you might build more bridges.
you and the other user seem to have no concept of anarchism.
This is a bit puzzling as both seem to be describing forms of anarchism. There are a multitude of different variations. Could you perhaps expound a bit on what form of anarchism you are meaning? Can you share any extant anarchic societies that you are aware of that are members of the global community? From my knowledge and experience, anarchic communities without agreed, intentional direction frequently implode either from external pressures (ex. capitalist or M-L military intervention, state actor infiltration) or personality conflicts.
It was just a tongue in cheek comment based on .ml being known for having a lot of tankies, which are not usually very friendly to anarchists; it was not meant as an insult.
As for anarchist societies that are part of the global community, that’s a bit of a Herculean task since no state will ever want to acknowledge a stateless society; but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. For a current one, you can look to the Zapatistas, which I’ve heard about but admittedly don’t know much about; and for other ones, you can look at the anarchists in Catalonia during the civil war, and Korean People’s Association in Manchuria around the same time.
Catalonia was stuck between Franco (supplied by Nazis and Mussolini, even officers) and the Republicans/communist party (supplied by the USSR, even officers), and not only did the Nazis and USSR take plenty of other territories, but before the war the Republicans, which were liberal, had won elections; so it can’t be claimed it failed because they were anarchists (and non-Soviet socialists and communists), especially with how well they did for a while with so few resources.
Manchuria was also caught between Imperial Japan and communist Korea, and finally fell with the Japanese invasion. Japan not only conquered Korea (which was obviously not all anarchist), but also a lot of other territory and killed a lot of other people, so the failure cannot be attributed to anarchism then either.
It was just a tongue in cheek comment based on .ml being known for having a lot of tankies, which are not usually very friendly to anarchists; it was not meant as an insult.
Lemmy.ml obviously leans heavily Marxist, but I also pick it because it has a lot of federation with other instances. I have another account on another instance if I want to just chill out with Leftists of all stripes, under the same username, so I can pick what I want at the time.
I do want to point out that it is normally Anarchists picking fights with Marxists, not the other way around. This is down to Anarchism generally being seen favorably by Marxists, just disagreeing on the idea that vertical organization must be opposed and that there must be Means/Ends unity. This is because Marxists are Dialectical Materialists.
Anarchists, however, see any amount of vertical organizing as bad in and of itself, so you see lots of anti-Marxism among Anarchists. While Marxists generally see Anarchists as having a noble goal with less realistic chances at success, Anarchists tend to see Marxists as better than Capitalists, but ultimately still advocating for an “oppressive” system. This is where “tankie” and “red-fash” usually comes in, while the absolute harshest slur for Anarchist is “Anarkiddie,” and it’s reserved for new leftistd picking Anarchism because they are disgruntled with their current system, but are also in alignment with the western narrative surrounding Marxism and Marxist movements. It’s condescending, and I don’t do it because it’s sectarian nonsense that reduces Leftist cohesion, but it’s a stark contrast to the way some Anarchists percieve Marxists.
As long as you enter Marxist spaces without attacking Marxism, you’ll likely see no trouble even advocating for Anarchism, but the reverse is rarely true. Some few Anarchists even accuse some Marxists as betraying Marxism, as though Marx were an advocate of Anarchism, which any amount of reading can readily disprove entirely.
I do think reading about a meeting between Lenin and Kropotkin is extremely valuable. In this transcript of the meeting, Kropotkin and Lenin show calm, mutual respect and Kropotkin himself describes his aged heart as warmed by the October Revolution, but tries to advocate for a more cooperative-focused approach, while Lenin takes a more hardline stance in favor of protecting the nascent Socialist society. They leave the meeting in disagreement, but on friendly and respectful terms.
Well, firstly, I think .ml doesn’t just lean heavily Marxist, it leans heavily Marxist-Leninist, which is different; secondly, it specifically has a lot of tankies, which is the specific thing I pointed out. Not sure why you would want to equate yourself with that, being that tankies usually refers to people who defend repressive, imperialist, genocidal, actions of madmen. The origin of the word is to describe British communists who defended the use of tanks against protesters in the Hungarian Revolution, and is also colloquial used to describe people who defend Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Kim Jung Un, and their regimes, and more recently to describe people whose views often are based on just being anti-west, to the point of supported the fascist state of Russia, for example. So again, I’m not sure why you’re equating yourself with that, but just remember you were the one to put on the shoe, I didn’t force it on you.
And I’m sorry, but the idea that it’s usually Anarchist picking fights with others is ludicrous, but it actually is the perspective that I expect from tankies, because for a tankie the idea of “leftist unity” is to fall in line with tankie values, and to kill or imprison anyone who does not fall in line. Marxists and MLs in general far outnumber anarchists in online spaces, and one thing you can often see is tankies and MLs in general bursting into anarchist discussions, and being anything less than civil. I have seen anarchists advocating for anarchism in anarchist communities that were in a ML instance or website, get flooded with comments from MLs. You can even be banned in .ml by just being critical of Russia or China; given that anarchists will always be critical of the state, I don’t really see how you can in good faith claim that “you’ll likely see no trouble even advocating for Anarchism”.
Historically, I find your comment even more revisionist. The USSR not only killed and imprisoned anarchists, but it also refused to support anarchists and other socialists in Catalonia during the revolution, and eventually took control of Catalonia - done by the Spanish Communist Party, which was serving USSR interests and even Russian officers - and began prosecuting them, for no reason other than that they had fought in the POUM against fascists, instead of serving under the communist party. The Korean People’s Association in Manchuria also suffered a lot of attacks at the hands of the Korean communists, who nowadays lead North Korea. And of course, there’s also the Black Army of Ukraine, that merely wished to see itself independent of the USSR; but of course, for MLs the right of self-determination goes out the window when MLs are the ones trying to subjugate you. All of this, is where the term “red-fash” comes from.
I also don’t really remember seeing an anarchist be that critical of Marxists, as I have of MLs, which are different; I’m not sure why you keep trying to merge the two into one, as there are plenty of people who think of themselves as Marxist but not ML, and others who are ML and think Lenin evolved Marxists ideas a lot and that Marxists are essentially living in the past and haven’t read enough theory.
In short: MLs, and tankies specifically, have historically heavily persecuted anarchists and wanted them dead, but asking for people to fall in line or be shot is not fucking “unity”. Not so different from when Liberal politicians ask for left unity by getting leftists to vote for them while making no compromises, but at least they are less likely to take you to a prison camp or shoot you in the head.
I’m really not interested in having a conversation with someone who is interested in sweeping all of this under the rug and pretend that anarchists just get prickly about MLs and tankies purely based on theory, and who wants to equate Marxists, MLs, and tankies as being all the same. I’ve even met MLs who distance themselves from tankies, but you claim to be a Marxist and still choose to run defense for them. Well, that’s your choice, but don’t complain when you get pegged for one, which is definitely how I see you now, and I really don’t have in interest with talking with you anymore after this.
Good examples and getting at what my point was. External forces (generally capitalist but also the Red Army did its fair share) continually besiege anarchic societies. Without alliances and reaching societal critical mass, anarchic (and other socialist and/or communist) societies are too vulnerable to interference. Rojava (different SDF) has already seen some of this with efforts to undermine their position having already taken place (ex. Trump’s government negotiating some disarmament then abandoning then to Turkish artillery/airstrikes).
Nice idea but it’s very telling that there is no mention at all of how to make this come about. The more I learn about Marx, the more he seems like Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, just a “wouldn’t it be nice if” pie-in-the-sky idea.
The more I learn about Marx, the more he seems like Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, just a “wouldn’t it be nice if” pie-in-the-sky idea.
Sorry, your argument is outdated by around 200 years. Engels already did an essay on the difference between scientific socialism and utopian socialism, because it was a common critique back then. It’s called, well, “Socialism: scientific and utopian”, and explains how Marxism isn’t a utopian pipedream but rather a systematic way of analysing the economy and the social relations and historical events, reacting to them, and fighting for the rights of the workers above all else. Among other things, it allowed the Russian Revolution to triumph, and it allowed the Soviets to predict the second world war 10 years before it happened (which allowed the USSR to place most of its heavy industry east of the Urals, and in turn saved the country from losing against the Nazi invasion).
your argument
I haven’t made an argument, I made a personal observation.
Engels already did an essay on the difference between …
I don’t understand any of this.
My point is that there were already conservatives 200 years ago claiming that socialism was utopian, and people like Marx and Engels proved them wrong. Lenin and Fidel, and all the workers who followed and guided them, adhering to Marxism-Leninism, successfully organized revolutions that abolished capitalism and Tsarism and turned their countries into socialist ones.
So your comment that it seems “utopian” has already been answered by Engels 150+ years ago, and confirmed wrong by Lenin and Fidel.
claiming that socialism was utopian
I didn’t claim that socialism was utopian, I pointed out that there is seemingly no proposal for how to make socialism come about, much like The Venus Project.
So your comment that it seems “utopian”
I haven’t used the word utopian. You’re putting words in my mouth. You’re so blinded by your expectations about what you think people are going to say about socialism that you literally can’t read what people are writing. Sort your shit out please.
“wouldn’t it be nice if” pie in the sky idea
How’s that not basically the definition of utopia?
that there is seemingly no proposal for how to make socialism come about
There pretty much is: create a vanguard party of Marxist intellectuals, create unions and give services to citizens in order to organise them, help them in their lives and their struggle, and educate them into class-consciousness. This makes a grassroots dual-power structure that makes workers class-conscious and politically involved as well as provides them with safety networks that they themselves maintain. When the material conditions for the revolution eventually come, the vanguard party and the grassroots organizations coalesce and take power from the bourgeoisie
How’s that not basically the definition of utopia?
LOL it’s not because that’s how concepts work.
the revolution
What revolution?
the vanguard party and the grassroots organizations coalesce and take power from the bourgeoisie
What’s the Marxist plan for preventing the people who take power from becoming the new exploiters? How do Marxists propose to overcome the fact that power corrupts?
LOL it’s not because that’s how concepts work.
You can tell that to yourself, it’s the core of what you meant, regardless of whether you want to use the specific word “utopia” or just talk about “ideal societies that won’t take place”. I’m not here to argue semantics.
What revolution?
Whichever comes. Revolutions take place periodically in different countries. French revolution, October revolution, revolutionary struggles against colonialism… All of those were revolutions, i.e. events in history with rapid radical changes in the form of governance and organisation of a system, possibly with a change in the classes of society.
What’s the Marxist plan for preventing the people who take power from becoming the new exploiters? How do Marxists propose to overcome the fact that power corrupts?
The solution is being as democratic as possible. Establishing grassroots, dual power structures early and way before the revolutions. Strong unions, neighborhood associations, social rights movements like current feminist organizations… All of those linked and in collaboration with each other and with a vanguard party of Marxist intellectuals who guide these collectives and vice-versa.
Fun fact: The expression pie-in-the-sky originates in an American socialist song. It’s quite catchy.
A curious diversion but doesn’t really contribute to the issue at hand.
Revolution, which is an inevitability as Capitalism and by extension Imperialism continues to decay and disparity continues to rise. Marxists advocate for building dual-power so that when this revolution does occur, the former state can be replaced with democratic councils and unions that already exist.
which is an inevitability
What makes you say that?
Competition and improvements in production result in increasingly lowered rates of profit, which are countered by higher exploitation. Wages have largely stagnated with respect to productivity while disparity rises.
I don’t follow.
You might want to read Wage Labor and Capital then.
I don’t want to read that.
Then what, specifically, are you having trouble with understanding?
Moneyless society is such BS. Have fun writing an IOU for 30 avacados
The very concept of money has changed a lot for the past 200 years. In Marx’s time, the dominating view of money was that of a trading good like any other. Economists wrongly believed that money had appeared through barter, that primitive economies were barter economies, and that money, originally as fragments of precious metals, appeared from its convenience of being small and relatively weightless, easy to divide, long-lasting and impervious to rotting, etc. properties. Nowadays we understand that money appeared as a quantifier of debt, in centralized economies where one central authority would request goods and services to be provided by the subjects of that authority. These debt-notes would eventually turn into money.
Many modern economists understand money not as yet another commodity, but as a debt-measuring utility. Money would be, in short, a quantification of the right to request something from society. “Moneyless” society was understood at a time where money was poorly understood. For example, if you fix the prices of most goods and services, or even provide them at no cost, then what’s the point of money? Many people argue that the Rouble in the late USSR (70s onward) wasn’t really a currency at all. If money stops being a good indicator of the amount of goods and services that you can obtain, is it really money anymore?
This just goes to say that Marxism is open to discussion, and that everything should be analyzed with the most current and applicable knowledge, and be subjected to the harshest scrutiny. You’re very welcome to discuss the implications of a moneyless society, I just suggest that you do it in a more well-versed and less authoritative way than you did in your last comment.
I’m not sure where to start to reply since your last paragraph indicates that you have taken my slight at moneyless socety as a challenge, I’m guessing it’s a concept that you believe in. You provided a bit of information about money but you didn’t provide any insight into what a moneyless society might look like and you didn’t provide any information to convince someone that this is a feasible concept. Your closest attempt seems to be a comparison between money as debt and money as a store of value, where they are different versions of money. In order to be without something I suppose you must define what it is that you are without, though- so you did do that. What you didn’t do is provide any convincing information for a moneyless society. The question about whether the Rouble was really money is a question about the definition of money. Any token or note that can be exchanged for an item of value is money. In a bartering system you will have IOUs (Promise notes) as items are delivered on different schedules. Without money people will be waiting around with IOUs waiting for goods to be delivered. I don’t think it could ever work. I do appreciate the conversation as you’ve made me think about organizing society in full scale as opposed to organizing society into smaller groups each with their own ability to do everything, like work camps. As for your suggestion that I discuss things in a less authoritative way- it’s just sarcasm. A moneyless society would suck. Waiting around with an IOU for avacados that you are owed for eggs that you produced is going to be terribly inefficient and a lot of extra work.
You provided a bit of information about money but you didn’t provide any insight into what a moneyless society might look like and you didn’t provide any information to convince someone that this is a feasible concept
That’s simply because I’m not particularly well-versed into the advantages or disadvantages of moneyless societies, and I’m not particularly for or against them, if anything I’m im favour of the existence of a centralized currency as we have now. My point was only that discussion is l best done when nuanced and interested, and not “but avocado”. My point was also that Marxist terms are to be discussed and revised at all times, and maybe you’re right and moneyless societies aren’t the best alternative given our modern knowledge of money.
Regarding the second half of your paragraph, my problems with IOUs are a bit different. The problem with non-centralized, promise-based forms of money, is that they’re very prone to being violated, and that barter is a very inefficient form of exchange of goods and services. I’m not well-versed in the concept of a moneyless economy, but I’m a bit more well-versed in the nature of money. For example, money’s worth doesn’t come from “everyone agreeing that it’s worth something for some reason”. It comes from taxation. A central authority, in this case the state, imposes compulsory taxes using the monopoly of violence, in a given currency. The fact that people will have to pay their taxes in that particular currency, means that they need to obtain that currency in the first place to pay said taxes. This makes people more likely to engage in economic activity with that currency, since it’s suddenly very useful for everyone in order to pay their compulsory taxes. Taxes are also very useful as a redistribution mechanism. All in all, a central currency whose monetary policy is decided collectively by the workers in a democratic fashion, can be argued to be a useful thing for a democratic communist society. I’m sure there are arguments against this but I’m not very well versed in the critique as I said.
Conclusion: question everything, but let’s do it in a serious way to improve our knowledge and to possibly envision better societies.
Are you familiar with the bartering system? Rather than money, you would judge the value of the object by how much you needed it. If you really wanted the avocados, you would ask the person who had avocados what they would trade. If you didn’t have what they wanted, you can bargain or try someone else who has avocados who wants what you currently have.
Basically, a money less society goes back to a very simplified society. You won’t be able to get everything you want and will have to, sometimes, settle for what you currently have. It also gives you the ability to trade your skills.
So, you go back to the avocado trader and tell them that you’ll build an avocado shed for them in exchange for a crate of avocados. You both negotiate, exchange and then move on.
It’s more work because you have seized the means of production by making things yourself in order to trade, rather than off shoring to someone else who is likely not getting paid at all. This is why the wealthy absolutely don’t want this system because it’s more work for them, while in the lower class it’ll give more control back. When balancing, there will always be people who lose and people who gain.
Interesting read and I can see how the lack of a monetary authority leaves less chance for exploitation. However, in 2024 we’ve lived for about 8 years in a world with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is decentralized and immutable. It has made the world take a second look at the concept of money. I don’t see how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin should not exist in your society. Rather than carry an IOU for avacados I can just take my Bitcoin or whatever over to someone who has avacados in stock. You wouldn’t want that ability?
Hey so the barter system never really existed, not in any real way. There were absolutely communal living pockets, like peasant villages in Russia, but barter would not work as a basis for a socialist society. You seem to have some interest in this stuff, so I think you should read Marx and Engels, and work your way through some of their economic stuff till you can work through Capital. Its a fucking fantastic book, but its pretty difficult, especially solo. Lots of great resources out there though, like David Harvey’s lectures and the Reading Capital With Comrades podcast. But start with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific which will prepare you for their analytical style, then read Wage Labor and Capital, or Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Sorry if you’re already familiar with some of this work but I figured from reading your comment that this stuff might still be new to you.
It sucks we were taught about the barter system in school, but that’s just some shit Adam Smith made up, he didn’t have any historical or material basis for it. Yet they still teach it as part of the liberal illusions about capital and private property.
Username does not check out
Socialism probably won’t be moneyless. Communism is moneyless but that’s a long ways away and there are no shortcuts. In any case, the value form is a nightmare, and has to be overcome. Ever heard of alienation, like from a Marxist perspective? The idea is that the extrinsic social relation we call “value,” has become so internalized that we can’t tell the difference between ourselves and commodities. On some level, we are always comparing things to other things, a new vacuum cleaner holds more value than a used pencil for an extreme example. Everything is reduced to what it is worth money-wise, which is a development that is unique to capitalism. And we even do it to ourselves and each other, comparing ourselves based on how much money we make, or how much cool stuff we have. So much so that Marx simplified this whole complex social clusterfuck called alienation as, “material relations between people, social relations between things.” And this is all tied to the value form, which is not a social necessity, but under our current system it is. Capitalism steals our humanity and turns it into value which is a measurement taken in dollars. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not too keen on having my time, labor and humanity robbed from me, but more importantly I’ll never get it back unless we take it back, all of the workers together demanding only what we already own, and what was taken from us.
I can haz Star Trek fyu cha?
The 1% cry about it way less than the 40+% of absolute troglodytes in this country who think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires and love their tacky prophet Donnie the douche
Question. How can we be sure to trust that the elected committees do not turn society into an authoritarian regime? Would it work like standard western democracy, i.e. electing a party / parties to form a “government” (in this case committee; semantics)?
I’ll jump in with an extra question here if I may:
So say you have two companies, doing more or kess the same thing, company A and company B.
If the workers in those companies detain their respective means of production, why wouldn’t they want to do what we see today:
“Hire” the best ones from the other company, grow so they all get more of it, intimidate concurrence etc? I mean it’s not just because there are lots of bosses instead of just some, that it will solve those problems?
Also, if company A does well, won’t people apply for work there, but ot for company B that (say) does less well? Wouldnt company A try to limit hired if they don’t fall in line with what they are thinking/doing etc.?
I just see the same system but with artificial blocks for the most obvious things, blocks people (who want it, I mean those crazy prycopathic bosses will still be around, they’re just not a CEO any more) will just work around.
Yes and no. Most Marxists advocate for a form of Whole-Process People’s Democracy, or Soviet Democracy. Essentially, the idea is that, rather than just having state, local, and federal elections (as a brief example), there are far more rungs you can directly elect and participate in. This ideally holds people accountable better than western democracies do.
All committees are authoritarian regimes, if they have any power. Making any decisions with power to back it up is authoritarian.
The question is whether you want decisions made by 500 bankers and some military conteactors or by collective deliberative organs that respond to the needs of the people at large, and assuming the latter, how do you make them function robustly?
A smart approach would borrow from the successes of others while allowing a bit of experimentation. Most real-world sociakist systems have implemented both a bottom-up local governance system for some domains and top-diwo national level policies for other domains. There is a real-world practical need for both.
Re: The councils in this cartoon, they are referring to, more or less, workplace democracy. Practically speaking, this requires a similar system: workers deciding how to run their company but also there is a need for national/regional coordination, for capital investment, and to balance against the bourgeois tendencies of what is basically a wirkers’ cooperative.
A key promise of socialism is not to immediately establish utopia, but to set the groundwork for how we may develop society for ourselves. There may be a form of workers’ councils that you prefer but that I might critique as unworkable in the current world. But it would surely be something made possible by socialist steuggle over time, as the comic explains: we would work to decrease necessary work time, to live our lives more how we want to. Once free if, say, imperiakist wars and expensive dirty energy, perhaps local workers’ council politics can adopt a simpler, more fair and autonomous form.
Basically, deconstructing oppressive systems would be an ongoing process that would have to be weighed against what is “more important” (e.g. not getting nuked), not one leap. So the form taken would depend on the context of how we win, what threats we face, borroeing from others’ successes, and how our experiments go.
The key is in one of the words you’ve said:
ELECTED committee
You don’t have to trust that they won’t turn authoritarian. If you see authoritarian tendencies and you don’t like them, you vote them out.
Would it work like standard western democracy, i.e. electing a party / parties to form a “government”
That depends on who you ask. An anarchist will tell you no, a communist will tell you a different answer, etc. I’m a Marxist-Leninist so I’ll answer to that as a Marxist-Leninist.
In a Marxist-Leninist state, there is only one party. In the same way that your country only have one justice system, your country only has one socialized system of healthcare (if at all), etc, there would be need only for one party: the party that represents the interests of the workers. This party would have a vanguard of communist intellectuals (liable to being removed from their position by popular vote), who would be in a constant back-and-forth democratic dialogue with the workers and their representation in worker-councils. The needs and demands of the workers would be translated to Marxist ideology, which is flexible depending on the circumstances, the culture, and the society it’s applied to, and policy would be drafted, approved and adopted.
A good example of this in action is detailed in a book called “how the workers’ parliaments saved the Cuban Revolution”, by Pedro Ross. It details the immense level of popular participation in the drafting, approval, implementation and execution of policy in Cuba during the 1990s “periodo especial”, a huge economic crisis precipitated by the dissolution of their biggest trading partner, the USSR. Literal millions of people, through their unions and through worker councils, participated democratically in deciding which sectors of the economy they wanted to preserve most, which ones least, which workers are redundant and which aren’t, which goods and services should be prioritised in the planned economy, how to organize local organic farms everywhere (including workplaces) in order to minimize food imports… All of this happened in a back-and-forth, multi-year exercise, between the top representatives of the government, the specialists (e.g. economists, hospital directors, transit company directors, etc.), and the direct representatives of the people through the worker’s councils. It’s truly one of the most explicit and overwhelming examples of democracy that I’ve ever encountered.
What do you think about people who claim only having one party is undemocratic? I do believe there should be a certain freedom to form parties of your own and eventually run for election, but this is standard in most western countries and I’m unsure if I’m missing some benefit to only having one party. Genuine question by the way.
Thanks for being open to discussion, I appreciate it. I’ll start talking about the reality of multi-party systems and liberal democracy.
Generally, multi-party systems aren’t democratic if we adhere to the definition that “the power of legislation is in the hands of the people”, which I think would be a good premise for a parliamentary multi-party system. Ideally, you’d choose a platform in elections, which has a given program, or even create your own platform if you don’t feel represented enough. Then, this platform supports its program in a Congress, and votes through representatives to pass legislation according to its program. Sounds good, but let’s examine whether the policy that people want to enact is actually passed, and whether policy that people don’t want to enact is passed.
We can start with the case of the US. The vast majority of Americans support an extended universal healthcare system of some sort. The technical details are a bit hazy, but the reality is that most people would support such a system as poll after poll shows. Yet, the years pass, and there’s basically no progress in this direction, how is this democratic? How come if a majority of people support this, it’s not pushed forwards and legislated? It’s the same with abortion rights, a vast majority of Americans believe in legal abortion rights for women, yet no legislation is passed in that regard and many states actually go backwards. A majority would support increased taxes on the extra-wealthy and on big companies. Study after study show that public opinion is one of the worst predictors for policy, i.e., there’s barely any correlation at all between polls on policy, and actual passing of policy. Can we say that there’s an actual democracy in the US, when the interests of the people don’t correlate with legislation?
I’ll talk about Europe now, since I’m Spanish and it’s a closer example to me. Recently we assisted to the outrageous example of Macron unilaterally skipping Congress to increase the retirement age against the desires of basically the entirety of France. Huge protests broke out, he was vilified in social media, and all polls showed that this was an extremely unpopular decision. Yet it passed. The same happened all over the EU during the 2010 Euro crisis. Austerity policy was enforced by the authorities everywhere: lowering expenditure on healthcare, education and public retirement pensions, reducing investment in infrastructure, increasing taxes such as VAT… Again, this was extremely unpopular and against the desires of most people. It’s been a decade and a half since then, and these austerity policies are still in place. VAT is still higher than it was, expenditure in healthcare and education hasn’t increased to the levels prior to the crisis… Yet another example of blatant anti-democracy. If the policy isn’t carried out with the will of the people, the system isn’t democratic.
I could go on giving examples of failed cases of policy in multi-party systems, but now I’ll do the opposite and bring examples of multi-party systems that actually applied popular policy.
Salvador Allende was a Chilean leftist politician in the previous century, who was elected by a majority of citizens to carry out nationalizations of the mining industry (the heart of the economy of the country at the time), and to improve the welfare state. His term didn’t last very long at all, because when popular policy started being actually enacted in a democratic fashion, a fascist coup murdered him and replaced him with a fascist dictator.
In the Spanish Second Republic, a similar thing happened. In the 30s, a very progressive leftist government was elected, and promised to carry out land reform, i.e. expropriation from big landowners and redistribution of land to the farmers in a country which was primarily agrarian. It suffered the same fate: a fascist coup, a bloody civil war, and almost 40 years of fascism.
In Iran, under the administration of Mosaddegh, a leftist secular politician who wanted to make sure that the Iranian oil was profiting the majority of Iranians instead of the Shah and a few British companies, nationalised the oil industry. This was met with economical blockade, with paid actors pretending to be communists destroying private property to agitate people, and fake protests organized by the mafia funded by the MI6 and the CIA ousting him from the government.
Now let’s go to a period in which actually progressive policy was passed in Europe in a popular and democratic fashion: the post-WW2 period. Under the looming threat of a socialist revolution, and the high level of labour organization through unions, the governments of Europe were successfully pressured into passing meaningful legislation on the limit of working hours per week, on progressive tax systems, on welfare state (healthcare, education and pensions)…
So it seems to me, that the only way to make governments pass actually progressive and democratic policy that most people agree with, is through the organization of workers and the threat of a communist revolution. That, if people just vote socialists into power without organizing labor, they suffer coups, that if they vote social-democrats they get austerity and antidemocratic policy. What percentage of Europe agreed to increase the military budget after the start of the war in Ukraine? I’m not trying to argue whether that’s a good or a bad policy, I’m just saying all polls showed it was an originally unpopular decision, yet it was carried out.
If the only way to enforce governments to enact popular, progressive and democratic policy, is through the organization of labor, then why would I want multi-party systems instead of a system of representation of workers in a single, unified, democratic structure?
I know it’s a long answer, but I appreciate it if you made it to the end.
I’m not the person you asked and they surely have a better answer, but I thought I’d throw some things out there:
A lot of what are understandably called “one party states” are not technically one party. The DPRK has like three other parties and I’m pretty sure there are countless parties all over the PRC. It’s still reasonable to refer to these countries as one party states because they have some kind of constitutional provision preventing any other party from taking power at the highest levels, but they still use multiple parties as a means of representing diverse interests.
Our comrade VI evidently knows way more about Cuba than I, but something I happen to know is that, when you run for office in Cuba, you are not the candidate of any party, you are effectively independent. I think that they conceptualize what a party is in a very different way. In America, the political parties are literally private entities, with all the legal ramifications that entails, and are effectively companies pushing brands in order to get money from donors via held seats (that’s a crude generalization, but I think it works well enough). In the “one party states” I know of, the “one party” is considered to be part of the governing apparatus itself, rather than something that exists outside it seeking to influence it. It’s all a conjoined project that way.
I personally think that, assuming there is actual democracy in terms of the government needing to enact the popular will, a one party state is probably a more coherent way of having society united in its various projects, even if the proverbial ship needs to change course now and then for whatever reason. That’s just my feeling though, and it’s mainly informed by the overwhelming sense one gets if they follow American elections that they are engineered at every level to be anti-democratic.
gestures broadly at elected officials now
What’s your point?
A good example of this in action is detailed in a book called “how the workers’ parliaments saved the Cuban Revolution”, by Pedro Ross.
That sounds like a fascinating book! I’ve always been interested in the nitty gritty of how the Cuban democratic process works, and this book seems accessible and is just under 200 pages (not including the appendices/bibliography) so I might actually get through it.
Here’s a temporary download if anyone wants to grab it (it’s also just on libgen if you prefer to find it yourself)
Rather than a dry, aseptic description of the Cuban institutions and form of government, the book reads as a historical account of the process that took place in the years of the Periodo Especial.
The second half of the book, for some reason, is a recount of the Cuban revolution and its historical causes, which you may or may not skip reading depending on what your purpose is with the book.
Thanks for providing a link!
Thanks for posting the link!
“But what if one day I get generational wealth? I better vote against anything that might reduce poverty and wealth inequality!” - republican voters
