"Communism sounds great on paper - it just doesn't work in reality!" = most tedious line of conversation EVER?

'there are only two kinds of music...' is more trivial but no less irritating

Even Marx had servants, when he could afford them.

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 11:09 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^ this is the same kind of "ZINGED YA, COMMUNISM" that the original phrase partakes in

I'm not saying the systems in those countries don't/didn't come with massive human cost (as does capitalism)! I'm just demonstrating how the statement being examined is pretty meaningless. Whether or not communism can be achieved without repression is a different matter.

xpost to Alfred

xxp: "country and western"?

The statement may be annoying in its ubiquity, but it's defensible. Like much of the rationalist utopian thinking that followed in the wake of the age of enlightenment, OG Marxist communism grounds itself in a vast number of unjustified assumptions about what people want, what they will "naturally" do under this or that circumstance, and how human societies actually function. It's reductive, simplistic, elitist and even arrogant. Thus, it may seem practical/practicable "on paper", when one isn't actively challenging its assumptions, or dealing with individual and social complexities.

We can't really critique capitalism on the same grounds. Capitalism is sustainable (thus problematic) simply because it does work. I don't mean "work" in the sense that max does ("people are happy, healthy, unoppressed"), I mean that it functions as described in the sales brochure. Goods and services are traded for money, supply and demand determine value, etc. The day-to-day functionality of capitalism does not depend on dubious assumptions about humanity's higher nature, and requires no externally-imposed support system. If you'll forgive the word, it's a "natural" product of the way that human beings have organized their conception of the individual and society for thousands of years. Private property, trade, and money have existed as concepts, after all, for a long, long time.

That said, I don't know why the dumbed-down "communism is GREAT on paper" meme is so persistent.

"Republican, Democrat, they're both exactly the same thing, man!"

lol dude i dont know about you but theres plenty of "communist papers" that dont sound so great to me

-- max, 30 July 2008 15:13 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i meant that don't work in reality, and that's probably what's meant most of the time by this statement.

fwiw Russian style of government basically had absolutely nothing to do with communism as envisioned by Marx et al, especially after Lenin expelled Trostsky, etc. Stalin never even read Marx.

I mean that it functions as described in the sales brochure.

I don't think this is strictly true at all, but I definitely lol'd at your chosen metaphor

"Republican, Democrat, they're both exactly the same thing, man!"

fearless Pelosi/Reid leadership has put the lie to that. Welcome home, troops!

capitalism doesn't function as described in the sales brochure but it functions

anyway the most interesting/accurate aspect of Marxism is its analysis of capitalism - predictions of a post-capitalist society and how quickly and easily one could be achieved, eh not so much

capitalism doesn't function as described in the sales brochure but it functions

you could say the same thing about communism if it had ever actually been put into practice (ie, autonomous worker-owned collectives running everything)

Communism vs. Democracy is a better head-to-head than Communism vs. Capitalism. Democracy is another absurdly idealistic, "unnatural", rationalist utopian scheme that really shouldn't work. But unlike communism, it does seem to work (that is function as advertised, in a sustainable manner, with minimal social disruption). Perhaps this is because it promises/demands less, has often worked to disempower the state in favor of the individual, and permits the accumulation of personal wealth & power.

worker-owned collectives running everything = syndicalism?

Communism "doesn't work" in the sense that it has proven unable to keep up with capitalism as an economic engine. Capitalism wins at exploiting resources, growing the economic base, developing technology, etc. Capitalism has its own flaws that may or may not yet undo it as well, at which point Communism might actually "work." Communism did not "work" in a specific context, i.e. a global power struggle with a capitalist power.

i think what shakey is saying is that communism sounds great on paper, it just doesn't work in reality.

no, shakey = "communism didn't fail, it was just executed wrong!"

The day-to-day functionality of capitalism does not depend on dubious assumptions about humanity's higher nature, and requires no externally-imposed support system.

I am not sure this is true at all, especially the part after the comma. Cf. Gilded Age robber-baron capitalism to a system with an FTC, FDIC, SEC, etc. As for the part before the comma, it's only true to the extent that all actors are rational, self-interested and have equal access to information. (Which plays into the second part.)

Democracy.....does seem to work (that is function as advertised, in a sustainable manner, with minimal social disruption).

not as advertised, though?

How about single party Communist countries in which officials are elected by the people, such as Vietnam? Communist or no?

China.

I agree w/a lot of what's been said here btw. I think the problem is no one's figured out the right way to transition to communism from older economies (Lenin tried to use socialism as an intermediate step)

My point above kinda boils down to the idea that Democratic societies (usually hybrid capitalist/socialist) make the carrot seem easily accessible and tend to hide the stick.

I am not sure this is true at all, especially the part after the comma. Cf. Gilded Age robber-baron capitalism to a system with an FTC, FDIC, SEC, etc.

As for the part before the comma, it's only true to the extent that all actors are rational, self-interested and have equal access to information.

no, shakey = "communism didn't fail, it was just executed wrong!"

it wasn't even executed at all. Mao, Stalin, Castro et al - in every single instance these guys were just bullies who used the most convenient ideological tool at their disposal (ie, the appealling idealism of "communism") to consolidate power and run shit.

True Marxist communism requires a hell of lot more top-down control.

I think Marx would disagree. what would be required is control from the BOTTOM - ie, the "workers"

charismatic leaders: the self-clowning ovens of communism

and this is the whole problem with "communism" as executed in the 20th century - it basically boiled down to dictators and/or existing elites claiming to represent the "workers"/"the people" when they did no such thing. Every single "communist" state was/is essentially a state-run capitalist economy - the working class never got shit.

Gore Vidal: "Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor."

the problem with Communism starts at the root: the basic assumption of how prices are derived for goods is just flat wrong

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/paretian/social.htm

That said, I don't know why the dumbed-down "communism is GREAT on paper" meme is so persistent.

man, you guys love to over think things. it's probably because when people use this it's usually got sweet FA to do with their actual opinions on communism and they have no intention for it to be some statement of ultimate truth. it's just a shorthand way of saying that they are not fully convinced of some random argument that the other person is making. this is despite the fact that the other person is trying really hard to make it sound good. aka. "what-ever!"

personally I think its a huge tragedy of the 20th century that Marx's ideas were effectively totally discredited due to the actions of a bunch of bloodthirsty autocrats who never gave two shits about any of his work whatsoever. Kinda like with Jesus and Christianity.

^^ this is the same kind of "ZINGED YA, COMMUNISM" that the original phrase partakes in (sic)

-- max, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 16:16 (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Incorrect. It is a statement of fact. Much of the reason for Marx's poverty was that he insisted on not living in accordance with the theory which he helped to invent, and therefore he lived beyond his means.

Leninism =/ communism, or at least there are other variants that don't involve a dictatorship of the proletariat.

i liked this thread more when it was less about communism and more about this stupid phrase

dingbod im not really sure what point youre trying to make, but im fairly confident that its stupid

the OP is a lame-ass statement of course, but it's basically backwards. communism is a mess theoretically but it worked just fine in practice! it took heavy state force to keep a lid on everything, the population not the least, but half the world was communist for half a century, that's not a 'failed' record for a form of government. it could have gone on forever, but for the outside pressure. monarchy and feudal economics were garbage too but that had a pretty good run, didn't it.

I'm actually rather comforted that ILX still has a tough old Red in its midst. "You should have lived through the 70's" etc.

why aren't there more communes?

Leninism = communism, but like Marxism it has never been purely achieved

"living within one's means" is hardly a communist idea. what is "one's means" anyway? fiscal discipline? bourgeouis! (i always spell that wrong...)

what are communist ethics anyway

i dont know, but i bet they sound great on paper

oh i get it

something can't SOUND anything on PAPER, amirong?

another subtext to this is "liberalism sounds great, but fuck you"

The problem with the statement isn't its veracity. It's that every dumbass who never read any actual Communist tracts repeats it. It's conventional wisdom for stupid people. It would be fine if someone had read the Manifesto (or anything!) and had some developed opinions about the economy, and then had some new point to make about why Communism can't work (btw: The human nature part isn't just tired - it's wrong).

The other real problem is that it's frequently spewed by self-described libertarians who think that they have SUCH EDGY OPINIONS about the economy and politics because they've read some Ayn Rand.

I think Marx would disagree. what would be required is control from the BOTTOM - ie, the "workers"

In that, I obviously disagree with Mordy, above, though I'm not a libertarian and I've never read Ayn Rand.

Vietnam functions well because it's as much a capitalist democracy as a socialist state.

^^I can get with that analysis

which is why there aren't more communes.

Here's the problem with the "human nature" thing. It presumes that "human nature" (which in this case assumes that humans will attempt to attain as much power and wealth as possible) can't work with Communism. But guess what? Human nature doesn't work with Capitalism either. Without government interference, Capitalism would devolve into the same issues -- people trying to attain as much wealth as possible without any regard for the lower class. Which is also why Marx's Communism doesn't depend upon "human nature." It depends upon a moment of such technological superiority that Capitalism fails due to the cheapness of its goods. And that's why government control ISN'T the intermediary for a shift to Communism. Capitalism itself is the intermediary.

Hm, well, the distinction between liability and opportunity doesn't seem insignificant to me.

the idea is that the state will be functionally democratic, and collective worker decision-making will happen fractally, all the way from the factory floor to the ministries.

Where did Marx state this?

Good points about early capitalism. I agree that the agrarian-to-communist leap was not what Marx had in mind but the fact that communism did not catch on in the most advanced countries itself seems to disprove the theory - surely the immiserating cycle of capitalist production and alienation of labour should have organically led to revolution?

it did! the manifesto is written from the middle of it; that's why it sounds so confident. then it was defeated. turned out capitalism wasn't old, but young. no doubt many hard lessons to be learned from 1848 but "this will continue forever" is not one of them, especially in our world where it seems yet another longstanding liberal safeguard against an event like 1848 is trashed every day.

my description of the worker-council model there is probably slipping forward into 1871 (or into 1905), whoops-- tho i'd be surprised if you couldn't find marx talking about something like it somewhere. in general tho you already know this is always the argument, even under a totalitarianism like stalin's where it is a transparent fiction: that you and your fellow workers are the ones who control the state.

Ha, OK, I wasn't remembering the context of the 1848 revolutions.

Yes, worker rule is always the argument, even, as you say, in the most authoritarian communist regimes, but nothing in the Manifesto really gives me an impression that Marx was mapping out some decentralized, democratic system, as opposed to the authoritarian versions that occurred irl. If anything, centralization seems pretty key.

The southeastern Indian state of Kerala is probably the most successful irl application of Marxist socialism. It actually puzzles me that it doesn't get more discussion among Western leftists.

I've been trying to think if there's /any/ system or principle about which this couldn't be said. Doesn't everything ever sound good on paper but run into problemos in real life?

Lots of things don't sound good on paper!

hugely relieved to scroll up itt and not find myself. now i will rob future-me of the same peace.

i feel like this should be the prologue to every post on ilx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism_in_Kerala

Sund4r otm - this is pretty astonishing and underrated. Well I've never seen it mentioned before.

*southwestern

Kerala is awesome

also a long history of matriarchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marumakkathayam

I fear that the absolute control required for the dictatorship of the proletariat attracts fucked up authoritarian people like Stalin.

It wasn't a case of attracting Stalin - the dictatorship within a dictatorship was his very own marvellous pièce de résistance!

although i know you on 2nd read of your post you aren't saying it wasn't tbf!

The southeastern Indian state of Kerala is probably the most successful irl application of Marxist socialism. It actually puzzles me that it doesn't get more discussion among Western leftists.

― One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact (Sund4r), Wednesday, January 15, 2020 3:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

their economy is not particularly socialist

"Sarcasm doesn't really translate over the internet".

It's almost as if sarcasm has existed in written form for centuries and you're just shit at parsing it

tedious argument i've been seeing everywhere lately, any time someone brings up billionaires having billions of dollars: "net worth isn't the same thing as liquid capital though"

guess a lot of people just learned that jeff bezos doesn't literally have a hundred billion dollars in a capital one account

a lot like the "communism sounds great on paper" and "the truth is somewhere in the middle" lines, half the time i think people just say these things because they heard other people say them and they want to say something, not because they're actually trying to make an argument

my fault for hanging around reddit/twitter

Love this essay (Tronti died a couple of weeks ago).

"Speaking for myself, I know that I would never have the freedom that I feel, inside myself, without having passed through, in my thought and my life, the historic experience of communism."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/a-message-from-the-emperor

admittedly I didn't know he was still alive, but I'm surprised I'm only hearing of his passing now

RIP

I don't have time to read this right now, but the Marx/Kafka thing is so perfect I can't believe I haven't encountered that before! thanks for posting this

Yes was laughing at the Marx-Kafka observation earlier. Great essay.