/lit/ - Literature

I think the wealth of the earth belongs to its inhabitants. Having your own property so long as you or your families uses it is fine, but owning miles and miles of land that other people work, is just greed.

>>7559922
It's an ideal built upon jealously and envy that put into practice, is a good way to break human rights, kill off people and ruin nature. And yet people keep saying "maybe next time".

>>7559922

How sure are you that we can trust your ability to assess intelligence?

When you say the redistribution of wealth, do you exclusively mean money, or do you include things like businesses and property?

>>7559957
>muh appeal to "nature"

>>7559957
meant to say nation, but hey considering the environmental records of Commist nations, I, not wrong.

>>7559957

Are the people who say "maybe next time" motivated by the same jealousy and envy?

Because if they're not, I don't see any reason to think they will repeat the same mistakes as the Soviet Union.

>>7559976
>implying that the USSR and other communist nations didn't have some of the worst environmental actions
Or
>implying that human nature does not BTFO communism

>>7559922
that quote is taken far too seriously, its a bit of rhetoric nothing more. What is crucial is not the 'use values' which everyone receives under communism but democratic control of the economy and the end of alienation of labour under manifested in private property.

>>7559984
I'm not wrong. What the hell auto correct.

>>7559993

>implying that human nature does not BTFO communism

You give the impression of someone who's never read something critical of their position ever.

Would I be right about this?

>>7559987
Of course they are motivated by the same envy and jeously. Also they think they would avoide the same mistakes, but it plays over again and again every time.

>>7560003
Are you implying that people without proper incentives would participate in this economy? Are you implying that we wouldn't seek to be top dog, even in the supposed "heiarchy less" world of communism?

You're not being specific enough. 'redistribution of wealth' is way too vague.

>>7560009

So you don't think it's possible that someone could be a communist for moral reasons, and simply be misguided?

It's much easier to argue against people who you define as inherently immoral, isn't it.

As for whether the same mistakes would be repeated again, that would very much depend on how the circumstances play out. If we were to have communism in the future, it's very unlikely to come about amid a large local conflict as it did in the Russian Revolution. That alone makes your claim that "history will repeat itself" mere conjecture.

>>7560023

So when Russia became a communist, was it that Russians ceased to be human, or were they never human in the first place?

>>7560085
The system was incompatible with them from the get go.

>>7560042
Communism only comes about through force. Marx thought that nations like Germany and the such would later become communist, but due to prevailing economic prosperity and the sustainably of capatilism, Marx's vision did not come about and instead when a nation goes communist, it is through bloodshed.

You would never go for communism for moral reasons, you would be a horrid liar if you said you did.

Its really great when people use examples such as the USSR to say Marx was wrong despite the fact that Lenin did almost the exact opposite of what Marx said

>>7559922

It will be redistributed whether anyone likes it or not.

>>7560003
Man has no nature, but history

>>7560122
>prevailing economic prosperity and the sustainably of capatilism
Wew lad, its a bit early to be making such claims

>>7560108

Yet there were periods in time when it was thought communist nations would outperform capitalist ones. The fact that they existed in the first place undermines your argument, not to mention the fact that humans are capable of living under conditions that are far more beastly than Communism, as demonstrated by history.

Honestly, rather than trying to persuade yourself that communism was absolute evil you should actually try and understand it. Then you might come up with criticisms that aren't completely generic. Because so far it has been every uninformed cliche about communism under the sun and not one insightful argument.

>>7560122

I repeat my previous comment about assuming people you disagree with are immoral.

The Russian Revolution was violent, a fair observation, but by what other means do you propose overthrowing an autocratic state? Let's ignore what their motivations were for a moment and think about the simple question of "how can we do it?".

>>7560126

Oh no, a saboteur!

It's foolish to deny the importance of the Soviet Union in discussions of communism. It remains a tangible example of communism and no matter how different you suppose a new communist state would be you cannot detach yourself from it.

We need to learn from it: everyone does.

>>7560229
I do not see how you could claim the USSR to be more communist than socialist

>>7560254

I do not see how you can detach a state which attempted to put the writings of Karl Marx into practice from Karl Marx as a figure.

It's like trying to deny that Islamic terrorists are not Muslims.

>>7560286

Obviously I meant to say "deny that Islamic terrorists are Muslims"

so every single person intelligent person you have ever met is against all taxes and government programs, am I getting that right. because you may just be an extremely bad judge of intelligence

>>7560312

Except that he said very clearly that he understands why people might think that state operated healthcare, water and so on was a good idea.

If only they would clarify what it is they mean by wealth, the discussion could progress.

>>7560085
Soviet Russia stayed alive because the natural resources, including large population, that they already had, the history of people being subservient to those in power, and the incredible amount of corruption that forced things to continue on. Theres a reason why the world is mainly capitalist now and the big communist countries, Russia and China, have pretty much become full capitalist by now.

Communism sucks
Capitalism sucks
Put 'em together and you get something somewhat tolerable.

>>7559922
Just a reminder that pretty much anyone
on /lit/ would be on there knees and put against a wall if any of this wealth distribution (communist revolution) took place

>>7560323
state operated healthcare, etc. is "redistribution of actual wealth."

>>7560023
What was the incentive of the rich artisan/artistic aristocracy of a while back, who such members like beethoven and davinci belonged to?
Definitely wasnt money you moron and or troll

>>7560332
This is really not accurate. Nationalism and racism has triumphed over class consciousness for now and I see no reason for it to change in the near future. Even the poorest american still profits from the exploitation of the third world and it is not in his interest to change things. Also, thugs would be the ones to carry out the revolution, but I doubt they would be ones to lead it.

>>7560286
Because the attempt was flawed. I can say I am fighting dragons but that doesnt actually change the windmills

I personally believe that in certain well-off countries with a fairly low population a basic income could work to boost innovation and help both culture and business thrive. I don't think it would work in the US just yet, but I think it is in the future for all societies in the long run. We'll see how Finland do with their trial.

I don't know if anybody advocates a complete equal split of all wealth between citizens.

>>7560324

The Soviet Union did not collapse for any single reason, a number of events conspired together to create conditions for it to collapse. In 1986 there was no reason to suppose the Soviet Union wouldn't last another hundred years and yet it fell within five.

Yet reading posts like yours would lead one to believe that Capitalism was ordained by God. As though the USSR was some prolonged lapse in logic which would eventually resolve itself. It's conspiratorial thinking at its worst.

I mean, Russians are naturally subservient... what the fuck are you talking about? They staged a revolution! Apart from that, their present attitude towards the United States or their neighbours could hardly be described as subservient.

>>7560341

Yes, but the fact he specifically excluded them meant that those of us who are outside of the autism spectrum didn't bother mentioning them.

>>7560377
Do you think Gorbachev could have just sent a few people to the firing squads, moderated his reforms a little, and kept things together?

>>7560367

Does the fact that United Kingdom has a national health service mean that it has 'failed' as a capitalist country?

Or that it's not a democracy because it uses a parliamentary system instead of direct democracy?

It was certainly a flawed attempt and I can even point to reasons that I think caused it to fail, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an attempt. At the end of the day even if you insist that it wasn't a communist state, the fact is that everyone else thinks it was.

Instead I would suggest taking a different path, and trying to remind people that the realities of communism were far less disastrous than most people have been led to believe, and the worst of its excesses can be avoided by changes in the structure and its implementation. There is no reason we would need to have round up Kulaks, or to censor the general public in a new communist state. Yet these are what put most people off. I doubt there are many opposed to communism because they've got a hard on for the free market or think taxation is immoral.

>>7560406

I'm not sure what your implication is supposed to be, because the answer to your question is, subject to a few caveats, obviously "yes".

It would have been difficult for Gorbachev to have done this in Russia after he allowed all the other former communists states to leave the Eastern block, but had that not happened then I have no doubt such tactics would have prevented the Communists from being overthrown. It would not even be the first instance of it.

I suppose my follow up question would have to be, do you think that the economy is more important for holding on to power than monopolising force?

Welcome to the real world.

>>7560413
>Does the fact that United Kingdom has a national health service mean that it has 'failed' as a capitalist country?
Yes, or at least severely compromised.

Democracy is a sham anyway.

I looked up the wikipedia page on the USSR and it manages to dodge the whole issue by calling it a M-L state. I guess I will concede the issue as my misunderstanding.

>>7560438
I am not sure what your implication is, as I did not mean to imply anything than a desire for your opinion. Of course, the economy collapsed far enough to disgruntle the populace than it would erode political power. The question is what degree of compromise would have been viable. Is anyone really happy with the way it did turn out?

>>7560351
Can you prove that it wasn't? Now apply that lack of money incentive to your general precious "proles", is Joe Shmo really going to work for free, I sure as hell wouldn't.

>>7560441

Well at least you are consistent. But what you are saying resembles a "no true scotsman" argument and as I said before, it's not useful because the only people who believe it are already communists.

Everything Marx said about the past is brilliant, everything he thought about the future is madness

>>7559922
What wealth are you talking about? Splitting a Tv between 50 people?

The issue with capitalism isn't an unequal distribution of wealth, it's that labour time functions as a measure of exchangeable values and that therefore all outcomes are based on these variate exchangeable values which are constantly being devalued... the accumulation of wealth in its abstract form of exchangeable value is the cause of all economic crisis. Sismondi was really the first to grasp the contradiction between use value and value in exchange but like all other Utopian Socialists he thought that a mere change in the distribution of wealth could fix this which it can't.

"Redistributing wealth" around would literally accomplish noting. You clearly don't understand Critique of the Gotha Program

The only "redistribution of wealth" that ever occurred is when the rich cordoned off for themselves a portion of wealth that society produces, anon. They didn't make anything; they just parasitized the functioning of society, and the fact that they contributed to society's function in the process doesn't detract from that.

Property is theft amigo.

>>7560451

I'm sorry, the way you phrased your question led me to think it was intended as sarcasm.

Towards the end of the USSR the economy did erode, but it did so for an extended period and the effect of it was probably negligible.

More significant would be the lack of viable successors in the high ranks of the Communist party (the old bolsheviks were dropping like flies) and Gorbachev underestimating the effect of policies like Glasnost would have on the general population. Rather than making the Soviet Union seem like a more open place the main consequence was to lead people to question their legitimacy and moral authority.

It's entirely possible to run a state into the ground and maintain power, as North Korea demonstrates. There is no reason the same policies would not have a similar effect if they were applied to the Soviet Union.

As for what degree of compromise would be viable, it's hard to say. I think if they had intervened in the Eastern Block, that would probably have made them less likely to protest in Petrograd and Moscow. Perhaps then the USSR could have been preserved even with Glasnost. Difficult to make that work though.

The oligarchs of Russia and the western governments at the time were pretty satisfied. Everyone else? Not really.

What about the referendum. I never really hear anything about it, despite the results being so in favor of a new union (except those few who boycotted) only for the whole process to fall apart. Were the results faked or just inconsequential?

>>7560540
>hear anything about it, despite the results being so in favor of a new union (except those few who boycotted) only for the whole process to fall apart. Were the results faked or just inconsequential?

I'm not sure what you're referring to, though I'm fairly sure that most Russians look back on the USSR with nostalgia.

>>7560576
this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991
and this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Sovereign_States

I know the second article claims the August coup stopped the treaty, I don't see what it would

>>7560385
to be honest I think I actually misread OP more than you judge me to have done - I assumed he was saying that non-redistribuative, market-based solutions (even conducted through the state) are inherently preferable to those funded through any sort of progressive tax

>>7560505
>>7560451
>>7560438
The interesting thing about Gorbachev is that the economic decline didn't begin until *after* he'd started his market reforms. Prior to that there was stagnation, corruption, and inefficiency, but it was by no means unsustainable. The main failure of the USSR was political, not econonomic; the stagnation of ideology and the failure of the Soviet system to produce any actual worthwhile young political talent. Instead the country was landed with an idiot like Gorbachev and a CPSU and bureaucracy too inert, dogmatic and corrupt to resist his ass-backwards reforms (look at Deng in China to see how to actually marketize a planned economy without fucking it up).

cbf reading this gay thread but just a reminder that human nature absolutely exists and no amount of Foucault reaction images will change this
also class is a genetic phenomenon

>>7559922

Every year hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, are stashed in offshore tax havens. This money could be used to drastically improve the lives of every single person in developing nations to the point that they would not feel the need to try to immigrate to other countries. Often, a lot of this money is made through questionable, legally grey or outright illegal means. My problem is not with the medical doctor who earns 300k a year, lives in a nice house and sends his kid to a private school, or with the successful small business owner, or even the professional athlete who might earn millions. It's with the ultra, ultra wealthy, corrupt people who carve up the world for themselves over expensive scotch, bribe/lobby politicians, finance wars, and when things go tits up, run away and let others take the fall. If you unironically support a class of oligarchs who only have the interests of themselves in mind, then you truly are a fool.

>>7561208

>I can't be bothered reading this thread, but I take the time to respond to it by making the most banal criticism of communism possible and still act like I'm some kind of fucking genius.

>>7561240
yeah

>>7561233
This m8

No, OP, I only believe in it ironically.

>>7559976
that's not what an appeal to nature is you fucking dunce