Is communism an experiment?
For Russia, communism was a grand; but, failed experiment, according to Google.
There was a thread on the previous philosophy forum, something to the matter stating that with central managers being coal workers or shoe salesmen, then it wouldn't seem hard to conclude that the whole endeavor would have failed.
Regarding this, if one day a computer can do the same work central managers can, without any issue about competence, then would communism be not condemned to the ineptitude of Soviet styled central managers?
There was a thread on the previous philosophy forum, something to the matter stating that with central managers being coal workers or shoe salesmen, then it wouldn't seem hard to conclude that the whole endeavor would have failed.
Regarding this, if one day a computer can do the same work central managers can, without any issue about competence, then would communism be not condemned to the ineptitude of Soviet styled central managers?
Comments (83)
The educated bureaucratic class could be employed to resolve any dysfunction caused by local management.
Better question is: do you think the republic would function any more equally than in western governments? Would the government be writer of amends or regulations that end up opposing the ideology of a publicly run economy?
Qaddafi believed democracy-socialism could work with religion as a third column. It would probably sour eventually, but don't all social schemes?
It was an aborted experiment. For starters, the Russian revolution had been brewing since 1905; what actually set it off was a bunch of women. All of that was erased in Stalin's revised history. He had no intention of attempting the Marxist vision: he was an emperor. The regime made some changes according to the (reasonably conceived but badly implemented) agenda: consolidating farms; nationalizing industries, and some social reforms like free education and health care. But the stratification continued, only with different players in the top three tiers of the hierarchy.
Quoting Shawn
Nothing like that. The soviets ('governing council'; something like trade unions) already existed and had considerable political influence.
((Shoe salesmen?))
Quoting Shawn
Huh? If a computer can do the work of all the 'managers' of human societies, and that computer recognized humans as worth keeping, it would distribute goods and services far more equitably than any so-called communist regime. The operative word there being IF.
Grand? They killed tens, hundreds, of millions of people. There has never been a country ruled by communism that didn't end up being a tyranny. Why? Opinion - communism goes against human nature, so it can only be forced on people from above.
At the time of the revolution, their factories were mostly owned by the British and French, so there wasn't any native expertise. I wonder how they managed as well as they did tbh.
While I don't disagree with you in principle, I feel compelled to ask: doesn't law and order as well? Surely the two aren't so terribly dissimilar in sharing similar qualities of being a "manufactured" or inorganic state of affairs, despite both also having relatable qualities of natural social cohesion and the resulting "values", virtues, whatever you wish to call the things that make a society a pleasant thing to call one's own? If I, absent of modern upbringing in any civilized society, feel hungry, or even not, and I see one of lesser or smaller stature than me in possession of something I wish to make mine, would I not be inclined to do so, whether by means of deceit or perhaps a bit more forceful of an approach?
Hundreds of thousands killed one another. 'They' just conducted one side and took over when the carnage was done.
Quoting T Clark
Of course it can't. But nobody's ever tried to. What passed for a communist regime was a top tier of pigs, a layer of Dobermans and millions of workhorses.
Quoting EdwardC
They were never given a chance to try.
Quoting EdwardC
Educated? Maybe. The main requirement for managers was loyalty to the regime.
How so?
Is democracy a grand but failed experiment?
:up:
Democracy is just an outrageous collective despair...
There is no reason a commune can't be governed democratically. I should imagine democracy would actually work very much better in a communist economic arrangement, where people are pretty much equal, than a capitalist one, where a few individuals wield immense political power through their wealth. Might go so far as to say that democracies are failing because of capitalism.
First of all, keep in mind that my opinion is based on "seems to me" rather than specific evidence. Given that, I don't think so. Revenge, security, behavioral control are all pretty human impulses.
Quoting Outlander
I agree that human's have a natural impulse to look out after each other and maybe in a small community where people live with their families and people they know, hat would hold sway. But when the group gets larger those sort of human connections are lost and generalized love of humanity won't get people to work when there is no specific benefit for themselves.
I wasn't talking about the Russian revolution, I was talking about Communism in all it's governmental manifestations - the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia... Wikipedia says that a very uncertain estimate of deaths caused by Communist regimes is between 60 and 150 million.
Based on a examination of the records from the time, Hosking estimates 37 million Soviet citizens died unnatural deaths between 1917 and the 1950s. It appears the Communist plan was to bring about a better world through destruction of the old, which actually wasn't the Marxist vision. Marx believed capitalism was the precursor for communism. Russia never had a real capitalist era. They just had a few foreign factories in St. Petersburg. Trotsky had some explanation for why Russia was able to leapfrog Marx's prophecy, something about the character of the Russian culture, that it easily reflected foreign ways.
China is a different story and a much larger scale of destruction. China appears to have engineered a famine that killed about 40 million people. Communist China tops the list of the worst things the human species has ever done to itself.
Yes, although Wikipedia indicates the Mongol invasion killed between 40 and 65 million, so they're up there too.
They were definitely badass.
Good point. According to Wikipedia, the lower end of the range of deaths, around 60 million, did not include non-intentional famines.
Let me amend that:
deaths caused by self-styled Communist regimes is between 60 and 150 million. They're dictatorships that gained power under a red flag, on the blood of the working and peasant classes, then systematically eliminated the idealists, the trade unionists, the intellectual and communal leaders of the movement. On the large scale, all popular and populist movements are co-opted by demagogues who then become despots.
If the contents smell like rat droppings, though the label says Caviar, don't eat it!
In a system where "the people" (aka the state) owns everything, tyranny is inevitable.
Plus Russia had no experience with democracy. They had an absolute monarchy up to the 20th Century.
It seems plausible to me that any large Communist regime will inevitably end up in tyranny. Again, that's my "seems to me" opinion, not a solid claim.
I'm inclined to agree. I can't see communism on a large scale at all, unless it evolves naturally through the stages of democratic socialism. And that cannot happen in a monetized economy, because powerful vested interests will do anything to thwart it.
But then, other kinds of political system also fall prey to despotism of one kind or another. Right now, capitalism is blundering its way toward implosion, while democracies are failing at various rates.
Yes, I think so.
Yes, I think you're right.
Not just thwart it. They will coopt the system so that they are the true polity: the system's desires becomes their desires, which are at odds with any kind of communalism. I think there is truth in the Communist idea that it is incompatible with democracy. A strong party must always be in place to suppress these monied interests, not share power with them... And thereby securing its own controlling interest.
People have busily tabulated the flaws of both the Soviet Union and the United States (and numerous other countries) so I don't need to do that. You all have your own preferred list; so do I.
Quoting Shawn
They had shoe salesmen in the Soviet Union? Why was I not informed?
Look, there's nothing about shoe salesmen or coal workers which prohibits them from being good managers, but various revolutionary sources assign workers managerial tasks only as they become educated and experienced enough to be effective managers. Motivated shoe and coal workers can acquire managerial skills on the job and in classrooms. I know American workers who, though lacking BAs and MBAs, have the talent and experience to be great managers. The higher in the organization one goes, the more that is expected. We all know professional managers, with Harvard MBAs to boot, who should or will or did get the boot.
Corpse counting is tricky, so there is that. Just off the cuff, I'll grant that communistic and authoritarian regimes have an outstanding record of killing people who got in the way. Perhaps capitalistic, democratic-ish nations and empires have have crappier figures for millions of dead victims, but I am pretty certain that the figures are high enough so that we will not be too embarrassed.
One could even say that great enterprises like revolution, colonialism, imperialism, communism, capitalism, and so on generally entail breaking trainloads of eggs on the way to the grand soufflé.
And fascism. That was quite a few eggs.
Capitalism made and deployed the small pox vaccine, so that saved 530 million people so far.
No it didn't! Medical scientists did. They would have worked in exactly the same way if their education had been free and the result of the research were available to everyone on the planet, regardless of means.
I was vaccinated for smallpox I'm 1964 -- still a somewhat routine thing then.
Note: The US and Russia both hold samples of the variola virus that causes smallpox. Will the virus ever escape its deep-frozen storage vials?
I was told that after 911 they were thinking about the possibility of starting small pox vaccines again. I guess biological warfare was a concern.
Seemingly, as you are the only person who addressed the OP's sentiments about Soviet styled central managers, then I just wanted to say, that the importance of well qualified managers in any society has been something that has concerned the elite of any nation for a long time.
It can be argued that the only reason the Soviet Union failed was due to the clumsiness of the central managers governing economics of Soviet Russia, and ALL the satellite states, which is dumbfounding that they got so little wrong apart from the stark differences with capitalist societies.
Given that you're willing to acknowledge that even democracies are experiments, as such, then I suppose this should appreciate in your mind, the concern of having a well operating socio-economic system. I remember, whilst living in a foreign country, a saying, that if I lay on the ground or if I stand, always 2000 (units of money) are due to me. This goes into the old topic, about how communism was vastly less efficient and productive than other capitalist societies, which is a separate topic, which I think is also true, given the lack of focus on having a good managerial class.
Agreed, but it's more than 7, more than 70, more than 700, more than 7,000, more than 70,000, more than 700,000, more than 7,000,000, and maybe more than 70,000,000.
Marx was always a republican, and therein lies the framework in which communism sees a way through its failure, that is, in the republic.
But it turns out to be less a way through than it is a dead end. The Soviet Republic, the Peoples Republic of China, The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Cuba, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuelathe framework is by now the coffin of the communist dream, and perhaps its final resting place. The result is the same as all republics: oligarchy and state capitalism. In that sense the socialist state is little different than the Roman one, with its bureaucrats no more than a praetorian guard. The state never withered away like Marx and Engels foretold, but it got larger, centralized, and more totalitarian in its reach. So much for historical materialism.
It seems plausible to me that any large regime will inevitably end up in tyranny. Again, that's my "seems to me" opinion, not a solid claim.
Revolutions usually happen when the 'government' The Tzar, king, despot, oligarch, and his coterie become completely careless of the ordinary folk. 'Communism' is simply a label adopted by, or imposed upon, recent populist uprisings. 'Democracy' is a label adopted by governments that want to prevent revolutions.
Russia before the revolution was a medieval society of nobles and serfs. The same is true of China. Such a system is destabilised by the industrial revolution, just as the system of slavery became destabilised in America.
The common mistake is to suppose that anything very much is different between one system and another - exceptionalism. There are better and worse governments to suffer under, and generally wealthy governments are more generous to their people, and when there is little growth, they become meaner and meaner. The reality is that no one is going to make America great again for ordinary people.
More likely, shoe delivery commisars, in all likelihood very inefficient at their job.
I have a favourite Soviet-era joke. You have to imagine it in the correct accent.
One day, after a very long time waiting, Ivans telephone is delivered and installed to his Moscow apartment. Its not very active, and hardly ever rings, but at least he has it. One day it rings.
Hello, answers Ivan.
The voice at the other end is impassive. We have information about the car you have ordered. It is due for delivery in 8 months, on Thursday, 8th September, in the morning.
Thank you, Comrade, answers Ivan. But I need to check something.
He goes away. When he comes back, he says:
Very good, but I ask a favour please. Could I pick it up in the afternoon? I have a plumber coming in the morning.
But sadly Shostakovich, for instance, produced his greatest work while sleeping with a suitcase ever-packed, ready to flee.
Sadly it wasn't the foulness of Stalinist tyranny that caused the Soviet Union eventually to 'fail', either, but a gradual post-Stalin collapse in economic and social management, as the social democracies of Europe, N America and elsewhere began to vastly outperform the USSR.
I travelled to Uzbekistan in the 2000's. (Samarkand! What glorious sights!) The differences between Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, on the one hand, and Uzbekistan / Kyrgyzstan on the other, were and are profound - the Communist legacy includes a much higher level of literacy and women's equality, and suppression of radical Islam.
The legacy also, alas, involved former commissars becoming dictators of each -istan: these countries lack a grounding of any kind of democracy except the (former) weak intra-Party democracy of the Communist era. Their precarious governments, like Putin's Russia, seem to me a good deal more experimental than Communism, though of course in 1921 Lenin and his mates were indeed making it up as they went along.
I wouldn't really say that this is a separate topic, it's a subtopic, and a very relevant one at that. The issue is the motivation to work, to be productive, and the question of the need for production. This points to what @BC said about the industrial revolution. If basic human needs for all human beings in a given society can be fulfilled from very little human work, the work being taken over by machines, then what drives the need for further work from those human beings? Now we have the goal of economic growth, but what supports this goal, giving it true value? "Failure" is judged in relation to a specific goal, but there is still a need to judge the merit of the goal.
People keep comparing communism with democracy, but that's a false comparison. Communism and capitalism are economic models, not political ones. The USSR was nominally democratic in its political structure after its aristocracy had been replaced by a different set of feudal lords.
While the Iron Curtain countries had nationalized industry and agriculture, they still continued to use money as a medium of exchange. More seriously, they had to trade with the west for some commodities. Unless a country is completely self-sufficient in raw materials, infrastructure and technical knowledge, it can't sustain an economic system completely separate from the rest of the world. The US probably could have, but never tried. Russia could not, even with the annexed territories - not even by draining the satellites. And Cuba, which might otherwise have been a valid experiment in communism, never stood a snowball's chance in hell under US embargo.
Personal goals - like the gentleman scientists of the Renaissance and financially independent inventors of the 19th century. A sense of achievement. Contribution to the community. Respect of peers.
The labourers of 'communist' countries had none of those motivations, because they had no real stake in the enterprises that employed them, no voice in management and no share in the income. In spite of that, in spite of the resentment most middle-class people felt, many of them did a conscientious job - even when the new job was a demotion from their previous position (In the early days, the class of one's birth could be a serious handicap to work opportunities. I knew a former history professor who worked on a collective farm and took great pride in his straight furrows. )
Not sure about that. I guess it also depends on how you define "large."
Quoting unenlightened
Not sure about that. I'm also not sure it makes sense to talk about the US ever being great.
Having pride in one's work is a feeling which is difficult to qualify. It's what provides one with a sense of belonging, and it really doesn't matter what that work is.
Better to have a choice, all the same.
One good thing they did, though: a high quality education for young people with the brains and application. Quite a few made good careers in the west, where they could not have afforded university, all the while ranting against the system that made it possible.
Nothing is pure and simple, is it?
An excellent question!
We haven't reached the point yet where machines perform all of the labor necessary to meet human needs. We have, however, passed the point where machines (powered machines, automation, even robots and computer-operated machines) and human labor can produce a substantial surplus of what we need. We could significantly reduce human labor (but not eliminate it at this point). I do not have a figure in mind. For discussion purposes, let's say we could reduce human labor by at least 20%.
There is no end to what human beings want; let's stick to needs.
At this point, human beings continue to seek paid work because of the general rule [i]those who do not work do not eat[/I]. Or at least, they don't eat very well.
The simplified way of looking at an economy is that workers are hired by capitalists to produce goods and receive a paycheck. The paycheck is used to buy what the worker and his family need to survive. (Consumption is something close to 3/4 of the American economy.) If workers are not needed to produce, then there is no paycheck for workers to buy food, clothing, and shelter.
In this simplified view, the unnecessary worker and his unnecessary family are totally screwed. However, so is the capitalist. If there are no consumers, to whom does he sell what the machines now produce?
One solution is for the state to provide an income that is not tied to previous labor--maybe $10,000 a year for a couple (seems low to me; pick your own figure). With this payment, the couple buy what they need. The producers receive an income to operate their factories. The "compulsion" or irrational drive to work for one's needs might still be present. Perhaps workers will find jobs producing for infinite wants but not needs. IMHO, that is an untenable basis for operating society -- it's not sustainable within the search to halt or slow global warming, and our infinite wants are already an environmental death trap.
Some authors have speculated that, given complete automation, a large share of workers will become obsolete / redundant / unemployed / unnecessary / a nuisance. Then what?
The State of Minnesota, which prides itself on efficient and effective administration, was defrauded of nearly $250,000,000 (a quarter billion) by a group of Somali mafioso operators who recognized weaknesses in a state agency (Education) charged with managing a large pot of Covid 19 money. A lot of the money was intended to provide food for children and families.
By setting up fake programs, fake budgets, fake food purchases, and fake beneficiaries, the group walked off with truck loads of cash. The cash ended up in the hands of various luxury goods sellers and real estate agents. During a recent trial of several of the 100+ defendants, the defense misused the names and addresses of the otherwise anonymous jury members, and a bag of $100,000 in cash was offered to a juror for a "not guilty" vote. That added crime is under FBI investigation. To Minnesota's credit, the juror called 911 to report the attempted bribe.
Where were the presumably competent state accountants and State agency managers who let a big hunk of cash run through their fingers like shit through a tin pipe?
The trials are returning a lot of guilty verdicts to date, but as far as I know, no heads have rolled at the Minnesota Department of Education, yet.
You guys should make like Britain and just incorporate greatness into the name just as you incorporated the unity "The United States of Great America". It's that easy!
We hang out and do philosophy. As need is the mother of invention, leisure is the mother of philosophy.
If I understand it correctly, "Great Britain" refers to the main island, not the country. Did you hear that Trump called the UK "a terrible country, worse than Milwaukee?"
Take heart in the deepening gloom
That your dog is finally getting enough cheese.
And reflect that whatever fortune may be your lot,
It could only be worse in Milwaukee.
Donald Trump stepped out of the pages of the National Lampoon, not knowing he was a bad joke.
There's a reasonable chance that you and I are old.
My big sister bought this.
People are capricious, unpredictable, and subject to whim. Their circumstances, needs, and appetites change. Assuming that a central planner could gather all the relevant data required to plan an economy, by the time he had possessed it, it would have changed and become obsolete. As weve seen with these regimes, any attempt to plan an economy invariably leads to tyranny, misery, and death.
You been reading Hayek? He said price reflects all pertinent information in a free market. It's a powerful idea, especially if you're an investor.
Except Hayek approved of dictatorship as the best method for insuring a free market.
The knowledge problem is from Hayek, yes, but is by now routine economics.
For now, yea.
I beg to differ. AI as a central manager will be able to do this with greater ease than any human manager. Everything in the marketplace is heading towards computerization. With greater complexity in the marketplace, then only AI can do it.
If not AI, then who?
No one. As intimated, the feat is impossible. Im not even sure why anyone would want a planned economy in the first place.
AI would not be able to grasp the thoughts, motivations, and circumstances of 10 people, let alone millions.
I'm not sure if you understand how the marketplace works. The marketplace is based on the relation between supply and demand. Where there is supply, demand is measured by the rise or decline in prices. Computers for the most part already do this kind of assignment of prices to goods.
The only thing a computer cant do at the moment is create supply.
Companion. There is, though, a pile of titles, jokes, and quotes waiting for just the right occasion. I want to use as many as possible before I die, which could be any day now.
Thanks for the education. But the market is based on the relation between flesh-and-blood human beings as they exchange goods and services. Though AI might be able to reiterate economic concepts such as supply and demand, and do all the economic math better than an economist, it could never grasp the activity of the market.
Do you think AI could and should plan your life?
Regardless of any should's or oughts, AI is being utilized and (in the future) continue to be exploited to do so. Any should's or ought's, never stopped the rich and wealthy from becoming richer and more wealthy.
The web says that's 1957, when I was 6. I didn't know they still made 78s then. The web says they still made them until the early 1960s. Looks like your big sister may be old too.
Good. After all, there is nothing wrong with becoming richer and more wealthy.
Why should it? People have very few and simple needs and motivations. The circumstances could be made a whole less variable by an AI making sure every human has the necessities of life and no one human hogs 10,000 people's allotment of necessisties. Equity ain't that complicated!
Quoting NOS4A2
J.J. Ward would agree!
Life isnt a zero-sum game, thank god, though the fallacy has led us to such injustice in the past.
So would history!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopia
Yes, it pretty much is, according to the laws of chemistry but I doubt a deity had anything to do with it.
Are you aware that Greek mythology is neither history nor current actuality, while slavery is both?
Once the Earth's cornucopia has been sucked dry, everybody becomes destitute. Those who are wealthy now will starve to death in their luxury bunkers.
Sorry, I just dont understand why you wouldnt want people to be wealthy. Do you prefer people to be poor? Do you prefer they should have just as much as Vera Mont allows?
It's that conservation of matter thingie. Nothing comes from nothing. In order for something to accumulate in one place, it has to be removed from another. In order for one person to have more money, some other person or people must have less money. The way wealth is accumulated is through the exploitation of the environment and the labour of poor people.
If you can't see the exploitation, it's either because you choose not to look, or because it's hidden from your daily gaze by a distance of continents. And of course, as long as you're doing okay, you can have the police protect your sensibilities from all the homeless people in rich countries, and all the slaves in 'developing' countries. If you have ample food, you never need not ask how many hectares of soil were lost to industrial farming or how many people starved to death today. You never have to look at all the dead fish and pelicans after an oil spill or drink the water downstream from a mine, just so you can have all the conveniences served up by the mega-rich owners of those toxic enterprises. You never need to ask where the wealth comes from and how it is obtained.
This is really quite elementary and should not require explanation. I don't decide how much the human economies can grow on a finite planet: the laws of physics do.
What sort of matter is the money in your bank account made out of? Wealth is not a fixed pie, Im afraid. Zero sum bias, especially when it comes to wealth, is a fallacy. This is elementary and should not require explanation, but of course it does.
Wealth is accumulated through effort and ingenuity. The only wealth exploited from you or me has been taken in the form of taxes.
1's and 0's. Nothing. It's a concept.
Quoting NOS4A2
The Earth is. Quoting NOS4A2
Yup. Bull markets shit golden apples for bear markets to eat.