Talk:Communism/Archive 5

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removed piece

I removed the following piece from "Human nature" section as irrelevant to the subsection, but they are false by themselves.

The argument that socialist and communist social structures give workers control of the means of production is without merit, because there are no such structures, it is always a priviledged few in control. In a capitalist system planning is simplified and worker control is exercised through price signals and the capitalists compete to best respond to those price signals

You wouldn't believe it, but there actually were structures that gave workers immediate control of the means of production. Actually, there are two of them: trade union and People's Control, both missing from wikipedia. Another problem that these structures got bureaucratized as well. I am not saying that according Soviet ideology everything belongs to workers, and bureaucrats only implement actions vested them by delegation from workers. I agree that this is bullshit, but formally it is correct. It is a totally different issue of de-facto alienation of workers. Mikkalai 00:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As for capitalistic piece, your interpretation is obsolete. In our time when everything important is nearly-monopolized "price signals" is naive fiction. Mikkalai 00:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"naive fiction", really, so what is determining the relative success of different technologies such as PDAs, vs cell phones with various features, vs mp3 players of various types, if not price signals from the workers? Yes, the price signal must be high enough that the "nearly monopolized" suppliers are willing to produce it, but absent the demand the monopolies have to eat it. Workers rule in a capitalist society, just indirectly as consumers and voters.--Silverback 01:05, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is certain truth in your statement, but still, the issue is irrelevant to the section, "human nature", unless you put everything what happens in the society under "human nature", like, what else if not "human nature" makes these workers to buy cell phones. (I cannot stop wondering how many workers in Zimbabwe have cell phones). Mikkalai 01:36, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, Robert Mugabe's Marxism is really improving the lot of the workers there, eh?

Also, I am wondering how come workers wanted to increase the cost of can of Yoplait yogurt from 50c to 80c while decreasing the amount from 16oz to 12 oz? It is probably because workers who produce yogurt wanted to buy more cell phones, right? Mikkalai 01:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My God Silverback, do you expect us to have this whole argument on the discussion page? We might as well debate whether or not God exists. The idea that price signals are needed in an economy (or at least the theories it comes from) didn't even exist until the the turn of the 20th century. If you're really curious about the alternative theory, and are not being coy, go read up on what the pre 20th century economists had to say - Adam Smith, David Ricardo etc. as well as the labor theory of value and so forth. That price signals are needed is a new theory proposed against the older one that not everyone has accepted. Ruy Lopez 03:26, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Technical limitations

Mikkalai, you have put the following paragraph in the article, "Before the advent of computers, a popular argument against planned economy, i.e., in fact against communism, was human impossibility to keep precise tally of everything, necessary for correct planning." This sounds good, but besides lacking any cited authority for the use of the argument in the past, it fails to establish that under even the most highly computerized control mechanism, adequate information could be developed or adequately utilized to conduct adequate planning, expecially with respect to innovation. In other words, you leap to a conclusion. Fred Bauder 02:44, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Good point, Fred. As far as I can tell, computers are no more pertinent than an abacus. If we decide to let HAL make decisions, we can call that digitocracy. (I suspect that link will be red!) But if people are going to continue to make decisions then it is people who have to absorb and use information, and the fact of human bounded rationality counts. By way of illustration, can anybody name me one thinker of any importance whose mind has been changed on the issue of the plausibility of a planned economy by the improvements is computers? Saying "that objection might have once had weight" isn't enough.' I'm curious whether anyone actually said, in year X (pick the year!) that a planned economy is impossible, and then said, in year X plus 5, "oh, NOW we have the needed capacity, NOW its possible!" Can anybody link me to the article about anyone who made both those statements? Hmmmm. The tree fell in the forest, but nobody heard it? --Christofurio

I work in a big capitalist enterprise now. I can assure you, the amount of planning and detail of planning done here probably exceeds the amount of planning in the whole, say, Byelorussian SSR.

But now I think it is a good idea to keep the argument/counterargument bickering out of the article.It can be endless. Mikkalai 21:26, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Anyway, the argument is more relevamt to the article Centrally planned economy, and probably must be repeated there, rather than to Communism. The ideology of communism doesn't go into such details of implementation. Mikkalai 21:37, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also, the culprit is not planning per se, but, as Christofurio pointed out, the basis of this planning. Under capitalist planning the goals are based on actual economical processes, while under communism most often it is vice versa: the state sets the goals, and the planning engine makes economy to fit this goal. The quality of life was always a secondary goal in the Soviet Union. Mikkalai 21:37, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Quite a Leap!

"In fact most opinion polls even in the USA show workers want more control over their work, which would indicate that human nature was that workers are against capitalist social structures, and prefer socialist and communist social structures where workers control the means of production."

Does this sound like as much of a leap to anyone else as it does to me? For all we can tell from the opening clause, the polls in question only show that workers would prefer, say, more flex time, especially if they could get it without lowering wage levels or making any other sacrifice. Hardly a surprise. Yet from a vaguely worded poll result we get a sweeping conclusion about preference for "communist social structures." Gee, I would like more flexible hours, too, so it follows I must favor the nationalization of banks. Not. I'm going to delete. --Christofurio 20:07, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. There is vast difference between "control of thier work" and "control over the ownership of the enterprise". Mikkalai 21:29, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

critiques

The people critiquing communism really don't seem to know a lot about the subject. I've read serious criticism of Marx regarding the transformation problem and things like that, but a lot of this seems to be from people unfamiliar with Marxism and communism.

The first two sentences of economic development make sense. The third goes off the rails: "The Marxist case for communism is based not only on moral (ethical) concerns (i.e. 'communism is good because it eliminates exploitation, gives most people a better life than in capitalism, etc.'), but also on concerns of economic efficiency (i.e. 'communism is good because it is more efficient than capitalism')."

The Marxist case for communism is not based on moral or ethical concerns, he used to *attack* socialists who made the case on moral or ethical concerns. He said he was a "scientific socialist" as opposed to one concerned with morals and ethics.

As far as economic efficiency, well the phrase turns on the word efficiency, and I don't remember Marx or Marxists making the case for communism on that basis either. Marx talked about value, alienation and that sort of thing, he never said communism would be more efficient. In fact, he praised capitalism for how it increased productivity capacity, but he thought that just as feudalism ran its course and made way for capitalism, that one day a similar fate would replace capitalism as it was replaced by socialism.

As far as the human nature section, the productivity incentives argument is not a great one, but it is OK. I wrote something about incentives and lack of them in slave, feudal and capitalism before and can do so again. And the stuff on planning belongs in the first section, not the second.

The "stuff about planning" -- or at least a brief mention of it -- belongs in the human nature section, which I why I keep putting it back there. It has long been integral to the pro-capitalist world view that human nature involves only limited rationality, much better adapted to making decisions for one's self than to making them for others. For this reason, a system in which people make decisions for themselves and the results of those decisions sum themselves up into an equilibrium is the true route to progress and freedom both. That, at least, is the argument. It is as much an argument about human nature as it is about economic calculation. I thrashed it out with another editor in Talk:human nature -- I would be happy to have you read the exchange there. The good stuff starts about 5 grafs down from the "Subheads needed" subhead. --Christofurio 16:10, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

But why don't I save you the travel? My correspondent in that context made the point, which others have made here, that capitalists of course plan too, (as for example, the blueprints for a skyscraper) so capitalism can't be consistently anti-planning. That is true, but one needs I submit to disambiguate the term "plan." After all, consider how skyscrapers generally do get built. Some people invest by buying the stocks or bonds of a construction company. Its managers hire subcontractors, who hire employees, some of whom are architects, others of whom are brick-layers, etc. The parties interact by buying goods and services from one another, on terms driven by supply and demand.

A communist planned global economy wouldn't be planning within a market, in an exchange-driven manner -- it would be planning instead of a market, which runs up against the bounded-rationality objection. Again, the objection is a matter of human nature, and all I'm insisting on in this article is that it be mentioned in that context.

No one is going to argue with you here. The main point is that this critique has nothing to do with communism as ideology (this is the topic of the article). Please feel free to put in into Communist state. It is also present in the Planned economy section, i.e., no one is suppressing this point of view. It is the matter of proper organisation of articles. Mikkalai 19:05, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Anyway, I've removed some of the stuff that was made up, leaving the two standard arguments against communism that were there. Ruy Lopez 09:52, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think what is missing is that Marx assumed communism would, with the support of the working class, be highly productive. Obviously, actual communist states have never achieved this although, at times, they did have significant support. Another problem actual communist states faced was the presence of other social classes, in the case of the Soviet Union, 80% of the total population were peasants. Fred Bauder 12:01, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Capitalism + Socialism

There is very little differance between capitalism and Socialism(Not Facist or Communist) When corperations buy up eachother until there is only a few cormperations you get socialism The corperations gain so much power that the government has to work with them or become controlled by them due to the power that the corperations gained you then get socialism I have noticed that Aristocracy and socialism often are the same. With a high ammount of socialism in the gov. the people cant control it because of the corperate power Communism some how is supposed to solve this If you make Communism more like a Republic than a Dictatorship,it will have a better chance of working