[ExI] communism/authoritarianism

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 8:57 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 10:19 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> I don't think it's merely a
>> matter of in theory communism is X but in practice it's Y.
>
> It is.  Lots of people have attempted the "but true communism has never been tried" defense.  In almost every case, it devolves to, "this is what 'true communism' breaks down into when attempted".
>
> Physics has something similar with perpetual motion machines and Maxwell's Demon, if one does not accept the laws of thermodynamics as a prior postulates.  "But why can't I just decrease the entropy in a closed system?"  Or, more directly, "But actually decreasing the entropy in a closed system has never been tried.  Sure, there were all those efforts that said they were going to, but they didn't actually do it, therefore they were not actually examples of this."

Before you can be sure, you'd have to actually define the term AND
then show that the folks saying they're putting into practice are
actually making that attempt. Else, you end up confusing people who
adverstise as X rather who are actually doing X.

There's also a difference between attempting something and failing per
se and attempting something and causing the deaths of millions of
people. Was the latter caused by the attempt to implement communism as
such or was it caused by having an authoritarian regime? For instance,
Lenin, in particular, was arguing for killing anyone who got in the
way. This isn't part of communism simpliciter but of Lenin have
basically dictatorial powers little different from other authoritarian
revolutions -- think of Jacobin rule and its Terror and its violent
suppression of the Vendée revolt. And if there's one thing
authoritarian revolutions tend to do, it's butcher people and increase
overall levels of social violence. The thing that's different by
Lenin's time, of course, is late 19th and 20th+ century states with
technology and bureaucracies can carry out massacres and purges far
more efficiently than states in prior eras.

I'm not disagreeing with the perpetual motion analogy either. I've
heard the analogy elsewhere years ago -- likely from a libertarian
source. But you have to look at non-authoritarian forms of communism.
Here the record is not good, but you do see mass deaths. You just see
the implementations not delivering and folks involved moving on to
other things. For instance, the commune breaks down because people
leave.

Regards,

Dan
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