[ExI] communism/authoritarianism

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 11:56 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 4:35 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> Before you can be sure, you'd have to actually define the term
>
> That would be nice, but then people keep redefining the term.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communism gives a definition, but the notes explicitly say that the USSR was in fact an instance of communism, and apologists say "the USSR was not 'true' communism".

Notice that the 1a and 1b definition are communism simpliciter. The
question would then be could such a system be put into practice.
(Someone like the late David Graeber would call how most of us live
the 'communism of everyday life,' meaning how people tend to live in
families and with close friends. And he would argue that this is
communism in practice. Then the issue becomes what would communism
look like were it more widely practiced rather than it never being
practiced.*)

Also, the notes also point out what I'm getting at:

'When it was first used in the mid-19th century, communism referred to
an economic and political theory that advocated the elimination of
private property and the common sharing of all resources among a group
of people; in this use, it was often used interchangeably with the
word socialism.'

What one must ask is did the Soviet regimes try to implement that. It
seems they didn't. They implemented a basically authoritarian regime
with a centrally planned economy. For a good chunk of Soviet history,
the economy didn't seem to be based on needs so much as meeting
(usually failing to meet) whatever targets the regime's planners
agreed upon. Earlier 'war socialism' -- during the Russian Civil War
-- was mainly about keeping the Party in power and the Red Army able
to fight off its adversaries. (In a sense, one can argue that that was
successful. After all, the Party stayed in power during and survived
the civil war and the Red Army did win that war.)

Another problem is the Soviet regime was good at quashing communist
groups that didn't ally with its views and usually with some level of
Soviet control -- until the break with China, which only meant that
the PRC, another authoritarian regime.

>> AND
>> then show that the folks saying they're putting into practice are
>> actually making that attempt
>
> How do you show this, when the people you are trying to convince make
> an a priori claim that none of the folks who said they were putting it into
> practice so far actually made that attempt?

You have to judge for yourself and see what they mean by communism and
whether it's just the usual stock answer. But my issue here wouldn't
be so much what they say. I want to investigate the idea itself. Why?
Because it's quite possible its most prominent advocates simply don't
know the fuck it means or how it might implemented.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/

* Which is interesting because it meshes with Hayek's view that family
life is basically different than life in a wider community. Hayek
believed the problem with socialism -- as he uses the term -- was
trying to apply the way families live to society as a whole,
especially to total strangers. There are problems with trust,
knowledge, and incentives once one gets beyond the family group. Or
that's my understanding of his _The Fatal Conciet_.