[ExI] communism/authoritarianism

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 12:49 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 5:23 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> 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:
>> >> 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.
>
> Which is typically "a society they are in charge of" (notice the complete absence
> of caring about wants beyond their own), but they refuse to admit as much -
> often, even to themselves.

Self-identified communists I've met have almost been nowhere close to
ever being in charge of society. :) Anarcho-communists, of course, of
which I know a few, don't want to be in charge of society.

>> 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.
>
> You may well be correct.

Well, this seemed to have been the case with Lenin and his clique.
When their coup was successful, they really didn't know what to do to
implement communism. If you read Marx -- and I wouldn't conflate
communism with Marxism -- he seems to believe communism will come
about after socialism and a dictatorship of the proletariat. The state
will wither away and voila! communism. That's about all he says. So
there isn't anything like a plan for communism in his writings. Even,
if my readings are correct here, socialism is sketchy under his views.
(And I'm leaving aside he thought there was historical inevitability
here: capitalism would continue to expand, with ever more crises,
until a revolution with a proletarian dictatorship, then socialism
under this, then somehow communism. There's an obvious problem with
the Soviet and Chinese examples and many others is that leading
'capitalist' societies (for Marx's time and up until the Soviet coup,
this would mean the UK, France, Germany, and the US) didn't have
proletarian revolutions, much less embrace socialism.)

That said, with the definition you cited, I do think one might be able
to easily implement communism: get a group of people all to agree to
hold property in common and decide to divide the work according to
abilities and consumption according to needs. That's been tried on a
small scale and doesn't seem to last long. (Unless, again, you're
talking about Graeber's view: then just about everyone is a communist
with family and close friends. But it doesn't seem to scale at this
point, no?)

Regards,

Dan
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