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Yes the $7.25 minimum wage is why rent is $1500 (/s)
No, it’s a dictatorship. Dictatorship of capital. Soviet union was also a dictatorship, which is why they also had elites that dictated how much of what you can have. It wasn’t because of the communism that they had elites, it was because it was a dictatorship.
Of course the funny thing about capital is that it tends to accumulate, so you get a dictatorship pretty naturally.
And capitalism when “voluntary exchange” in commodities
Sure, fuck it, that’s communism. Death to communism, instead we must create a classless stateless society!
I wish anarchy would work.
The thing where a warlord tells you what to do? No, death to anarchy, instead let’s have a society where hierarchies are abolished and org charts are all rhizomatic and voluntary, with vigilant critiques of power differential with an eye to equalizing them as much as possible?
warlordism isn’t anarchy.
/woosh
Sorry, what do you think anarchy is? Because what you’re describing, no hierarchal society, voluntary… Uhh, THAT’S the definition of anarchy. Why do so many people think anarchism is just synonymous with chaos? That’s just called chaos.
Homie is literally posting from an anarchist instance. This is satire lol.
Anarchy is a society completely free from government, coercive authority, or imposed hierarchies. While it is popularly misunderstood to mean chaos or lawlessness, it actually advocates for a system based on voluntary cooperation, self-organization, and mutual aid among individual
What?!? Are you ok comrade?
good news
At least if anarchy were able to work there would be no “leaders” at all
Yes!
Anarchy is a society completely free from government, coercive authority, or imposed hierarchies. While it is popularly misunderstood to mean chaos or lawlessness, it actually advocates for a system based on voluntary cooperation, self-organization, and mutual aid among individual
Bad news: opiates and fentanyl
This is usually my clench-point with anarchy. Yeaaaah, but… man, should we really have heroin in the 7/11 snack isle?
Libertarians: YEP!
wait, man, fuck. I get education and healthcare… kinda fixes this, but… does it, tho?
how does 711 operate in a stateless classless society to begin with?
Armed militias and unchecked gangs of armed thugs hired for enforcement and security.
Then again, we’re both thinking way too far ahead. Who’s producing medicine and opiates in an anarchist society?
in a classless society, how can anyone employ anyone else? I think you’re lost, and you should wander back to a liberal conclave
In a classless society, how is anyone cared for if no one has the intrinsic motivation to do so? Because it’s the nice thing to do? Lmao.
Nice bait, try harder.
Anarchy is a society completely free from government, coercive authority, or imposed hierarchies. While it is popularly misunderstood to mean chaos or lawlessness, it actually advocates for a system based on voluntary cooperation, self-organization, and mutual aid among individual
You know what my eyes are opened too —capitalism is when hard working Americans get all the capital and communist leeches aren’t allowed to steal it just because they’re in charge.
You know what goes well with capitalism? Democracy! You vote on your sheriff, so why vote for who your boss is at work, and how many sick days everyone gets? Let’s go full capitalist!
And we’ll protect our gloriously fought victory with a vanguard enforcing conformity to support the eventual relinquishing of power to the proletariat once there is no longer class and we have expanded our stateless society worldwide, thus vanquishing borders!
Just need to kill off done rabble rousing anarchists first…
Nobody:
You with sectarian ragebait:
The vanguard is the proletariat, just the organized section of it. They do not constitute their own class, they come from the proletariat and have the same relations to ownership of the Means of Production. The vanguard is not to “relinquish power,” but instead raise up the level of political education of the rest of the proletariat to their level.
The vanguard is not to “relinquish power,” but instead raise up the level of political education of the rest of the proletariat to their level.
They will never lmao, that would be the same as giving up power. Power is subjective. The vanguard may not de jure “own the means of production”, but they de facto “own the right to tell everyone what they’re allowed to do”, which can be worse. Once everyone has the same amount of power, nobody has power over anyone else.
Thats objectively an elevated class imbued with power over others.
I know it’s hard but you really gotta question whether what you’re reading is absurd in context. If it is, it’s possible it’s sarcasm.
Managers are objectively not an elevated class, assuming they have the same relations to ownership of the means of production, in Marxist analysis. You don’t need to read Capital for this, Marx’s Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy makes Marx’s position explicit:
Marx responding to Bakunin
Will the entire proletariat perhaps stand at the head of the government?
In a trade union, for example, does the whole union form its executive committee? Will all division of labour in the factory, and the various functions that correspond to this, cease? And in Bakunin’s constitution, will all ‘from bottom to top’ be ‘at the top’? Then there will certainly be no one ‘at the bottom.’ Will all members of the commune simultaneously manage the interests of its territory? Then there will be no distinction between commune and territory.
The Germans number around forty million. Will for example all forty million be member of the government?
Certainly! Since the whole thing begins with the self-government of the commune.
The whole people will govern, and there will be no governed.
If a man rules himself, he does not do so on this principle, for he is after all himself and no other.
Then there will be no government and no state, but if there is a state, there will be both governors and slaves.
i.e. only if class rule has disappeared, and there is no state in the present political sense.
This dilemma is simply solved in the Marxists’ theory. By people’s government they understand (i.e. Bakunin) the government of the people by means of a small number of leaders, chosen (elected) by the people.
Asine! This is democratic twaddle, political drivel. Election is a political form present in the smallest Russian commune and artel. The character of the election does not depend on this name, but on the economic foundation, the economic situation of the voters, and as soon as the functions have ceased to be political ones, there exists 1) no government function, 2) the distribution of the general functions has become a business matter, that gives no one domination, 3) election has nothing of its present political character.
The universal suffrage of the whole people…
Such a thing as the whole people in today’s sense is a chimera…
…in the election of people’s representatives and rulers of the state — that is the last word of the Marxists, as also of the democratic school — [is] a lie, behind which is concealed the despotism of the governing minority, and only the more dangerously in so far as it appears as expression of the so-called people’s will.
With collective ownership the so-called people’s will vanishes, to make way for the real will of the cooperative.
So the result is: guidance of the great majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxists…
Where?
…will consist of workers. Certainly, with your permission, of former workers, who however, as soon as they have become representatives or governors of the people, cease to be workers…
As little as a factory owner today ceases to be a capitalist if he becomes a municipal councillor…
…and look down on the whole common workers’ world from the height of the state. They will no longer represent the people, but themselves and their pretensions to people’s government. Anyone who can doubt this knows nothing of the nature of men.
If Mr. Bakunin only knew something about the position of a manager in a workers’ cooperative factory, all his dreams of domination would go to the devil. He should have asked himself what form the administrative function can take on the basis of this workers’ state, if he wants to call it that.
Power and hierarchy is not class. Class is a specific relation to ownership of the means of production. Principals and teachers are both proletarian, yet the principal’s job responsibility is in managing teachers, while the teacher’s job is to educate. Administrative labor is socially necessary and compensated in wages, not via ownership and entitlement to the profits of accumulation and exploitation.
Your condescension is undue. You are free to take issue with administration and managerial labor, but to conflate those with class is a horrendous misreading of class dynamics and muddies the water when discussing Marxism and anarchism.
I’m not discussing Marxism.
You were attacking the idea of a vanguard as has been utilized in Marxist-led revolutions.
Yes.
I said classless stateless society, not multi level marketing scam.
Look, you just need to build your downstream. I take your bribes and give you some power. Then your downstream bribes you for parts of it. The more downstream you have the more bribes you get. With no borders, the whole world can be your downstream. It’s not upper and lower class, it’s upstream and downstream! See? Classless.
This is unironically how every power structure in the entire human society in the entire history of the world works.
Don’t forget moneyless.
Ya know, there might be something to that as a strat.
Words are just tools we made up. If fascists are willing to break the meaning of language to get what they want, maybe we can too!
Down with those communist fascists!!
Communism has needed a rebrand for a while now
Communism: “Look at me… I am the capitalism now.”
Communism is when capitalism does something I don’t like
It is what American boomers think “communism” is.
Whatever you criticisms of the USSR, they weren’t charging folks 25% or even 11% of their income in rent. I
For fun, when I was in school, I’d ask people what they thought of this and that all the time and I was very much impressed that “what is ____” are questions that don’t have answers. Our education is fucked.
Generally, to boomers capitalism and communism is absolutely summed up with that drunk in the grocery store story.
Consumer choice is typically the vibes.
The USSR did not “rapidly depart from Marxist ideals.” I don’t know where this mythologized version of Marxism originated, but Marx was explicit about wanting a dictatorship of the proletariat, a democratically controlled state that had public ownership as the principal aspect of the economy. This was the only path Marx saw as a transition to communism.
Also, rent was mostly a nominal thing as far as it related to disposable income in the USSR, which is completely different from the US. Makes sense considering the USSR was run by the working classes and the US is run by capitalists.
Ah yes, the Soviet union where rent capped out at 10% of your salary, and that’s just in places without any labor incentives. If you were in a new industrial town your rent was free since it was you doing a favor to the people in moving to a remote area and having to live in a new city.
10%! Where can I sign up?
1930s-1980s USSR. (Gorbachev’s reforms really fucked with some areas before the collapse but the edge of the union was unharmed until the 1991 collapse wherein many former states of the USSR experienced homelessness as a problem for the first time in 70 years.)
Also some parts of China have rules of 0-25% of your salary depending on location, whether or not you were a rural citizen before moving to a rented home, and why you moved. (not that normal rent is far off from that thanks to the fact only 8% of the Chinese population doesn’t own a home.)
I read the comments and I think they are all wrong.
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Current capitalism is not capitalism at all, it’s oligarchy. Capitalism originally originated from an idea of everyone having the same equal opportunities. Right now it does not capitalism, it is a oligarheism or whatever - a circle jerk to syphon your wealth and make you poor - capitalism aas never designed for this.
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Communism is about equality dictated by the government which also implies government for some reason is not equal to basic citizen. And communism doesn’t allow the ability to grow. However, communism on paper really guarantees your social safety in terms of you will not die, you will have food, you will have a house. However, on practice, it didn’t really work well. And current community countries are actually socialism.
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Something good is always in the middle. We can have a capitalist-like growth opportunities and regulations from the government and social guarantees. For example, like in most countries in Europe, you have a wealth guarantee, you have a social and job protection. and also strict regulations on terms of companies so they will not abuse their customers and they will not abuse their employees
The current comment section is just a fight for nothing. The problem is not in the system capitalism, socialism or communism. The problem is in a legar case and circlejerk - where even the government is in. So it actually becomes harder and harder to actually have a good thing in common reason in socialism and in capitalism.
Something good is always in the middle. We can have a capitalist-like growth opportunities and regulations from the government and social guarantees.
Ehrm… The current system has caused the sixth mass extinction on the planet. Capitalism will inevitable collapse because it incentivizes ecocide.
Oh my, I would have never though that this comment will actually cause this explosive reaction.
But of course it is the internet. Who would have though that having an opinion that differs from both sides will result in “not” pissing all sides.
Internet is awesome.
there is a cure for political illiteracy
Oh my, I would have never though that this comment will actually cause this explosive reaction.
Nuclear-level dumbassery tends to get that kind of response, yes.
Who would have though that having an opinion that differs from both sides will result in “not” pissing all sides.
Imagine thinking this is why everyone is replying and not reflecting on the terrible arguments or reasoning in the initial comment. Notes from someone watching
Most intelligent liberal.
I don’t know how did you get all 3 points so wrong
.world accounts usually do. I’ve given up trying to argue with them. 🤷♀️
It’s not like Lenin didn’t write about this same thing 100 years ago…
Lenin after revolution, when people tried to do communism:
They’re even doubling down to be the enlightened centrist by saying of course being in the middle makes everyone upset not them being completely wrong on everything
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Current capitalism is capitalism of its latest stages. The oligarchy was present from the beginning, but it has consolidated as markets do. Capitalism was never “designed,” it was born from feudalism upon the rise of industrial production and wage labor.
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Communism has the working classes running administration. Further, socialist systems have absolutely had some of the highest rates of growth and innovation in the world. The fact that socialist countries have not reached communism is not a flaw in communism, but the understanding that communism is constructed during socialism.
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European social democracies rely on imperialism and neocolonialism to fund their safety nets and welfare. They exist only by stealing from the global south.
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Current capitalism is not capitalism at all, it’s oligarchy.
Gee… nothing oligarchical about a system where the rich hold all the power, eh?
Nothing at all, brightspark?
Communism is about equality dictated by the government
Really, brightspark? Nothing at all about a stateless, classless and moneyless society, eh?
The problem is not in the system capitalism,
Have you ever tried not eating paint flakes?
To be fair, the state doesn’t exist in communism, but administrative functions we would associate with the government absolutely will. This goes back to Marx. Engels referred to it as “the administration of things” as a way to distinguish it from the state, but from the outside this does look like a government, even without classes.
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Saying today is oligarchy not capitalism is like saying you don’t have cancer you have stage four cancer
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Communism is by definition a stateless society, not sure where you are getting those ideas about a communist government. Define “didn’t work well”. Nations such as Cuba have not achieved a communist utopia, but they did significantly improve the lives of their citizens in pretty much every way compared to pre revolutionary Cuba. Those states are obviously not communist and it is debatable to what extent they are socialist and not state capitalist.
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Almost all European are currently in the process of removing as much of those social guarantees, which is a logically process that pretty inevitably happens as long capitalism exists.
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Oligarchy is not caused by capitalism. These are different things. I’m not really sure if capitalism really caused it - it could just accelerated it. Bad people would so evil things in any system unless regulated
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Communism requires state. Otherwise, it would be an anarchy - which never worked. About utopian communism: 2.1 USSR - failed on the way to the communism due to economic reasons. The system wasn’t able to handle it all, and USSR had huge deficits and poorness. 2.2 China - “a communistic” country. Which is not really anymore. It just masks itself as one to still have a single leader (in their case a single party) 2.3 about Cuba I have no idea, no experience
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That is unfortunate. But this social guarantees are being removed by rich and power hungry people that are trying to aggregate more power. And power is money. Imagine money = capitalism = bad. But if we will remove money from the system - bad actors could still abuse their power in different ways (political weight, connections)
Im downoted to hell for a different opinion from lefties, righties and centrists. Cool. I love society. But it is not a reddit and no karma, so it doesnt matter :)
The Soviet economy was slowing down a bit, but it did not collapse. The USSR was dissolved from the top-down in a political coup. As for China, it’s a socialist market economy, the working classes control the state and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy.
You’re downvoted for being confidently wrong about leftist theory and history in a leftist community.
Anarchy never worked except for the vast majority of human existence.
The vast majority of human existence: slavery and feudalism
Early communalism existed for far longer. I don’t agree with people associating anarchism with it, as anarchism today implies current levels of productive forces and thus a new organization of humanity fundamentally different from early communalism, but they are correct that the bulk of human existence has been without a state and without classes.
That shit happened after agriculture.
agrarianism isn’t universal, and humans who eschewed it are just as capable as people who embraced it. it’s not before or after.
You young earth creationists get wilder all the time. Now the Earth is younger than bronze?
Your thinking of written history, almost all of which was written by slavers and lords to justify them doing nothing and getting all the stuff.
The vast majority of human existence, from when we first diverged from apes until the agricultural revolutions, was organized around anarchic tribes and clans where they shared there resources and the leader “ruled” at the discretion of the tribe.
These were not benign, cooperative social structures. They were tiny dictatorships. The leader controlled the “discretion of the tribe” by eliminating dissent. The controlling principle of their social structure was “might makes right”.
Other words for the broad concept you are describing are “harem” and “cult”.
Show me your proof, liberal. And no… reruns of The Walking Dead doesn’t count.
That sort of tyranny won’t last long because there is no real method to monopolize violence before the agricultural revolution.
A tyrant could rule over a village by taking all the surplus, buying weapons and armor for him and his goons, and spending all their time training and specializing in violence to the point where there small group could easily threaten the remaining men in the village to work for them.
Before agriculture there was no surplus, no specialization and no advanced weapons and armor. So the difference between men matters far less and it becomes a numbers game. If one guy tries to monopolize the women and resources of the tribe then the rest of the men would rebel and easily take him and his goons.
Also pre agricultural society was nomadic, so if a tyranny ever came the oppressed could just leave.
If all the other men leave, or the tyrant kills the dissenters, then that leaves them vulnerable to attacks from other tribes. So naturally these tribes filled with strife and tyranny would die out while tribes that were able to keep consensus and coherence among the men would prevail.
Thus the leader in Hunter gatherer society ruled at the discretion of the tribe. If he deviated from the will of majority the threat of rebellion would loom over his head.
This is also why we saw a loosening of hierarchies after the invention of the gun and the loss of the importance of violence specialization and the increase in the importance of man power.
Communism requires state. Otherwise, it would be an anarchy
So is anarcho-communism an oxymoron for you then?
- You have no idea what communism means. It is not anarchy, but mainly due to the difference in the way and not the goal. Saying communism requires a state is like saying water atoms require more than one proton and electron. It is literally the definition of what communism isn’t is.
2.1 The USSR had economic problems, especially near the end, but it also had achieved great economic progress. If you consider the full existence of USSR it’s economy grew equally to that of the West. The USSR however had a way worse start as it inherited a feudal society that had just lost a war and was attacked immediately by capitalist nations such as the USA. Other countries that had similar starting conditions grew significantly less than the West or USSR in the same time period. The USSR saw a significant increase in life expectancy:
. It’s economy later declined due to mismanaged and a expenditure for the military that wasn’t feasable, but all in all I don’t think it’s fair to call the USSR a economic failure.USSR has a different stages. One of stages where was burst growth in almost all the aspects - medicine, science, military and economics - was when Stalin was rule. Lenin was a dumb ruler that stealing food from poor people and he is make people poor starting inner war. After Stalins death USSR have some inertia, not so dumb ruler like Khrushchev and vibe of scientists country that have a flight into the space and so on that now sometimes shows in games or other media when it wants to show strong country. But then USSR with dumbest Brezhnev was finally tasted crude oil selling and thats was needed for its elites to live rich. With the outer long wars like Afganistan its become a break point from where the USSR doesn’t solve his problems but silenced and accumulated them before the end. (in 80th USSR start money printing to prolong its death, but there was too late)
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To be fair, the state doesn’t exist in communism, but administrative functions we would associate with the government absolutely will. This goes back to Marx. Engels referred to it as “the administration of things” as a way to distinguish it from the state, but from the outside this does look like a government, even without classes.
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THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED UNDER CAPITALISM
That has to be a troll account.
Not at all. Here in South Africa, the ruling ANC has spent the last thirty years demonstrating what perfect neoliberal capitalists they are… yet you’ll still find plenty of local neo-nazis blubbering about the (supposedly) “socialist” ANC.
Sounds like the next thirty should be fairly predictable.
“Everything I don’t like is socialist”
The person who wrote the comment must be lobotized.
Seems to me they already have been
That’s a troll
It’s two sides of the same coin. Everyone likes capitalism in the early days when there are lots of entrepreneurs and small businesses competing against each other. Mom and pop can run a family store. There’s a strong middle class and national prosperity.
But it doesn’t last, and capitalism always morphs into crony capitalism, where monopolies run everything and lawmakers are bribed to protect the rich and exploit the poor. It’s functionally no different from communism, which is a political and economic model (yes its both) that just speedruns straight to late stage oligarchy.
Both crony capitalism and communism concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few oligarchs that control most of the nation’s resources. Both hand majority control over to one or a handful of major political parties. Both involve high degrees of bribery, corruption, and accumulation of wealth and power with the goal of exploiting the masses.
Marx was a liar and a terrorist. His work has done more harm to humanity than nuclear weapons. Communism is a blueprint that tricks the naive, the gullible, and the stupid and in every single instance without fail causes violent revolution that incorporates genocide to put the absolute worst people in power so they can oppress and tyrannize those weaker than them.
Crony Capitalism is the same end, it just takes longer and dresses the whole thing up in mask and gown and plays a charade to keep people from realizing the truth.
The human race has an inherent flaw. We can’t govern ourselves properly. Every single model of government we have ends up abusing the people who the government is supposed to represent. We don’t have a model of government that actually works as intended.
Tell us you don’t understand what communism is without telling us you don’t understand what communism is. 🙄
There is no good capitalism. Capitalism was a power shift from one ruling class to another: kings to the capitalist. May we prefigure a world without rulers.
Everybody wants to wear the boot.
Exactly. The words used to describe the model are just that. Words. The ruling class is always shitty people who have their heads in the clouds. They cannot fathom the struggles of the working class and have no idea how to actually make things better. It doesn’t matter how you structure the government when our rulers are always human-shaped embodiments of shit.
I understand why my post above gets so many downvotes. It’s natural for people to want to believe they have an answer that works. That what they believe in is correct and everyone else is wrong. I’m telling you that everyone is wrong, and we don’t have a model that works. Nobody wants to hear that, but it’s the answer I’ve arrived to after thinking about politics and economics for decades. It’s also why the people are so susceptible to demagogues. A man with a plan will come along, tell everyone what they want to hear, and lead society towards its next mass atrocity. It’s going to happen again. It will happen here in the USA. You can bet on it.
I live in hope we can get rid of the smelly old boot.
Happened to me. Lived in a building for multiple leases for $1100 -1300 a month over the course of seven years. Next renewal jumped to over $1800 per month. When I asked why, they said, "Because it’s what people are willing to pay. "
At least they’re honest.
Here in NY we have 1 year leases capped at an increase of 3% per year. However landlords can increase rent another 3% if they can show that they had to do upgrades or emergency repairs or some other nonsense. They’ve applied for and received this exemption to double our increase EVERY SINGLE YEAR I’ve lived there, and it seems there is nothing to stop them from doing it every year until the end of time.
The infuriating thing? There are no actual upgrades being done. The roads are constantly full of potholes. The water lines constantly spring leaks. The power is constantly cutting out - brownouts are common, and blackouts happen every winter. We are responsible for paying all our utilities, mowing the lawn, and maintaining our lots, and the office is apparently responsible for nothing and spends nothing upgrading or maintaining the park. But somehow they qualify for that extra 3% increase every single year without fail.
- I live in a trailer park owned by Horizon Land Management. There are youtube videos detailing how trailer parks used to be cheap housing for the poor, but now that private equity companies like Horizon are buying them up, they’re raising lot rent sky high and parasitizing the people who are so poor they can’t afford to leave. Trailers were the cheapest housing many of us could afford. Where else could we go? They basically suck the blood out of us like vampires.
Lol “Communism”.
I mean, it is moving past capitalism and into something else, but that thing is feudalism.
It’s wild to me that we just casually call them land lords… I’m literally just a serf paying rent to my lord. “Tenant” is just putting lipstick on it.
Forget about reeducation camps, you can’t undo what never happened. After the revolution we need a massive programme of education camps, these people are politically illiterate and doesn’t have any idea how anything works.
Communism is when bad decision of politician affects entire nation.
Capitalism is when bad decision of a rich person affects entire nation.
Difference is that one of those people is elected in democratic system.
Sometimes forcefully elected
There are people who would be elected endlessly thanks to their sheer competence. My town had one such mayor, but opposing party passed country-wide limit to amount of times one can be re-elected.
And I bet americans would love to still have Teddy Roosevelt as their president, especially now, though that might require a bit more than forceful election, a bit of necromancy perhaps.
