Questions about socialism

[homo sapien]

I'm a disillusioned American democrat who is thinking he may be becoming a real socialist, thanks in large part to the World Socialist Web site (which I've been reading a lot of lately). I agree that the working class is under assault internationally. I hate the Ayn Rand style rhetoric that comes from the right and the "only pragmatic thing to do is cut medicare" rhetoric from the democrats. I truly believe that on some issues (such as single payer healthcare) a socialist alternative on a particular policy has been thoroughly empirically proven on the world stage to be superior to the "free market".

However, there are some things that always seem to hold me back from fully comitting to Marxism. I'd value the input of those on these boards who identify as communist or socialist as I try to process my thoughts. Below are the main arguments that seem to keep popping up in my head as to why socialism just doesn't make sense to me:

1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?

2. Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky. From what I've gathered about Trotsky, he had no problem putting down the Kronstdadt rebellion where the number one demand was free elections through secret ballot. The WSWS and other Trotskyist sites never seem to indicate that Trotsky favored anything like the kinds of checks and balances, seperation of powers and electoral participation by all citizens that Americans generally see as essential components of a free society. My impression is that he would have ruled basically as a dictator as well, he just thought he would have been a more benevolant dictator.

3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? I've recently been studying the life of Chairman Mao, and I am constantly shocked at the degree to which being branded a "reactionary" gets someone killed or tortured in a country like that. Can you have communism without policing thought crime? I've heard it said that since many people are naturally selfish, there are always going to be "reactionaries" that a truly communist state would have to kill. And that's assuming the people in charge are really non-selfish people committed to communist ideology. If they were opportunists or beurocrats, they could just brand everyone who threatened their power a "reactionary" and go from there. Isn't that basically what Mao did in the cultural revolution and what Stalin did in his purges?

4. There is also the argument that any kind of revolutionary change in terms of economics simply is unnecessary in order to solve the problems of the world. Growth in GDP is what brought us the advances in living conditions that are enjoyed in the developed world, and the problem with poorer countries is simply that their GDP hasn't grown enough and they aren't developed enough to enjoy all the benefits of the developed world yet. It is capitalism which is driving the insanely high GDP growth in countries like China and India. Sure, the workers don't always have the best conditions, but when they reach the same level of development as the US than their working conditions will improve. In this view, poverty is seen as the natural state of humanity, and economic growth and development is what liberates people from poverty. In time the difference in living quality between the rich and the poor will decrease as competition drives the prices of new technology down.

This really seems to be the best argument against communism to me. Not that it's necessarily wrong in it's diagnoses, but that it's irrelevent. What matters for curing the ills of the world is fundamentally economic growth, and the benefits of economic growth are ultimately much greater than the inequality that often results from the capitalist machine that drives that growth along. Many of the problems of capitalism suck in the short term, but in the long term we'll all be better off as the world develops.

5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

[Oswy]

...Below are the main arguments that seem to keep popping up in my head as to why socialism just doesn't make sense to me:

1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?

The first rule of human existence is to pursue the satisfaction of needs, whether that be in food, clothing, shelter, medical care, social life, companionship, sex or whatever. The mistake here is to observe the capitalist ideology of greed and accept it normatively ‘people are greedy, they always want more’. No, people aren’t inherently greedy, they seek to have their needs satisfied but that is a profoundly different thing. Water? Yes. Water out of gold taps? No.

Communism envisages a society in which everyone has their basic needs met and their potentials maximised; given what we know already about how capitalism works it’s a bad joke to suggest that it has such an aim in mind. In short, no, you won’t want a rolex watch when you’ve got the thing a rolex watch is a substitute for, actual human recognition, value and participation in your community and society.


2. Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky. From what I've gathered about Trotsky, he had no problem putting down the Kronstdadt rebellion where the number one demand was free elections through secret ballot. The WSWS and other Trotskyist sites never seem to indicate that Trotsky favored anything like the kinds of checks and balances, seperation of powers and electoral participation by all citizens that Americans generally see as essential components of a free society. My impression is that he would have ruled basically as a dictator as well, he just thought he would have been a more benevolant dictator.

There are several ways of looking at this one and it’s a complex issue that a paragraph (whether as a question or answer) can’t easily do justice to. Part of the problem, in my view, is that past attempts to implement socialism have paid too little attention to the need to maintain democratic systems and implement safeguards against trends towards ever smaller elites, or even individuals, from accumulating and perverting power. The first socialist revolutions have been remarkable overthrows of established economic, social and, invariably, military power, expecting them to then get everything right in the aftermath was probably asking too much. We have to learn from our mistakes. And, it’s really a problem associated with states more generally, not really specific to socialism. Maybe libertarian socialism or anarcho socialism are things for you to look at. Some prominent commentators of US politics lament the extent to which both Republican and Democratic parties are at the mercy of big-business and capital, in both their pursuit of power and their exercise of it. And, it shouldn’t be forgotten, Marxism envisages a communist society in which the state ceases to exist, even if getting there isn’t so easy.


3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? I've recently been studying the life of Chairman Mao, and I am constantly shocked at the degree to which being branded a "reactionary" gets someone killed or tortured in a country like that. Can you have communism without policing thought crime? I've heard it said that since many people are naturally selfish, there are always going to be "reactionaries" that a truly communist state would have to kill. And that's assuming the people in charge are really non-selfish people committed to communist ideology. If they were opportunists or beurocrats, they could just brand everyone who threatened their power a "reactionary" and go from there. Isn't that basically what Mao did in the cultural revolution and what Stalin did in his purges?

You’ve got to get past the idea that the likes of Stalin or Mao are the representatives of socialism or communism. Some might defend them but plenty of Marxists see them as individuals who, for whatever reasons, were corrupted by their power and were, ultimately, enemies of socialism.


4. There is also the argument that any kind of revolutionary change in terms of economics simply is unnecessary in order to solve the problems of the world. Growth in GDP is what brought us the advances in living conditions that are enjoyed in the developed world, and the problem with poorer countries is simply that their GDP hasn't grown enough and they aren't developed enough to enjoy all the benefits of the developed world yet. It is capitalism which is driving the insanely high GDP growth in countries like China and India. Sure, the workers don't always have the best conditions, but when they reach the same level of development as the US than their working conditions will improve. In this view, poverty is seen as the natural state of humanity, and economic growth and development is what liberates people from poverty. In time the difference in living quality between the rich and the poor will decrease as competition drives the prices of new technology down.

This really seems to be the best argument against communism to me. Not that it's necessarily wrong in it's diagnoses, but that it's irrelevent. What matters for curing the ills of the world is fundamentally economic growth, and the benefits of economic growth are ultimately much greater than the inequality that often results from the capitalist machine that drives that growth along. Many of the problems of capitalism suck in the short term, but in the long term we'll all be better off as the world develops.

Marxists recognise the productive power of capitalism and its capacity to drive technology, Marx himself marvelled at these things. But capitalism is a system which is inherently exploitative of the many for the benefit of the few, it may have escaped your notice but while small numbers of super-wealthy people have their absurd whims met hundreds of times over the remainder routinely cannot have their most basic needs met. Many thousands of Chinese peasants are right now are being forcibly removed from the semi-independence of their homesteads and shuffled towards factories while Chuina's capitalist 'miracle' is being praised. Suggesting that in many instances the life of the wage-labourer (or unemployed would-be wage-labourer) can be improved through advances in capitalism is no different in suggesting that in many instances the life of the slave can be improved through such advances. You might as well argue that wives and girlfriends need not expect to vote given that their husbands and boyfriends will make political decisions to protect them from the worst of discriminations and exclusions. The other problem here is in praising growth, and by implication consumerism, the engine of capitalism which is exhausting natural resources, accelerating species extinction and rendering land, sea and atmosphere ever more toxic. And this isn’t even to mention man-made climate change.


5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.

All geographies which are subject to a nation-state are planned in some degree or other by that state. Even in the US the government has substantive involvement in many aspects of human life through law, regulation and policy. Socialism and communism actually represent a supremely democratic aim, ironically enough, but place as much stress on social and economic democracy as political democracy. Whereas capitalism promotes a society of a few winners and many losers, a society built upon mistrust, greed, exploitation and alienation, socialism promotes a society more consistent with the spirit of that long period of human evolution in which people lived as an egalitarian community, each member valued, each member’s needs regarded with equal consideration, each member having productive power and participation.

[Widerstand]

1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?

That "incentives matter" is indeed a capitalist, neoliberal argument. It is based around the conception of homo economicus, which assumes that humans are rational, egoistic agents (inspired by Hobbes amongst others), which will always work towards their own self-interest. Traditional (non-cooperative) game theory has gone to great lengths demonstrating how this is true, however under the assumption that humans never behave altruistic, ergo that altruism really is just a means to an egoistic goal - although true in some regards, this is not an universal law. Cooperative game theory has started being researched under the USSR, and ultimately provided way of a cooperative society not based around egoism, that works just as well, if not better, than non-cooperative models. There have been other refutations of the homo economicus as well. The bottom line is: The incentive model is based around a constructed image of humanity, which has been contested, partially refuted, and isn't set in stone at all. That people often behave that way, although no one does all the time, can be explained by social conditioning.



2. Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky. From what I've gathered about Trotsky, he had no problem putting down the Kronstdadt rebellion where the number one demand was free elections through secret ballot. The WSWS and other Trotskyist sites never seem to indicate that Trotsky favored anything like the kinds of checks and balances, seperation of powers and electoral participation by all citizens that Americans generally see as essential components of a free society. My impression is that he would have ruled basically as a dictator as well, he just thought he would have been a more benevolant dictator.

To make it blunt: Because of a misunderstanding of complexity theory. So-called socialist regimes operated, and still operate, under the assumption that suppressing relatively small conflicts will prevent relatively large conflicts (counter-revolution). This is wrong however, has been refuted by practice, by mathematical research, and can easily be refuted by common sense. Repressing small conflicts seemingly stabilizes the system, but only for a limited amount of time. Tension keeps building, until all the small suppressed conflicts escalate in one big "catastrophe" - (counter-)revolution. This is also why capitalist democracies are so longliving: They let small conflicts escalate and thereby delay the larger conflicts; although complexity theory forwards the notion that large conflicts (revolutions) are ultimately inevitable.



3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? I've recently been studying the life of Chairman Mao, and I am constantly shocked at the degree to which being branded a "reactionary" gets someone killed or tortured in a country like that. Can you have communism without policing thought crime? I've heard it said that since many people are naturally selfish, there are always going to be "reactionaries" that a truly communist state would have to kill. And that's assuming the people in charge are really non-selfish people committed to communist ideology. If they were opportunists or beurocrats, they could just brand everyone who threatened their power a "reactionary" and go from there. Isn't that basically what Mao did in the cultural revolution and what Stalin did in his purges?

See above.



4. There is also the argument that any kind of revolutionary change in terms of economics simply is unnecessary in order to solve the problems of the world. Growth in GDP is what brought us the advances in living conditions that are enjoyed in the developed world, and the problem with poorer countries is simply that their GDP hasn't grown enough and they aren't developed enough to enjoy all the benefits of the developed world yet. It is capitalism which is driving the insanely high GDP growth in countries like China and India. Sure, the workers don't always have the best conditions, but when they reach the same level of development as the US than their working conditions will improve. In this view, poverty is seen as the natural state of humanity, and economic growth and development is what liberates people from poverty. In time the difference in living quality between the rich and the poor will decrease as competition drives the prices of new technology down.

This really seems to be the best argument against communism to me. Not that it's necessarily wrong in it's diagnoses, but that it's irrelevent. What matters for curing the ills of the world is fundamentally economic growth, and the benefits of economic growth are ultimately much greater than the inequality that often results from the capitalist machine that drives that growth along. Many of the problems of capitalism suck in the short term, but in the long term we'll all be better off as the world develops.

This is a complicated argument. Fist off, Marxism differs between two forms of communism. The primitive, scarcity driven form of communism where cooperation was necessary for survival because there were too few resources, and the post-capitalist, abundance-driven form, where cooperation is possible because concurrence is unnecessary: Everything exists in abundance. The latter is what the vast majority of communists and anarchists aim for, the former is what anarcho-primitivists want. As such Marxism agrees that capitalism is necessary for communism because it allows for rapid, nigh-limitless technological growth.

The argument that capitalist growth will bring everyone on the same level is straight-out untrue though. It can only be made and sustained under a few assumptions which all can be refuted:

a) The assumption that GDP growth benefits the people.
b) The assumption that we are currently living in global scarcity, eg. that there are not enough resources to end underdevelopment.
c) The assumption that, on the larger scale, living conditions for most (all) people are improving.

To a): This assumption leaves out the fact that some people/corporations own significantly more than everyone else. A GDP growth can mean a couple of different things: That everyone owns more; that the people who own a lot own more; that everyone owns less except the people who already own a lot owning a lot more. I think there are a few occasions were a GDP growth meant the former, and a lot where a GDP growth meant the latter two. See here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product#Standard_of_living_and_GDP) .

There are lots of countries with high GDP or high GDP growth, but bad living conditions, wages, personal income, etc. Also note that most numbers we have are averages - averages don't include horrible conditions for some but good conditions for others. However capitalism is dependent on these differences. They are created by an extraction of surplus value, which is fundamental for capitalism to work.

b) I really don't know how this is maintained for so long. There are tons of food thrown away, fields burned, etc. - all to maintain prices. Scarcity is artificially created to maintain profit. It also applies to non-food resources. Malaria medication, for example, could be produced cheaply and in large numbers in the third world, however it isn't, because it's patented.

c) This is also a common argument for free-trade zones. However it has been documented that free trade zones, despite all neoliberal claims, do not lead to a technology transfer, drive local business to bankruptcy, and steadily worsen working conditions in the countries they are in. A really good account of the negative effects of capitalism on developing countries can be found in Naomi Klein's No Logo. Another example are the global austerity measures going on at the moment.

Overall, I strongly advise you to get a basic understanding of Marx' analysis of capitalism, for example here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/marx-39-s-t41211/index.html



5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.

These are true to some extent: It is true that the rapid growth of capitalism has pushed rapid technological advance. However, this is very limited - everything not directly profitable is discarded. This has lead to a technology that grossly fails to realize it's potential, and sometimes is rather dangerous. Overall, the incentive argument, again, is wrong. A lot of research is crippled because of a lack of financing. Most researchers also don't reap benefits for their work - if it was that way you'd see tons of highly paid scientists. You don't. The ones reaping the benefits of research are the company bosses who get greater profits.

[graymouser]

1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?
Well, studies have shown that beyond simple manual labor, material incentives (i.e. money) do not make a positive impact on work done. This is counter-intuitive for mainstream economists, but it is illustrative of how psychology doesn't work like economists think it does. The classic counter-example to your rule is open source software, people have invested millions of man-hours into giving stuff away for free because they believe in it that strongly. Just because capitalism crushes people's ideals doesn't mean that those ideals don't actually drive people to do things.


2. Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky. From what I've gathered about Trotsky, he had no problem putting down the Kronstdadt rebellion where the number one demand was free elections through secret ballot. The WSWS and other Trotskyist sites never seem to indicate that Trotsky favored anything like the kinds of checks and balances, seperation of powers and electoral participation by all citizens that Americans generally see as essential components of a free society. My impression is that he would have ruled basically as a dictator as well, he just thought he would have been a more benevolant dictator.
First, there are a lot better examples of Trots than the ones on the WSWS. ;)

Second, I see the "Trotsky would have been as bad as / worse than Stalin" argument a lot, but it doesn't wash from the actual Marxist perspective. I don't think a lot of these people have ever thought it through - Trotsky could have realistically seized power in Russia, but he knew it would have meant being a dictator - the Bonaparte that he feared, and most feared becoming. Given that the actual perspective of the Bolsheviks before 1924 was that the Russian Revolution could only be a prelude to a broader social revolution in Europe, and Trotsky's perspective was to continue this.

Third, Kronstadt is a bit of a third rail here, but in context if the Bolsheviks had allowed it to succeed it would have meant the victory of white counter-revolution. Russia was barely trying to rebuild from the devastation of years of civil war that had wiped out the flower of the proletariat, and the Bolshevik Party was desperately trying to stabilize the country. This situation was used by the bureaucrats to win power through Stalin, systematically removing Trotsky then all the other major pre-1917 Bolsheviks. In other words, the problem wasn't Kronstadt, it was the bureaucracy, which expressed itself through Stalinism.


3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? I've recently been studying the life of Chairman Mao, and I am constantly shocked at the degree to which being branded a "reactionary" gets someone killed or tortured in a country like that. Can you have communism without policing thought crime? I've heard it said that since many people are naturally selfish, there are always going to be "reactionaries" that a truly communist state would have to kill. And that's assuming the people in charge are really non-selfish people committed to communist ideology. If they were opportunists or beurocrats, they could just brand everyone who threatened their power a "reactionary" and go from there. Isn't that basically what Mao did in the cultural revolution and what Stalin did in his purges?
Marxists view human nature as a fluid thing, not a hard set and determined reality. "Selfishness" in many ways is driven by the type of society we have created; the basic stance of humans is toward cooperation and social behavior. People, even in capitalism, have tremendous degrees of loyalty to their social unit. To assume that this would simply vanish in socialism instead of being intensified is mind-boggling.

Stalin's purges were not about "counter-revolutionaries" at all, they were the deliberate murders of the original Bolshevik Communists who represented a possible alternative to Stalin and the bureaucracy in power. China was somewhat different, because the social revolution was forced on that country by a bureaucratized party from above; the situation there was never a healthy workers' state.

As far as killing "reactionaries" after the revolution - that would have to be a democratic decision given actual circumstances. I mean, a terroristic fascist movement determined to re-establish capitalism under its jackboot would have to be crushed, and I would not shed a tear for its foot soldiers. But in a relatively peaceful post=revolutionary society with actual workers' democracy, I think we could do without the death penalty and so on.


4. There is also the argument that any kind of revolutionary change in terms of economics simply is unnecessary in order to solve the problems of the world. Growth in GDP is what brought us the advances in living conditions that are enjoyed in the developed world, and the problem with poorer countries is simply that their GDP hasn't grown enough and they aren't developed enough to enjoy all the benefits of the developed world yet. It is capitalism which is driving the insanely high GDP growth in countries like China and India. Sure, the workers don't always have the best conditions, but when they reach the same level of development as the US than their working conditions will improve. In this view, poverty is seen as the natural state of humanity, and economic growth and development is what liberates people from poverty. In time the difference in living quality between the rich and the poor will decrease as competition drives the prices of new technology down.

This really seems to be the best argument against communism to me. Not that it's necessarily wrong in it's diagnoses, but that it's irrelevent. What matters for curing the ills of the world is fundamentally economic growth, and the benefits of economic growth are ultimately much greater than the inequality that often results from the capitalist machine that drives that growth along. Many of the problems of capitalism suck in the short term, but in the long term we'll all be better off as the world develops.
As Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead.

But seriously, capitalism cannot produce long-term stability. First, because of its need for profits, it necessarily creates a race to the bottom in terms of wages; that is, growth in living standards for workers have to be stripped away. Temporary expansion, for the sake of class peace, can be granted but it is strictly temporary. We are living in a period in which these gains are being stripped away, and the mean is heading toward something slightly better than what the Chinese and Indian workers currently have. Capitalism requires poverty, it doesn't remove it; there will always be a drive for more surplus-value that will force wages down, even with a counter-force driving them up. You cannot have rich people without poor people.

Second, capitalism has an imperative toward growth that always creates instability. Since it always must grow beyond its current boundaries it will always produce crises, and these crises will necessarily be resolved at the cost of the workers. Overproduction is inevitable, that is, production beyond the point at which goods can be profitably sold. It can be delayed through credit and so on, but in the long run cyclical crises always stop any trends toward a more affluent world.

Third, there is an ecological imperative in the current period that cannot be reconciled with capitalism. The tendency toward growth means that capitalism cannot become sustainable for the long term - it will always seek to use more resources than can be renewed naturally. You need a stable, planned economy that can last permanently, or you are essentially choosing a path toward barbarism. Our current path is on a crash course there, with irreversible climate change effects already happening and catastrophe almost certain after another a decade or so.


5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.
But capitalism doesn't create innovation in the first place. Risks are too dangerous for finance capital to actually take. Most modern innovation is heavily driven by government intervention. For instance, computing is largely a result of the military working closely with universities and private corporations; the costs of research are socialized but the profits are privatized. Pharmaceuticals are another excellent example, public universities work hand-in-hand with the drug companies on developing new medicines, but the profits all go to the drug companies. The whole idea that capitalism is just tremendously innovative is a huge myth, it's mostly parasitic. Investors, not innovators, make the bulk of the rewards.

[Peace on Earth]

1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?
People work for many different reasons. Obviously, writers, poets, artists, and almost any creative person takes up a "profession," if it can be called that, in the arts not for the wealth that rarely accompanies it, but for the personal satisfaction. I plan to write because I love to do it, not because I'm hoping my books will be turned into Hollywood drivel.

In a communist system, some people will simply understand that work has to get done. If you put ten people in a home on several acres of land with all the neccessities, the work will get done. Why? Because collectively, it is more effective for each person to do a bit of the work to receive the peace of mind that having all the work done (completed in part by each person) will ease their lives.

Furthermore, it is entirely possible that incentives will be offered. Certain privileges, if not given to the point where an upper-class emerges, could be given to those who do the work that the rest of society would rather not do.

Lastly, it is probable that advances in the sciences and technology will result in much of the unwanted manual labor being done by machines.


3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? I've recently been studying the life of Chairman Mao, and I am constantly shocked at the degree to which being branded a "reactionary" gets someone killed or tortured in a country like that. Can you have communism without policing thought crime? I've heard it said that since many people are naturally selfish, there are always going to be "reactionaries" that a truly communist state would have to kill. And that's assuming the people in charge are really non-selfish people committed to communist ideology. If they were opportunists or beurocrats, they could just brand everyone who threatened their power a "reactionary" and go from there. Isn't that basically what Mao did in the cultural revolution and what Stalin did in his purges?
In a communist society, there isn't really much one could do to oppose the communism that hopefully is entrenched. If you believe in the glory of capitalism, fine, go for it. Thinking about it, or speaking about it even, won't get you thrown in a gulag and beaten to death. However, if you use force to harm the well-being of others, chances are you will face some sort of punishment.


5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.

Actually, there would be much more growth in creative areas and innovation. In a socialist phase, there would be much more funding (not dependent on on the wealthy) avalible for pursuing solutions to many of societies problems. While today, many corporations are responsible for medicine and technology (and often do not produce the best result so they can make a better product one year later and sell it for more), in a socialist society people would have more opportunities to try out their ideas, as profit is not the central concern.

[mikelepore]

1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?

I'm a Marxist who agrees with that criticism. When we operate industry non-profit and worker-managed, it should to be done in a way that rewards personal efforts.

The part about "time" is easy - just compensate people in proportion to their hours.

As for "effort", that has too many meanings. Do you mean encourage people to be workoholics so that they neglect their children and they have heart attacks? I'm sure you don't mean that, but that is what capitalists mean by it. To me it simply means adopting greater rates of compensation for types of work that are classified as being more strenuous.

"Creativity" is even more ambiguous. Capitalism does everything possible to squash creativity, usually telling any worker who expresses an original thought the same thing that the Morton Thiokol company told engineer Roger Boisjoly when he warned them that it would be unsafe to launch the space shuttle Challenger in cold weather: managers make all decisions, you're merely an employee, shut up and get back to work.


2. Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky ............

What you're missing is that it doesn't matter who "would be a dictator." It was a deviation from Marxist principles to give power to any one leader in the first place. Administrative authority is supposed to be widely distributed, so if some would-be dictator somehow gets elected to be the manager of putting labels on canned beans, then the worse damage this individual could do is mess up the labels on canned beans, etc. The idea of having one big ruler has no basis in Marxist theory.

(Nor is there any basis in Marxist theory for the communist party continuing to exist after the workers take control of the means of production. The purpose of the party is to take the state away from the former rulers, politically mandate the transfer of property, and then, it's entire job now complete, be dissolved.)


3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? ..........

I consider the right of freedom of speech to be absolute and unconditional.


4. There is also the argument that any kind of revolutionary change in terms of economics simply is unnecessary in order to solve the problems of the world. Growth in GDP is what brought us the advances in living conditions that are enjoyed in the developed world ................

Your notion of economic improvements is viewed through rose-colored glasses. Maybe you didn't notice, but the standard of living in the U.S. has been dropping continuously for the past fifty years. In the 1950s and early 1960s, a family with just one wage-earner who had a high school diploma would usually have enough income to buy a house and pay it off early, go on annual vacations, have a country club membership, etc. Today a family with two wage earners with college educations is usually worse off than that. That is a huge decline in the standard of living.


5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.

The important innovations don't come from individuals taking risks on crazy ideas. That fabled explanation only accounts for cultural phenomena of questionable significance, like Colonel Sanders believing that society should have a chain of fried chicken cafeterias. The innovations that matter the most come from teams of thousands of workers performing many specialized tasks in cooperation, for example, the television receiver combines the incremental ideas of thousands of workers. What facts do you have to indicate otherwise? A rags-to-riches story on the cover of Fortune Magazine doesn't count as actual data.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

Most of what you've asked has been answered so I'm going to just make a few brief comments...


Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky.

Trotskyists have never reduced the degeneration of the revolution to personalities. Stalinism itself is considered to have been a development of the bureaucratization of the revolution, which had its source in the difficulties the revolution faced such as backwardness, war, famine, and the failure of the revolution to spread.


The WSWS and other Trotskyist sites never seem to indicate that Trotsky favored anything like the kinds of checks and balances, seperation of powers and electoral participation by all citizens that Americans generally see as essential components of a free society.Trotsky saw freedom for conflicting views and soviet democracy as essential to socialism. I suggest you go straight to his writings, though WSWS also expresses the same views:

"Either the self-emancipation of the working class means that it is the masses who must create and work out the forms of their own liberation or it does not. This is not merely an issue of abstract theoretical interest. The question has merely to be posed: Would a revolutionary socialist government, in the aftermath of the conquest of political power, be subject to the democratic control of the working class? Would the working out of policies proceed on the basis of diktats issued by the ruling socialists or through the open struggle among diverse social tendencies, whose right to fight for their viewpoints and policies would be among the most precious and zealously defended of democratic rights?"

[syndicat]

1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?

One should be paid for working. But this is to provide an incentive for the actual effort, and for agreeing to take on the burdens, boredom, risks associated with working.

With all education free and open to anyone, there would be no point to remunerating people for having acquired certain types of knowledge or expertise. Schooling is not a harsher form of work than any other. Since schooling is at least as pleasant as other forms of work, no special incentive is needed to get people to do it.

Work effort is the one thing people have under their own control and this is where the incentives are needed. But under capitalism people receive income from inheritance, windfall profits, innate talents (biological inheritance), acquiring skills from growing up in educated and affluent families (another form of inheritance), from their ability to exploit others through owning businesses. There is no reason to remunerate people for any of these reasons.



2. Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky. From what I've gathered about Trotsky, he had no problem putting down the Kronstdadt rebellion where the number one demand was free elections through secret ballot. The WSWS and other Trotskyist sites never seem to indicate that Trotsky favored anything like the kinds of checks and balances, seperation of powers and electoral participation by all citizens that Americans generally see as essential components of a free society. My impression is that he would have ruled basically as a dictator as well, he just thought he would have been a more benevolant dictator.

They were fake socialist regimes. The workers were not in power, they didn't run the places where they work. Those were class-divided societies controlled by a bureaucratic class -- party apparatchiks, middle managers, elite planners and other experts, generals, etc.

An authentic socialism can't be built by a party leadership gaining control of a state and then running society through a bureaucratic hierarchy, as has happened in all the "communist" revolutions. There has to be worker-run democratic mass working class organizations, workers have to take over direct management of all the industries and construct from the bottom up a governance system controlled democratically by them, not put some socalled "workers party" or "socialist party" in state power.



3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? I've recently been studying the life of Chairman Mao, and I am constantly shocked at the degree to which being branded a "reactionary" gets someone killed or tortured in a country like that. Can you have communism without policing thought crime?

no, you can't. the working class cannot actually control the society unless they have the freedom to deliberate...discuss and debate...among themselves. A real participatory democracy presupposes freedom of speech and assembly at the base, and freedom of association. Marxist-Leninists often justify a top-down "workers state" (never actually controlled by workers) in order to "repress the old capitalist class" but this often ends up by them simply labeling as "petty capitalist" any viewpoint that disagrees with the party.



I've heard it said that since many people are naturally selfish, there are always going to be "reactionaries" that a truly communist state would have to kill. And that's assuming the people in charge are really non-selfish people committed to communist ideology. If they were opportunists or beurocrats, they could just brand everyone who threatened their power a "reactionary" and go from there. Isn't that basically what Mao did in the cultural revolution and what Stalin did in his purges?

In the case of both Mao and Stalin, a one-party state and a bureaucratic class were consolidated. Once you have a group who have power, they won't give it up voluntarily and will use their power to crush opponents.

To answer the first question, people have the ability to be greedy but the level of greed in capitalism is hyped up by the way the system is structured, since it is built to encourage greed since greed and callousness win. The system is built around pursuit of private profit and encourages people to step on and exploit others because that's how you win. But there is no necessity for human society to built around greed as an operative principle like that. But it does have to allow for a healthy level of self-interest.



4. There is also the argument that any kind of revolutionary change in terms of economics simply is unnecessary in order to solve the problems of the world. Growth in GDP is what brought us the advances in living conditions that are enjoyed in the developed world, and the problem with poorer countries is simply that their GDP hasn't grown enough and they aren't developed enough to enjoy all the benefits of the developed world yet. It is capitalism which is driving the insanely high GDP growth in countries like China and India. Sure, the workers don't always have the best conditions, but when they reach the same level of development as the US than their working conditions will improve. In this view, poverty is seen as the natural state of humanity, and economic growth and development is what liberates people from poverty. In time the difference in living quality between the rich and the poor will decrease as competition drives the prices of new technology down.

The hyped up competitive struggle of the last three or four decades has increased poverty and inequality, not reduced it. this is more capitalist propaganda. The "problems" of the world include global warming and other ecological catastrophes for which capitalism has no solution since it is the cause. And this still ignores the systemic underdevelopment of the potential of the working class, meaningless work, and tyranny in the workplace that the working class are routinely subject to. "Economic growth" isn't what the capitalists are interested in. They're interested in profits and accumulation of wealth. They don't care how this comes about. And this doesn't "trickle down" to those at the bottom, as increasing inequality shows.



5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.


It's the owners who capture gains in capitalism. Technical innovations are only adopted if they benefit capital. Many other kinds of innovations are discarded. Capital isn't interested in innovations that would be ecologically beneficial if they won't make a profit for example, nor are they interested in innovations in work techniques that empower workers.

Anyway, it's best not to define the question of capitalism versus "communism" because in ordinary language "Communism" is often used to refer to the fake socialist "Communist" regimes, which are actually bureaucratic class dominated regimes, not a society of workers management. so i talk about "libertarian socialism" or "self-managed socialism", to refer to a society based on workers self-management of industry and direct self-management of society by the masses, to distinguish it from the fake socialiist bureaucratic system advocated by "Communists" and state socialists.

[PoliticalNightmare]

...

Well, a lot of (but not all of) these arguments seem to be that socialism is necessarily authoritatarian/pro-statism but this is not necessarily the case. On this level, I would recommend you look into social anarchism:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html

[homo sapien]

Wow! Thank you all for such thoughtful and detailed responses. I'll try my best to reply to everyone...

OSWY-



The first rule of human existence is to pursue the satisfaction of needs, whether that be in food, clothing, shelter, medical care, social life, companionship, sex or whatever. The mistake here is to observe the capitalist ideology of greed and accept it normatively ‘people are greedy, they always want more’. No, people aren’t inherently greedy, they seek to have their needs satisfied but that is a profoundly different thing. Water? Yes. Water out of gold taps? No.

Communism envisages a society in which everyone has their basic needs met and their potentials maximised; given what we know already about how capitalism works it’s a bad joke to suggest that it has such an aim in mind. In short, no, you won’t want a rolex watch when you’ve got the thing a rolex watch is a substitute for, actual human recognition, value and participation in your community and society.


LOL about the gold faucets. Yes, I don't really think most people have the kind of acquisitive drive they are supposed to have under capitalism. However, I think that's kind of the point of the moral universe in capitalism. Since greed is a virtue under capitalism, the people who have an unnaturally large acquisitive drive (often called Ambition, or go-get-it-ness) are rewarded with greater money and power in society.

I understand everyones basic needs would be met under communism, but what about "wants?" Honestly, we need very little to get by in life. Bread, water, vitamin pills and a warm place to sleep will suffice most days, unless one is sick, in which case one needs medical care (a concept we still haven't seemed to figure out in the "greatest country on Earth"). For example, the other day I was walking through the mall and as I looked a the video game store I wondered whether they would have had video games in the USSR if it hadn't collapsed. On a more serious note, what about more utilitarian consumer goods like vacuum cleaners and blenders and microwave ovens? I'm not sure where consumer goods, entertainment and such fit into a socialist economy. Don't you need people trying to make money by making other people's lives easier or entertaining them to have these kinds of things?



There are several ways of looking at this one and it’s a complex issue that a paragraph (whether as a question or answer) can’t easily do justice to. Part of the problem, in my view, is that past attempts to implement socialism have paid too little attention to the need to maintain democratic systems and implement safeguards against trends towards ever smaller elites, or even individuals, from accumulating and perverting power. The first socialist revolutions have been remarkable overthrows of established economic, social and, invariably, military power, expecting them to then get everything right in the aftermath was probably asking too much. We have to learn from our mistakes. And, it’s really a problem associated with states more generally, not really specific to socialism. Maybe libertarian socialism or anarcho socialism are things for you to look at. Some prominent commentators of US politics lament the extent to which both Republican and Democratic parties are at the mercy of big-business and capital, in both their pursuit of power and their exercise of it. And, it shouldn’t be forgotten, Marxism envisages a communist society in which the state ceases to exist, even if getting there isn’t so easy.



True, we don't have much in the way of democracy when so much of our policy is influenced by a handful of big donors and their lobbyists. But at least here I can go on a message board like this and not worry about FBI agents busting down the door and taking me off to a work camp for re-education (knock on wood). The thing that worries me about socialism is that part of me wonders if the level of government control over the economy actually does predispose a nation towards totalitarianism. WHat do you say when you hear people reciting the right wing maxim "a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything away from you?"

(Personally, I'd say that the government is probably already big enough to take everything away from me. Really, pretty much any government with armed policemen and military would probably be big enough to take everything away from me. Just because it can doesn't mean it will. But this seems to be an incomplete answer consider the tendancy of leftist revolutions in the 20th century to result in tyrannical governments. In fact, our word tyrant was originally used to refer to the leaders of populist uprisings who would suspend democracy in order to make life better for "the people" in an ancient Greek polis, which sounds remarkably like a leftist revolution to me. Doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong for the tyrant to do what he does, if he actually is righting wrongs and increasing inequality. But it makes me suspect that there might be some kind of link between tyranny and populist uprisings that might lead one to reject leftism or at least think very long and hard about what kinds of ideology, organization and governmental structures leftists need to fight for in order to avoid a tyrannical outcome.)



Marxists recognise the productive power of capitalism and its capacity to drive technology, Marx himself marvelled at these things. But capitalism is a system which is inherently exploitative of the many for the benefit of the few, it may have escaped your notice but while small numbers of super-wealthy people have their absurd whims met hundreds of times over the remainder routinely cannot have their most basic needs met. Many thousands of Chinese peasants are right now are being forcibly removed from the semi-independence of their homesteads and shuffled towards factories while Chuina's capitalist 'miracle' is being praised. Suggesting that in many instances the life of the wage-labourer (or unemployed would-be wage-labourer) can be improved through advances in capitalism is no different in suggesting that in many instances the life of the slave can be improved through such advances. You might as well argue that wives and girlfriends need not expect to vote given that their husbands and boyfriends will make political decisions to protect them from the worst of discriminations and exclusions. The other problem here is in praising growth, and by implication consumerism, the engine of capitalism which is exhausting natural resources, accelerating species extinction and rendering land, sea and atmosphere ever more toxic. And this isn’t even to mention man-made climate change.



You have a real point here about externalities, and I of course think you definitely have a point about inequality. I don't know how anyone can live in the world with their eyes open and not agree with these things (although somehow they do). What I was thinking of here was a video I saw on NPR's Planet Money blog awhile back that I was originally planning to post until I found out I can't post links until I get 25 posts:confused:. If you are interested, go to the Planet Money blog and search for "Come With Me To The Wonderful World of Statistics." In this video they statistically track life expectancy along with economic growth over the past 200 years, and with the exception of Mao's Great Leap Forward you see a general rising trend for both statistics in concert, as well as a lessoning of inequality between rich and poor nations over time. Looking at these statistics it seems like capitalist development is actually lessoning inequality at the macro level between nations and improving the life expectancy for everyone, even though it may enhance inequality within nations. Of course, there's still global warming, pollution etc. But these things would be a problem for any industrialized modern nation. Although I do think the problems would be lessoned if society's resources were harnessed to solve these problems rather than to make profits for investors.

[homo sapien]

That "incentives matter" is indeed a capitalist, neoliberal argument. It is based around the conception of homo economicus, which assumes that humans are rational, egoistic agents (inspired by Hobbes amongst others), which will always work towards their own self-interest. Traditional (non-cooperative) game theory has gone to great lengths demonstrating how this is true, however under the assumption that humans never behave altruistic, ergo that altruism really is just a means to an egoistic goal - although true in some regards, this is not an universal law. Cooperative game theory has started being researched under the USSR, and ultimately provided way of a cooperative society not based around egoism, that works just as well, if not better, than non-cooperative models. There have been other refutations of the homo economicus as well. The bottom line is: The incentive model is based around a constructed image of humanity, which has been contested, partially refuted, and isn't set in stone at all. That people often behave that way, although no one does all the time, can be explained by social conditioning.



Can you point me to some good extended refutations of homo economicus either in website or book form?



To make it blunt: Because of a misunderstanding of complexity theory. So-called socialist regimes operated, and still operate, under the assumption that suppressing relatively small conflicts will prevent relatively large conflicts (counter-revolution). This is wrong however, has been refuted by practice, by mathematical research, and can easily be refuted by common sense. Repressing small conflicts seemingly stabilizes the system, but only for a limited amount of time. Tension keeps building, until all the small suppressed conflicts escalate in one big "catastrophe" - (counter-)revolution. This is also why capitalist democracies are so longliving: They let small conflicts escalate and thereby delay the larger conflicts; although complexity theory forwards the notion that large conflicts (revolutions) are ultimately inevitable.



I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by complexity theory :blushing: Can you explain in more detail? If revolutions are always inevitable, does this mean any socialist/communist society would inevitably break down and possibly lead back to capitalism?



This is a complicated argument. Fist off, Marxism differs between two forms of communism. The primitive, scarcity driven form of communism where cooperation was necessary for survival because there were too few resources, and the post-capitalist, abundance-driven form, where cooperation is possible because concurrence is unnecessary: Everything exists in abundance. The latter is what the vast majority of communists and anarchists aim for, the former is what anarcho-primitivists want. As such Marxism agrees that capitalism is necessary for communism because it allows for rapid, nigh-limitless technological growth.

The argument that capitalist growth will bring everyone on the same level is straight-out untrue though. It can only be made and sustained under a few assumptions which all can be refuted:

a) The assumption that GDP growth benefits the people.
b) The assumption that we are currently living in global scarcity, eg. that there are not enough resources to end underdevelopment.
c) The assumption that, on the larger scale, living conditions for most (all) people are improving.

To a): This assumption leaves out the fact that some people/corporations own significantly more than everyone else. A GDP growth can mean a couple of different things: That everyone owns more; that the people who own a lot own more; that everyone owns less except the people who already own a lot owning a lot more. I think there are a few occasions were a GDP growth meant the former, and a lot where a GDP growth meant the latter two. See.

There are lots of countries with high GDP or high GDP growth, but bad living conditions, wages, personal income, etc. Also note that most numbers we have are averages - averages don't include horrible conditions for some but good conditions for others. However capitalism is dependent on these differences. They are created by an extraction of surplus value, which is fundamental for capitalism to work.

b) I really don't know how this is maintained for so long. There are tons of food thrown away, fields burned, etc. - all to maintain prices. Scarcity is artificially created to maintain profit. It also applies to non-food resources. Malaria medication, for example, could be produced cheaply and in large numbers in the third world, however it isn't, because it's patented.

c) This is also a common argument for free-trade zones. However it has been documented that free trade zones, despite all neoliberal claims, do not lead to a technology transfer, drive local business to bankruptcy, and steadily worsen working conditions in the countries they are in. A really good account of the negative effects of capitalism on developing countries can be found in Naomi Klein's No Logo. Another example are the global austerity measures going on at the moment.

Overall, I strongly advise you to get a basic understanding of Marx' analysis of capitalism,


a. yes, this is the incredibly frustrating thing for me about trying to decide anything about my political views anymore. I feel like I need to be able to deal with economics and statistical evidence in the limited time I have each week to devote to this kind of thing, and even when I find what looks like good evidence it might not be when you disaggregate the data or take a broader look at the research. And so much of what you read (if not everything) is really on some level propaganda funded by someone with a political agenda Politics and economics are positively maddening to try to form a reasoned, responsible opinion about

b. This is a very good point. I know during the Great Depression there was plenty of grain for people sitting in guarded lots rotting because a profit could not be made. Meanwhile, Americans were starving. It makes sense that the same thing happens today (although in America it seems we mostly turn our surplus crop into high fructose corn syrup to help our obesity epidemic along nowadays.) Do you have any statistics about how much food and other resources are lost in this manner today?

c. I haven't read no logo, but I have read The Shock Doctrine and found it highly informative. Really, that book is the reason why socialism seems like a viable option to me now, because it really hammered home how dictatorships can be made to enforce "free market" economics as well. I'll have to put no logo on my to read list as well

I've read a small amount of Marx in the past in a political philosophy class. I was kind of planning to wait to read most of his stuff until I got up to him in my Great Books of the Western World reading list that I'm working my way through so I would be going in with a good grasp of Hegal (and for that, I assume I'd need to read the other philosophers before him). However, the list is taking me much longer than I thought, so maybe I need to just skip up to Marx if I'm going to be serious about exploring socialism. Your link looks like a good way to get the Cliff's Notes version...

[homo sapien]

Graymouser-


Well, studies have shown that beyond simple manual labor, material incentives (i.e. money) do not make a positive impact on work done. This is counter-intuitive for mainstream economists, but it is illustrative of how psychology doesn't work like economists think it does. The classic counter-example to your rule is open source software, people have invested millions of man-hours into giving stuff away for free because they believe in it that strongly. Just because capitalism crushes people's ideals doesn't mean that those ideals don't actually drive people to do things.


Yes I remember seeing a video on RevLeft awhile back while I was lurking called Drive:the surprising truth about what motivates us which made this point. However, even if monetary incentives don't drive people to produce better work at work, does this mean they aren't necessary to encourage people to come to work on a daily basis in the first place? Or get the education they need to work in a demanding profession?


First, there are a lot better examples of Trots than the ones on the WSWS. ;)

Second, I see the "Trotsky would have been as bad as / worse than Stalin" argument a lot, but it doesn't wash from the actual Marxist perspective. I don't think a lot of these people have ever thought it through - Trotsky could have realistically seized power in Russia, but he knew it would have meant being a dictator - the Bonaparte that he feared, and most feared becoming. Given that the actual perspective of the Bolsheviks before 1924 was that the Russian Revolution could only be a prelude to a broader social revolution in Europe, and Trotsky's perspective was to continue this.

Third, Kronstadt is a bit of a third rail here, but in context if the Bolsheviks had allowed it to succeed it would have meant the victory of white counter-revolution. Russia was barely trying to rebuild from the devastation of years of civil war that had wiped out the flower of the proletariat, and the Bolshevik Party was desperately trying to stabilize the country. This situation was used by the bureaucrats to win power through Stalin, systematically removing Trotsky then all the other major pre-1917 Bolsheviks. In other words, the problem wasn't Kronstadt, it was the bureaucracy, which expressed itself through Stalinism.

Wait, what's wrong with the WSWS from your perspective as a Trotskyist? I've heard some criticism due to their leader being a business owner with non-unionized workers... is there something in particular about their messaging that you find doesn't fit with the way you see Trotskyism?

That's the funny thing about revolutions. The revolutionaries eventually have to be the rulers if they are successfuly, and then they have to use state power in ways that might class with their earlier idealistic statements. How would Trotsky have gone about stabilizing the country if he had been in power? He was using force to put down political opponents at Kronstadt, why do you think he wouldn't have continued to do so?


Marxists view human nature as a fluid thing, not a hard set and determined reality. "Selfishness" in many ways is driven by the type of society we have created; the basic stance of humans is toward cooperation and social behavior. People, even in capitalism, have tremendous degrees of loyalty to their social unit. To assume that this would simply vanish in socialism instead of being intensified is mind-boggling.

Stalin's purges were not about "counter-revolutionaries" at all, they were the deliberate murders of the original Bolshevik Communists who represented a possible alternative to Stalin and the bureaucracy in power. China was somewhat different, because the social revolution was forced on that country by a bureaucratized party from above; the situation there was never a healthy workers' state.

As far as killing "reactionaries" after the revolution - that would have to be a democratic decision given actual circumstances. I mean, a terroristic fascist movement determined to re-establish capitalism under its jackboot would have to be crushed, and I would not shed a tear for its foot soldiers. But in a relatively peaceful post=revolutionary society with actual workers' democracy, I think we could do without the death penalty and so on.



I generally agree about human nature, although I think biology has a pretty big role to play. As to your example of when reactionaries would have to be killed, I think we already basically have something like this in our society. People who are trying to overthrow the government by force or commit acts of violent terrorism get forcibly repressed, and that's how the democratic majority wants it to be. We can't have a stable state without at least some forcible repression of some people. And the problem in soviet Russia and Mao's China does seem to be more about the lack of democracy and leadership through cultrs of personality than about anti-reactionary witch hunts primarily. You make good points.




But seriously, capitalism cannot produce long-term stability. First, because of its need for profits, it necessarily creates a race to the bottom in terms of wages; that is, growth in living standards for workers have to be stripped away. Temporary expansion, for the sake of class peace, can be granted but it is strictly temporary. We are living in a period in which these gains are being stripped away, and the mean is heading toward something slightly better than what the Chinese and Indian workers currently have. Capitalism requires poverty, it doesn't remove it; there will always be a drive for more surplus-value that will force wages down, even with a counter-force driving them up. You cannot have rich people without poor people.




This is the message I seem to be getting from the WSWS and books like The Shock Doctrine. Whatever gains capitalism has brought for the masses are actually going to be shortlived. There seems to be a lot of truth in this looking at the way in which the position of the working class is under such ferocious assault in the developed world at the moment.

You really are right about where many innovations today actually come from as well. After all, it was the communists who put Sputnik in orbit, right?

Well, it's late and I'm getting really tired. I know I said I'd try to reply to everyone, and I will try later, but right now I'm going to bed. Thanks again for your time everyone.

[Victus Mortuum]

I'm gonna take a crack at your post. even though you've already had a bunch of responses...


I'm a disillusioned American democrat who is thinking he may be becoming a real socialist, thanks in large part to the World Socialist Web site (which I've been reading a lot of lately).

Great! Democrats in the United States are "welfare state" capitalists (though they stand less and less for this). They advocate dictatorial economics and protecting the long term interests of capital by helping those at the bottommost within the country. Socialists are nothing of the kind. Socialism, at its core, is economic (and political!) democracy, though I discourage use of that word in public discourse, because, for Americans at least, the word means "strong welfare state" capitalism.


I agree that the working class is under assault internationally.
Yeah. :( It's very horrible. In some nations the worker-class has managed to organize enough to provide minor "protections" for itself, but in others the state of things is particularly grim.


I hate the Ayn Rand style rhetoric that comes from the right and the "only pragmatic thing to do is cut medicare" rhetoric from the democrats. I truly believe that on some issues (such as single payer healthcare) a socialist alternative on a particular policy has been thoroughly empirically proven on the world stage to be superior to the "free market".
A single payer healthcare system, if you maintain the current state, is not socialism. It is welfare-state capitalism. Remember, the American (and others) government is the rule of the bourgeois, not of the proletariat. Even if you nationalize an industry within it, you are just giving the capitalists (economic dictators) a monopoly on the industry rather than having private competing capitalists.


However, there are some things that always seem to hold me back from fully comitting to Marxism.

Do you know what Marxism really is? You should read this entire article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism) to get a good basic grasp.


I'd value the input of those on these boards who identify as communist or socialist as I try to process my thoughts. Below are the main arguments that seem to keep popping up in my head as to why socialism just doesn't make sense to me:

I'll do my best. I am going to be using the definition of socialism as the truly democratic public or worker's control of the means of production. If you mean simply state ownership of industry, then these responses will not be relevant to you.


1. The first rule of economics is often said to be "incentives matter." This seems to be most people's problem with far left ideologies: after a certain point, the theory goes, people will stop working if they aren't seeing more personal benefits from their increased effort/time/creativity. What kinds of incentives are there for people to work in a communist system?
Communist? Now you are changing terms on me. In the US, communism has varied and difficult to deal with meanings. I'm going to take communism to mean socialism (as defined above) + consumption on need, not income.

How about if you don't work some job you don't eat (unless you are unable to work and society has deemed you worthy of keeping alive anyway - such as physically or mentally handicapped, the temporarily unemployed, children, and the elderly)? Workers are paid shit in capitalism but they still work hard at their jobs. Why would this change if they were paid more and had democratic control of their workplaces?


2. Why were so many communist nations in the 20th century brutal dictatorships? I understand that Trotskyists like the WSWS people think that all of this was the fault of "Stalinism" but I don't see how things would have been different under Trotsky. From what I've gathered about Trotsky, he had no problem putting down the Kronstdadt rebellion where the number one demand was free elections through secret ballot. The WSWS and other Trotskyist sites never seem to indicate that Trotsky favored anything like the kinds of checks and balances, seperation of powers and electoral participation by all citizens that Americans generally see as essential components of a free society. My impression is that he would have ruled basically as a dictator as well, he just thought he would have been a more benevolant dictator.

As soon as the central governing body, and even the soviets themselves, ceased to be truly democratic, the system ceased to be socialist in my sense (though it remained "socialist" in the american sense). There is no state, and certainly no dictatorship, in communism, however. Don't get distracted by any of the tendency bullshit, especially at the beginning. True radical democracy = socialism. Anything else is not.


3. What role does freedom of thought and speech play in your vision for the world? I've recently been studying the life of Chairman Mao, and I am constantly shocked at the degree to which being branded a "reactionary" gets someone killed or tortured in a country like that. Can you have communism without policing thought crime? I've heard it said that since many people are naturally selfish, there are always going to be "reactionaries" that a truly communist state would have to kill. And that's assuming the people in charge are really non-selfish people committed to communist ideology. If they were opportunists or beurocrats, they could just brand everyone who threatened their power a "reactionary" and go from there. Isn't that basically what Mao did in the cultural revolution and what Stalin did in his purges?

Frankly, the history of the Chinese revolution is one I have not studied and know very little about. However, I will say that freedom of thought and expression are fundamental components of socialism (in my offered definition). As far as these are violated, a revolution is not socialist.


4. There is also the argument that any kind of revolutionary change in terms of economics simply is unnecessary in order to solve the problems of the world. Growth in GDP is what brought us the advances in living conditions that are enjoyed in the developed world, and the problem with poorer countries is simply that their GDP hasn't grown enough and they aren't developed enough to enjoy all the benefits of the developed world yet. It is capitalism which is driving the insanely high GDP growth in countries like China and India. Sure, the workers don't always have the best conditions, but when they reach the same level of development as the US than their working conditions will improve. In this view, poverty is seen as the natural state of humanity, and economic growth and development is what liberates people from poverty. In time the difference in living quality between the rich and the poor will decrease as competition drives the prices of new technology down.

No, the conditions of workers do not improve in a country simply because the means of production get more effective. The conditions of the workers only get better if the workers fight for "protections". The truth is, however, that until there is democratic control over governments and economies, true human freedom can never be achieved, and "protections" for workers are simply pacifiers and protections for capitalists. And protections erode over time anyway because of capital flight from profit-restrictive governments.


This really seems to be the best argument against communism to me. Not that it's necessarily wrong in it's diagnoses, but that it's irrelevent. What matters for curing the ills of the world is fundamentally economic growth, and the benefits of economic growth are ultimately much greater than the inequality that often results from the capitalist machine that drives that growth along. Many of the problems of capitalism suck in the short term, but in the long term we'll all be better off as the world develops.

In all fully developed nations, we have the capacity to feed, clothe, shelter everyone. Not only that, but we have the capacity to give them all access to the internet, access to great education (though that whole system needs reformed), and lots of other things. And as other nations develop they will too have this capacity.


5. Along with this is the argument that communism doesn't provide the same kind of incentives and freedom for innovation that capitalism does. The idea is that individuals need to be able to take a risk on crazy ideas they have and reap the benefits of their work personally in order to have a climate where technological innovators will flourish. A planned economy wouldn't have the same kind of space for these vital people as an unplanned economy does.

Innovations happen because it's a fundamental attribute of humanity to satisfy more and more needs at easier and easier levels. Corporations reward innovation with R&D to make it happen faster. I don't see how a radically-democratic economy couldn't use some similar means to innovate (reward people for their work on innovations and inventions and other information production). Why do you claim a planned economy discourage innovation?