Selfishness

[Diirez]

How do you respond if someone says that Communism will never work because people are selfish?

After all, people don't want to share their car, or meals, or house with strangers. If the whole concept of private property is abolished, how can it work?

[Ocean Seal]

How do you respond if someone says that Communism will never work because people are selfish?

After all, people don't want to share their car, or meals, or house with strangers. If the whole concept of private property is abolished, how can it work?

People aren't purely selfish, they are socialized into it. There is no relevant state of nature that controls how we conduct ourselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_%28book%29

The way that people interact is determined by their conditions.

Communism provides a new set of conditions for people to interact.

[Sinister Intents]

How do you respond if someone says that Communism will never work because people are selfish?

After all, people don't want to share their car, or meals, or house with strangers. If the whole concept of private property is abolished, how can it work?

Ocean Seal answered this pretty much head on. It also makes me think of the human nature argument. The nature of society and how we're raised and the conditions that affect us determine our nature not some god-given thing. Also people's homes, vehicles, their food, et cetera would count as personal property and not private property. Private property includes the means of production and land which would become the property of society as a whole not the property of those that seek to exploit for personal profit.

[IBleedRed]

Point out that different societies across different time periods have had very different ideas of what "human nature" is (e.g. in the Middle Ages, "human nature" determined that the King, who derives his power from God, was at the top; then the nobility; then the warrior class; then the peasants). In fact, our ideas about what is socially acceptable have changed dramatically over the last fifty years, let alone the past thousand or two thousand.

Like Sinister Intents said, your car, house, laptop, etc, are not what we would call the "means of production", so they would still be personal. "Means of production" would be things like factories, land, natural resources (water, precious metals, game), etc

[Red Banana]

People are selfish, but by that same token they're also altruistic. It's not like it has to be one or the other.

Now if this were raised in an argument for 'why communism can't work', I would counter it by pointing out that if all people are motivated by is selfishness and greed, why haven't the workers done the 'greedy' thing and expropriated the means of production from the bourgeoisie already?

Capitalism relies on workers subsidizing the capitalist class with their surplus labor (whether they consent to it or not, which would make it more akin to theft on the part of the bourgeoisie than altruism on the part of workers tbh).

[helot]

There's loads of examples of people risking their lives to help strangers.



I can't be arsed with these arguments tbh, everyone comes out with the same bullshit and it's just ridiculous the level of unthinking. These days i just go "so you wouldn't even piss on someone who's on fire?" and just leave.

[Niccolo]

When we say that we want to abolish private property, we're not referring to the things you mentioned. Your house, car, toothbrush, teddy-bear, etc are your personal possessions. Private property refers to things that produce capital like factories, mines, oil wells, etc. These are things that people own and use to employ other people who don't own any capital.

Regarding selfishness, I'd say that socialism would give the average person a better life, by improving their standard of living and the say they have in how society is run. Selfishness is conditioned - in capitalism we're told how life is 'survival of the fittest' and that being rich equals being a valuable member to society. But that really isn't the case. People who research medicine and cures for diseases aren't paid too handsomely while shuffling around money through investing and hedge funds earn one millions. The system isn't meritocratic as it is usually described.

[RedWaves]

Capitalism can breed selfishness and greed very easily.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Isn't it odd that those who argue that selfishness should be the basis of the economy only support this selfishness for the bourgeoisie? But if the workers act in their own self-interest, which is what communism is, then somehow that defies "human nature". Communism doesn't really negate selfishness as a human characteristic, it simply provides a material abundance so that it need not express itself like it does now, like petty crimes and other inter-working class hostility that exists in bourgeois society.

[Decolonize The Left]

How do you respond if someone says that Communism will never work because people are selfish?

After all, people don't want to share their car, or meals, or house with strangers. If the whole concept of private property is abolished, how can it work?

1. The claim that people are selfish involves presupposing that people are absolutely one thing or another (i.e. human nature). This is unjustified and a remarkably difficult claim to hold in the face of nuanced critique.

2. Communism, in theory, doesn't do away with personal property. It does away with private property (i.e. capital) by collectivising it in the hands of the working class (i.e. the people). So you can still have your house, car, meals, etc... but you can't have an industry whereby you exploit people for your own profit.

3. Communism has never been implemented. Hence if/when it is, it will be the people who make these decisions and hence these decisions will be organic and resulting from the desires of the very 'selfish' people who are supposedly ruining communism. In short, communism actually refutes the claim in itself.

[Fourth Internationalist]

After all, people don't want to share their car, or meals, or house with strangers. If the whole concept of private property is abolished, how can it work?

"The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

- Karl Marx in Chapter II. "Proletarians and Communists" of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/)

[Remus Bleys]

Yeah I never did get why people use selfishness as a reason communism couldn't work. Communism will produce a society of such overabudance that people will probably be able to take whatever they want without hurting anything.

[piet11111]

I believe my life would significantly improve materially if we just lived under a socialist system.

Being a selfish bastard i cant wait for the overthrow of capitalism so i can finally live a life worth living.

Of course this only applies if you consider having a home to call my own an actually health care plan and a retirement that wont end in my living in an impoverished condition as selfish.

Communism can only work because we wont stand for the vile enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.