what are logical, non emotional reasons for communism/abolition of property?

[Jacob Cliff]

i know it seems a simple question, but what are reasons that aren't based on emotion? I saw someone say it was just subjective and its theft to take away someone's property. I have my answer, but what are yours?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Reasons in this sense (i.e. motives) are not the sort of thing that can be objective (and correspondingly, calling them subjective misses the point). Nothing in the universe will tell you what you should do - that's fairly basic materialism.

And why should we care if it's theft? The bourgeoisie have the cake, we want the cake, it's as simple as that.

[Slavic]

Communism benefits me the most. It's a perfectly logical and selfish reason which I am completely ok with.


@FYP I want the cake too.

[motion denied]

OMNIA SUNT COMMUNIA, bruv.

[Blake's Baby]

I want the whole fucking bakery.

OK - this is learning.

Capitalism is an ustable system - the contradictions between social production and individual consumption guarantee that distribution must be sub-optimal. The whole system is based on the systematic exploitation of workers in order to produce wealth for the few. The only reason this happens is because some people are able to claim 'property rights' which defraud the producers of the products of their production.

The definition of 'theft' is also subjective. If the workers made something, why is it not 'theft' for the bosses to take it from them?

[Q]

Capitalism already socialises the economy to a huge extent. In fact, the dynamics of capitalism have made society possible in its absolute sense. Under feudalism there was no such thing as a national, let alone global society. You had a village and peasants were preoccupied with their field. That was it.

Even at the level of production, things become more and more social, more and more planned, more and more rationalised. But capitalism can't make the final stretch, can't start producing for social needs, due to private ownership of the means of production. So, it then becomes a political task to end this private ownership. Nationalisation is one road to this (a problematic one though), Paul Cockshott et al have suggested another road. Whatever the solution, it has to happen at a social level, therefore it needs to be a political task.

Only when we can start producing for social needs, can we start to overcome the limitations of capitalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I want the whole fucking bakery.

OK - this is learning.

Capitalism is an ustable system - the contradictions between social production and individual consumption guarantee that distribution must be sub-optimal. The whole system is based on the systematic exploitation of workers in order to produce wealth for the few. The only reason this happens is because some people are able to claim 'property rights' which defraud the producers of the products of their production.

The definition of 'theft' is also subjective. If the workers made something, why is it not 'theft' for the bosses to take it from them?

Alright, but my point was that none of this is really "objective" in the sense that the statement "ћc = 197 MeV fm" is objective. A member of the bourgeoisie could accept all of this and still not care particularly. After them, the flood. Would they be wrong, in any sense? Well, no, not really.

I think it's very strange that people are looking for "objective reasons", as if socialism is not a matter of class interest but some eternal truth that a disinterested disembodied mind could deduce from other eternal truths.

[consuming negativity]

it is in our interest to do so because it will improve our quality of life significantly and make a better world for people in the future

[ckaihatsu]

what are logical, non emotional reasons for communism/abolition of property?

i know it seems a simple question, but what are reasons that aren't based on emotion? I saw someone say it was just subjective and its theft to take away someone's property. I have my answer, but what are yours?

Alright, but my point was that none of this is really "objective" in the sense that the statement "ћc = 197 MeV fm" is objective. A member of the bourgeoisie could accept all of this and still not care particularly. After them, the flood. Would they be wrong, in any sense? Well, no, not really.

I think it's very strange that people are looking for "objective reasons", as if socialism is not a matter of class interest but some eternal truth that a disinterested disembodied mind could deduce from other eternal truths.

The answer is egalitarianism.

Our social existence and experiences as individuals are virtually *identical*, from a macroscopic, societal viewpoint. What *does* vary -- and too much so -- is the pre-arrangement, or social 'tracking' / "engineering" that happens to us based on the socio-economic circumstances that we're born into. So richer people tend to live longer lives, with more opportunities for self-direction, while poorer people may tend to have limited horizons, access to resources, etc.

Achieving a truly collective co-administration over the world's resources and productivity would bring everyone to a formally equivalent *social* status, so that individual-based privileges no longer exist.

(Isn't this all part of Socialism 101 -- !)

[Mad Frankie]

Yeah, and others forgot to mention - technology stagnates under capitalism, scientific progress is checked by the interests of a particular class.

[Slavic]

The answer is egalitarianism.

Our social existence and experiences as individuals are virtually *identical*, from a macroscopic, societal viewpoint. What *does* vary -- and too much so -- is the pre-arrangement, or social 'tracking' / "engineering" that happens to us based on the socio-economic circumstances that we're born into. So richer people tend to live longer lives, with more opportunities for self-direction, while poorer people may tend to have limited horizons, access to resources, etc.

Achieving a truly collective co-administration over the world's resources and productivity would bring everyone to a formally equivalent *social* status, so that individual-based privileges no longer exist.

(Isn't this all part of Socialism 101 -- !)

I wouldn't say that egalitarianism the reason to support socialism, albeit an egalitarian would agree that a socialist society would be the better society under those moral conditions.

I support socialism because it benefits me individually. My selfishness can be a microcosm to the class base macrocosm of socialism benefiting the proletariat class. The proletariat need socialism because it benefits them the most, to hell with the other classes. There doesn't need to be a moral justification for this conclusion.

@ Madfrankie

Is there support for that claim?

[Lev Ulyanov]

The entire Marxist approach is an approach which seeks to distance itself from emotionalism. Perhaps Marx's greatest contribution is his unity of German philosophy with British political economy, and his explanation of the necessity of communism from a structural perspective i.e. because capitalism was inherently unstable and doomed to failure. Indeed, this marks the difference between Marx and the Utopian Socialists who came before him - his analytic approach, enabled by a new understanding of the Hegelian dialectic as human Method and not merely passive Means, is what gives Marxism its revolutionary spirit.

This is not to say that one cannot have any emotional drive whatsoever within the fight for communism, but only to say that emotional reasons are not sufficient to provide the basis for the struggle or for the establishment of a new order. Indeed, people such as Kautsky go too far in their scientism, and even argue that we should not bother to fight for the cause because it's bound to happen sometime anyway.

[ckaihatsu]

I wouldn't say that egalitarianism the reason to support socialism, albeit an egalitarian would agree that a socialist society would be the better society under those moral conditions.

I don't think an argument for egalitarianism is a *moral* one, and I don't happen to be a moralist, either.

I'd say that every individual has an individualistic self-interest in making sure that there aren't *disparities* of access to the world's resources and opportunities, as with the 'divine right of kings', capitalist wealth, state power, industrial production, etc.

Fortunately the vast bulk of the world's population happens to be of the proletariat, so there's a common, inter-subjective interest in overthrowing capitalist privileges.

I support socialism because it benefits me individually. My selfishness can be a microcosm to the class base macrocosm of socialism benefiting the proletariat class. The proletariat need socialism because it benefits them the most, to hell with the other classes. There doesn't need to be a moral justification for this conclusion.

Agreed.

[tuwix]

i know it seems a simple question, but what are reasons that aren't based on emotion? I saw someone say it was just subjective and its theft to take away someone's property. I have my answer, but what are yours?

Capitalism is going to collapse. It's inevitable. So what would be the best choice after all? The answer can be communism.


Besides IMHO communism is just inevitable. Less and less people is needed to do any job that has real values. Today in western world the most of jobs are just bureaucratic that produce nothing else that tons of wasted paper. Besides more and more commodities are available and price of them is going down. We are going to the point when job and many will become obsolete.

[Rafiq]

It's not a matter of trying to find diverse ways in which Communism is personally justified. Communism represents a fundamental struggle - a problem. It's not about supporting a wide array of nice abstractions - it's about taking a side in a real struggle. Communism derives from the existing conditions of production and life. It is not as though class society is a mere abstraction asserted upon by Communists. Class exists independently of Communist ideology. It is real. Communism as a movement is consequential of these realities.

So of course you cannot be emotionally detached from it. The point is that these emotions don't come out of nowhere. I don't know what fools you have seen that have attempted to convince people our cause is true by making them cry to death, but they are certainly not Communists. Even aside from that - what do you mean by logical? Communism is certainly logical - it is a manifestation of the interests of a real class. There's no utilitarian value as far as the "betterment" of society goes or the "well being" of Earth if that's what you're looking for.

[ckaihatsu]

Capitalism is going to collapse. It's inevitable. So what would be the best choice after all? The answer can be communism.


Besides IMHO communism is just inevitable. Less and less people is needed to do any job that has real values. Today in western world the most of jobs are just bureaucratic that produce nothing else that tons of wasted paper. Besides more and more commodities are available and price of them is going down. We are going to the point when job and many will become obsolete.

Interestingly, these are all the same reasons that were given to us (growing up in the waning Cold War era) for the inevitable demise of the superpower rival, the USSR.

I tend to find more *similarities* between the functioning of the two than *differences*, and now we're seeing that what *seemed* to be endemic and particular to the Soviet sphere is in fact more typical of capitalism *in general*, with all of its in-built contradictions and crises.

[cyu]

I would say that the vast majority of the world's population want to be "happy" - that is an entirely emotional goal. I would say if you want to remove emotion from the discussion of humanity, you might as well say you want to remove animals from the discussion of zoos.