Doubts

[xXRickyXx]

Hi everybody!
I'm new at this forum and I would like to ask some questions to you guys.

1-What do communists say about the refugees crisis. Do they support them or not?
2-Is it true that in communist country, you can't have a different political opinion/view?
3-Is it true that in a communist country, everybody earns the same? If it's true, how can a person be motivated to study or work?

That's all

Regards

[ChrisK]

Hi everybody!
I'm new at this forum and I would like to ask some questions to you guys.

1-What do communists say about the refugees crisis. Do they support them or not?

Support them. Refugees need help and should be given it.

2-Is it true that in communist country, you can't have a different political opinion/view?

There is a common misconception that there is such a thing as a communist country. Communism means a global, classless, stateless society. In such a society you would see differing opinions.

However, I assume your question pertains to societies that have existed that are called communist. The answer is that I do not know about all of them, but the old Soviet Union was quite oppressive, such as putting down the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Dissent was not taken well.

Of course, the story of what happened in Russia is complicated.

3-Is it true that in a communist country, everybody earns the same? If it's true, how can a person be motivated to study or work?

In an actual communist society it's entirely unclear if there will be a form of money or not. I think that most people are on the not side, but it could be that there would be money in the form of labor vouchers.

More to the point, why do you think people wouldn't be motivated to study or work? Even today people engage in innovation and hard work with almost no chance of reward. In fact, most labor is undervalued and hard work does not pay off, which would not be true in a communist society.

People tend to study to do jobs that require degrees because its something they want to do. That want will still exist, so people will study and work hard.

[xXRickyXx]

First of all, thank you very much for your reply.

More to the point, why do you think people wouldn't be motivated to study or work? Even today people engage in innovation and hard work with almost no chance of reward. In fact, most labor is undervalued and hard work does not pay off, which would not be true in a communist society.

Just because when you talk to someone about communism, the person who you're talking with will probably tell you that it wouldn't work due to salaries being the same to everybody and in consequence you wouldn't be motivated to study. Why would you study to be a medic while you can earn the same being a teacher?

Regards

[Blake's Baby]

Perhaps you want to be a medic? What, in a socialist society, is to stop you being medic? Not the thought of 7 years at college with a massive student debt to repay. I suspect that many more people will try to become medics. That's good; it means public health might improve.

And when there are no 'salaries' anyway, it's all much of a muchness. People will learn how to do what they want, not what they can afford.

[Armchair Partisan]

First of all, thank you very much for your reply.



Just because when you talk to someone about communism, the person who you're talking with will probably tell you that it wouldn't work due to salaries being the same to everybody and in consequence you wouldn't be motivated to study. Why would you study to be a medic while you can earn the same being a teacher?

Regards

You see, the funny thing is, I often see this kind of counterargument from two different angles. One type of anti-communist asks: "Why would I spend my life flipping burgers or sweeping streets if I can choose to be a doctor and there are no market forces constraining me?" (That's what it boils down to.) The other type of person asks: "Why would I study hard to be a doctor when I can just flip burgers or sweep streets?" There is absolutely no need for any refutation other than pointing these two kinds of people towards each other...

As a general hint, communism would be very different from capitalism, a lot of ideas you take for granted in this society (e.g. "harder work should be paid more, because..." - I mean, only a very spiteful person would demand that another person be paid less for their work if they can live perfectly fine on their own wage) would be gone - you'll have to question very basic beliefs of yours if you are interested in this communism thing.

Edit: Honestly, if there is one thing that worries me (though no doubt it can be solved, it might still create temporary problems though) is not that people will not want to study a lot or do menial work, but rather, that specific niches of the economy might go unfulfilled due to no market forces coercing people to accept shittier jobs (for example, and this may not actually be the case, just something hypothetical: maybe people who are interested in medicine would want to be surgeons, diagnosticists etc., creating an oversupply of such personnel, and few of them would want to be a nurse, which is much less glamorous, involves much more cleaning up of diapers, and does not have the same creative appeal behind it, leading to too few nurses. Again, not the best example perhaps, but maybe you understand where I'm coming from. This is what I believe might be the real issue, though it could still be solved in a variety of ways.

[Chomskyan]

1. Support them.

2. First, there are no communist countries. There are socialist countries. Depends on what you mean. The material conditions of the society would be entirely different, so the politics which would exist would be entirely different. Bourgeois politics would be suppressed, but a new proletarian politic could be very multifaceted and complicated. We have no way of knowing. The likelihood is that we´ll have different political consciousness under socialism, but it wouldn´t be abolished.

3. Everybody has access to the means of subsistence. That doesn´t necessarily mean everyone makes the same amount of money. Motivation would be based on what someone loves to do, or is good at doing or something which is highly enjoyable etc.

[Blake's Baby]

The main way is, changing 'job descriptions'. 'Hospital worker, specialises in brain surgery' s opposed to 'hospital worker, specialises in trying to reassure patients bout the weirdo who does brain surgery'. Both change dressings and do swabs.

It's not that doctors now can't, it's just that they're generally too busy playing golf and employ someone else to do it.

[xXRickyXx]

you'll have to question very basic beliefs of yours if you are interested in this communism thing.

I was just giving an example. It wasn't something I was really saying. I am trying to learn more about communism.

Edit: Honestly, if there is one thing that worries me (though no doubt it can be solved, it might still create temporary problems though) is not that people will not want to study a lot or do menial work, but rather, that specific niches of the economy might go unfulfilled due to no market forces coercing people to accept shittier jobs (for example, and this may not actually be the case, just something hypothetical: maybe people who are interested in medicine would want to be surgeons, diagnosticists etc., creating an oversupply of such personnel, and few of them would want to be a nurse, which is much less glamorous, involves much more cleaning up of diapers, and does not have the same creative appeal behind it, leading to too few nurses. Again, not the best example perhaps, but maybe you understand where I'm coming from. This is what I believe might be the real issue, though it could still be solved in a variety of ways.

I actually never thought thought in your example but I don't see it problem. We live in a world with people who are different from each other. We all want to do different things. I don't believe that in a certain period of time a certain job area will be oversupplied and another one will be empty. If it's empty it's because it doesn't produce anything new/useful to a society.

[Guardia Rossa]

First of all, welcome!

About the shittier jobs, I think an option after some development would be to use robots for such tasks.

[Thirsty Crow]

Hi everybody!
I'm new at this forum and I would like to ask some questions to you guys.

1-What do communists say about the refugees crisis. Do they support them or not?

I think it's an unconditional thing in this day and age. Not only we think and say out loud that borders are bullshit - and that migrating people are to be supported - but also that failing to do so can only feed into kinds of nationalism that is inherently, and without exception, oppositional to class struggle and communism.

2-Is it true that in communist country, you can't have a different political opinion/view?

That's a bit tricky because many of us would say there's no single communist country; if you're asking about repression of politically dissenting views (e.g. arguing for continued capitalism), then I'd say folks could have a different view. Just as many more folks might shout them down and ostracize them.

3-Is it true that in a communist country, everybody earns the same? If it's true, how can a person be motivated to study or work?

That's all

Nobody earns anything in a projected communist world community. You simply take stuff off of the common stock which could as well grow as large due to our advanced levels of productivity. That's it.

[Tim Cornelis]

Here's some information about work motivation:

http://marxistpedia.mwzip.com/wiki/A...ng_a_doctor.3F

I don't know how a comment saying that we don't know whether communism will have money or not got so many thanks. Money is a universal equivalent that facilitates the exchange of commodities. Commodity production is based on private labours becoming indirectly social. A communist revolution integrates all units of production into one cooperative whole, making production directly social. Consequently, commodity exchange cannot exist, the commodity-form cannot arise, and money is obsolete. Labour vouchers are not money, unless we have a Proudhonist understanding of it I suppose.

Unsurprisingly, this suggestion was made by someone whom subscribes to "anti-dialectics". "Anti-dialectics" opposes analysing social reality as a social totality. Money, commodity production, private property, and so on and so forth, in this type of analysis become entirely separate categories with no logical interaction. Thus, they imagine we can have a society based on common property and directly associated labour and still have money, because money is seen in isolation and therefore not recognised in relation to, or as expression of, or embedded in particular social relations (namely capitalist ones). This highlights the need for a dialectical understanding of reality, otherwise we end up with a distorted, schizophrenic understanding of reality.

It is absolutely not "entirely unclear", it is very clear if we allow ourselves to use appropriate analytical methods, that communism necessarily is moneyless.

[Thirsty Crow]

Unsurprisingly, this suggestion was made by someone whom subscribes to "anti-dialectics".

Than I suppose that it is positively bewildering that another person of the anti-dialectics bent is not on board with that kind of view?

A real shocker that one.

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't follow. If the suggestion is that some people subscribing to "anti-dialectic" views may still hold to the idea that communism is moneyless (such as most anarcho-communists), then yes, that is perfectly possible. But this conclusion, to them, is accidental. For instance, to give a more obvious example, in the case of anarcho-communists, communism is moneyless because it is their preference that it is, the ideal society that they imagine would be moneyless, rather than it following from the structural or social configuration of society.

[Chomskyan]

I was just giving an example. It wasn't something I was really saying. I am trying to learn more about communism.



I actually never thought thought in your example but I don't see it problem. We live in a world with people who are different from each other. We all want to do different things. I don't believe that in a certain period of time a certain job area will be oversupplied and another one will be empty. If it's empty it's because it doesn't produce anything new/useful to a society.

Well, under communism people will be allowed to enter into new job markets as easily as they want to, and the amount of skills and occupations they become adept in will be encouraged.

Karl Marx (The German Ideology): In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

A pretty common and well known quote of Marx´s. If a job becomes obsolete, the person´s niche would not be threatened because under communism he would attain to more skills than just ´x´ job or ´y´ occupation.

[odysseus]

Hi everybody!
I'm new at this forum and I would like to ask some questions to you guys.

1-What do communists say about the refugees crisis. Do they support them or not?
2-Is it true that in communist country, you can't have a different political opinion/view?
3-Is it true that in a communist country, everybody earns the same? If it's true, how can a person be motivated to study or work?

That's all

Regards

1) We have to help them in every way we can.

2) In my opinion, a communist country has abolished/moved beyond employment. There are no more employers nor employees, no more employment contracts. Instead, people democratically decide what to do with the surpluses they create with others. Now, no one truly knows what a communist country looks like. We can say it won't look like what Leninists think, because the government employing people instead of a private capitalists employing people is still an employer-employee relationship. The newer view coming up is that it will go in the direction of worker cooperatives, where there are neither employees or employers.

Now, you are probably thinking of countries led by communist parties. They have been pretty awful, and anyone who says they want that kind of repression should be ashamed.

3) No. Wages are not equal. Instead, workers would have an equal say in how much of the surplus, since they all helped to produce it, is distributed to each other for their incomes. I avoid saying wages, cause it's not a wage deal. In my mind, the closest comparison is that it's like how CEO's in capitalist businesses don't get paid hourly wages or salaries, they give themselves bonuses.

Although, if you wanted, you could look up the great psychological and relationship benefits we get between people through having equal wages. Though the problem is not how equal or unequal people get paid, how little or much people get paid, or how well employees get treated. The problem is that they are paid by an employer in the first place.

[Thirsty Crow]

I don't follow. If the suggestion is that some people subscribing to "anti-dialectic" views may still hold to the idea that communism is moneyless (such as most anarcho-communists), then yes, that is perfectly possible. But this conclusion, to them, is accidental. For instance, to give a more obvious example, in the case of anarcho-communists, communism is moneyless because it is their preference that it is, the ideal society that they imagine would be moneyless, rather than it following from the structural or social configuration of society.

It's accidental? Would that be the same accidental as in the way I was going about my business and tripped over something and busted my ass?

Nope, the point about "anti-dialectics" folks being somehow committed to erroneous views on money and indeed on social relations in general implied in your post:

Unsurprisingly, this suggestion was made by someone whom subscribes to "anti-dialectics". "Anti-dialectics" opposes analysing social reality as a social totality. Money, commodity production, private property, and so on and so forth, in this type of analysis become entirely separate categories with no logical interaction.

...is bogus. Because we're not.

[Tim Cornelis]

That is not at all implied. If I say that it's unsurprising that if some 'communist' expresses homophobic views that it is unsurprising to find out that they are a Stalinist, it doesn't follow that I believe all Stalinists support this. Rather, they may have a predisposition towards this kind of beliefs because of a flaw in their ideology.

(If all people believing in X would subscribe to Y it would be weird to say it's "unsurprising" that X would express Y).

[xXRickyXx]

There is a common misconception that there is such a thing as a communist country.

In that case what would a communist party, of a certain country do if they won the elections there?

[oneday]

2) In my opinion, a communist country has abolished/moved beyond employment. There are no more employers nor employees, no more employment contracts. Instead, people democratically decide what to do with the surpluses they create with others. Now, no one truly knows what a communist country looks like. We can say it won't look like what Leninists think, because the government employing people instead of a private capitalists employing people is still an employer-employee relationship. The newer view coming up is that it will go in the direction of worker cooperatives, where there are neither employees or employers.

In what ways does a worker cooperative supercede employment? Is it not based on signing employment contracts with the worker cooperative? What is the status of one who does not belong to a worker cooperative? How are worker cooperatives at all democratically deciding what to do with the surplus as political decisions? It will be decided by the market and capital will still rule.

[Alet]

2-Is it true that in communist country, you can't have a different political opinion/view?

What constitutes a political "opinion/view"? Is it something that is deeply ingrained in an individual as such? Is, therefore, "pluralism" the "natural" principle of human society? Pluralism is an illusion because the diversity of "opinions", which we can presently observe in the bourgeois-democratic sphere, eventually reproduces the current state of things. It is your practical relation to the social totality that defines the framework of your political position and its practical implications, not some arbitrary, meaningless "opinion". My point is that a communist society does not even provide the conditions for a different political position. That is because after all, politics is reserved for class societies as controversial discourses reflect the struggle between classes.

When becoming a communist, one enters a domain that is irreducible to one's individuality. A communist is socially conscious, that is, they understand their personalities as constituted by society, they become a part of a power or movement that is indeed formed by individual subjects but represents mankind as a whole, etc. Just conceive a communist society as a collective subject. That's right, we should not mince matters: Communism is collectivist. Of course, we mustn't confuse communism with, say, North Korea. It's not like communism is a kind of "totalitarian" state that attempts to bring its people into line by oppressing political enemies but "by nature" fails to accomplish this task. Although revolutionary violence is necessarily ruthless, the point is that communism eradicates already the conditions for opposing political positions (that are actually meaningful, at least). It is the negation of political controversy, if you will.

how can a person be motivated to study or work?

The bourgeois egocentric, or "Homo oeconomicus", is not inherent in humans. "Laziness" or the insistence on motivation (that is, economic reward) is not predetermined before the social domain, by genes for example. What constitutes our desires and how we want something is again the social totality. That is to say, why wouldn't people be motivated to study or work? Even if it is literally shit, even if people will, for whatever reason, hate a task, that can't be done by robots and requires a lot of discipline, like poison - why not? Commitment and devotion are observable even today. You don't have to enjoy a task to accomplish it without expecting a reward. Think of family members who do the housework. Think of people who care for relatives that suffer from, say, dementia.

By the way, I see a lot of people talking about "jobs" in this context. I don't know if that's just semantics and they are actually aware of it, but nevertheless, it should be made clear: Remember that in communism division of labor is abolished. There are no professions, I guess people will most likely be polymaths. Marx and Engels also argued that specializing in one sphere of activity is ultimately responsible for the contempt for labor.