I think what Observer is saying is that “the absence of social classes, money and the state” leads to poverty, lack of freedom and death. And depending on how he interprets “the absence of social classes, money and the state”, that might be true. But what’s the proper way to interpret that statement? Should we take it literally and assume that “the absence of social classes” means “equality”, “the absence of state” “lawlessness” and “the absence of money” “lack of economy”? It would be useful if he went a little bit deeper into his argument.
I did offer you the opportunity to refer to a quote about Socialism in addition to your one about Communism:
From the above quote you seemed to be satisfied with my attempts to relate your definitions back to the the single Wikipedia quote that you provided about Communism, but I did want to be more fair - and it turns out that you’ve later provided another about Socialism too, giving me the opportunity to do so - so thank you for that.
As I stated at the start of the thread, I’m going to take a different tack and fully examine your definitional formulations first. Once we’re each satisfied with a fair representation of how you’re building your definitions then maybe we can think about getting to my descriptions of the difference - I have actually covered this in other threads though so you ought to already know the answer to your question already, but this has not gotten us anywhere so far. Hence my new tack.
To the quote in question, that you provided about Socialism:
To again focus on what you have emboldened, I can amend my model of your reasoning as follows:
- Socialism: social class/incentive systems → justified hierarchy and oppression as judged by those at the top of that hierarchy for and
- Communism: no social class/money/state → equally poor, no authority, uniformity of love, no God, no reality and no truth.
How is this looking now?
I’ve left the latter basically the same as what you’ve already said is close enough - but feel free to change your mind or object to any small alterations in wording that I’ve made along the way so far.
At this point it might be an idea to think about how you’d explain/further back up in more detail the transition from “no social class/money/state” to “equally poor, no authority, uniformity of love, no God, no reality and no truth.” Do you simply regard the progression from the above arrangement of social/economic/political conditions to the above attitudes towards emotion/theology/ontology as self-evident, or is there more to it than that?
The former I’ve amended in light of your Socialism quote. Personally it seems a little lacking, but let me know if there’s either more to it that you want to add, or if you regard it as sufficiently self-evident and complete as it is.
So your new tact is to just repeat what I said and then ask me if that is what I said?
Isn’t a tactic supposed to have a goal to achieve?
Yes.
How else will I know that you know that I am on the same page as you?
If I know that you know that I am on the same page, we can walk somewhere in the same direction without scrapping. Scrapping is all we’ve achieved in the past - don’t you want to finally get somewhere?
Yes.
I want to “steelman” your arguments so that we can successfully emerge in agreement with regard to the degree of validity of your opening post.
You ask the question “Isn’t that the reality of these ideals?”
a) that was just rhetorical.
b) you asked the question in good faith and genuinely want to explore it.
Take your pick.
I think that the first time would have been enough. What you are doing is more like walking behind me asking over and over, “Is this the direction you are walking? Am I still walking behind you? Is this the path you are on?”
Let me suggest that you take a picture of the Opening Post. When you wonder if that it what I said, read it. Maybe that will last longer?
_
I see that I’m not the only one, that has found the position that
Silhouette has chosen to argue/debate from, a strange one.
I get that he is ensuring the precision in his understanding of obsrvr’s
position, but I think that he should take obsrvr’s suggestion up, and
take a picture of it. 
…unless he was going for musings, rather than debating?
If I go with the main definitions…
…then there have only been very small scale communisms, things like communes. In these small groups perhaps up to a hundred or two people, the bonds can be tight enough, it seems, to actually live up to the ideas and not have financial power hierarchies arise. At the nation state level, there have always been elites who have had financial power way beyond others. There have also been oppressed minority groups, private property, either straight off legally or de facto.
Even countries that are called socialist, like the Scandanavian countries do not live up to the main definition of socialism. Though there is some swing room in that term ‘regulated’. Even in a country like Sweden with very high taxes, extremely strong unions (compared to the US say) a very large social support system and many subsized services, there are large private corporations that are not regulated by the community as a whole. And this is true even going back more than 20-30 years. Since then privitization and other Thatcher/Neocon/Reagan-ish polices have been moving these countries more towards more capitalism models. IOW even in the past these were mixed economies.
Yes. That is the ideal. And both logic and the real world present problems disallowing that ideal from becoming real -
Equal Authority
Even in the case of an ideal communistic society, equal authority means no authority. If anyone decides that one plan is better than someone else’s plan there is opposition - which plan is accepted and accomplished? No person or group is allowed to demand one plan over another’s objection. Objection can not occur else a problem arises.
In the case of opposing, albeit well intending plans arise, some form of authority must be used to choose one over the other yet there is no authority.
It has been suggested that the well meaning people could simply all discuss it and come to agreement. But there is still a problem with that. In a small group perhaps everyone will have an equal education and perspective so they could all agree. But a large group is going to have people who think a little differently and so have different perspectives and different belief as to which is a better plan.
No God, No Reality, and no Truth
So already the commune must be kept small and uniform of mind. How could they be kept uniform of mind? Brainwashing from birth would be required. But there is no authority to keep them that way. There is no god to demand this or that. No king or chief. And even if there was, there could be no policing to ensure compliance so any proposed god, king, or ultimate reality would have to be deeply worshiped and thus be a socialist group, not communist.
.
For an ideal commune to exist for very long at all or to grow very large would absolutely have to have an impervious wall preventing intrusion and infection of tempting ideas and diseases - Isolated - East Berlin as an attempted real world example. Without a wall it would be like a human body void of skin. The real world result is complete infectious corruption of the body and death (the hope of the American Marxist party (“Democrats”) for the USA - no borders, no police - no protection from the outside. No immunity on the inside.).
Love each other - to death
Being totally isolated without outside interference posses another problem of being stuck only with what was already there - nothing new, only more of it. Nature seems to display that genetic atrophy and eventual deterioration occurs - incest and aging - into extinction due to being isolated.
Even a commune of enlightened Buddhist monks have authority figures permitted to sometimes harshly train the young and eject the non compliant, gaining their new membership from outside their ranks.
So even the ideal communist society can only be very small and temporary.
Large Ideal Communist Society - not possible = Fantasy.
Yes. Again that is the ideal. And again both logic and the real world present problems disallowing that ideal from becoming real -
With a hierarchy things can get more stable and resistant to intrusion and infection. There is authority. So I would expect an ideal socialist society to last at least a little longer.
Only the rights we grant to them as we see fit
With socialism, the hierarchy has no limiting or constraining authority above itself. If there is a proposed God, that God is only whatever the rulers declare - the “God” is a servant image of the socialist rulers. There can be no permanent dogma and certainly no constitution limiting their authority. The ruling class is the absolute power authority.
In effect, the ruling authorities (even if also workers themselves) become the isolated commune feeding off of the labor of the others, the non-authority laborers. The ruling authorities must keep themselves free from aberrant intrusion and corrosive infection from outside of their group. There can be no authority within the authority to police. And that is why “Absolute power leads to absolute corruption” (the USA’s deep state).
If an ideal isolated commune cannot exist for very long, an isolated and protected ruling class can’t either.
Their God and Speak Their Reality into Truth
In an attempt to survive the ruling authority must constrain its environment - allow no exception to its ideals and authority - an Oligarchy = “There can be no god above us” (sounds Biblical).
The lower class isn’t expected to be highly educated or know the truth. They are to simply obey authority - bees serving the nested Queen. The lower worker bees are destined to always misunderstand what is really going on - always in the dark. Without going to the trouble of giving enlightenment to every laborer, there is no choice but to use either force or deception to accomplish compliance.
For deception to work as a compliance tool, truth must be actively hidden. Objections must be silenced (Twitter and Google/Facebook). And that means whatever reality the labors are given to see and hear (their perception of reality) is to be declared as “Truth” (not those nasty conspiracy theories). Their perception must be controlled so as to allow for it to be the apparent truth. Anyone who objects to what is given as real and true are to be announced and defamed as liars.
So far the only logical objection is that the authority must eventually become corrupt from within and perish as would the commune. But there is still an outstanding issue. And it is the most alluring and attractive.
What about -
Each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.
The commune clearly has no means to sustain that edict for long due to having no authority. But even with the ideal authority of ideal socialism there is a very serious and frequently observed practical problem.
How do the authorities even know what those needs really are? That thought suddenly triggered my James obsession with his SAM co-op (again).
In the real world efforts the needs of the people are simply guessed at with an occasional averaging investigation and statistic. To know the real needs, there must be very extensive communication to and from every individual person. That means that an ideal socialist society would have to have either a massive brain or a very small body. Every cell (or person) would have to have a direct access to an authority capable of addressing its issues (multiple types of nerves attached). But if there is a massive brain, there must also be a massive body to support it (an elephant - a Republic but without a constitution or autocracy).
That seems to be a restriction of size even in the ideal case. The number of people being cared for by the well meaning authority cannot be many more than the authority itself because there is just too much to actually know about each person in order to truly “give to those as to their need”.
So once again it seems that
Large Ideal Socialist Society - not possible = Fantasy.
Both of these idealistic societies have to be small to logically and certainly practically exist.
It seems that in order to achieve that most attractive feature of
“Each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs”
Any society is going to HAVE TO BE made of smaller, much smaller groups.
That is what impressed the hell out of me about James’ Constitution of Rational Harmony.
It may be escaping you that in your opening post, you provided only your definitions.
Since your opening post, I have attempted to draw out from you the origins of those definitions, and after a few posts we now have a couple of Wikipedia quotes on which to justify your opening post.
These quotes and the proposed progression of their essence to a distilled version of your definitions weren’t in the opening post - they were developed along the way with the greatest care to not misrepresent precisely how you arrived at your opening post.
Is the rigorous process of steelmanning so very alien? I actually didn’t intend for it to be as tortuous as it has been so far, but it’s been really difficult just to get you to answer my opening question about where your opening post definitions actually came from. At one point you even questioned what meant when I literally copied your own words… - I’m doing my best to work with you and be patient in spite of how difficult it’s been to produce anything remotely constructive from our previous encounters, and yet I’m still met by petulance.
Spoilers - I’m trying to map out a path from where you got your definitions from, to get to your definitions, so that we can go over the reasoning and assess its validity in such a way that we’d both agree on both the path and the assessment of it.
If that’s too laborious an ordeal for you then I think that in itself probably speaks for the degree of effort you’re willing to put into formulating the kinds of definitions we see in your Opening Post.
And my question was whether you disagree with them. What’s the issue?
Irrelevant. Again, the only question has been whether you disagree.
Again, totally irrelevant.
My prior post should answer to that in serious detail.
In compliance to my only original question, do you object to the details expressed in my last prior post…
A breakdown of the reasoning in your “serious detail”:
KT’s quoted Communism definition: community owned property/contribution and receipt according to ability and needs.
Essence of your Communism definition: no social class/money/state → equally poor, no authority, uniformity of love, no God, no reality and no truth.
Your development of your definition:
equal authority → no authority → no casting vote → no objection → small population/uniform of mind → brainwashing → walls/isolation → incest → genetic deterioration - collapse/death.
equal authority → no authority → no god/king/chief/police/ultimate reality → no possible brainwashing.
Also in your development:
Buddhist communes have authority.
KT’s quoted Socialism definition: community owned/regulated means of production/distribution/exchange.
Essence of your Socialism definition: social class/incentive systems → justified hierarchy and oppression as judged by those at the top of that hierarchy.
Your development:
Authority → no dogma/constitution to constrain top authority → God in their image/absolute authority → isolated from and parasitic on non-authority (and as above) → incest → genetic deterioration → collapse/death.
Authority → no dogma/constitution to constrain top authority → God in their image/absolute authority → absolutist obedience and compliance from uneducated non-authority.
Authority providing for the non-authority → extensive communication → less non-authority than authority → small scale.
Not sure whether to ask you if this is a fair formulation of what you said since making sure that I’m understanding what you mean has been making you uncomfortable.
Once again, I remind you that I’m breaking the reasoning down in this way so we can look more closely at each stage of your reasoning that go you to your OP definitions and to isolate where the whole reasoning is fundamentally grounded. Although for some reason this is making you uncomfortable too:
And you’re instead trying to divert attention to your later question about what I think when I began by making clear I want to hear from you first, get that fully down and extensively analysed before I can know for sure exactly what it is that I’m offering my opinion on:
Right, so with that out the way, let’s analyse:
- Equal authority under Communism? That’s your foundation upon which you’re developing your reasoning towards your definition.
From where are you getting this rule in your definition that Communism must absolutely equalise authority in order to be Communism? NB: citing your definition as reason for your definition is tautologically invalid. Trying to get to the source here when you’ve made it very clear in your opening post that you’re “talking ONLY about the idealized versions of each, not the on-ground, in-action, real versions”.
Without this fundamental requirement of what constitutes Communism, the rest of the reasoning through brainwashing and isolation to collapse and death is not supported.
Neither does this lead to contradictions with the impossibility to enforce brainwashing without authority.
You even provide a real world example of communes employing authority with your Buddhist monk example…
- Authority, as under Socialism, necessarily leads to unchecked absolute authority and corruption that’s unable to communicate sufficiently unless on a small scale?
But you just argued that no authority, as your premise for Communism, also necessarily leads to collapse and death.
So either:
a) authority at the foundation leads to collapse and death as you’re defining Socialism, and no authority at the foundation leads to collapse and death as you’re defining Communism, and a sustainable model is impossible
or,
b) sustainable models are possible, and there’s something wrong with your reasoning about how to define Socialism and/or Communism.
Once we’ve got to the bottom of all of this, only then can I get to “Again, the only question has been whether you disagree.” I need to know what I’m disagreeing with.
Stateless = no authority and no means to enforce any even if they had it (no police).
If everyone owned a small amount of stuff,
they would be a lot like a community ownership situation.
In community ownership, a group of persons runs a larger show,
but a small business only needs 1 manager.
One issue that often does not get talked about in these contexts is the commons.
This may seem like needlessly complicating an already potentially toxic discussion, but I bring it up because often Communism and Social get couched as alien ideas entering traditional environments, whereas there are strong traditions (in both the West and East, for example) for having a commons. The Neo Cons see the commons as problematic and more or less communist. Common hunting grounds, common forest for fire wood, the public frequencies, water and other resources, have been handled as something run for everyone and more or less owned by everyone. Every Capitalism (and Feudalism for that matter) has had a commons.
It seems to me the commons can be used as a litmus test for the proposed values of the various proponents in a debate over how economies should be run.
If the value is tradition, well the commons were part of traditional society, so the issue becomes what is held in common.
If the value is that if a monied elite can get control of anything at all, then it has the right to force others to pay for it, period, then one is not conservative, at least in whatever areas one allows the commons to be privitized.
In parallel to this is conservatism often focuses on changes to culture/society brought in by the left/liberals through policy and does not concern itself, for some reason with changes, even radical ones, brought in via products and technology/media.
I think this can also be a litmus test. Ideas around transpersons are carefully analyzed for their effects on children, people in general, human relations, while the effects of digital social media on children, people in general and human relations are ignored.
And if you think this means that I am in favor of soviet style government, well, nope.
commons sound like a good idea to me.
Me too. Then it’s a matter of determining what is held in common and what is not, and then also there are generally gradations. We can’t build nuclear weapons on our private property or have sirens going off at 120 decibels all the time. We also can’t dig down and destroy the groundwater on our property because it will hurt others. So the concept of private (as in private property) has degrees. The community often considers knowledge to varying degrees to be a kind of commons. And roads, police, the fire department, parks, libraries, water, air…
Ever noticed how the commons inevitably deteriorate into collapse and death, in line with obsrvr’s reasoning?
Yeah me neither.
So police are impossible unless operated as part of a State?
Historically untrue, as is obvious from private security firms, mafia and all kinds of enforcement/protection/detection etc. organisations.
There’s tons of real world examples of stateless authority, good and bad, and potentially all kinds of examples of stateless authority that haven’t yet been tried or sufficiently explored…
And none of them require an “owner” of the whole operation.
Capitalism doesn’t have an issue with commonwealths. It is when the commonwealth includes the economy and all means of production and state (or corporate) controlled speech (anti-democracy).
So are you ascribing tribalism and Mafia to socialism or to communism? And who is paying these people for putting their lives at risk to protect someone else’s property and rights?
Isn’t owning something the ability to control who uses it and how it is used? Socialism says that only the state can own property in such a way. Police ensure the state’s ownership. And in communism, everything is owned by everyone. Where do police come into the picture?
Right, so:
“equal authority → no authority → no casting vote → no objection → small population/uniform of mind → brainwashing → walls/isolation → incest → genetic deterioration - collapse/death”
isn’t a sufficient line of reasoning.
Commonwealth is its own moneyless non-Capitalist economy. The word “economy” doesn’t require money and profit as demonstrated by the commonwealth.
In order to explain why “equal authority → no authority etc.” doesn’t always lead to destruction, you need to improve your reasoning to distinguish what kinds of “economy” need money and profit to function and why.
I’m demonstrating to you that “no state” doesn’t necessarily → “equal authority → no authority etc.”
Therefore your line of reasoning as so far presented is demonstrably flawed.
From where are you getting the definition that under Socialism, only the State can control who uses property and how it is used?
Your definition said there is authority under Socialism, and already it’s debatable whether authority necessitates a State.
So not only do you need to justify authority MUST be a State, you also need to justify that only such a state can own property in the above way.
You also need to justify why it has to be police who ensure this State’s ownership.
Also… why doesn’t the commonwealth need police?
That wasn’t my line of reasoning but I’m sure no line of reasoning would be sufficient to you and those who prefer to ignore it so as to promote their own narrative.
So?
I thought that is what You need to prove.
I don’t have objection to the word “economy” not always referring to money. The fact that it doesn’t makes your stance even worse. Ideal socialism is government control over any kind of wealth or influence - Oligarchic.
What you are talking about is a state of tribalism and mafioso. How is that related to socialism or communism?
[b]You have said that yourself - “Socialism = state controls the economy and means of production”.
Do you have a different definition?[/b]
A “State” IS authority. They are the same thing.
Again, I don’t have to justify anything. I have merely asked for your disagreements to the provided explanations. Your “new tact” of avoiding any contribution doesn’t necessitate me trying to justify myself.
Have you never been to England or perhaps to Pennsylvania in the US? Australia maybe?
The police ensure the commonwealth from looters, thieves, anarchists, criminals of every sort - especially in commonwealths.