“I have an idea.”
Ok, that’s good, that’s a definite something. How are you going to execute that idea?
Communist: “Fuck you!”
Capitalist: “Like this and like this and like that, thoough, you know, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy!”
Socialist: “What is an idea?”
The truth is, the communist cannot answer because, no matter how sweet the idea sounds, it is inherently divorced from reality.
Like I can imagine now, prometheous75 thinking how obviously the capitalist is superfluous, how it’s the simplest of thought experiments to imagine workers working together to get shit running as complex and fruitful as a nuclear reactor. But they don’t exist in real life. Actual workers don’t want noneothat. It’s cruel even to try to demand it of him. A worker just wants a nice life with his wife and whatnot. Capitalism can do this, though it takes some building. It is not a perfection, a platonic idea like communism, that comes down from heaven and is implemented. It is built.
The thought experiment is just that, a thought experiment. The soviet is not in fact possible, not feasable, no matter how possible it is. That is the absolute only reason why it hasn’t, why Russian soviets and Lybian workers’ whatevers and Venezuelan colectivos only ever really were ways for the would-be rulers to build deeply vertical command structures to demolish capitalism. That’s all they can ever be. What’s more, that’s all the members of the soviets ever want it or need it to be. That’s life man. That’s facts. That’s truth. And yes, there will always be a percentage, maybe it is Jakob’s 20 or so percent, that will actually be a creative train and be frustrated by the state of soviets. Those people would undoubtedly be better served by accepting his brothers as the tranquil working men they want to be and take it upon themselves to build something beautiful that is built only on themselves, not some idealized collective.
The people will love you for it, and you will discover that they are right to love you for it, and you will love them back. Cause people are cool. It’s just, you know, not everybody is a Dr Dre.