General

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Anenome — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:34:11 GMT

"The problem is that communism requires people to act contrary to their rational self-interest, which people are unlikely to do in general, and especially unlikely to do for the benefit of strangers; and it's in the nature of large social units for almost everyone to be a stranger to almost everyone else."

Rand's attack on statism was aimed directly at the moral idea that self-interest was somehow low, and that acting contrary to your own self-interest somehow a higher moral ideal. In practice it just leads to pure duplicity, talking out one side of your mouth and still acting selfishly on the sly, for politicians especially.

People still think politicians are doing what's in everyone's best interest. Eventually we need to delegitimize the state by disabusing the public of such a notion. Nixon helped with that. Clinton a bit. Obama's idiotic trillion dollar budgets will force the next crisis...

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Minarchist — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 18:23:54 GMT

Communalism is perfectly viable and possible as an economic system.

Yes, but only on very small scales.

It works to a certain degree. Most people around the world going back into tribal days live in some variant of communalism, be that tribal or whatnot.

Again, small scale.

However, the modern world has been created by capitalism and been built up beyond what communism could support. Thus, a return to communism would mean drastic reductions in population size and wealth.

Yes. But it's not only that communism could never achieve anything remotely close to the level of production we enjoy, it's also an organizational problem; i.e. when the social unit grows beyond a certain point, either communism collapses or a State is needed to enforce it and at that point it becomes socialism. Can 10 people who know and like each other live communally? Sure. Can 100? Perhaps. Can 10,000? Almost certainly not. The problem is that communism requires people to act contrary to their rational self-interest, which people are unlikely to do in general, and especially unlikely to do for the benefit of strangers; and it's in the nature of large social units for almost everyone to be a stranger to almost everyone else.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Anenome — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 02:07:13 GMT

Whoa, let's be clear and accurate here.

Communalism is perfectly viable and possible as an economic system. It works to a certain degree. Most people around the world going back into tribal days live in some variant of communalism, be that tribal or whatnot.

However, the modern world has been created by capitalism and been built up beyond what communism could support. Thus, a return to communism would mean drastic reductions in population size and wealth.

The evil thing is that there are people who want exactly that.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Minarchist — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:25:56 GMT

Thats what i was saying. I dont think there was ever any communist society on a large enough scale to be considered for thought.

I agree. And the reason for this (I submit) is that communism (stateless communal ownership of property) is an impossibility on any scale.

I think a lot of people confuse common ownership vs state ownership.

Agreed, but it's a forgivable confusion, considering that the most well-known of the communists are advocating socialism as an intermediate step between capitalism and communism - and since communism is impossible, all we ever get from communist agitation is socialism. Likewise, if I were going around advocating Heaven on Earth, but I claimed that killing everyone and destroying everything was a necessary precondition for bringing about Heaven on Earth, I think we'd have to forgive people for forgetting about the Heaven on Earth part and associating me only with the ideas of killing everyone and destroying everything: being that the death and destruction stage is all they ever see, as the Heaven on Earth stage never arrives (because it can't).

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Kelvin Silva — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 02:05:24 GMT

Thats what i was saying. I dont think there was ever any communist society on a large enough scale to be considered for thought.

I think a lot of people confuse common ownership vs state ownership.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

DMI1 — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 01:57:39 GMT

Really? Mexico? 1910-1930 was a period of political instability where no particular warlord could establish any national authority of consecuence. And there were bandits trying their damnedest to get the country to full-communalism (though they were not marxist ideologues), unfortunately these guys are still held up as heroes today by the intelligentsia in Mexico.

But communist? Communist? I'm from down here, I've never once in my life heard the revolutionary period described as anarcho communist. I don't have one iota of respect for it, but the description seems to be ... unfitting.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Minarchist — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:25:40 GMT

Ive always thought that state controlled economies would be command or socialist.

And then "communism" is anarcho communism.

was that "socialism" or "comunism" then?

By these definitions, there was socialism in Russia, not communism. And all of the previous historical instances I mentioned were instances of socialism.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Anenome — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:21:45 GMT

Kelvin Silva:

Well was that "socialism" or "comunism" then?

We must define our terms here.

Whats the difference?

Ive always thought that state controlled economies would be command or socialist.

And then "communism" is anarcho communism.

It's taken me a long time to ferret out a good definition between communism and socialism.

While I don't intend to list a completely exact one here, I will say that communism is that system which implements a communalist ethic. There's not necessarily a denotation or connotation of government power in straight communism / communalism. However, with socialism there is:

Socialism is the attempt to use the powers of government to force communalism on a country.

So, socialism would be a subset of communism. There have been many "communes" where people get together voluntarily and hold all things in common. None of these would be called socialism because they lack the aspect of government. People are allowed to leave, and may even be ejected for being too individualist (lol).

In Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard paints the true place of socialism in history, in a chapter called "Right, Left, and the Prospects for Liberty" (title is iirc).

In this chapter, he points out that socialism is a strange attempt to achieve the goals of the historical-liberals using the coercive powers of the conservative-coercive regime.

That is, if we paint the term cosmic-conservative as one stretching back through all time and ignoring its current (mostly wrong) usage in modern day America, then a conservative is one who is in favor of privilege, the status quo (which is the main denotation of the word), and coercive exploitation generally.

A liberal is one who was trying to get away from that and move to liberty and individualism.

Marx created socialism by taking the idealism of the liberals and their goal of revolution--of freeing people from the coercive exploiters, and mating it to the mechanism of that exploitation: government coercive power. But Marx went wrong further by accepting Godwin's blaming of private ownership of property for the ills of the world.

In that sense, socialism is a weird middle-of-the road phenomenon, taking elements from the historical liberals and conservatives.

At that time there was a liberal movement, 1800's, but it had been poisoned philosophically, mainly by the idea of darwinism and utilitarianism. Rothbard notes that Herbert Spencer, the great libertarian writer and thinker of that age, embodied in himself that move, coming towards the end of his life to stop believing in radical, immediate change--making the liberals (libertarians) of that day essentially acquiesce to the status quo, believing change would take many ages (darwinistic) rather than being achieved in fits and leaps. And, as they achieved power, these same liberals shifted from pursuing their idealism to focusing on gradualism towards the ideal, then to defending what little change they'd achieved, thus defending the status quo.

Anyway, I recommend the book, and I'll stop here :P

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Kelvin Silva — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 21:30:31 GMT

Well was that "socialism" or "comunism" then?

We must define our terms here.

Whats the difference?

Ive always thought that state controlled economies would be command or socialist.

And then "communism" is anarcho communism.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Minarchist — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:56:36 GMT

The OP asked "was Russia the first place to create communism?" This implies that Russia at least had communism; i.e. the OP is defining the social order in Soviet Russia as communist, and asking whether there are any prior historical instances of this king of social order arising. That's the question I was attempting to answer. Whether this social order in question is more properly called communist or socialist or something else is a separate issue.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Andrew Cain — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:11:41 GMT

One: You are using the definition of Communism established by Marx

Two: Even if you use that definition there are two forms of communism: Crude and Final.

The USSR was still in the crude communism phase.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Vanitas Nomen — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 12:23:02 GMT

Man this is confusing, eh? I was, at least prior to this thread, aware that stateless communism is 'pure communism'? Prior to that stage of stateless communism there is a sort of state-communism, otherwise why make a distinction such as 'pure communism'? Confused again.

"Anarchists and Marxists both agree on the long-term desirability of a stateless society, but disagree on how such a society will emerge and on what strategy, if any, is to be used for achieving stateless communism."

^^^That quote is from the Stateless Communism Wiki, I chuckle at the irony if a Marxist is debating how such a society will emerge given Marx's description of how communism will come about regardless of what men do. I guess, if one were to be loyal to Marx, a Marxian would claim there is no strategy necessary, whilst the Anarchist would claim there is(a strategy).

Big ::Jordan Shrug::

To be crass: Molyneux almost downright says Russian went Commie because there were a lot of Jews turned Communists.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Kelvin Silva — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 09:00:54 GMT

Where?

Not ussr, not mexico. As long as there is government its not communism. Its state ownership.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Andrew Cain — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 07:38:43 GMT

It has.

Re: Was Russia the first place to create Communism?

Kelvin Silva — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 07:33:02 GMT

I dont think communism has ever existed.