Can Communism Ever Work?

I was a Communist in my youth-fully payed up member of the British Communist Party-what cured me of that was life experience! My opinion is that human nature is way too under developed cope with the self disipline and resposibility required to create & maintain,humanely, a genuine Communist society.

We human beings are a 'work in progress'. Im not saying we should not attempt to progress things, Im now a Socialist & believe we must ,we have to match our aims with our ablities .Look at the terrible mistakes Idealists have inflicted upon their people for their 'greater good';Soviet Russia, China ,ect ect. That was all begun with the best intensions & it remains as a warning . Working for a better world we must ,forcing my 'Utopia' upon you ? Naw!

 

Not to single you out rjhangover----if you do support the idea of communism, but can you or anyone else who does support the idea answer this----

As I pointed out in my post a few pages back, the one mistake that Marx made was the assumption that the market and its alienating effect on the consumer from the producer was a feature of capitalism, when in fact it is really a feature of Industrialism. In an industrialized society whether capitalist, fascist, socialist, or whatever label it goes by, the market places a wedge between the consumer and the producer (who in most cases are one and the same person, because one is a consumer when you are out buying things, and a producer when you are working to make the money to buy things)---this enables the commodification where everything becomes nothing more than a commodity valued by the market----whether you are a human, an animal, or a product manufactured in a factory. Then intrinsic value becomes meaningless. For example, humans become nothing more than numbers for purposes of exploitation, or a salary expense.

But the Soviet Union (working towards communism), and even China (before integrating more capitalistic concepts), ended up to be worse than capitalism. Without private ownership of any of the means of production, the market was still in place, and individuals became so severely commodified as to become slaves to the State. At least under capitalism, there was a competition for labor and workers, and even if they were exploited, the worker did have the option of quitting and seeking better conditions through another employer.

Ironically, excluding the case of the Khmer Rouge, wherever there has been a communist revolution, it was actually a revolution of industrialization—attempting to take a largely agricultural based economy into the industrial age, and thereby ushering in the very dynamic of exploitation---the market----that Marx was trying to work around.

SO-----clearly, if the problem is the market----not greed, as you yourself admitted rjhangover, that there will always be greedy people and lazy people---how do we work around this problem of the market and this wedge it creates between the consumer and the producer?

Or maybe Summerhill, as a Socialist you can answer this?

Is technology creating the answer? Perhaps, Marx was wrong about taking over the means of production----today that is becoming a moot point----why take over a factory when technology is creating the means to rent manufacturing as easily as to rent an accounting staff----for hardly anything? Is technology creating a new kind of market where production can be so local and so small, that the only one to exploit is the individual’s exploitation of himself (which is not really exploitation)?

Something to think about anyway…

 

I wish, but probably not in my lifetime if so.

 

On a side note:

Here is my problem with Marxism from a Nietzschean perspective (ignoring, for a moment, his failure to recognize the market as an aspect of Industrialism, not Capitalism). While, as a youth, Karl Marx certainly had a humanistic side, his later theory was clearly a typical example of the rationalistic objectivism of his age. It was filled with as much scientific rationalistic crap as Freud, Hegel, Kant, and any other of the intelligentsia of that period, save for those rebels such as Jung, and Nietzsche, that rejected and rebelled against the pure rationalistic objectivism that defined this period.

Europe was at, or rapidly approaching its peak—the peak of the European Bourgeoisie Culture. But while the peak may represent the highest level of influence, the highest affluence, and the highest achievement of a culture, it is also the end of that culture’s reign over the rest of the world.

History has shown us that the peak and downfall of every Western culture, or empire, at least since Ancient Greece, is accompanied by a shift into blatant rationalistic objectivism. My own explanation of this is that near the end, there is a growing sense that growth, which at one time seemed unlimited and almost infinite, is now in fact understood to be very finite. So man very naturally clamps down and tries to rationalize the best way to get the most out of what he has---squeeze blood from stones if he can rationally figure out how, for example.

Nietzsche understood the forces of culture and the human experience to be an expression of two dynamics—the Dionysian, which is an explosive dynamic of natural, ecstatic, even drunken energy (think of the whole hippy movement as it exploded onto the 1960’s, for example), and the Apollonian, a dynamic of management, control, repression, in other words, the rational-objectivistic attempt to squeeze blood from the stones.

In my interpretation, the Dionysian forces are the strongest in the earlier stages of a culture’s, or empire’s, rise to prominence. Growth is more natural and spontaneous, and the ‘Will to Power’ is very effective. On the other hand, the Apollonian forces tend to take hold of a culture as it peaks and falls. The ‘Will to Power’ here becomes very exploitive and destructive. The war in Iraq is a good example of the expression of the Will to Power in the latter stages of the life of an Empire.

In this light, Marx then was a product of the rationalistic Apollonian forces that marked the end of the European Bourgeoisie Culture.

Nietzsche, like myself, favored the Dionysian dynamic. It promotes true growth because it is not repressive, oppressive, restraining, or manipulative. Marxist dialectic and ideology is clearly not Dionysian, but Apollonian. For example, Communism is achieved after repressively forcing people to give up such concepts as private ownership, manipulating them into a state of being where they might then see the light of communism. It is a science, and man is expected to act like an empirically derived mass of numbers in a Cartesian model of the world. Therefore, in my opinion, Marxism was doomed to failure, even if he had worked out the problem of the alienating market dynamic, because by embracing rationalistic objectivism he had lost the humane ideologies of his youth. In other words, he had lost those ideologies that were more natural and Dionysian in essence.

Real progress must be natural---and therefore Dionysian. A good example is the amazing impact we Baby Boomers had on America. I think that America had first reached its peak in the 1950’s. There was a very clear embracing of rationalistic objectivism that carried over from World War II, and the Great Depression* But then along came the hippies, a Dionysian force of creativity and ecstasy if there ever was one-----we breathed new life into a world hell-bent on trying to calculate the best mathematical scenario of nuclear war with our archenemy---the other super power. We brought the irrational and the impulses of nature back into a cultural context. Then after growing a bit, we returned to the establishment, i.e. joined the work force, but for many of us, only at our terms. This resulted in close to 3 decades of amazing growth for the US economy,

However, in the last decade, Apollonian forces have clearly taken over. The Patriot Act is a blaring and scary example. But even individual corporations are embracing micro-managerial policies and procedures. And then there is the fact that corporations are clearly buying their way into controlling the whole national political arena. And we sit idle as the Social Contract, that unwritten agreement between we as individuals, and the State is passed into the hands of multinational corporations, who could care less who we are and what we do, for we are after all, fully commoditized, and are only important to them as long as we provide labor and consume their products.

The American Empire is clearly in decline, but it is likely to be replaced, not by another continent or sovereign state, but by multinational corporations, and the implications for exploitation are actually pretty scary (especially after the dirty tricks and shenanigans that were so blatant in the last US Presidential election).

Most of our young people have been well-programmed by the Modern Consumer culture (i.e. the culture of the Multinational Corporation as it is outwardly expressed) to worry more about short term satisfaction and pleasure, rather than to worry about the direction we are heading in. Why worry about human rights in the real world, when PlayStation 3 has such amazing graphics that will put you in just about any virtual reality you want?

Who will be next to inject the forces of the Dionysian dynamic to carry us to a new peak? Even those who should at least try—those who see themselves as rebels—are being misguided onto side roads—by layers and layers of conspiracy theories designed to sell books and create more consumerism, while clouding the true issues at hand.

I fear though, if we don’t change direction, the rise of the multinational corporation, will be the downfall of capitalism and democracy—and that comes from someone who made a lifetime career on Wall Street.




*World War I was the peak and fall of the European Bourgeoisie Culture, and World War II was clearly a last ditch rational-objectivistic attempt to regain that supremacy, as if the misguided science of Eugenics, a newly rationalized expression of ancient Germanic traditions, an Apollonian reworking of Nietzsche, and an overall cult of Modernistic science could save the day.

 

Hi Mountain Valley Wolf, Id very much like to reply my friend,can you clarify the question for me please ?

 

Sorry---I had a few beers lastnight before I got on, so I probably rambled on a bit. Here is the question in a nutshell:

Marx identified the market as the alienating force that places a wedge between the consumer and the producer (even though they are usually the same person---who buys as a consumer and works as a producer). In this manner, the market commodifies all things, including humans and other living things---i.e. it subjugates all things to a market value, and the intrinsic values are lost. (A human being is no longer values as a loving living human being, but instead is valued as just another commodity in the market). However Marx made the mistake of thinking that this was only an aspect of capitalism. In reality, it is an aspect of the Industrial Age, which is why, instead of solving the problem by doing away with private ownership of the means of production, he made it worse.

In any industrialized economy, regardless of its structure, the alienating force of the market is still there.

So the question is, how do you work around the problem of the market? Or we could rewrite the question as, how do we remove the dynamic of commodification?

This to me is the heart of Marx's philosophy---how to return intrinsic value back to all human beings. It is commodification that replaces intrinsic value with market value.

 

Hi Mountain Valley Wolf , I hope in this reply I do justice to a very interesting question-please get back to me if it is otherwise.
It is many years since I last read The Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital, neither of which I have to hand today.
My understanding is that Marx's solution was Socialist revolution resulting in the Working classes taking control of the Means of Production and the redistribution of wealth as a first stage in the evolution toward the communist ideal . At some point between these two states (socialism and true communism) there would be set in motion a process of de-industrialisation of production aiming toward the return of an Artisan based economy in which individuals skills and products would have their deserved value and sociatal recognition. Governance by the State would wither as authority was passed down to the many localised Communes of workers who would manage theirown social , economic and welfare issues . My understanding is that this was Marx's solution to the issue of worker alienation (and supposedly that of the consumer. Hope this helps my friend.

 

Welllllll... You did answer the question---the way Marx would be proud of. But it completely ignored my point that Marx was wrong about his assumptions on the market as an alienating force in only Capitalist societies. In retrospect we can see that a socialist economy did not escape the alienating effects of the market, and in fact magnified it to greater levels of exploitation of the workers than did capitalism.

The same wedge separated consumer from producer, the same commodification meant workers would be objectively valued based on market values, and in turn State power would not whither, because it has replaced the owners of capital and is now faced with the problem of getting producers (labor) to produce more, at lower costs, and consumers to spend more----in other words, how to increase the activity of the market. (The consumer part however was not really a problem because they tended to always operate at levels of insufficient production, meaning, there was not enough consumer goods to go around.

If you look at Soviet-era academic literature, you will see what I mean. There was hardly anything about the intrinsic value of human beings and the quality of their lives. Almost all of it was about production levels, and manufacturing, and the production of agricultural goods.

We can't really blame Marx, because he had no alternative industrialized economy to study. There was capitalism, or the older feudal system. And the peasants, in his time were very self-sufficient, as were the laborers for the most part. If a wagon wheel broke down, they simply fixed it in their barn or garage.

So now that we know things won't work the way that Marx envisioned it---how do we get around this-----namely----the alienating effect of the market?

And the real answer---if you can give it-----involves moving beyond Marx.




----
Perhaps technology will answer the problem—the internet is certainly breaking markets down into very localized segments that theoretically have the world at their doorstep. On a limited basis, it is reuniting producer and consumer (e.g. Craig’s List, E-Bay, etc)

However the alienating forces of the market have also grown to immense power, and are no longer simply market place forces. Guy Debord defined this new powerful entity of alienating force as the Spectacle. The Spectacle is literally the spectacle of Modern life---the media, advertising, promotions, concerts, discos, even the virtual realities of PlayStation and Xbox. The Spectacle, as it hypnotizes us to fit into the Modern consumer world, alienates us from our very humanity, not to mention the real world.

For more on the Spectacle---because it certainly ties into this problem of the market---see Post # 2 in the thread I started in the Music part of this forum, titled, “What that song means to you”

 

I regret my not being able to assist you in your quest . All i can add is that in the &0s I was heavily involved in trying to tackle the Youth Unemployment problem in Norther England. Many of the old industries were closing,the national Economy was in a serious slump . The new technologies as they exist today had not been developed. However we strongly believed that Technology would increasingly replace human labor and that newer' more efficient working methods would narrow employment even further.
We set about creating jobs for young people in areas of work that could not be 'mechanised' : the Welfare and human Care services, Medical ,Horticulture and small workshop placements, manufacturing goods and providing services that were specialist,of high quality,requiring skill and time to deliver that were obviously not mass produced (one work placement was with a stringed musical instrument maker for example).
My point is that we found that the alienating forces ,as i understand you to mean ,were minimised as the gap between the producers of goods and the consumer were narrowed . The Young People reported greater satisfaction in their work as it required skill and as they were in daily contact with their customers they felt respected as a sought-after service. The Consumers were likewise satisfied enough to pay a higher price or fee for a quality human product or service. As I saw it it struck me as being very like Marx's 'Artisan' model,albeit artificially constructed.

I still hold the belief that 'work',the production of Goods and Services on a human scale can only continue ,in the way described above, as technology and mass production methods increase. Marx was right-in my experience.

 

Very good point----and yes, in their case, with their specialized skills, and the uniqueness of their jobs, in what I assume was a localized marketplace, they were not subjected to the forces of the mass market, and therefore there was less exploitation, and commodification.

So one solution may lie in---can this be applied to the overall economy?

I would grant you that Marx identified a key problem, and had a solution, but I believe that there were flaws and therefore his solutions are not wholly feasible----on the other hand, some of the dynamic he saw that would lead to a more humanistic society may not have been possible for the times----basically any time from the time he lived until up to the present. (That's my opinion anyway).

Today technology is rapidly changing our world---on the one hand it is manipulating, controlling, and taking away our humanity more effectively than anytime before. On the other hand, it is very empowering to the individual as well.

As I said in my other post on this page with the Nietzschean perspective of Marx (or if not there---elsewhere), taking over the tools of production has become a moot point. After all, you can rent factory time in today's world. Today, its clearly capital that is the key.

On the other hand, technology and increased automation should be freeing workers to more leisure and peresonal time. Instead, workers are working harder with larger work loads than 20 years ago----seriously, if we were using technology to our benefit, we would be working fewer hours, getting more pay, than anytime before----this is one of the key reasons behind the increasing income disparity between the top 1 or 2 percent of the population, and the rest of the population.

 

Communism can never work because some will always be more equal than others.

 

Pure communism won't work because most people want to own stuff...

 

You hit the nail on the head in your last paragraph.So technology 'unemploys' the human workforce-who then is gona consume the products ? So far its been a combination of moving production to the third world so that consumers here can buy products dirt cheap and making personal loans ,being in debt to finance companies, easier and more socially acceptable .
Capitalisms chaotic attempts to keep all the 'plates spinning'along with consumer need/greed is what lead to the 2008 crash (with the help too of unregulated finance firms) . If there is an epicentre of the alienation you speak of then I'd speculate that its now in China , India and the emerging economies of the third world .

 

Buy now, pay later consumerism, might deserve a little attention. While a debt free society may not fill everyones wants, or provide government the means to claim economic growth, it does reduce the probability of bubbles which require government to bail out the resulting unpaid debts accumulated spreading the cost to all those who are producing an income.

 

Debt is certainly part of the spectacle--I guess I should include that post on the spectacle here, so people can read it here rather than have to go to a different thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyLpHOfTHP4"]Static Revenger - Turn The World On (ft. Dev) (Protohype & Kezwik Remix) - YouTube

 

Here is some more that I posted elsewhere (Facebook to be exact):

Last week I posted a comment (and a Note) about the Spectacle, as defined by the Post-Modern theorist, Guy Debord. The Spectacle is an immense and powerful dynamic of modern Industrialized Societies constructed of commercials, promotions, p...rograms, movies, websites, simulations, virtual realities, lights, music, holograms… It is the multitude of spectacles that bombards modern man, every day of his life, designed to either, seduce him, shape him, manipulate him, provide temporary happiness, replace live human interaction, or all of the above.

Today's Americans are seduced by PlayStation and XBox, 3-D IMAX, 100+ Channels on cable. We work hard, and then we go home and sit (or go to a theatre, or club, or wherever and sit) while entertainment is made available at a flick of a switch. We will plan our life around blocks of time to let our emotions feed off of the Spectacle. More than ever we are seeking short term satisfaction, short term happiness, rather than worrying about and fighting for the things that are important. Our corporations and our government are free to do as they please, as long as they keep us pacified, and hooked up to that bottle of baby-formula—nonstop entertainment.

The real problem is our younger generations. We have raised a whole generation that is even more pliable and shapeable by the machine, than we were. They have become almost mindless automatons, fueled by momentary bits of pleasure in either an abstract or a virtual world. The machine (the corporate and political side of consumerism) is more and more able to do what it wants as it reshapes society and civil liberties into its own image. Meanwhile, the automatons are oblivious, and are covertly being well-trained for menial jobs in a fully automated future.

The Industrial Age saw all levels of society reshaped into the image of the mechanical machine, or the factory, in order to maximize the benefits of Standardization, Specialization, Synchronization, Concentration, Maximization, and Centralization (what Alvin Toffler, author of The Future Shock and The Third Wave, referred to as 'The Code' of industrialization). But while mankind went to work in factories, or offices structured off of factories, or schools designed like factories, and listened to orchestral music modeled after factories and machines, his civil rights, his private life, and humanity, kept him human.

If the Information Age is reshaping society the way it appears to be through the Spectacle, we may find humanity itself finally modeled after the machine--an automated machine--lacking in civil rights and liberties, and alienated from the essence of humanity. If the illusion of satisfaction through temporary happiness remains strong enough, most of us will never know. Instead, we will continue on in abstract hyper-realities, reaching new levels of insensibility to reality and our true condition. Sadly, capitalism and democracy would fail to exist, and the words themselves would be redefined to fit the purposes of the machine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCfVFxRsKQc"]Welcome To The Machine - Pink Floyd - YouTube

 

"Evil has always existed, the perfect world most people seek shall never come to pass and it’s gonna get worse." - Richard Ramirez

 

The Rainbow Gathering used to be a great example of communism, but I hear that it's turning more anarchist now. Check out the Rainbow Family in the Hip communities section for info, or go hear....
http://welcomehome.org/rainbow/index.html

 

I don't buy that. The history of humanity does'nt bear that out. Qkay , we blunder along,get hooked on all the wrong priorities,see utopias in winning the lottery or becoming Anarchists way ahead of our evolution,then reality kicks in...

I'm a pessamist by nature but I believe in learning the lessons of the past & if so we will 'get there'. We,as individuals , as societies, are works in progress. Human nature is a constant but we work on it. We've the same drives as our ancesters had ,and, given all the contradictions you could list, I'd say we still live in a better world,for the majority of folk,than existed 100 years ago.

We're not evolved enough ,yet, to cope with a communist utopia,as a species. But on a planet with ever more obvious finite resources thats the only future that makes sense to me-albeit not achievable for generations as a feasible reality.

 

Somehow I don't think a majority of humans will ever accept communism as a utopian goal desirable of achievement.