It’s about calling things what they are. Doesn’t matter if were fond of it or not. The problem with soviet/north Korean/Chinese large C Communism is their placing absolute authority in a single entity. The state the party etc. Especially when that entity is ultimately the “military”. Or derived from it. As the euphemism goes. When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. Addendum and when things don’t work like nails you just keep hitting them harder out of frustration.
Mao Zedong’s famine comes to mind. Lets assume that many of us here are fairly techy and nerdy. Being on a federated opensource platform as early adopters. Risky bet I know. Now would you think it’s a good idea to put someone, say a baker. Who has no experience with tech whatsoever as the supreme authority in running something like this? Let alone multiple non related essential things? You’re just asking for trouble. Maybe they will listen to advisers and take the advice to heart. Maybe they will do the normal human thing and over estimate their abilities and ignore them. There shouldn’t be a single ultimate authority that people fear to cross. True small c communism could work. But that would rely on the workers, not the state being the authority. And cooperating with other workers to fill the needs of each. The state can be an effective arbitrator for those groups. And I’m not so far down the libertarian/anarchist rabbit hole to believe we can get away with zero state authority. But the power needs to be balanced between the workers and the state.
No I have not. And I’ll be honest there’s a lot of related socialist and communist reading that I probably haven’t done. Some of it because I have fundamental disagreements with the basic premise of many of them. Such as the all too common belief that Karl Marx’s figurative call for a dictatorship of proletariat. Was literal. Which happens to be the basic underpinning premise of Big C communism. And the ultimate failure of every group that has implemented it.
In my view at least. If everyone is the proletariat. Then by definition the proletariat has an effective dictatorship. Because no one but the proletariat would have a say. The problem with making the state etc the dictator. Is that they Don’t always understand or want to understand the needs and wants of different groups. China’s government has done a lot of infrastructure projects for instance. But extremely wastefully. Because it wasn’t for, or fulfilling of the people’s needs. It was for status and to flatter the vanity of the non proletariat in the government.
There are so many more ideologies and concepts under socialism than authoritarian communism. And it’s really a shame they don’t get more attention/recognition.
It’s about calling things what they are. Doesn’t matter if were fond of it or not. The problem with soviet/north Korean/Chinese large C Communism is their placing absolute authority in a single entity. The state the party etc. Especially when that entity is ultimately the “military”. Or derived from it. As the euphemism goes. When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. Addendum and when things don’t work like nails you just keep hitting them harder out of frustration.
Mao Zedong’s famine comes to mind. Lets assume that many of us here are fairly techy and nerdy. Being on a federated opensource platform as early adopters. Risky bet I know. Now would you think it’s a good idea to put someone, say a baker. Who has no experience with tech whatsoever as the supreme authority in running something like this? Let alone multiple non related essential things? You’re just asking for trouble. Maybe they will listen to advisers and take the advice to heart. Maybe they will do the normal human thing and over estimate their abilities and ignore them. There shouldn’t be a single ultimate authority that people fear to cross. True small c communism could work. But that would rely on the workers, not the state being the authority. And cooperating with other workers to fill the needs of each. The state can be an effective arbitrator for those groups. And I’m not so far down the libertarian/anarchist rabbit hole to believe we can get away with zero state authority. But the power needs to be balanced between the workers and the state.
@Eldritch you do have good points in here, by the way have you ever read state and revolution?
i think i may count as a big C communist that cant get their nose out of the books
No I have not. And I’ll be honest there’s a lot of related socialist and communist reading that I probably haven’t done. Some of it because I have fundamental disagreements with the basic premise of many of them. Such as the all too common belief that Karl Marx’s figurative call for a dictatorship of proletariat. Was literal. Which happens to be the basic underpinning premise of Big C communism. And the ultimate failure of every group that has implemented it.
In my view at least. If everyone is the proletariat. Then by definition the proletariat has an effective dictatorship. Because no one but the proletariat would have a say. The problem with making the state etc the dictator. Is that they Don’t always understand or want to understand the needs and wants of different groups. China’s government has done a lot of infrastructure projects for instance. But extremely wastefully. Because it wasn’t for, or fulfilling of the people’s needs. It was for status and to flatter the vanity of the non proletariat in the government.
There are so many more ideologies and concepts under socialism than authoritarian communism. And it’s really a shame they don’t get more attention/recognition.