I strongly encourage ACTUALLY reading Marx and not just the facebook post equivalents that various influencers love to spout.
But, at a very high level: Marxism is largely built around communism (well, the other way around, but just roll with it). Which does have implications for governing and decision making, but is largely a socioeconomic system. So the better “opposite” would be Capitalism. Although, even that is a pretty reductive approach and is arguably wrong.
That said: Communism requires some form of centralized planning. And while there is nothing that says that can’t come from a true Democracy, it tends to favor republics which may or may not use democracy to select. The US, as the chuds so often like to exclaim, is a Democratic Republic (sort of) in that we use Democracy-ish to select our representatives.
Communism most certainly doesn’t require centralized planning - all it requires is a method of providing start up capital without giving away ownership.
It could be from local government taxes, federal coining of money, crowdsourced or some combination of these - you’d just need a mechanism of some sort to give loans to groups looking to start a worker-owned company. That’s the only requirement
There’s an infinite number of ways to slice it - centralized planning is super worrisome IMO because it creates a locus of power. But not only is it unnecessary, the same result
can be achieved far more effectively with a digital marketplace that matches buyers and sellers. You just have to remove incentives and power from the entities managing it - with a fairly small amount of money, you could host a standard system with an open and auditable code base
But you could also just design an open market without ownership of companies - that’s communism. You’d have to decommodify certain basic needs and shape incentives carefully, so it’s a bit more complicated than that… But not much
Computers and databases with logistics didn’t exist in 1918. Walmart and Amazon have strong central planning. Chile began to do it in 1971 with Project CyberSyn, but the CIA and capitalism couldn’t have that in their backyard.
Edit: There is a failure of imagination concerning what socialism and communism could like in the future. Lenin was materially bound by his time. Actual Communism (worldwide) might look sufficiently different than what’s been done before.
Yeah, I think we have proven over and over that human nature doesn’t do communism well at large scales. Not that I don’t think at small scales it’s a perfectly good system. Capitalism isn’t really any better tho. I don’t have a solution for how to avoid the pitfalls of socialism and communism. Worker owned means of production is really the thing I want, attainable or not. No single person should own all of the gains off the backs of worker blood, sweat, and tears.
I think there are a LOT more problems than just that, but yeah.
You can more or less “break” libertarianism and many anarchies by asking about “what happens to the orphans?”. For Communism and its derivatives, the question is usually “Who gets to be a scientist, a doctor, a movie star, and the person who cleans out the sewers? And do they all get the same benefits?”
I strongly encourage ACTUALLY reading Marx and not just the facebook post equivalents that various influencers love to spout.
But, at a very high level: Marxism is largely built around communism (well, the other way around, but just roll with it). Which does have implications for governing and decision making, but is largely a socioeconomic system. So the better “opposite” would be Capitalism. Although, even that is a pretty reductive approach and is arguably wrong.
That said: Communism requires some form of centralized planning. And while there is nothing that says that can’t come from a true Democracy, it tends to favor republics which may or may not use democracy to select. The US, as the chuds so often like to exclaim, is a Democratic Republic (sort of) in that we use Democracy-ish to select our representatives.
Communism most certainly doesn’t require centralized planning - all it requires is a method of providing start up capital without giving away ownership.
It could be from local government taxes, federal coining of money, crowdsourced or some combination of these - you’d just need a mechanism of some sort to give loans to groups looking to start a worker-owned company. That’s the only requirement
There’s an infinite number of ways to slice it - centralized planning is super worrisome IMO because it creates a locus of power. But not only is it unnecessary, the same result can be achieved far more effectively with a digital marketplace that matches buyers and sellers. You just have to remove incentives and power from the entities managing it - with a fairly small amount of money, you could host a standard system with an open and auditable code base
But you could also just design an open market without ownership of companies - that’s communism. You’d have to decommodify certain basic needs and shape incentives carefully, so it’s a bit more complicated than that… But not much
The problem with communism is bcz it requires strong central planning it tends to devolve into authoritarianism quickly.
Computers and databases with logistics didn’t exist in 1918. Walmart and Amazon have strong central planning. Chile began to do it in 1971 with Project CyberSyn, but the CIA and capitalism couldn’t have that in their backyard.
Edit: There is a failure of imagination concerning what socialism and communism could like in the future. Lenin was materially bound by his time. Actual Communism (worldwide) might look sufficiently different than what’s been done before.
Yeah, because a world run like Amazon sounds like such a utopia. /s
I liked bolo’bolo
Thanks, I’ll read it.
Yeah, I think we have proven over and over that human nature doesn’t do communism well at large scales. Not that I don’t think at small scales it’s a perfectly good system. Capitalism isn’t really any better tho. I don’t have a solution for how to avoid the pitfalls of socialism and communism. Worker owned means of production is really the thing I want, attainable or not. No single person should own all of the gains off the backs of worker blood, sweat, and tears.
Anarcho-Syndicalism or Anarcho-Communism? There’s the rub. I’m still exploring that myself.
I think there are a LOT more problems than just that, but yeah.
You can more or less “break” libertarianism and many anarchies by asking about “what happens to the orphans?”. For Communism and its derivatives, the question is usually “Who gets to be a scientist, a doctor, a movie star, and the person who cleans out the sewers? And do they all get the same benefits?”
Why would you rather have Amazon and Walmart plan your economy than a democratically elected government?
Communism doesn’t require central planning. The fact that you think it does tells me you don’t know what communism even is.