Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Please explain communism for those who don't understand. I lived in a communist country so it's not for my benefit, but others might be curious.
Okay, maybe Lithuanian will explain better to an Estonian:
Once in the 19th century there was a rapid industrialization. Farmers and citizen guild-workers lost their economical value and had to turn into factory workers. At that time, there was massive unemployment, and factory owners were unregulated. Then a philosopher Karl Marx went in, and started to analyse. He concluded that, in history, it's always 'slaves vs landowners', then 'peasants vs seniors', and ultimately 'workers vs enterprise owners (bourgeoisie)'. He named this phenomenon 'class struggle', and hypothesised that, after workers will defeat bourgeoisie, then it would be possible to create a perfect egalitarian society with no exploitation, in which people have all the rights except the right to be rich. That was called 'Communism', a proposed ideal society.
His ideas attracted many followers, which were split into several political campus, for instance, Socialist democracy ('mild' socialism, rich people pay more taxes, etc.), Anarcho-Communism (no state, no regulations, lived only for a short period of time in Ukraine), and many more.
Then V. Lenin came in, and told there must be a 'peasants' revolution' that abolishes the existing state(s), kill all the enemies of that revolution, become a Socialist country (ie. State controls all the economy) and then slowly progress into Communism. His practices were furthermore refined by Stalin and were called 'Marxism-Leninism'. History of the USSR shows that the power of a Socialist state can be used to create a totalitarian prison.
So 'Communism' can mean either an egalitarian society or heading towards that direction, basically.
I appreciate your write up, but I think you replied to a different comment from some person in Estonia who might or might not have lived under that regime. Either way, Marxism-Leninism had been drilled into me for decades.
Oops. I thought lemm.ee is Lemmy for Estonians.
There are a variety of views from different authors and political experiences. But they're mostly rooted on not having privately owned means of production (a consensus exists for big corporations at least). This would mean big corporations cannot be privately owned, it must belong to the workers themselves. This implies the destination of profits should be decided between its workers, and not its owners. This might even make many more people rich than just some random dude (like Musk) for owning the whole thing.
In general, there is no contradiction between being rich and communism. In fact, the workers should get the profits for what they build.
Dude, you don't know the first thing about communism. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." It means you don't take more than you need. "Rich communist" is an oxymoron.
First of all, I will say I'm definitely no expert on communism, but it's definitely not true that "I don't know a thing about it".
As I mentioned, there are quite a few views on what communism is. Communism precedes Marx and Engels and there is even a small book from Engels which discusses previous views of communism (called utopian) to their view of communism (called scientific). The phrase you mentioned precedes Marx and Engels's work and they study how that phrase could become true. In their work, Marx and Engels do mention scientific communism cannot be exclusively theoretical (which they call praxis), for the risk of being utopian. So according to past and current experiences (USSR, China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, North Corea), there are quite a few developments and different views on communism. They don't all agree on everything, but they do agree on "not having privately owned means of production". On the Stalin era of USSR, it was considered something similar to the phrase you mentioned, but it was somewhat inneficient. People need incentives for their work and discoveries and it was not based exclusively on needs, as that phrase implies. The reality was complex, btw. This is really a generalistic view and don't expect it to be flawless.
You lived in a country that called itself communist, in the same way that North Koreans live in a country that calls itself democratic. There has never been a country that actually achieved communism, because communism requires there be no state. At best these countries would claim that communism was their goal, but honestly most were lying, or at the very least co-opted and turned against their ideals somewhere down the line.
I do agree that the ideal communist state has never existed, though I need to challenge the assertion that communism demands the existence of no state. Anti-state philosophies are generally characterized as "anarchism" -- it's certainly true that communists and anarchists have historically held common interests, but in general they do not view themselves as members of the same group.
It's a weird distinction, but the distinction exists for a reason. Communists do not reject the establishment of a governing apparatus, so it's actually very inaccurate to say that "communism requires there to be no state". You could instead adopt the anarchist argument that "communism is self-defeating because it leads to the creation of non-communist states", but keep in mind that this is in-and-of-itself a rejection of communism in favor of communal anarchism.
The back and forth on what is and isn't communism will continue until there aren't two humans left to argue about it. I've described the classical Marxist view of communism including the withering away of the state. It has been redefined by various persons and groups over time, but I don't have a high opinion of those definitions.
Anarchists also do not inherently reject the establishment of a governing apparatus.
Very eloquently put! If you'll forgive me for quoting Engels (circa 1872) rather than Marx, I'd like to highlight a salient excerpt from his letters (bolded emphasis is my own, italicised emphasis preserved from original translation):
As you can see, even early Marxists did not actively advocate for the abolition of the state and in fact strongly sought to be perceived as separate from those who viewed abolition of the state as a fundamental prerequisite. Engels even ridicules the idea of completely abolishing state authority as magical thinking despite conceding that communism could eventually lead to the obviation of traditional state functions.
Fantastic! I thought that communism was impossible to achieve in a state, but if it is only achievable in 'no state', then we have to come up with a word more negative than 'impossible'.