Listen here, kulak...
Listen here, kulak...
288 comments
-
-
When you own the means of production it's literally yours. I don't understand the issue.
-
Under communism, the state owns the resources. People are not the state.
-
Big difference between communism and socialism.
-
That's correct, but I'm not sure what you understand those terms to mean, because neither really supports taking all ownership away from people. I'm just gonna leave this blorb here, because I feel like this is where it fits best.
Communism in the style of Marx and Engels means that the workers own the means of production. They would have been completely in favor of a person owning their own farm (or jointly owning it if multiple people worked it). They didn't really envision much of a state to interfere, much less own property.
That the Soviet Union (and later the PRC, fuck them btw) claimed to be building the worker's paradise under communism was mostly propaganda after Lenin died. There hasn't been any state that has implemented actual communism as established by theory.
Socialism (as I understand it, but I'm not well-read on it) means the state has social support networks, but largely works under capitalist rules, with bans of exploitative practices. There are some countries trying to implement a light version of this across Europe, to varying success (mostly failing where capitalism is left unchecked).
The issue is that the US started propagandizing like mad during the cold war, and "communism" was just catchier to say than "supportive of a country that is really just a state-owned monopoly". Soon everything that was critical of capitalism also became "communism", which eventually turned into a label for everything McCarthy labelled "un-american". This is also the time they started equating the terms communism and socialism. A significant portion of the US population hasn't moved past that yet, because it fits well into the propaganda of the US being the best country in the world, the American Dream, all that bs. The boogeyman of "the state will take away the stuff you own" turned out pretty effective in a very materialistic society. Although I'm very glad to see more and more USAians get properly educated on the matter and standing up for their rights rather than letting themselves be exploited.
-
-
The issue is probably “HahA ComMUnIsM BaD!1!”
-
The issue of course is that when we reach peak communism we'll drop possessive language entirely like in The Dispossessed.
I'll work and teach on the farm we share.
-
-
It doesn't sound like you understand these terms.
-
-
-
Dude why do people think communism means you can't own anything. There's a difference between private and personal properties. You can own a house, and a car, hell even a whole farm. What you cannot do is hold capital.
-
A farm is means of production, therefore it would classify as public property. You cannot own production under communism, only products.
-
Therefore it could count as a means of production but in general in Communism personal farms of reasonable size and constant use are encouraged. Again, that's a misunderstanding of communism.
-
Oversimplified for brevity, but basically: You may not be able to OWN a farm in the sense that the land itself is collectivized (not even always true under socialism, depends on specific policies and also whether you consider the "farm" to be a different entity from the land it's sitting on, in that case you often own the farm itself, just look at home ownership rates in socialist countries), but you can USE and WORK ON the farm to generate products for yourself and society at large. I don't see it as that different practically from the perspective of the farmer, since they're still living on the land and taking advantage of its productivity.
I think that's certainly better than renting or mortgaging the land and having to deal with landlords and banks. Collectivization usually freed farmers from their obligation to their landlord or private bank and they just continued farming as normal. It's the landlords who had their "livelihood" taken away (i.e. land that they owned but someone else was living and working on), not the farmers doing the actual work.
-
-
Because in practice the line between capital and personal property is very thin. Can a car or apartment not be used to generate income in a modern economy?
When the soviets were in power they would force multiple families under one roof (kommunalka). Think 4-8 families sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. Each family was given just one room and all housing was considered communal housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment?wprov=sfti1
After Stalin’s death families began receiving single family apartments due to massive housing reform by Kruschev, but were hastily built and called ‘khrushchyoba,’ a cross between Khrushchev's name and the Russian term for slums. That by the way still leaves a multigenerational period from 1917-1954 where the kommunalka would have been the primary unit of housing.
-
You can generate money with a car or a farm. The whole problem with capitalism is getting money without working because you let people work with your stuff. So owning a car and use ist as a taxi is fine with communism. Having a taxi company is not. But you can form a taxi company with others. The difference is no one has financial power over others. No one just profits because he/she is the owner. There are people in charge but they are in charge because they have the knowledge and ability not just because they own everything and can do what they want.
-
That was a really fascinating read, thanks. Checked out a few of the other links from the wiki. Do you happen to have or know where I can see interior pictures and floorplans?
I'll try looking it up myself in the meantime; I love stuff of that nature
-
-
So when does a farm go from personal to private property? Is it the moment you rent it or employ other people on it?
-
One of the thousands of nuanced use cases that generalist communist revolutionaries haven't even thought about let alone have the skills to provide solutions for.
-
It's an oversimplification, but.... Sort of, yeah. Property you "own" to keep from others, and make money from owning it.
-
Rule of thumb and there are always exceptions, land that you live and work on is usually personal property, land that you own but someone else pays you for the privilege of living and working on is private property.
-
-
Dude why do people think communism means you can’t own anything. There’s a difference between private and personal properties.
Because the dictionary definitions of those words don't match the way you're using them.
-
Tell that to the kulaks
-
I'm ashamed to admit I had no idea, until I stumbled upon this video. https://youtu.be/Krl_CUxW14Y
-
-
I too want a post-scarcity luxury space communism utopia. Unfortunately most iterations of communism feel more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic than actually plugging the hole in the fuselage.
-
It's just human nature in my eyes. Power attracts many people and the less positions of power to fill, the fiercer the competition and the more ruthless the ultimate victor. Communism focusses too much power in too few positions, so ultimately, corrupt people are almost guaranteed to win. Democracy is spreading out that power more. It is still not perfect, corrupt people are still regularly found at the top, but they wield less power individually and they have to do it more in the open.
-
Any socialist society needs to be democratic first, socialist second. Many more democracies have gotten closer to socialism than socialist societies have gotten close to democracy.
-
Communism focusses too much power in too few positions
Literally the opposite of communism
-
Communism focusses too much power in too few positions,
marxism would be a better term instead of communism as true communism requires no one having economic or political power over someone else
-
We should select leaders by lottery from a pool of those who have passed a civics exam instead of elections. Maybe that would help with the problem of corrupt people seeking positions of power.
-
The only thing I know for certain is that the people who want to be in power are very people you don't want to be in power. We should do that veil of ignorance thing once we havr learnt how to wipe someone's memory.
-
-
-
What if we plugged the holes with the corpses of the workers we had to sacrifice to achieve a hole-free hull?
-
-
...until the central committee decides that more coal miners are required.
-
You say that like it's worse than the current capitalist epidemic of giga corporations pushing independent farmers out of the market to the point of leaving them jobless and forced to sell their farm to them for cheap.
-
But it's different when a monopoly/oligopoly does it! Surely... The difference here really is that there is no incentive to decide more coal miners are required, whereas our shitty version of capitalism absolutely pushes for companies to fuck over competitors any way possible. It makes it near impossible for small businesses to stand up to established ones with all the resources.
-
-
-
Well someone has to dig the tunnel beneath the reactor core...
-
-
I mean technically, you could have a farm if you worked the entire farm by yourself (personal vs private property).
-
Or they could share ownership of that farm with others that also work on it AKA a non-profit co-op 🤷
-
And technically that means you’re producing on that farm which makes it private property.
-
-
That's not really how it works
-
Wrong. Personal property is owned by an individual person. Private property is owned by corporations/ capital. It's impossible for one to magically change into the other.
-
Only if you keep all the stuff you produce
-
Nah
-
Under a capitalist legal framework yes, but hear me out, it's possible to redefine laws and is really what this debate is about.
-
-
-
I've never understood how this is supposed to be some big own to communism. You'd still refer to it as "my farm," even as I refer to the community where I live as "my city" and the jobs I've worked to benefit some capitalist bozo as "my job." This is even worse than Ben Shapiro popping out of a well. In many ways, I think I'd feel more ownership as part of a community vs. the facade of "private property."
-
This particular thing was actually tried by the Soviets. Farms were considered excesses of kulaks. Kolhos (collective "farm") was the replacement.
And yes, it was possible to say "my kolhoz" like people say "my city", good point. Even if "our kolhoz" was a lot more accepted, since it emphasizes how collective it is.
It is also possible to feel personal affinity to collectively owned space.The difference between usually implied individual "my farm" and collective "my farm" is of course in the governance.
Collective ownership may end up being governed by ineffective unaccountable and irresponsible "people representatives". E.g. deciding that genetics is a capitalist plot, and planting corn everywhere is the solution to all problems (both cases actually happened on a massive scale).
The result is not very different from what ineffective unaccountable and irresponsible large capitalist landowners do.
Both systems disenfranchise the disadvantaged ones, since decisions can practically never be completely unanimous.
So it's good if you agree with the party line, but if not - violent suppression comes, no teaching on the farm.
That's where the feeling of "my farm" breaks down. On a private farm you have a lot more options before you are lost.I get the challenges with governance in capitalism-turining-feodalism which we have now in many cases.
But I do not get it why people imagine that full collective ownership is a good and sustainable alternative.-
None of this is a critique of ideologies like syndicalism and anarcho-communism, so it's still a pretty ignorant meme that conflates Soviet communism with all forms of communism.
None of this disproves what people like Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman were writing about, whose worldviews do not disenfranchise such groups.
I also heartily disagree with your take about private farms. The options you think you have with "private property" are a scam.
-
Most early Bolshevik policies were more situational than ideological. The main priorities were to repel threats and industrialize as quickly as possible. They expected to be crushed by industrialized capitalist powers unless they reached parity.
-
-
-
It’s my farm too. We all own farm. Back to work comrade.
-
Da
-
-
For those interested, Dessalines' "what would be X like under communism" is a helpful aggregated of discussions regarding this: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#what-would-x-be-like-under-communism
-
Hey! Literal communist propaganda. Honestly, the better thing to do instead of this is just ask someone over 50 who lives or lived in Eastern Europe.
-
"Did people in the USSR hate their governments?" - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-citizens-of-the-soviet-union-dislike-their-government
"Did the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries have functioning democracies?" - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-soviet-union-and-the-warsaw-pact-nations-have-functioning-democracies
It's also interesting how people who's 50, who would have been around 18 when the USSR collapsed or their country seceeded and would have spent their entire adulthood and potentially a part of their teenhood bearing the shockwaves rocking every part of their country under the newly established capitalism (their supposed liberation and salvation and who their new governments claimed would fix literally everything and make them not miserable anymore) that nearly destroyed plenty of Eastern European countries, are overwhelmingly against the USSR, but the trend goes to far more favorable of the USSR the older you get. I'm sure it's just nostalgia though, the oldest people are just behind on the times and their opinions don't count.
Edit: I fixed a miscalculation I made regarding how old people were when the USSR collapsed. My bad.
-
-
-
Arguments about the definitions of Communism or Property aside - yes, my farm. As in, the one I work on. The possessive pronoun, despite the name, sometimes connotes association rather than ownership - I do not own my school, my country, my street or (despite what Republicans might wish) my wife.
-
No. You'll probably be assigned a job that's required to be done for the good of society.
-
It blows my mind the people who think, "after the revolution I'm going to be a dog walker and bake dog treats!" When in reality they will probably die in a labor camp.
-
Seeing as how in most markets you can't exactly do what you want for a living (or even close), or acquire the skills because they're behind a steep pay wall, and the only employment you can find is very limited in scope to what the community wants, what's the difference? Most jobs might as well be issued in the mail.
-
-
Socialism vs communism be like
-
End goal; you will own nothing, and you'll be happy. Also work harder and don't advance.
-
Isn't that kind of where the current system is inching towards anyways? Rent, subscriptions, bullshit jobs and all that.
-
Communism is when you own nothing lol
-
No it isn't. Communism eliminates private property. E.G. Land ownership. (You lease land from the state)
It does not get rid of personal property. You're still allowed to own things. A phone, a car, books, anything that is movable; pretty much anything except land and maybe buildings.
I'm not even a fan of communism but this is just an ignorant misconception.
-
Get that shit out of here bub. Everybody knows that communism is when capitalists exploit you and steal all your hard-earned money so you stay poor while they keep raking in record profits.
-
-
-
-
Communists are like the left equivalent of libertarians? Both absolute morons.
-
Just as communism has been proven to fail in the past so is capitalism. It has been warped to something terrible for the common worker. I think this communism thing is just a way for people to vent their frustrations with the current system. Honestly as long as their is a corruptible person in charge no system will work as intended. And unfortunately everyone is corruptible.
-
am i going mad, or are the letters slightly wobbly in this screenshot?
-
It may be one of those fonts that's supposed to help with dyslexia or whatever. Because unless it's serving some functional purpose I can't imagine why you'd want your phone looking like you're halfway through your sixth drink of the night.
-
How dare you curse me with this knowledge.
It's a weird font. Anything with a curved bottom dips below the level of flat bottoms.
-
They are, easily visible in the first of the 3 posts.
-
288 comments
Haha, funny way to say "working in the lead mines", comrade.
Comrade, we all know lead poisoning and the need for safety gear are capitalist propaganda! Now, get back in the mines! Production must increase 50% this year, and your state-appointed union representative says it can!
Capital successfully fought to put lead into American's blood and lungs for a century after it was known to be poison. To this day they're still fighting to keep it there.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-it-took-decades-of-blaming-parents-before-we-banned-lead-paint/275169/
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/14/report-lead-paint-makers-helped-gov-walker/90349256/
Tinfoil is absolutely enough protection against radiation, now go out there and stabilize the reactor!
The Glorious Leader has declared that we have too much lead. You’re now reassigned to be in front of the firing squad.
The gold standard are urainum mines. Lead are for those with good behavior.
Tbh I'd rather work in a uranium mine, it's less toxic than lead in the quantities you'd be exposed to
Remind me, what did they do to indigenous people when they were trying to get uranium for the Manhattan project?
This nonsense is just western projection.