Ask Lemmy

I have never seen it functioning outside of theory and doubt that it can. I like social democracy with a lot of regulation.

Works great until people become involved.

That being said, you can say the exact same about capitalism.

Good in theory, problematic in practice. A goal to strive towards but not achieve.

The main problem is that the dictatorship of the proletariat is so easily corrupted into a regular ol dictatorship. It's supposed to be a transitional period, but when that much power is in play, it's hard for people to give it up - and even when they're willing, they can just get ousted by less scrupulous people.

Making it safely through that passage is like a Great Filter of socio-economics

That we should be striving for it even though it may take a while

It needs guardrails similar to capitalism in terms of checks and balances and protections against abuses of power. And it needs to be an economic framework, with direct-participation democracy doing the political work.

We are at the technological threshold where a Republic is no longer needed as the primary interface of democracy, but such a direct-participation democracy needs to be paired with an electorate which is highly educated, places said education on a higher pedestal than wealth or power, and focuses on experience and meritocracy above all else. Most importantly, said population must have virtually no economically vulnerable people, as poverty nerfs intelligence by up to 15 points and dramatically reduces a person’s ability to think critically beyond their immediate day-to-day needs. Having a population that can see near-100% attention to national questions makes for an effective direct-participation democracy.

Essentially, the people vote directly on everything, and about the only “political apparatus” that exists would be those structures meant to carry out the will of the people and diplomats that interact with other countries. There would be no leaders or politicians, only people being the gears of government.

If a person is particularly passionate about a cause, they can champion it in public forums, going up against other debaters, but are not allowed to monopolize the forum in a career-like manner.

Plus, such a democracy would be reflected down into the worker’s collectives which would operate on virtually identical principles, only with scopes restricted to that collective.

There are other parts of the societal structure that could enhance said communism.

The legal system will need to be 100% apolitical and utterly divorced from the political structures or economic incentives. Lawyers become judges by courts of their peers, who examine their body of work and determine if the expertise is sufficient for the judgeship. Ideally they wouldn’t even be told who they are evaluating, their only opportunity is to recognize the work done through any anonymization done to it. Judges that misbehave can be removed either internally or by an external vote by the population at large. Laws can be implemented in either direction - from the population or from judgements - but must be approved by the people.

The police system needs to be a national system that cannot allow bad apples to just jump from precinct to precinct to avoid discipline (as per America), but must also be unarmed as a base unit. Only SWAT has the ability to carry more than restraints. Police are assigned to neighbourhoods to learn and integrate with the residents, as per Japan’s system. Trust is built by literally walking the beat and being an integral part of the community.

Any wider security forces (NSA/CIA/FBI) or military would be focused only on external and internal threats, and are highly constrained to only act in the best interests of the society as a whole, but are also under a sort of “prime directive” to not meddle in other countries except to blunt/neuter what they are doing in the first place. Military, in particular, would be primarily self-defence and international peacekeeping.

Both the military and the police and any other security forces would have a shadow council of randomly-chosen civilians whose entire purpose would be to criticize and constrain overreach, along with dedicated lawyers whose entire purpose is to advise on laws. All police and military members would have the ability to access JAG-style lawyers and would be protected when refusing to carry out illegal orders.

There is a lot more I could add, but imma gonna stop here.

I think it’s susceptible to the same problems we have now. Elites gonna form and do their thing. Whether they’re in the party or on the board of directors, the effect is the same.

I think we’re just way too naive about systems. We expect them to work for us without putting in any effort. We should stop focusing so much on systems and start focusing on communities and cultures.

The best societies have tight-knit communities and a culture of cooperation. You can’t achieve that by passing laws or writing a new constitution or whatever. You have to get buy-in from everyone.

if people actually studied it in college, you wouldnt be so quick to supporting it without knowing the ins and outs of the system. people/tankies fantasizes it alot, without actually reading the whole meaning behind it. thats why fall very easily for the extremes of politics.

i live in a "communist country" and communism does not exist

There are things that you shouldn't be able to "own" as private property. We basically all agree that our fellow humans are on that list, but whether anything else is on that list is what outlines the spectrum from Capitalism to Communism. I do know that isn't technically definitionally correct, but the simple question "What things on earth should humans not be able to privately own and profit from?" is a pretty good proxy for knowing where the person you are talking to lies on that spectrum.

Good on paper, never works in practice.

Are we talking actual idiologie communism, the Red-Scare Version, or what some people say they are but are actually totalitarianists or stalinists aka dictators with red paint

I'm not an expert or an economist, mind you. I'm also jaded after America's change in power. It's a noble idea and a step up from capitalism. But while capitalism ends in mass surveillance and police states so the wealthy can profit, communism is similarly likely to lead to centralized identification, albeit with benevolent intentions. Allocating resources from the top down requires a system of administration, which is a hierarchy and an unchecked power. But Classification is the first step to genocide, and we've seen multiple times now that any country can fall to fascism in the span of 15 years. Just because you have a wonderful benevolent communist government now doesn't mean it'll always be that way.

Maybe there are ways around this. Part of me wants to say that only names and dates of birth (not race, gender marker, country of origin, income level) should be recorded, but even names in many cases can reveal a person's gender and sex at birth, which is itself a form of classification. Maybe you could have a single-blind ID system, only including a name and DOB, where only citizens have access to their IDs, and governments do not store that data centrally. The hope being that if people's needs are taken care of that the incentive to steal another person's identity goes away. There are flaws, I know.

Again, maybe there are ways around this. I'm more partial to anarcho-syndicalism because it can more easily exist without a centralized ID system. Having traditional government functions decided democratically among and between the worker-run syndicates also helps stop fascists because if any one syndicate goes fascist, they get cut out from everyone else's resources and get starved out.

However, if a communist government can exist without collecting data, then I'm potentially in favor of it.

Probably would've gone better if Russia hadn't been the first to try it.

What kind? It's good to have it as an ideology amongst others to weigh and debate between ideologies and implementations of mixture of them.

Needs technology to scale.

It's also one of the great filters; we get nowhere without it.

We already have some communism implemented there is cooperatives, communal gardens , the fediverse. I think private companies should be allowed to exists but cooperatives should be more encouraged. I believe we should have a state and the concept of money too