Modern arguments for communism?

[theweatherman]

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"from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs"

jobs based on aptitude

"ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well"

less work with same gain.

please dont make me repaet myself anymore

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I'll repeat myself again, we're not debating the ideal, only the impossibility.

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how is what i posted impossible?

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The selfishness, etc. we were talking about earlier. And the sheer number of people (that hasn't been brought up yet).

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Ok, for the last time, humans have not been proven to be inately selfish, if anything i have presetned evidence to the contrary. Untill you can prove that humans are born with a bulit in drive to gbe as selfish as possibleplease do not use that as a reason to debunk a communist society.

Scale is a good point, however, as I mentioned earlier I am no communist and there fore do not have all the answers (only most [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ) I am unsure how to acomidate the massive scaleof a worldwide communist system, although Im sure there are some who are able to
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[CIncyHR]

This is a good post. In a "truly" capitlast system, the worker would be able to hold his work out if he was not being compensated properly (this is how Adam Smith envisioned the system working). Unfortuantely, capitalism in practice holds workers (especially those working the most menial taks) as wage slaves, and therefore prevents them from fighting for apporpriate compensation for their labor.

[Khern]

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The main difference between Adam Smith and Karl Marx...

Smith's primary intellectual tool: Logic

Marx's primary intellectual tool: Rhetoric


I could make up a word, we'll call it 'utterfailure'. The definition of this word is "any individual with a net worth under $10 million." Of course, the definition has nothing to do with what people will assume given the name. I, like Marx, chose this "arbitrarily."

This is the way Marx uses the word 'exploitation'. His definition has little to do with the one people are used to. It simply represents the clever manner in which Marx influences people through rhetoric.

Marx believes that the worker is not appropriately compensated for his labor, placing no weight on the value of capital in society. He does not give credit to the capitalist for using his mind (the most powerful tool to any individual in a capitalist system) to pool the resources necessary to provide employment for the worker. Instead, he believes that the worker is "exploited," regardless of the fact that the capitalist and worker enter an agreement in which both parties consent.

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The agreement to which you refer is a dubious concept. The worker has to work or else he will starve, this is a pretty unfair situation for the worker to be in. To many it seems like borderline extortion, work or die. This is especially evident in smaller fields of work, ie mining towns in West Virgina. Here people are born into a situation where they have limited employment and almost no chance to escape to a larger market.

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There is a significant difference between meeting basic needs and creating an egalitarian society. Given basic needs, the labor aggrement would not be coercive.

As I noted below, even F.A. Hayek agreed that our society should be able to provide a basic survival to everyone. (I think he may have even noted that without this, labor contracts would be coercive.)

I was quite surprised when I read this, and I asked (in this thread) how libertarians on this board felt about his assertion. I am still interested in any responses. I am still not sure how I feel about this.

Ah, I found the quote:

"These two kinds of security are, first, security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a given minimum of sustenence for all; and second, the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person of group enjoys compared with others.
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There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which our has obtained the first kind of security should not be garunteed to all without endangering general freedom."
F.A.Hayek, The Road to Surfdom, Ch 9.

This is from one of the leading libertarians of our time. Can anyone draw an economic picture that makes this make sense, or one that makes it seem ludacris?

[CIncyHR]

The general misconception with communism exists becuase no true communist has ebver attempted to gain power anywhere. Lenin was not a communist nor a marxist. neither was Mao, neither was Castro. They are all fascists using Marx's words to garner pupular support.

Interestingly, there are no nations today that are capitlaist int eh spirirt of Adam Smith either. Both "The Wealth of Nations" and "Das Kapital" are theoretical and philosophical. It seems that both of the systems are equally flawed in the present state of the world. It is my opinion that communism does hold a possiblity of being prevalent in the future, while theoretical cpaitlaism is impossible.

The dominant (usually referred to as capitlaist) system of the world today is looselyy based on real capitalism, but is far less fair.

[tylerdurden]

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The worker has to work or else he will starve, this is a pretty unfair situation for the worker to be in.

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What's unfair about this? Why should he be able to survive with no effort? Whose production should he be entitled to so that he won't starve?

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The immediatness of the worker's situation makes forces him to an unfair contract. Wage slaves have no room to negotiate since they will run out of money in a week or so

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What's unfair? He's offering his labor for a price. He agrees or not. His particular situation is not the labor buyer's fault.

Out of curiosity, do you think you're ahead in this debate?

[CIncyHR]

Indeed. Two excellent arguments for the failure of fascism.

[tylerdurden]

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"ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well"

less work with same gain.

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What's the life expectancy of a hunter-gatherer?

[theweatherman]

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"ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well"

less work with same gain.

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What's the life expectancy of a hunter-gatherer?

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The purpose of the quote is not to suggest a return to a hunter gatherer society but to show that people who claim that mankind is inherrently selfish are flat out wrong. Humans can live and thrive in an egalitarian setting with no leader, owner or boss.

[CIncyHR]

This is incorrect. Life expectancy has increased due to medical and technological advances. real wages in the US have gone up becuase the capitalists have cleverly hidden the awful exploitation of the lowest class of workers overseas. Union power is at an all time low, thanks largely in part to the federal government preempting their power. Crime contineus to grow to absurd levels among the lower classes, and the divide between the haves and have nots between the upper and lower classes expands every day.