fOR3V3RPINKKKK said:
1. Ill just give a wiki definition - Communism is a socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production and property in general.
This is a shaky definition.
How can a "socio-economic structure" is not a conscious agent. Thus to say that a socio-economic structure can
promote "the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production and property in general", makes not sense.
A better picture can be formed with the help of some quotes from Marx:
To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.
Karl Marx -
Critique of the Gotha Program
Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement [alienation], and hence the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man. It is the complete restoration of man to himself as a social — i.e., human — being, a restoration which has become conscious and which takes place within the entire wealth of previous periods of development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between man and man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and being, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution. -
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
Communism is for us not a
state of affairs which is to be established, an
ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the
real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. -
The German Ideology
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
"In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. -
The Communist Manifesto
Now if we want to put it concretely, the
ICC puts it well when they identify that the economic characteristics that define the communist mode of production are:
- The only incentive governing production will be the satisfaction of human needs.
- The goods which society produces will cease to be commodities; exchange-value will disappear and only use value will remain.
- The present restricted framework hampering the process of production will become more and more socialised. Private ownership of the means of production, whether possessed on an individual basis as in laissez-faire capitalism or by the state as in decadent capitalism, will give way to the socialisation of the means of production. This will mean the end of all private property; the end of the existence of social classes and thus the end of all exploitation. - Perspective of Communism, Part 1
fOR3V3RPINKKKK said:
2. Provide evidence that it isn't.
Sorry deary, but your shifting the burden of proof. You are making the assertion, so unless you can provide evidence in support of it we have no reason to take your objection is moot.
Christ, can't you people go more than two posts without making logically fallacious arguments.
fOR3V3RPINKKKK said:
Even though it isn't (which im not saying that it isnt) the majority of people are greedy which is evident with all the corruption that is happening and is explored in the media. Just buy a newspaper for one day and see for yourself
Sure, but even if we accept this, how does this prove that greed, corruption and all the other so-called barriers to communism are innate in humanity and comprise a so-called "human nature".
In a FAQ entitled "
Misconceptions, Confusions and Conflicts concerning Socialism, Communism and Capitalism" from the Washington State University website, the argument that "Communism could never work because it goes against human nature. People are naturally more competitive than cooperative"
is answered as follows:
This argument is actually dealt with by Marx himself in the Manifesto, where he puts forward his view that there is no such thing as fixed "human nature." Human attitudes and behavior are constantly reshaped by the changing economic systems in which people find themselves. Engels went on to spend a good deal of effort showing that early hunter-gatherer and village societies depended far more on cooperation than on competition.
The Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin made the classic argument against social Darwinism in his Mutual Aid (1902), and leftist social scientists have developed it further. In many cultures prestige or authority are more highly prized than property, and competition may be expressed by acts of even radical "selflessness" such as giving away almost all one's wealth in the "potlatches" of certain northwest tribes of Native Americans. Capitalism, socialists argue, simply brings these otherwise marginal emotions to the center and exaggerates them, stripping people of the strong ties which unite groups based on tradition, honor, religion, etc.
fOR3V3RPINKKKK said:
3. Again from wiki: Greed is the selfish desire for or pursuit of money, wealth, power, food, or other possessions, especially when this denies the same goods to others. Because of this desire for wealth, money, food etc. it is not possible to have an egalitarian, classless, stateless society because people will do whatever they can to get what they want through this idea called freedom.
To combat this point I will once again cite the ICC from the
Perspective of Communism, Part 2:
‘Human nature’ is a bit like the Philosophers’ Stone for which the alchemists searched for centuries. Up till now, all significant studies of ‘social invariants’ (as the sociologists would have it) — i.e. characteristics of human behaviour which are the same in all societies — have ended up showing the extent to which human psychology and attitudes are variable and linked to the social framework in which the individual develops. In fact, if we wanted to point to a fundamental characteristic of this ‘human nature’, to the feature which distinguishes man from other animals, we would have to point out the enormous importance of ‘acquired’ as opposed to the ‘innate’; to the decisive role played by education, by the social environment in which human beings grow up.
[...]
The peevish-minded will object to this by saying that if asocial behaviour exists, no matter what form it takes, in different forms of society, it’s because at the root of ‘human nature’ there’s an anti-social element, an element of aggressiveness against others, of ‘potential criminality’. They will argue that, very often, people don’t steal out of material necessity; that gratuitous crime exists; that if the Nazis could commit such atrocities, it’s because there’s something evil in Man, which comes to the surface in certain conditions. In fact such objections only show that there’s no human nature which is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in itself; Man is a social animal whose numerous potentialities take on different expressions depending on the conditions that are lived in. Statistics speak eloquently on this question: is it ‘human nature’ which gets worse during periods of crisis in society, when we see a growth in criminality and all kinds of morbid behaviour? On the contrary, isn’t the development of ‘asocial’ attitudes among an increasing number of individuals the expression of the fact that the existing society is becoming more and more incapable of satisfying human needs - needs which are eminently social and which can no longer be satisfied in a system which is less and less functioning as a society, a community?
The same peevish spirits base their rejection of the possibility of communism on the following argument: ‘You talk about a society which will really satisfy human needs, but the desire for property and power over others are themselves essential human needs, and communism, which excludes them, is therefore unable to satisfy human needs. Communism is impossible because man is egoistic.’
In her ‘Introduction to Political Economy’ Rosa Luxemburg described the reaction of the British bourgeoisie when, in the cause of conquering India, they came across peoples who had no private property. They consoled themselves by saying that these people were ‘savages’, but it was still rather embarrassing for people who had been taught that private property was something ‘natural’ to conclude that it was precisely these ‘savages’ who had the most ‘artificial’ way of living! In reality, humanity has such a ‘natural need for private property’ that it did without it for over a million years. And in many cases it was only after bloody massacres, as in the case of the Indians described by Rosa Luxemburg, that they were instilled with this ‘natural need’. It’s the same with commerce, that ‘unique, natural’ form of the circulation of goods, the natives’ ignorance of which so scandalised the colonialists. Inseparable from private property, it arose with it and will disappear with it.
There’s also the idea that if there was no profit to stimulate the development of production, if the individual effort of the worker wasn’t recompensed by a wage, no one would produce anything anymore. True enough, no one would produce in a capitalist way anymore; i.e. in a system based on profit and wage labour, where the slightest scientific discovery has to be financially viable, where work is a curse to the overwhelming majority of workers, on account of its length, its intensity, and its inhuman form. On the other hand, does the scientist who, through his research, participates in the progress of technology, always need a material stimulant to work? Generally they’re paid less than the sales executive who makes no contribution to the advancement of knowledge. Is manual labour necessarily disagreeable? If so, why do people talk about the ‘love of craftsmanship’, why is there such a craze for ‘do-it-yourself’ and all sorts of manual activities which are often very expensive? In fact, when labour isn’t alienated, absurd, exhausting, when its products no longer become forces hostile to the workers, but serve to really satisfy the needs of the collective then labour will become a prime human need, one of the essential forms of the flourishing of human potential. In communist society, human beings will produce for pleasure.
[...]
‘Everyone for themselves’ is supposed to be a basic human characteristic. It’s undoubtedly a characteristic of bourgeois humanity with its ideal of the ‘self-made man’, but this is simply the ideological expression of the economic reality of capitalism and has nothing to do with ‘human nature’. Otherwise one would have to say that ‘human nature’ has been radically transformed since primitive communism, or even since feudalism with its village communities. In fact individualism massively entered the world of ideas when small independent owners appeared in the countryside (when serfdom was abolished) and in the towns. Made up of small owners who had been successful - mainly by ruining their rivals - the bourgeoisie was a fanatical adherent of this ideology and saw it as a fact of nature. For example, it had no scruples about using Darwin’s theory of evolution to justify the social ‘struggle for survival’, the war of all against all.
But with the appearance of the proletariat, the associated class par excellence, a breach was opened in the domination of individualism. For the working class, solidarity is the elementary precondition for defending its material interests. At this level of reasoning, we can already reply to those who claim that human beings are ‘naturally egoistic’. If they are egoistic they are also intelligent, and the simple desire to defend their interests pushes them towards association and solidarity as soon as the social conditions allow it. But this isn’t all: in this social being par excellence, solidarity and altruism are essential needs in more ways than one. People need the solidarity of others, but they also need to show solidarity to others. This is something which can be seen even in a society as alienated as ours, expressed in the seemingly banal idea that ‘everyone needs to feel useful to others’. Some will argue that altruism is also a form of egoism because those that practise it do it above all for their own pleasure. Fair enough - but that’s just another way of putting forward the idea defended by communists that there is no essential opposition - on the contrary - between individual interest and collective interest. The opposition between individual and society is an expression of societies of exploitation, societies based on private property (i.e. private to others), and all this is very logical - how could there be a harmony between those who suffer from oppression and the very institutions that guarantee and perpetuate this oppression? In such a society, altruism can only appear in the form of charity or of sacrifice, i.e. the negation of others or the negation of oneself; it does not appear as the affirmation, the common and complementary flowering of the self and others.
Contrary to what the bourgeoisie would like us to believe, communism is not, therefore, the negation of individuality. It is capitalism, which reduces the worker to an appendage of the machine, which negates individuality; and this negation of the individual has reached its most extreme limits under the specific form of capitalism in decay: state capitalism. In communism, in a society which has got rid of that enemy of freedom par excellence - the state, which will have no reason for existing - each member of society will be living in the reign of freedom. Because humanity can only realise its innumerable potentialities in a social way, and because the antagonisms between individual interest and collective interest will have disappeared, new and immense vistas will be opened up for the flowering of each individual.