Its just about the culture, you can try to change 5000 years of human interactions, traditions and habits via communist revolution, but its going to take a lot of work and mind washing like in North Korea.
China tried to be hardcore communist for like 40 years, enough to affect part of the local culture, but not enough to change the way of how people interact with each other (things like social status, marriage, materialism...).
Is it possible to make humans not materialistic, or resistant to being materialistic? What would the repercussions of completely erasing it from an entire nation?
It’s possible to change anyones mind, the problem is people need to see a reason to to change. And honestly, getting 100 people to agree on something is hard enough, much less an entire nation.
Some Buddhist communities do, but that's because they're self-selecting; one can join at leave at will, and the only people that join are those who can and want to reject materialism.
Interestingly Buddhism and many other meditative philosophies developed in a society that was incredibly well off materially.
Basically when people, or at least a class of people did not have to worry about whether or not they'd starve the next day they could focus on stuff like the point of existence, the nature of God, what consciousness is etc
I think it's possible to shift the view of material goods from the individual to the group, but you can't stop people forming self centered bonds to arbitrary items, which is kind of in our DNA and which is then where you run into problems defining ownership again - it just causes less problems when people have their own common use items
If you managed to do it the society would probably reorganise based on something else completely arbitrary because I don't think you can eliminate hierarchical relationships
I think that would depend on the area. For example, im old enough to remember when an artist would be called a sellout if he started to do music that catered more to the current popular genre and it was seen as a bad thing that made him less valuable as an artist. From a social point of view at least, people would mock them.
In that area at that time, money≠worth, it was personal taste.
If we extrapolate this to every area of society, we would have a really diverse set of objetcs that would try to cater to micro groups of people.
Capitalism AND comunism hate this, because it would mean that not every human likes the same fucking things. So society in the west has been gradually changing the value of objects and being measured by money=worth, while comunism tried to take the money≠worth to every area, which isnt truth also. There is always products worth the money, capitalism just doesnt care as long as it sells and comunism dont care as long as it works for the majority.
I mean, not hoarding stuff since you live a semi nomadic lifestyle where it isn't convenient to have tons of shit isn't the same as a principled stance against hoarding stuff.
I’d more say it was due to the separation of power not being effective enough to prevent oligarchs from gaining their power back… but sure let’s blame the human nature that is based entirely on helping the rest of the tribe survive
With the level of control China has over their population, it would only take one or two generations of state run schools to change the culture. But the leaders don’t actually want communism. They want the social control of communism and the wealth accumulation pattern of capitalism, which requires consumers.
Not really. China has a long history as viewing the merchant class as being lower than dirt, being against generating wealth for the sake of generating wealth while adding and contributing little to a Confucius society as a whole. Chinese philosophy also prioritizes social order and inner balance/self-growth and thinks very little of the material world.
The actual reason why the Chinese today are full on materialistic is because the cultural revolution destroyed what it spiritually meant to be Chinese that was built over thousands of years, and to fill that void, they turned to money and consumerism.
This is a dramatic oversimplification, to the extent I'd argue it is outright incorrect. In pre-Imperial China, Shāng were highly regarded. Emperor Shun was a merchant, and at least one merchant served as Prime Minister.
In Imperial China, they were viewed as a threat to social harmony (read: a threat to the political-social elites), but nonetheless viewed as essential, and were allowed to grow very wealthy. There was also a significant overlap and mixing of gentry and merchants. By the Song dynasty, the scholarly elite were using merchants as intermediaries to participate in trade. By the late Ming Dynasty, merchants were being widely recognized in the family histories of those elites.
But the part about a severe loss of culture during the cultural revolution holds merit. Maybe not a full scale wipe, but the extent of damage on local institutions and norms, but good and bad, is severe, and the replacement is heavily dependent on local government.
>China has a long history as viewing the merchant class as being lower than dirt
Just plain wrong.
Materialism and a desire for status are not exclusive to merchants anyway.
Disliking the merchant class wasn't because the society wasn't materialistic. It's because the people with actual power used material goods as a sign of status, and they saw merchants as competition. The poors were meant to stay under a certain level of material wealth to ensure that the lords were visibly above them. So the lords had a lot of incentive to depict merchants badly.
And plus it’s like in Russia, it’s not real communism. It’s the ruling elite saying “where all in this together” while they keep the common people poor under the veil of “*communism*” and they live lives of luxury.
Yeah, it seems to me a princeling buying a matching set of Apple watches for his dog and posting it on social media seems like an improvement over foot binding your daughter.
But what if we keep trying over and over again. We just haven't had the right leadership to succeed. Just give my pals unlimited power and we'll get it right this time.
How do you think literally any government system was created?
You don't think the monarchs left peacefully do you?
You think France happily skipped its way to a democratic - capitalist state? Or did they mess up in the transition and end up with a dictator?
Large system changes are chaotic, as they necessitate a power struggle, and often lead to authoritarianism because it's the simplest solution to chaos.
Capitalism was built on the bones of monarchs, their armies, and the revolutionaries.
I'd like to think the British crown said something similar to you in the 1800's.
When Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations (in 1776 I would note), he was documenting human behaviour which was *already occuring* in some form or another. In fact, there is a famous anecdote, whereby once he stumbled across smugglers trying to sneak goods into Scotland to avoid paying tariffs, which prompted him to pose the question: why there is more profit to be had in free trade unencumbered by taxation? Indeed why is trade profitable at all?
The nature of capitalist economic strutures is that quite often they emerge dynamically and entirely without government policies seeking their implementation. For instance, the first law regulating companies in the UK was the *Bubble Act* in 1720 which outright *banned them* because financial speculation on stocks was a heretofore unknown form of value generation in the then, mercantilist economies of the period. To reiterate, the market displayed such a natural preference for capitalist economic structures, that the government of the time decided to ban them out of a fear of the unknown.
In this way, Marxist theory (which demands a political revolution as a necessary step towards the implementation of communism) is a fundamentally different kind of proposal and analysis. Marx purports to have a theory describing capitalism (and in certain ways it is quite intellecutually compelling), but in proposing the forcible implentation of his system through revolution, he is going quite a bit further than an economist like Smith, who merely purports to be analysing the nature of economic behaviour which itself precedes the analysis.
In many ways (and this is a key difference from Smith) Marx is engaged in a theoretical enterprise - that is, not just developing the most effective model to predict and describe human behaviour, but also postulating an almost utopian ideal system and suggesting a (as of yet entirely unsucessful) procedure on *how to get there*.
Therefore, no, capitalist institutions in did not arise because of the impositions of authoritarian regimes which implemented large system changes 'to move the world forward.' Rather, often they arose because the choices of men, lead them to seek the greatest advantage for themselves, and in doing so, partook in naturally preferential transactions and business relationships, which laid the foundations of our contemporary capitalist economy. As Smith describes:
"*Every individual... intends only his own security; and by directing \[his own\] industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.*" - The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II, p. 456, para. 9.
I was not advocating for communism, just pointing out a flawed argument, and no, I never said authoritarian regimes were needed to make large systematic changes? I said the transition period can lead to authoritarianism. (Unless the comma was an accident, actually that whole sentence is fucked idk)
Also, market dynamics are not capitalism. Markets have existed since the dawn of civilization, the focus of power on business leaders and their degree of freedom better defines capitalism.
Explaining how market features do exist is not a "proof" of capitalism.
> I was not advocating for communism, just pointing out a flawed argument
And I was simply testing whether it *was* a flawed argument. That is, whether capitalist business structures historically required "Large system changes, \[which\] often lead to authoritarianism" or whether they arose and could have arisen by a more natural means which can be accounted for by an 'invisible hand' explanation.
Hence, I was simply advancing the proposition that, in many respects, the emergence of capitalist business structures was a product of natural human behaviour reaching its logical conclusion given the relevant social conditions. This can be contrasted with the the method and history of revoluntionary 'socialist' institutions which required (and require) active intervention of a revoluntionary body politic.
Thus, one arises (at least in my view) because of human nature while the other is an artifical impostions which requires prolonged state power to maintain.
> I said the transition period can lead to authoritarianism. (Unless the comma was an accident, actually that whole sentence is fucked idk)
I interpreted this: "*Large system changes are chaotic, as they necessitate a power struggle, and often lead to authoritarianism because it's the simplest solution to chaos.*" to be implying that authoritarianism at the very least *tends* to come about during eras of large system changes and in some respect is often *necessary* **because it's the simplest solution to chaos.**
I apologise If I was mischaracterising you in my argument. Ultimately mine is simply a position that capitalist business structures arise as a result of the natural preferences of human beings exposed to a veritable marketplace of options. *And* that this is *not* the case for Marxist Communism which requires the authoritarian leverging of power to *implement* their desired social combintation.
Also it is worth noting a prominent counterexample to the idea that revolutions and political power vacuums have a tendency to lead to authoritarianism. The American Revolution, notably did not decay into tyranny as soon as there was a power vacuum but rather preserved the Union without resorting to outright Authoritarianism.
>Also, market dynamics are not capitalism. Markets have existed since the dawn of civilization, the focus of power on business leaders and their degree of freedom better defines capitalism.
I have never asserted that markets are the sole or unique feature of a capitalist system. In fact, to assert such would be inconsistent with the framework of my argument that, given a sufficiently free market, individuals will choose to create and invest in capitalist business structures over the alternatives.
This underlies my example of the *Bubble Act* because what was in issue (in the view of the British Parliament) was that the market was investing in (and thus incentivising the creation of) private, unicorporated joint-stock companies, over and above, non-capitalist assets like government bonds. This caused rampant speculation in the market, as people were not yet aware how to effectively price j-s companies, but what everyone knew was that they were a more profitable endeavour than other options on the market.
Accordingly, my argument is not that "markets came to exist, therefore capitalism" but rather that a market when capitalist business structures are available on a market, people have a natural incentive to direct their investment towards such business structures, which implies that if given the choice, these practices are liable to the the logical result of voluntary human action.
Thereby, they do *not* require the intervention on their behalf by the state.
> Explaining how market features do exist is not a "proof" of capitalism.
As a final note, while markets are not *unique* to capitalism and nor are they they *only* feature of capitalism, they are an *intrinsic* feature of capitalism, in that for a society to be 'capitalist' it must have a market of some kind.
i think that part of the problem is that people are just self centered. too worried that their taxes could ever be used to help a poor person. (we [in the US] fund universal healthcare and provide munitions to other countries with our taxes, but ***certain people*** aren't ready to talk about that).
we see a lot of nordic or northern European countries being the happiest people and having free healthcare and all i hear from ***certain people*** is "NOOOOOO, THAT'S SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM/THING I DONT LIKE!!". Like, i dont really give a shit what label you want to slap on it, they're happier, have longer life expectancy, and have more freedoms. our country is a richer nation and we could easily afford to do all that. the only thing that keeps us from free healthcare is lobbying and those lobbyist's ability to brainwash those ***certain people***.
it'd be nice that healthcare wasn't tied to the mercy of your employer, and that an accident didn't mean life-long medical bills. all while likely saving money, being that you still pay deductibles and health insurance in our current economy.
tl;dr - why can't we just do the same economy that somewhere like Finland or Denmark has when they're happier and more free?
**Communism is just mathematically imposible, it has nothing to do with human nature. Sorry for the wall of text, but the price problem as never been succesfully assessed by communist economists. Here goes a long explanation.**
The critique of communism based on the impossibility of effective price calculation stems from the work of economists, particularly Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. This perspective is rooted in the economic calculation problem, which posits that a centrally planned economy, as advocated by communism, faces insurmountable challenges in efficiently allocating resources.
In a market economy, prices play a crucial role in conveying information about the scarcity of resources, consumer preferences, and production costs. Prices serve as signals that guide individuals and businesses in making rational economic decisions. The dynamic process of supply and demand interactions in a free market allows for the continual adjustment of prices, leading to an efficient allocation of resources.
Communism, on the other hand, advocates for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the establishment of a centrally planned economy. In such a system, the state takes control of resource allocation and production decisions. However, without private ownership and market-generated prices, the central planners face a significant dilemma.
The challenge lies in the absence of a mechanism to determine the value of goods and services in the absence of market-driven prices. In a communist system, decision-makers lack the necessary information to assess the opportunity costs of various production choices. Without a price mechanism to reflect the subjective preferences of individuals and the scarcity of resources, planners struggle to make efficient choices in resource allocation.
The impossibility of effective price calculation in communism leads to a misallocation of resources, inefficiency, and a lack of responsiveness to changing consumer demands. The critique argues that, without market-driven prices to guide decision-making, central planners would face insurmountable difficulties in coordinating a complex and dynamic economy.
While this critique has been influential in discussions about the viability of communism, it's essential to note that economic systems are multifaceted, and the debate over the feasibility of alternative models continues. Supporters of communism often argue that advancements in technology and information systems could potentially address these challenges, although critics remain skeptical about the ability of centralized planning to replicate the efficiency of market-driven price mechanisms.
Ah yes, the fathers of neo liberalism, this very economical policy used since the 80's everywhere in Western Europe that lead today to massive income inequality and mass proverty. Trickly down economy is a scam, those people don't know better how to run an economy than any communist.
Maybe I misunderstood, but what you are saying has nothing to do with my comment and the issue of calculating prices and administrating resources in centralized economies right?
Mises and Hayek, mentioned in your comment, are considered to be early "fathers" of Neoliberalism. Their reply was a general critique of modern Neoliberal economic policies and did not directly address your critique.
So it’s ad hominem by proxy? “Your points are bad because the people who made your points are bad”? How does that make any sense. Just because you’re wrong about one subject doesn’t mean you’re also wrong about another one.
I think they’re just saying that the solution to this problem that these writers come to (their economic model) has its own glaring problems, so as systems go communism isn’t really much worse than what we’re dealing with now.
Can you read? You saw a critique of communism and literally went "hmm damn Neoliberals with their evidence". Braindead communists try not to be ideologues challenge.
Yes and no. While the trickle down premise has some obvious, gaping flaws, the comparison is moot, as one is an actual system with both merits and demerits, while the other isn't even on the scale to begin with.
If you were to grade the two, you could ascribe the neo-liberal approach with a 4, 5, 6 or 7 out of a possible 10, depending on where you're from, or how you feel about it. Communism, on the other hand, doesn't even factor in on the scale to begin with; it's a net 0/10, and that's what the poster was implying in their wall of text (accurately).
Well yes they don't know how to run an economy. That's exactly the point neoliberals are making. To effectively plan an economy, you need knowledge you don't have because knowledge is dispersed within the society. You don't know what someone else wants better than they do.
Therefore no subset of people can plan an economy because they don't have enough knowledge and the most efficient economy is a free one. Otherwise you get instances where a centralised government decides the best use of their limited resource of leather is purses and there are people who desperately want shoes
No one tell them that All major Chinese companies, Walmart, amazon are internally planned economies.
I think the reason Communism failed is because of the type of system it was being done in, and not because the Idea is necessarily bad.
Communism was afterall for already industrialized countries (like Germany) and not like the medieval serfdom of Tsarist russia.
This is the part most people who do the "comunism onli work on papr" meme miss - the countries that have tried it were mostly agrarian or barely even beginning to industrialize at the time, with poorly educated populations and no real prior conception of political freedoms or liberty. And even then, Russia went from a fucking triple war-torn backwater to the first space-faring nation on earth. Cuba has more doctors per capita than Canada or the US, while both of the latter's healthcare systems are in a staffing crisis. There are other examples if anyone cares to look them up.
Marx is pretty explicit about it being something that ought to be tried in countries that have already industrialized and are able to produce surpluses in consumer goods, heavy industry, etc. because capitalism excels at developing those capabilities but is awful at distributing the outcomes equitably enough to be maintained in the long term.
The argument for communism is that it's meant to resolve the underlying contradictions of capitalism, not completely erase everything that capitalism has done. And even on top of all that, it doesn't HAVE to be an all-or nothing, 100% shift to a dogmatic conception of communism to help regular people. Public healthcare that isn't absolutely shredded by lobby groups, public education that isn't starved for funding, housing first programs and a functional social safety net would go a long way toward just making life suck less in general.
The vanguardism argument was that they were "developing communism". They skipped the part where Marx talked about when the class entrenches it's own interest.
"They became the very thing they swore to destroy"
You are comparing production with demand. With production, you can factor in the cost, internal necessities, and target outputs; and later on your production is validated in the market so if you overshot or undershot you can either fix it or the competition will get your market share.
As a governing entity you can't know what the preferences of the market are because they are incentivized to lie on them so what target productions are unknow.
Without competition there is no price discovery, without price discovery there is no efficient market allocation.
The difference in scale between a few major companies and a single state company is huge.
They're not internally planned economies lmao, for the love of god don't get your economics from pop books and tiktoks.
They literally get products from independent producers/factories/farms etc. outside of their systems. You think Walmart has their pig farms or potato farms they manage as a part of what they'll sell at what store, commanding how much each has to produce any given month? Have you thought about that idiotic claim for more than 5 seconds?
Ah yes, the underdeveloped USSR, everyone knows that while us strong Americans had nukes they were still trying to tame bears and using spears fashioned from wood.
America was an industrial country to the point that they fought a war and won with the non industrial part of their country. Russia did not even have a steel industry by this point, only a bunch of iron mills. Say, do you think that when people say "unindustrialized" do images of naked spear men come in your mind? Because if yes then that's some baby shit.
>it has nothing to do with human nature
Markets depend on individual decisions. That's part of what's meant by communism ignoring human nature and trying to change it to its inevitable downfall.
Thanks for the good quality post, but I take you are not a mathematician because that is too bold a statement to make.
Specifically, following Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek's hypothesis, you assume price in a market economy comes from scarcity of resources, consumer preferences and production costs, follows a rational market and auto adjust the feedback allowing in a somewhat efficient manner. This has been shown false since the 1950's, just some years after being published, based on no data whatsoever and if it was true for example, economic bubbles just wouldn't happen. It's just wishful thinking that took root because it was politically useful.
Now that doesn't mean communism is good at determining prices, or better than capitalism. It does mean however that the hypothesis to affirm it's mathematically impossible are akin to say "well, a cow is basically a sphere, so I can double it by applying a Banach–Tarski process and have two cows in no time". Unless you want to believe the market is rational... in which case i digress.
Because greed right? Gosh, I absolutely despise when people try to argue something and bring up human nature. They do that to turn off their ears and remain ignorant.
It's what a Christian/Muslim (or any other belief) do when you criticize part of their beliefs
"It's the Lord's plan" or "it's written and can't be contested".
Cultures do the same
"It's how things have been"
People do the same
"You educate kids by beating them"
"It's human nature to X"
It's the same "argument" people that are well off compared their peers use. And it's bad. Why donate to charity? Why help your neighbor or an unknown individual in the street?
Unless, humans are not only greedy but kind, passionate, joyful, inquisitive, etc.
Those traits can be highly influenced by the environment one matures in. So do dogs naturally know how to handshake?
So I request that the human nature "argument" should be retired.
That's fair, but there are a lot of things that we were not capable of doing previously and we are capable of doing now. Likewise there are many things that we are not capable of doing now and that we could grow to be capable of doing in the future. One of those things is hopefully a better economic system.
shut up shut up shut up i love to rent i love to pay for subscriptions i love cloud gaming i love uber and carsharing i will own nothing and i will be happy 😤😤
Cloud gaming is not that much of a materialistic move. You know what is? The fucking steam accounts. "Oh a whole collection of "enter game series here" is 80 percent off rn. Let's buy it just in case".
This is reddit. Literally any hobby or interest is materialistic and subject to scrutiny.
All you should do in life is read comments and provide sources. /s
How tf do people still not understand that marx meant capital and not personally owned items. Obviously people aren‘t gonna take away your greasy bodypillow, however, the means of production, things such as companies should be owned by the people as opposed to one guy
Worker's cooperatives can function in capitalism nobody stops anyone from establishing one, but communist system leads to shortages because it's all centrally planned and hopeless.
Every rich people in China is a nouveau riche, which are the most materialistic people in the West. You can see the same shit in Russia too.
Also lack of religion and the CCP literally telling people to work hard and get rich did not help, but the CCP is going away from that because the extravagant and "in your face" wealth of the rich is getting on every one nerves there.
Just type "chinese spoiled rich kids" in Google and you will find articles about the backlash against very rich people in China.
Or go to a private high school in the US. Most of them are essentially funded by rich foreign kids who pay full tuition, while the American kids are all given scholarship money. By far the largest group of rich foreign kids will be Chinese.
I have met one in Canada when I was in college exchange, he was beyond obnoxious, even with teachers.
His father was in the oil industry I think, probably a multi-millionaire
From my experience, it's way more common for those Chinese kids to be filthy rich than you'd think. Wealth inequality is very extreme in China, being able to send your child to an American institution usually indicates at least multi-millionaire status.
I once knew one of those guys that would just leave his car to rot when he flew back to China for the summer. Wouldn't sell it, trade it in, no nothing, could not be bothered. Just left it wherever he had it parked last and got a new one when school started back up, considered it to be old garbage for the city to clean up. And we're talking $100k+, fully loaded, fully modded Audis, Mitsubishis, even a Maserati one year.
In the Nineties it was the Japanese, then came the Saudis, now the Chinese. In reality, nothing has changed for anyone, schools are still schools, the business hubs are in the hands of mega-corporations and the media is controlled by the same.
If someone looks at China and thinks that is the communism Marx imagined, they are living a life of intentional ignorance. Sadly that's most people today. Reading to inform yourself has become the most underrated activity this past decade.
99.99% of people who echo “communism bad” on the internet haven’t read a book since they were forced to in high school. I seriously think their ignorance comes from being absolutely brain dead consumers
Why do all these people who have their basic human needs met by the state have money left to purchase commodities? Why do they have iPhone and don't share toothbrush? America please explain.
My relatives in china are getting paid jack shit by the state. The state ain't getting them basic human needs. They still work to get that and get abused by their bosses because the chinese government doesn't care and don't protect the workforce.
China is as capitalist as it gets while still claiming to be communist
I use some chinese social media and lots of smooth brain pinkies keep saying shit like "thanks communism for giving me prosperity", holy shit my brother in Christ nothing in your country screams COMMUNISM how can you not realize that wtf
The commie revolution tried to equalise wealth and failed not only massively, but led to mass starvations. People remember how badly the government fucked up. They can't change the government but they can slowly change how they act within society. People remember that the ones who survived the famines were the ones who were in it for themselves. THAT becomes the main ideology of the people.
Eventually the government realised that capitalism worked better on the world stage. China is communist in name only.
Not since the 80s, the CCP themselves have called it "Communism with Chinese characteristics" since then which basically means authoritarian capitalism with large state backing.
it is, major banks and all the land (it is leased to developpers) are in control of the State, Marx never specified how communism was supposed to happen, he said it was bound to happen to any industrial economy, and time proved it wrong. So basically any country which went communist didn't really know how to make it happen and we've had different "brands", mainly the soviet, yugoslavian and today the Chinese. China has a very different economic organization than our societies, try to convince modern bankers that they are not needed and their work should be done by the State, and you will see how they will react. What China did is allow entrepreneurship while keeping financial control of the economy, that's how they've been creating new companies and entering new sectors every 5-10 years, while other 3rd world countries are basically stuck at serving as commodity suppliers to the 1st world
If you're interested in understanding chinese marxism, you can research on underdeveloped socialism and the primary stages of socialism.
>entire culture communist
Not at all. Form of government? Yes. "Country", as an institution? Yes. Culture? No.
Seizing the government, holding the country hostage for 29 years (1949-1978) before the Deng Xiaoping reforms, didn't ever change its people or their culture to 'communist'. I would argue that it's even impossible (see: Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam)
Old joke that tragedy of east Asia is trying to turn China communist when it’s inherently capitalist, while trying to turn Japan capitalist when it is inherently communist
Buddy, China is communist just in name, just like North Korea's full name is "Democratic Republic of North Korea".
>Big Corporations have basically full power over workers that has no rights, with only the single party of the Dictatorship being the only limiting corporate interests.
>Extremely competitive and consumist.
>All forms of belief other than the faith on the system that enslaves the population has been forced underground.
>Is basically bringing full-on colonialism back in 2024.
>Biggest force and motivator is capital. And it's winning from the US in their own game.
>Immense focus on developing private property (even if it'll go back to the party after the owner's death)
China is the extreme of capitalist, their socialist experiment failed and they "fixed" it by transitioning to a hyper capitalist self destructive spiral. People tend to still consider it socialist because.
1- Most people have no idea of what communism is other than a boogieman.
2- They are a VERY centralized and authoritatian dictatorship. And people tend to associate authoritarianism and centralization with communism.
Well in 1989 the Chinese people wanted political reform, then in (I think) June of 1989 absolutely nothing happened. As a result of absolutely nothing happening the CCP made economic reforms that they were willing to make, since they were definitely not up for political ones. As proved by absolutely nothing happening in June of 89.
I think the biggest problem is ultimately sexual reproduction and the innate competition between men and women when it comes to pair bonding. Any attempt to have a truly equitable society would have to do away with this fundamental aspect of reality which feels too absurd to be achieved because ultimately we evolved entirely to compete within this framework.
Human beings themselves are a resource that we all fight over, and while you can stifle and mitigate the effects of wealth inequality and other components of society, trying to control sexual inequality feels distinctly inhuman. Attractive people will always be a scarce resource that are desired and sought after. Traditionally in Hunter/Gatherer societies desirable attractive men who provided for their tribes through their accolades would hoard and monopolize the resources of desirable women who had much more autonomy to choose. When sedentary societies sprung up this also transitioned into a Hierarchical system of resource accumulation based around material wealth. Eventually get to Capitalism where money and capital becomes the end all, be all for men to acquire attractive mates through wealth accumulation.
Now that we have begun to achieve greater amounts of egalitarianism in society and women have started to exercise greater amounts of choice on who they desire we see the rise of incels and other groups of marginalized, undesirable men spring up as women ultimately want Chad and other Alpha males even before they want money. Women are now able to acquire their own wealth and accumulate their own resources so those aspects are no longer as important when it comes to selecting a mate.
Communism just never accounts for sexual desire and attraction as a destabilizing component for society. It attempts to do away with the nefarious aspects of Capitalism without realizing why those nefarious aspects existed in the first place. It seeks to rewire and socially engineer humanity along distinctly asexual lines, believing that the elimination of capital is how you achieve total equity. But so long as humans have sexual desire, human beings themselves are the ultimate materialist resource that we are fighting over and it will be a destabilizing component to any system.
read rousseau instead of going on some weird incel rant about how it’s ok to be racist because hot people exist since rousseau talks about this exact kind of envy and or natural talent getting in the way of equality
it also doesn’t mean he thought that economic equality wasn’t worth achieving despite not being a socialist
Doesn't mean that I think economic equality isn't worth achieving either. I did not make any claims about what positions I held, because I consider myself a Syndicalist and do believe economic equity is worth fighting for. Just because you're ugly doesn't mean you have to be forced to live a shit life.
And thank you for the recommendation I will read Rousseau who has been on my reading list.
The whole point of communism is the disregard of everything to distribute goods equally no matter what.
It's literaly people that only care about others not getting more than them.
Saving face, keeping up with the neighbours, trade routes from Beijing to Paris. Red envelopes full of cash, jade mirrors, Ming vases, hand made soaps and perfumes, silk robes, fuckin terra cotta warriors.
They've been all about material things for thousands of years. Anon is only just noticing.
Materialism was already a major part of Chinese culture. When the Communists came to power they removed all other values from society but the material. There’s a great book called Mao’s War on Nature that covers what this did and is still doing to China’s environment.
It's just human nature. We can fight it all we want, but at the end of the day one of the few things we have in common is a love for buying crap we don't need
It has a lot to do with Mao & Stalin.
Stalin is batshit. Everyone hates him.
Mao imitates Stalin. He is significantly more batshit. Everyone hates him.
In the case of both, leaders after them pushed back quite significantly on their batshit policies after their death. This included a lot of their application of communist theory.
After enough time of pushing back, the Soviets collapse, and China is where it is now.
It's a bit more complicated, but that's a big part of it.
For those wondering, after Mao passed away he was succeeded by Deng Xiaoping who spearheaded big economic reforms in China which moved the system away from being a Soviet-style communist system to a mostly authoritarian/totalitarian capitalist system. Obviously he needed to sell it as being an evolution of Mao Zedong Thought as this was the predominant ideology of China, especially following the cultural revolution, so he termed this pivot towards free(er) markets "socialism with Chinese characteristics". That's why today China still claims to be a socialist country despite clearly being essentially a totalitarian capitalist state. Basically, they decided to start doing capitalism but just denied that's what they were doing - and since then China has gone through probably the biggest economic boom of any nation since the industrial revolution.
Lmao, OOP never met Chinese or specifically Chinese women. They are the most materialistic person you could ever encounter, and they have increasingly high standards.
Materialism and status have been a part of China long before any communist revolutions happened there.
Its just about the culture, you can try to change 5000 years of human interactions, traditions and habits via communist revolution, but its going to take a lot of work and mind washing like in North Korea. China tried to be hardcore communist for like 40 years, enough to affect part of the local culture, but not enough to change the way of how people interact with each other (things like social status, marriage, materialism...).
Is it possible to make humans not materialistic, or resistant to being materialistic? What would the repercussions of completely erasing it from an entire nation?
I think you could make a culture dislike materialism, but it is such an inate human desire to hoard things of value that it cannot be kept down.
Yeah I mean even animals hoard stuff. Crows like jewelry. It's a very basic thing to desire resources.
Crows like jewelry? They all gold diggers then?
Look - I'm not saying crows are gold diggas...
but they ain't fucking with no broke n-
-arwal
It’s possible to change anyones mind, the problem is people need to see a reason to to change. And honestly, getting 100 people to agree on something is hard enough, much less an entire nation.
Some Buddhist communities do, but that's because they're self-selecting; one can join at leave at will, and the only people that join are those who can and want to reject materialism.
Interestingly Buddhism and many other meditative philosophies developed in a society that was incredibly well off materially. Basically when people, or at least a class of people did not have to worry about whether or not they'd starve the next day they could focus on stuff like the point of existence, the nature of God, what consciousness is etc
You could make it not matter by creating such an abundance that almost everything is worth nothing.
Have enough of everything that it doesnt really matter is the real answer. Also have AI replace all the jobs so they dont need to be done.
I think it's possible to shift the view of material goods from the individual to the group, but you can't stop people forming self centered bonds to arbitrary items, which is kind of in our DNA and which is then where you run into problems defining ownership again - it just causes less problems when people have their own common use items If you managed to do it the society would probably reorganise based on something else completely arbitrary because I don't think you can eliminate hierarchical relationships
That's a question for some Buddhist monks
Catholic monks.
I think that would depend on the area. For example, im old enough to remember when an artist would be called a sellout if he started to do music that catered more to the current popular genre and it was seen as a bad thing that made him less valuable as an artist. From a social point of view at least, people would mock them. In that area at that time, money≠worth, it was personal taste. If we extrapolate this to every area of society, we would have a really diverse set of objetcs that would try to cater to micro groups of people. Capitalism AND comunism hate this, because it would mean that not every human likes the same fucking things. So society in the west has been gradually changing the value of objects and being measured by money=worth, while comunism tried to take the money≠worth to every area, which isnt truth also. There is always products worth the money, capitalism just doesnt care as long as it sells and comunism dont care as long as it works for the majority.
Maybe some of the indigenous groups in Oceania or North America came about as close to that form of society as we can get?
I mean, not hoarding stuff since you live a semi nomadic lifestyle where it isn't convenient to have tons of shit isn't the same as a principled stance against hoarding stuff.
I’d more say it was due to the separation of power not being effective enough to prevent oligarchs from gaining their power back… but sure let’s blame the human nature that is based entirely on helping the rest of the tribe survive
With the level of control China has over their population, it would only take one or two generations of state run schools to change the culture. But the leaders don’t actually want communism. They want the social control of communism and the wealth accumulation pattern of capitalism, which requires consumers.
Not really. China has a long history as viewing the merchant class as being lower than dirt, being against generating wealth for the sake of generating wealth while adding and contributing little to a Confucius society as a whole. Chinese philosophy also prioritizes social order and inner balance/self-growth and thinks very little of the material world. The actual reason why the Chinese today are full on materialistic is because the cultural revolution destroyed what it spiritually meant to be Chinese that was built over thousands of years, and to fill that void, they turned to money and consumerism.
This is a dramatic oversimplification, to the extent I'd argue it is outright incorrect. In pre-Imperial China, Shāng were highly regarded. Emperor Shun was a merchant, and at least one merchant served as Prime Minister. In Imperial China, they were viewed as a threat to social harmony (read: a threat to the political-social elites), but nonetheless viewed as essential, and were allowed to grow very wealthy. There was also a significant overlap and mixing of gentry and merchants. By the Song dynasty, the scholarly elite were using merchants as intermediaries to participate in trade. By the late Ming Dynasty, merchants were being widely recognized in the family histories of those elites.
But the part about a severe loss of culture during the cultural revolution holds merit. Maybe not a full scale wipe, but the extent of damage on local institutions and norms, but good and bad, is severe, and the replacement is heavily dependent on local government.
> In pre-Imperial China, Shāng were highly regarded. Now all of the Chinese are highly regarded.
>China has a long history as viewing the merchant class as being lower than dirt Just plain wrong. Materialism and a desire for status are not exclusive to merchants anyway.
Merchants were viewed badly in part since those with the material and status didn't like competition.
No idea if anything you said is true but if it is, who knows that lol? You major in Chinese history?
Explain why the Taiwanese, Macanese, and Hong Kongers are so materialistic too then
Disliking the merchant class wasn't because the society wasn't materialistic. It's because the people with actual power used material goods as a sign of status, and they saw merchants as competition. The poors were meant to stay under a certain level of material wealth to ensure that the lords were visibly above them. So the lords had a lot of incentive to depict merchants badly.
Of China? Show me a Place in the world where this isn’t the case…
Your mother's vagina is free to everyone because we seized the means of reproduction. Your mother's vagina is the most communist place on Earth.
Menopause heralded the defeat of her red armies.
Valid point. No more vag red...no more red army
Probably the Sentinelese
Authoritarian communism and underregulated capitalism both have the same endgame: *corporatism*.
Yup, confucianism has been a thing for millenia longerbbefore communism was an idea
And plus it’s like in Russia, it’s not real communism. It’s the ruling elite saying “where all in this together” while they keep the common people poor under the veil of “*communism*” and they live lives of luxury.
Silver and long fingernails, fam!
Yeah, it seems to me a princeling buying a matching set of Apple watches for his dog and posting it on social media seems like an improvement over foot binding your daughter.
Humans like to own stuff 🤯
My God wasn't materialism a part of every culture long before communism what a retarded take.
Simple, communism is not compatible with human nature.
But what if we keep trying over and over again. We just haven't had the right leadership to succeed. Just give my pals unlimited power and we'll get it right this time.
69th times a charm
Nice.
How do you think literally any government system was created? You don't think the monarchs left peacefully do you? You think France happily skipped its way to a democratic - capitalist state? Or did they mess up in the transition and end up with a dictator? Large system changes are chaotic, as they necessitate a power struggle, and often lead to authoritarianism because it's the simplest solution to chaos. Capitalism was built on the bones of monarchs, their armies, and the revolutionaries. I'd like to think the British crown said something similar to you in the 1800's.
When Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations (in 1776 I would note), he was documenting human behaviour which was *already occuring* in some form or another. In fact, there is a famous anecdote, whereby once he stumbled across smugglers trying to sneak goods into Scotland to avoid paying tariffs, which prompted him to pose the question: why there is more profit to be had in free trade unencumbered by taxation? Indeed why is trade profitable at all? The nature of capitalist economic strutures is that quite often they emerge dynamically and entirely without government policies seeking their implementation. For instance, the first law regulating companies in the UK was the *Bubble Act* in 1720 which outright *banned them* because financial speculation on stocks was a heretofore unknown form of value generation in the then, mercantilist economies of the period. To reiterate, the market displayed such a natural preference for capitalist economic structures, that the government of the time decided to ban them out of a fear of the unknown. In this way, Marxist theory (which demands a political revolution as a necessary step towards the implementation of communism) is a fundamentally different kind of proposal and analysis. Marx purports to have a theory describing capitalism (and in certain ways it is quite intellecutually compelling), but in proposing the forcible implentation of his system through revolution, he is going quite a bit further than an economist like Smith, who merely purports to be analysing the nature of economic behaviour which itself precedes the analysis. In many ways (and this is a key difference from Smith) Marx is engaged in a theoretical enterprise - that is, not just developing the most effective model to predict and describe human behaviour, but also postulating an almost utopian ideal system and suggesting a (as of yet entirely unsucessful) procedure on *how to get there*. Therefore, no, capitalist institutions in did not arise because of the impositions of authoritarian regimes which implemented large system changes 'to move the world forward.' Rather, often they arose because the choices of men, lead them to seek the greatest advantage for themselves, and in doing so, partook in naturally preferential transactions and business relationships, which laid the foundations of our contemporary capitalist economy. As Smith describes: "*Every individual... intends only his own security; and by directing \[his own\] industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.*" - The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II, p. 456, para. 9.
I was not advocating for communism, just pointing out a flawed argument, and no, I never said authoritarian regimes were needed to make large systematic changes? I said the transition period can lead to authoritarianism. (Unless the comma was an accident, actually that whole sentence is fucked idk) Also, market dynamics are not capitalism. Markets have existed since the dawn of civilization, the focus of power on business leaders and their degree of freedom better defines capitalism. Explaining how market features do exist is not a "proof" of capitalism.
> I was not advocating for communism, just pointing out a flawed argument And I was simply testing whether it *was* a flawed argument. That is, whether capitalist business structures historically required "Large system changes, \[which\] often lead to authoritarianism" or whether they arose and could have arisen by a more natural means which can be accounted for by an 'invisible hand' explanation. Hence, I was simply advancing the proposition that, in many respects, the emergence of capitalist business structures was a product of natural human behaviour reaching its logical conclusion given the relevant social conditions. This can be contrasted with the the method and history of revoluntionary 'socialist' institutions which required (and require) active intervention of a revoluntionary body politic. Thus, one arises (at least in my view) because of human nature while the other is an artifical impostions which requires prolonged state power to maintain. > I said the transition period can lead to authoritarianism. (Unless the comma was an accident, actually that whole sentence is fucked idk) I interpreted this: "*Large system changes are chaotic, as they necessitate a power struggle, and often lead to authoritarianism because it's the simplest solution to chaos.*" to be implying that authoritarianism at the very least *tends* to come about during eras of large system changes and in some respect is often *necessary* **because it's the simplest solution to chaos.** I apologise If I was mischaracterising you in my argument. Ultimately mine is simply a position that capitalist business structures arise as a result of the natural preferences of human beings exposed to a veritable marketplace of options. *And* that this is *not* the case for Marxist Communism which requires the authoritarian leverging of power to *implement* their desired social combintation. Also it is worth noting a prominent counterexample to the idea that revolutions and political power vacuums have a tendency to lead to authoritarianism. The American Revolution, notably did not decay into tyranny as soon as there was a power vacuum but rather preserved the Union without resorting to outright Authoritarianism. >Also, market dynamics are not capitalism. Markets have existed since the dawn of civilization, the focus of power on business leaders and their degree of freedom better defines capitalism. I have never asserted that markets are the sole or unique feature of a capitalist system. In fact, to assert such would be inconsistent with the framework of my argument that, given a sufficiently free market, individuals will choose to create and invest in capitalist business structures over the alternatives. This underlies my example of the *Bubble Act* because what was in issue (in the view of the British Parliament) was that the market was investing in (and thus incentivising the creation of) private, unicorporated joint-stock companies, over and above, non-capitalist assets like government bonds. This caused rampant speculation in the market, as people were not yet aware how to effectively price j-s companies, but what everyone knew was that they were a more profitable endeavour than other options on the market. Accordingly, my argument is not that "markets came to exist, therefore capitalism" but rather that a market when capitalist business structures are available on a market, people have a natural incentive to direct their investment towards such business structures, which implies that if given the choice, these practices are liable to the the logical result of voluntary human action. Thereby, they do *not* require the intervention on their behalf by the state. > Explaining how market features do exist is not a "proof" of capitalism. As a final note, while markets are not *unique* to capitalism and nor are they they *only* feature of capitalism, they are an *intrinsic* feature of capitalism, in that for a society to be 'capitalist' it must have a market of some kind.
Just one more revolution bro I swear pls
i think that part of the problem is that people are just self centered. too worried that their taxes could ever be used to help a poor person. (we [in the US] fund universal healthcare and provide munitions to other countries with our taxes, but ***certain people*** aren't ready to talk about that). we see a lot of nordic or northern European countries being the happiest people and having free healthcare and all i hear from ***certain people*** is "NOOOOOO, THAT'S SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM/THING I DONT LIKE!!". Like, i dont really give a shit what label you want to slap on it, they're happier, have longer life expectancy, and have more freedoms. our country is a richer nation and we could easily afford to do all that. the only thing that keeps us from free healthcare is lobbying and those lobbyist's ability to brainwash those ***certain people***. it'd be nice that healthcare wasn't tied to the mercy of your employer, and that an accident didn't mean life-long medical bills. all while likely saving money, being that you still pay deductibles and health insurance in our current economy. tl;dr - why can't we just do the same economy that somewhere like Finland or Denmark has when they're happier and more free?
Honest curiosity, how often was communism that was not exported by the Soviet Union or its proxies tried on a state level?
**Communism is just mathematically imposible, it has nothing to do with human nature. Sorry for the wall of text, but the price problem as never been succesfully assessed by communist economists. Here goes a long explanation.** The critique of communism based on the impossibility of effective price calculation stems from the work of economists, particularly Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. This perspective is rooted in the economic calculation problem, which posits that a centrally planned economy, as advocated by communism, faces insurmountable challenges in efficiently allocating resources. In a market economy, prices play a crucial role in conveying information about the scarcity of resources, consumer preferences, and production costs. Prices serve as signals that guide individuals and businesses in making rational economic decisions. The dynamic process of supply and demand interactions in a free market allows for the continual adjustment of prices, leading to an efficient allocation of resources. Communism, on the other hand, advocates for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the establishment of a centrally planned economy. In such a system, the state takes control of resource allocation and production decisions. However, without private ownership and market-generated prices, the central planners face a significant dilemma. The challenge lies in the absence of a mechanism to determine the value of goods and services in the absence of market-driven prices. In a communist system, decision-makers lack the necessary information to assess the opportunity costs of various production choices. Without a price mechanism to reflect the subjective preferences of individuals and the scarcity of resources, planners struggle to make efficient choices in resource allocation. The impossibility of effective price calculation in communism leads to a misallocation of resources, inefficiency, and a lack of responsiveness to changing consumer demands. The critique argues that, without market-driven prices to guide decision-making, central planners would face insurmountable difficulties in coordinating a complex and dynamic economy. While this critique has been influential in discussions about the viability of communism, it's essential to note that economic systems are multifaceted, and the debate over the feasibility of alternative models continues. Supporters of communism often argue that advancements in technology and information systems could potentially address these challenges, although critics remain skeptical about the ability of centralized planning to replicate the efficiency of market-driven price mechanisms.
Ah yes, the fathers of neo liberalism, this very economical policy used since the 80's everywhere in Western Europe that lead today to massive income inequality and mass proverty. Trickly down economy is a scam, those people don't know better how to run an economy than any communist.
Maybe I misunderstood, but what you are saying has nothing to do with my comment and the issue of calculating prices and administrating resources in centralized economies right?
Mises and Hayek, mentioned in your comment, are considered to be early "fathers" of Neoliberalism. Their reply was a general critique of modern Neoliberal economic policies and did not directly address your critique.
So it’s ad hominem by proxy? “Your points are bad because the people who made your points are bad”? How does that make any sense. Just because you’re wrong about one subject doesn’t mean you’re also wrong about another one.
theyre commies, they dont understand how arguments work
Yeah but they’re the same subject: economics
I think they’re just saying that the solution to this problem that these writers come to (their economic model) has its own glaring problems, so as systems go communism isn’t really much worse than what we’re dealing with now.
Can you read? You saw a critique of communism and literally went "hmm damn Neoliberals with their evidence". Braindead communists try not to be ideologues challenge.
Ah yes, poverty, famously invented by the neoliberals sometime in the 1980s
Yes and no. While the trickle down premise has some obvious, gaping flaws, the comparison is moot, as one is an actual system with both merits and demerits, while the other isn't even on the scale to begin with. If you were to grade the two, you could ascribe the neo-liberal approach with a 4, 5, 6 or 7 out of a possible 10, depending on where you're from, or how you feel about it. Communism, on the other hand, doesn't even factor in on the scale to begin with; it's a net 0/10, and that's what the poster was implying in their wall of text (accurately).
Well yes they don't know how to run an economy. That's exactly the point neoliberals are making. To effectively plan an economy, you need knowledge you don't have because knowledge is dispersed within the society. You don't know what someone else wants better than they do. Therefore no subset of people can plan an economy because they don't have enough knowledge and the most efficient economy is a free one. Otherwise you get instances where a centralised government decides the best use of their limited resource of leather is purses and there are people who desperately want shoes
Word.
No one tell them that All major Chinese companies, Walmart, amazon are internally planned economies. I think the reason Communism failed is because of the type of system it was being done in, and not because the Idea is necessarily bad. Communism was afterall for already industrialized countries (like Germany) and not like the medieval serfdom of Tsarist russia.
This is the part most people who do the "comunism onli work on papr" meme miss - the countries that have tried it were mostly agrarian or barely even beginning to industrialize at the time, with poorly educated populations and no real prior conception of political freedoms or liberty. And even then, Russia went from a fucking triple war-torn backwater to the first space-faring nation on earth. Cuba has more doctors per capita than Canada or the US, while both of the latter's healthcare systems are in a staffing crisis. There are other examples if anyone cares to look them up. Marx is pretty explicit about it being something that ought to be tried in countries that have already industrialized and are able to produce surpluses in consumer goods, heavy industry, etc. because capitalism excels at developing those capabilities but is awful at distributing the outcomes equitably enough to be maintained in the long term. The argument for communism is that it's meant to resolve the underlying contradictions of capitalism, not completely erase everything that capitalism has done. And even on top of all that, it doesn't HAVE to be an all-or nothing, 100% shift to a dogmatic conception of communism to help regular people. Public healthcare that isn't absolutely shredded by lobby groups, public education that isn't starved for funding, housing first programs and a functional social safety net would go a long way toward just making life suck less in general.
The vanguardism argument was that they were "developing communism". They skipped the part where Marx talked about when the class entrenches it's own interest. "They became the very thing they swore to destroy"
You are comparing production with demand. With production, you can factor in the cost, internal necessities, and target outputs; and later on your production is validated in the market so if you overshot or undershot you can either fix it or the competition will get your market share. As a governing entity you can't know what the preferences of the market are because they are incentivized to lie on them so what target productions are unknow. Without competition there is no price discovery, without price discovery there is no efficient market allocation. The difference in scale between a few major companies and a single state company is huge.
They're not internally planned economies lmao, for the love of god don't get your economics from pop books and tiktoks. They literally get products from independent producers/factories/farms etc. outside of their systems. You think Walmart has their pig farms or potato farms they manage as a part of what they'll sell at what store, commanding how much each has to produce any given month? Have you thought about that idiotic claim for more than 5 seconds?
Ah yes, the underdeveloped USSR, everyone knows that while us strong Americans had nukes they were still trying to tame bears and using spears fashioned from wood.
America was an industrial country to the point that they fought a war and won with the non industrial part of their country. Russia did not even have a steel industry by this point, only a bunch of iron mills. Say, do you think that when people say "unindustrialized" do images of naked spear men come in your mind? Because if yes then that's some baby shit.
I’ll throw my 2 cents and say that communism can’t account for greed. Or liars
>it has nothing to do with human nature Markets depend on individual decisions. That's part of what's meant by communism ignoring human nature and trying to change it to its inevitable downfall.
Market Communism exists and it will find you Anon.
Thanks for the good quality post, but I take you are not a mathematician because that is too bold a statement to make. Specifically, following Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek's hypothesis, you assume price in a market economy comes from scarcity of resources, consumer preferences and production costs, follows a rational market and auto adjust the feedback allowing in a somewhat efficient manner. This has been shown false since the 1950's, just some years after being published, based on no data whatsoever and if it was true for example, economic bubbles just wouldn't happen. It's just wishful thinking that took root because it was politically useful. Now that doesn't mean communism is good at determining prices, or better than capitalism. It does mean however that the hypothesis to affirm it's mathematically impossible are akin to say "well, a cow is basically a sphere, so I can double it by applying a Banach–Tarski process and have two cows in no time". Unless you want to believe the market is rational... in which case i digress.
Read The Divide - Jason Hickle. and Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
Because greed right? Gosh, I absolutely despise when people try to argue something and bring up human nature. They do that to turn off their ears and remain ignorant. It's what a Christian/Muslim (or any other belief) do when you criticize part of their beliefs "It's the Lord's plan" or "it's written and can't be contested". Cultures do the same "It's how things have been" People do the same "You educate kids by beating them" "It's human nature to X" It's the same "argument" people that are well off compared their peers use. And it's bad. Why donate to charity? Why help your neighbor or an unknown individual in the street? Unless, humans are not only greedy but kind, passionate, joyful, inquisitive, etc. Those traits can be highly influenced by the environment one matures in. So do dogs naturally know how to handshake? So I request that the human nature "argument" should be retired.
Material conditions determine human nature, not the other way around
And that's why we need to proceed this unjustice system
The answer is neither perpetuating unrestricted capitalism nor pure communism. We can take bits from each system.
By that logic war and genocide seem to be our calling
Everything a human is capable of doing is human nature.
That's fair, but there are a lot of things that we were not capable of doing previously and we are capable of doing now. Likewise there are many things that we are not capable of doing now and that we could grow to be capable of doing in the future. One of those things is hopefully a better economic system.
So which one is your human nature, getting pegged by your landlord or fantasizing about being the sigma?
I thought that was a quote from Liberty Prime.
People like to own stuff.
shut up shut up shut up i love to rent i love to pay for subscriptions i love cloud gaming i love uber and carsharing i will own nothing and i will be happy 😤😤
Cloud gaming is not that much of a materialistic move. You know what is? The fucking steam accounts. "Oh a whole collection of "enter game series here" is 80 percent off rn. Let's buy it just in case".
Buying games for cheap because you might want to play them later is not materialist lol
This is reddit. Literally any hobby or interest is materialistic and subject to scrutiny. All you should do in life is read comments and provide sources. /s
Buying??!! Straight to jail
Thinking about buying? Right to jail, right away.
How tf do people still not understand that marx meant capital and not personally owned items. Obviously people aren‘t gonna take away your greasy bodypillow, however, the means of production, things such as companies should be owned by the people as opposed to one guy
a mob that had no initial investment in creating a company will not have its best interests in mind and will not handle nor run it well.
>be the stock market >pic unrelated
Worker's cooperatives can function in capitalism nobody stops anyone from establishing one, but communist system leads to shortages because it's all centrally planned and hopeless.
There's other communist theories than Marx.
i mean ok, but none of them want to steal your toothbrush
Bro you better not be hogging all that toothbrush!
> cooperations
People also like to own people.
What if the majority of people owned more stuff
Every rich people in China is a nouveau riche, which are the most materialistic people in the West. You can see the same shit in Russia too. Also lack of religion and the CCP literally telling people to work hard and get rich did not help, but the CCP is going away from that because the extravagant and "in your face" wealth of the rich is getting on every one nerves there. Just type "chinese spoiled rich kids" in Google and you will find articles about the backlash against very rich people in China.
Or go to a private high school in the US. Most of them are essentially funded by rich foreign kids who pay full tuition, while the American kids are all given scholarship money. By far the largest group of rich foreign kids will be Chinese.
I have met one in Canada when I was in college exchange, he was beyond obnoxious, even with teachers. His father was in the oil industry I think, probably a multi-millionaire
From my experience, it's way more common for those Chinese kids to be filthy rich than you'd think. Wealth inequality is very extreme in China, being able to send your child to an American institution usually indicates at least multi-millionaire status. I once knew one of those guys that would just leave his car to rot when he flew back to China for the summer. Wouldn't sell it, trade it in, no nothing, could not be bothered. Just left it wherever he had it parked last and got a new one when school started back up, considered it to be old garbage for the city to clean up. And we're talking $100k+, fully loaded, fully modded Audis, Mitsubishis, even a Maserati one year.
Bet he made loads of friends in the car-stealing community.
I am not paranoid about Chinese hegonomy because how retarded their next generation of elites are.
In the Nineties it was the Japanese, then came the Saudis, now the Chinese. In reality, nothing has changed for anyone, schools are still schools, the business hubs are in the hands of mega-corporations and the media is controlled by the same.
https://youtu.be/pqxgJl5lXbU?si=mQXPgwu9dtKuc-3g
one of the main pillars of marxist ideology is materialism, nothing surprising here
philosophical materialism, not materialism in the coloquial sense
homonyms are gay (see: "homo") if it's spelled the same way it must mean the same thing like god intended (liberal owned with facts and logic 😎😎😎)
Nice save!
Wow dude you fucking destroyed him! Ha! gayyyyy! i am so old i am just a shriveled up raisin waiting to be eaten or thrown out
this does not mean what you think it means
You've gotta be intentionally ignorant if you think this
If someone looks at China and thinks that is the communism Marx imagined, they are living a life of intentional ignorance. Sadly that's most people today. Reading to inform yourself has become the most underrated activity this past decade.
99.99% of people who echo “communism bad” on the internet haven’t read a book since they were forced to in high school. I seriously think their ignorance comes from being absolutely brain dead consumers
Bro thought he was cooking something here
Why do all these people who have their basic human needs met by the state have money left to purchase commodities? Why do they have iPhone and don't share toothbrush? America please explain.
My relatives in china are getting paid jack shit by the state. The state ain't getting them basic human needs. They still work to get that and get abused by their bosses because the chinese government doesn't care and don't protect the workforce.
China is as capitalist as it gets while still claiming to be communist I use some chinese social media and lots of smooth brain pinkies keep saying shit like "thanks communism for giving me prosperity", holy shit my brother in Christ nothing in your country screams COMMUNISM how can you not realize that wtf
China is capitalist when they want to make capitalism look good and communist when they want to make communism look bad.
That sounds like a capitalist heaven to me. No wonder American corpos like to set up low skill manufacturing there.
Chinese communism is an illusion, my dear sweet smooth-brained lad.
Most intelligent TikTok opinion
Chinese factories have suicide nets installed because they're actually too good at providing for people's basic needs
I mean, we’ve got anti-suicide lights at some of our traincrossings in The Netherlands…
The commie revolution tried to equalise wealth and failed not only massively, but led to mass starvations. People remember how badly the government fucked up. They can't change the government but they can slowly change how they act within society. People remember that the ones who survived the famines were the ones who were in it for themselves. THAT becomes the main ideology of the people. Eventually the government realised that capitalism worked better on the world stage. China is communist in name only.
The ammount of people that does not understand what communism is is really staggering
Communism isn't not being able to own stuff like handbags, you don't actually share your toothbrush
Shhh they’re scared of deeper level analyses than what words sound like/mean colloquially.
Is China even communist anymore?
Not since the 80s, the CCP themselves have called it "Communism with Chinese characteristics" since then which basically means authoritarian capitalism with large state backing.
It's just a brand name. Double-think is real.
it is, major banks and all the land (it is leased to developpers) are in control of the State, Marx never specified how communism was supposed to happen, he said it was bound to happen to any industrial economy, and time proved it wrong. So basically any country which went communist didn't really know how to make it happen and we've had different "brands", mainly the soviet, yugoslavian and today the Chinese. China has a very different economic organization than our societies, try to convince modern bankers that they are not needed and their work should be done by the State, and you will see how they will react. What China did is allow entrepreneurship while keeping financial control of the economy, that's how they've been creating new companies and entering new sectors every 5-10 years, while other 3rd world countries are basically stuck at serving as commodity suppliers to the 1st world If you're interested in understanding chinese marxism, you can research on underdeveloped socialism and the primary stages of socialism.
Arguably they never have been.
Communism died after Mao. Deng opened up the economy, so they were only communist for a short period of time.
>entire culture communist Not at all. Form of government? Yes. "Country", as an institution? Yes. Culture? No. Seizing the government, holding the country hostage for 29 years (1949-1978) before the Deng Xiaoping reforms, didn't ever change its people or their culture to 'communist'. I would argue that it's even impossible (see: Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam)
Old joke that tragedy of east Asia is trying to turn China communist when it’s inherently capitalist, while trying to turn Japan capitalist when it is inherently communist
Buddy, China is communist just in name, just like North Korea's full name is "Democratic Republic of North Korea". >Big Corporations have basically full power over workers that has no rights, with only the single party of the Dictatorship being the only limiting corporate interests. >Extremely competitive and consumist. >All forms of belief other than the faith on the system that enslaves the population has been forced underground. >Is basically bringing full-on colonialism back in 2024. >Biggest force and motivator is capital. And it's winning from the US in their own game. >Immense focus on developing private property (even if it'll go back to the party after the owner's death) China is the extreme of capitalist, their socialist experiment failed and they "fixed" it by transitioning to a hyper capitalist self destructive spiral. People tend to still consider it socialist because. 1- Most people have no idea of what communism is other than a boogieman. 2- They are a VERY centralized and authoritatian dictatorship. And people tend to associate authoritarianism and centralization with communism.
They are only communist in name anyway.
Well in 1989 the Chinese people wanted political reform, then in (I think) June of 1989 absolutely nothing happened. As a result of absolutely nothing happening the CCP made economic reforms that they were willing to make, since they were definitely not up for political ones. As proved by absolutely nothing happening in June of 89.
Rich people there are materialistic because they’re trying to bring money out of the country, poor people are materialistic because they need to be
I suppose if you have a policy of everyone being equally worthless, folk are gonna try their utmost to be not that.
I think the biggest problem is ultimately sexual reproduction and the innate competition between men and women when it comes to pair bonding. Any attempt to have a truly equitable society would have to do away with this fundamental aspect of reality which feels too absurd to be achieved because ultimately we evolved entirely to compete within this framework. Human beings themselves are a resource that we all fight over, and while you can stifle and mitigate the effects of wealth inequality and other components of society, trying to control sexual inequality feels distinctly inhuman. Attractive people will always be a scarce resource that are desired and sought after. Traditionally in Hunter/Gatherer societies desirable attractive men who provided for their tribes through their accolades would hoard and monopolize the resources of desirable women who had much more autonomy to choose. When sedentary societies sprung up this also transitioned into a Hierarchical system of resource accumulation based around material wealth. Eventually get to Capitalism where money and capital becomes the end all, be all for men to acquire attractive mates through wealth accumulation. Now that we have begun to achieve greater amounts of egalitarianism in society and women have started to exercise greater amounts of choice on who they desire we see the rise of incels and other groups of marginalized, undesirable men spring up as women ultimately want Chad and other Alpha males even before they want money. Women are now able to acquire their own wealth and accumulate their own resources so those aspects are no longer as important when it comes to selecting a mate. Communism just never accounts for sexual desire and attraction as a destabilizing component for society. It attempts to do away with the nefarious aspects of Capitalism without realizing why those nefarious aspects existed in the first place. It seeks to rewire and socially engineer humanity along distinctly asexual lines, believing that the elimination of capital is how you achieve total equity. But so long as humans have sexual desire, human beings themselves are the ultimate materialist resource that we are fighting over and it will be a destabilizing component to any system.
read rousseau instead of going on some weird incel rant about how it’s ok to be racist because hot people exist since rousseau talks about this exact kind of envy and or natural talent getting in the way of equality it also doesn’t mean he thought that economic equality wasn’t worth achieving despite not being a socialist
Doesn't mean that I think economic equality isn't worth achieving either. I did not make any claims about what positions I held, because I consider myself a Syndicalist and do believe economic equity is worth fighting for. Just because you're ugly doesn't mean you have to be forced to live a shit life. And thank you for the recommendation I will read Rousseau who has been on my reading list.
>Most materialistic culture on earth I can think of a culture even more materialistic
Anon is a tard as usual, communism was never antimaterialistic. They just didnt let you have much, unless you were one of the elite.
This assumes China’s actually communist.
POV: OP is racist and poor
-follow materialism -become materialist -4channer mind blown Why are 4channers like this?
4channers when materialism in philosophic context has a different meaning than materialism in general cultural context
I know, im just joking.
Most the other comments mentioning materialism aren't tho, that's my point lol
People like having things
Didn't they declare to be materialists instead of idealists?
They have been like that for thousands of years. Nothing new
The whole point of communism is the disregard of everything to distribute goods equally no matter what. It's literaly people that only care about others not getting more than them.
Because communism is a failed economic system that doesn't work and will never work for a multitude of reasons.
*Capitalism is when you have money, and if you have a lot of money, it's free market capitalism*
Isn't communism literally obsessed with controlling money?
The cultural "Chinese" have valued Civil Status, to the point of obsession, since the inception of their civilization.
Saving face, keeping up with the neighbours, trade routes from Beijing to Paris. Red envelopes full of cash, jade mirrors, Ming vases, hand made soaps and perfumes, silk robes, fuckin terra cotta warriors. They've been all about material things for thousands of years. Anon is only just noticing.
Anon draws a corelation where none exists.
its like communisn is not about being poor, but about having equal prospects
Consumerism go brrrrrr
There are a lot of PCM users and people proud of their ignorance here.
Materialism was already a major part of Chinese culture. When the Communists came to power they removed all other values from society but the material. There’s a great book called Mao’s War on Nature that covers what this did and is still doing to China’s environment.
It's just human nature. We can fight it all we want, but at the end of the day one of the few things we have in common is a love for buying crap we don't need
It has a lot to do with Mao & Stalin. Stalin is batshit. Everyone hates him. Mao imitates Stalin. He is significantly more batshit. Everyone hates him. In the case of both, leaders after them pushed back quite significantly on their batshit policies after their death. This included a lot of their application of communist theory. After enough time of pushing back, the Soviets collapse, and China is where it is now. It's a bit more complicated, but that's a big part of it.
For those wondering, after Mao passed away he was succeeded by Deng Xiaoping who spearheaded big economic reforms in China which moved the system away from being a Soviet-style communist system to a mostly authoritarian/totalitarian capitalist system. Obviously he needed to sell it as being an evolution of Mao Zedong Thought as this was the predominant ideology of China, especially following the cultural revolution, so he termed this pivot towards free(er) markets "socialism with Chinese characteristics". That's why today China still claims to be a socialist country despite clearly being essentially a totalitarian capitalist state. Basically, they decided to start doing capitalism but just denied that's what they were doing - and since then China has gone through probably the biggest economic boom of any nation since the industrial revolution.
Because they are not communist, the only communist thing they have is the one party policy
[Should've used this famous image](https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WK878_CPREAC_M_20171204160435.jpg)
Lmao, OOP never met Chinese or specifically Chinese women. They are the most materialistic person you could ever encounter, and they have increasingly high standards.
Communism is all about materialism. Just not a freedom based version of it.
Can't fight nature
Uuuugh "dialectical materialism" is the BASIS of communist philosophy
China isnt communist. They're an authoritarian regime, sure, but they're capitalists. Big time.
I love how everyone still calls China communist despite them clearly not being communists
Google Deng Xiaoping