I can imagine someone saying “In a communist system we will all be slightly poorer because central planning doesn’t work as well as markets, but it would be worth it because of the reduction in inequality”
Using Marxist terminology, that’s not communism, that’s mere socialism. Communism is pretty much defined by “To each according to his need”.
“Imagine that by some unspecified magic we have solved that problem, so that everyone willingly pitches in to do their bit.
I don’t see this anywhere in Xyrik’s comment. I am not sure that at the time of writing it he was even aware of the incentives problem.
And once you start specifying elven magic as the reason a particular problem doesn’t exist, you can’t have any unsolvable problems because elven magic, done.
I don’t see any obvious absurdity about saying “suppose problem A only resolved by elven magic; then what would happen to problems B, C, and D?”.
I do see an obvious incoherence. Xyrik’s scenario was;
a hypothetical situation in which everyone on the planet decides to temporarily get rid of the concept of money or currency, and pool our collective resources and ideas without worrying about who owes who
This is a highly complex scenario, made apparently simple because the complexity is hidden inside the words. What is the problem A that is the only thing hypothetically solved? The “get rid of the concept of money or currency”, the “pooling collective resources and ideas”, the “without worrying about who owes who”. What do these look like—what do you see if you follow a few people around in the hypothetical world? What do these phrases mean, to be able to say, these things B, C, and D are not part of that? How can you say what would happen to them, without any description of what the elven magic actually did to produce something described by A?
The scenario is too vague for these questions to be answered.
Yup, agreed, it’s vague and that’s bad. This seems to me an entirely different objection from “there’s no point saying ‘suppose such-and-such is dealt with by elven magic’ because elven magic could solve all the other problems too”.
that’s not communism, that’s mere socialism. Communism is pretty much defined by “To each according to his need”.
I’m not sure I understand your objection. I wasn’t imagining anything other than an attempt at “To each according to his need”. That might still leave many people poorer than under capitalism. (I said “all” but that was silly, and maybe that’s the cause of any misunderstanding; I should have said something like “we will collectively be slightly poorer”, which is what I actually meant.)
That might still leave many people poorer than under capitalism.
Nope. The promise of communism is the satisfaction of all your needs, not just satisfaction of what we can afford to, given the limited amount of stuff/services which we have available. It is supposed to be a place of plenty, not just a place where thin gruel is shared fairly.
I suppose you can, if you want, define “communism” so narrowly that nothing counts as communism unless it brings about an early paradise of perfect plenty. To me, that seems much too narrow a definition.
Imagine that someone tells Karl Marx that the economic system he advocates will not bring about a permanent end to all kinds of want. Which is the more likely response, supposing he believes them (of at least is willing, arguendo, to stipulate that they’re right)? “Oh, then it turns out that what I’ve been advocating isn’t communism after all” or “Oh, then it turns out that communism doesn’t work as well as I hoped”?
I suppose you can, if you want, define “communism” so narrowly that nothing counts as communism unless it brings about an early paradise of perfect plenty.
This is the canonical, traditional, classic, orthodox, and correct definition of communism in Marxism.
Imagine that someone tells Karl Marx...
I feel we’re veering into the If my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle territory...
I am far from being an expert on Marxism. But my impression is that what you say is at best an oversimplification. For instance, in the Communist Manifesto I find no claim that nothing should be called communism unless it successfully offers limitless plenty to all. I do find things like this:
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
and this:
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
You will notice that nowhere in that second quotation does he add “3. Communists believe that they will successfully bring about an end to all forms of economic scarcity.”. (So: Marx may perhaps have believed that an end to scarcity was inevitable, or something of the kind, but he doesn’t appear to have thought that such a belief is a requirement for someone to be called a communist.)
I don’t (of course) deny that an end to scarcity was a goal of communism. For that matter, it is (or should be) a goal of capitalism too. And Marx, fond as he was of the idea that his preferred system was a matter of historical inevitability, may well have believed—or at least found it useful to say—that when communism is fully implemented scarcity will be at an end. But none of that is the same as saying that if you abolish private property, social class, etc., and this regrettably fails to bring about a total end to scarcity, then what you did wasn’t communism after all.
First, let me point out that there is a terminological mess here. I was careful to specify that I was talking in Marxist terms which do not match terms used in contemporary Western political discourse. Note, by the way, that we are not talking about theories (one of which is named “communism”), but about forms of society.
Marxists call “communism” a particular form of future society which has never (yet) been realized. It’s an aspirational form, the carrot in front of the donkey, the light at the end of the tunnel, the heaven in which the worthy will find themselves. The realized, intermediate form is called “socialism”. The USSR was a socialist country.
In Western political talk, “communism” and “communist” refers to real societies like Soviet Russia and Communist (!) China, while “socialism” means a capitalist state with a generous welfare system, e.g. Sweden.
In any case, a Google search will give you lots of Marxist definitions of communism. Let me quote you Wikipedia to start:
A communist economic system would be characterized by advanced productive technology that enables material abundance, which in turn would enable the free distribution of most or all economic output and the holding of the means of producing this output in common. In this respect communism is differentiated from socialism, which, out of economic necessity, restricts access to articles of consumption and services based on one’s contribution.
-
if you abolish private property, social class, etc., and this regrettably fails to bring about a total end to scarcity, then what you did wasn’t communism after all.
It wasn’t. The Russians, for example, who abolished private property, etc. did not call their society “communist”. They called it “socialist” and said that they are only building communism.
Well, as I say, I am not a Marx expert, so let me stipulate that you’re completely and perfectly correct in what you say about Marx’s use of the word “communism”. Then … well, so what?
Looking back at the context in which the perfect-abundance-or-not question arose, it looks to me as if it was right when you said this:
The whole point of the communist paradise is freedom from need.
But up to that point, no one had been talking specifically about a Marxian end-stage perfected communist paradise. Xyrik’s question was broader: what if there were no private property and everyone just did whatever was needed? Now, for sure, one implausible imaginary future in which that’s the case is Marx’s end-stage perfected communist paradise, but there was nothing in what Xyrik wrote to imply that particular implausible imaginary future.
And you brought in “the whole point of the communist paradise” in order to foist upon Xyrik an idea not—so far as I can see—either explicit or implicit in the original question, namely that our hypothetical communards would be engaged only in “meaningful conscious-expanding profound activities” to the exclusion of mundanities like growing food. I don’t really see how you get there even with the assumption that Xyrik is talking about Marx’s specific utopia, but without that assumption I think it’s hopeless.
So, granting you literally everything you say about Marx and Marxism here, I don’t see that it actually gets you near the conclusion you were trying to support.
Using Marxist terminology, that’s not communism, that’s mere socialism. Communism is pretty much defined by “To each according to his need”.
I don’t see this anywhere in Xyrik’s comment. I am not sure that at the time of writing it he was even aware of the incentives problem.
And once you start specifying elven magic as the reason a particular problem doesn’t exist, you can’t have any unsolvable problems because elven magic, done.
It’s what I took this to mean:
but maybe you understood it differently.
I don’t see any obvious absurdity about saying “suppose problem A only resolved by elven magic; then what would happen to problems B, C, and D?”.
I do see an obvious incoherence. Xyrik’s scenario was;
This is a highly complex scenario, made apparently simple because the complexity is hidden inside the words. What is the problem A that is the only thing hypothetically solved? The “get rid of the concept of money or currency”, the “pooling collective resources and ideas”, the “without worrying about who owes who”. What do these look like—what do you see if you follow a few people around in the hypothetical world? What do these phrases mean, to be able to say, these things B, C, and D are not part of that? How can you say what would happen to them, without any description of what the elven magic actually did to produce something described by A?
The scenario is too vague for these questions to be answered.
Yup, agreed, it’s vague and that’s bad. This seems to me an entirely different objection from “there’s no point saying ‘suppose such-and-such is dealt with by elven magic’ because elven magic could solve all the other problems too”.
I’m not sure I understand your objection. I wasn’t imagining anything other than an attempt at “To each according to his need”. That might still leave many people poorer than under capitalism. (I said “all” but that was silly, and maybe that’s the cause of any misunderstanding; I should have said something like “we will collectively be slightly poorer”, which is what I actually meant.)
Nope. The promise of communism is the satisfaction of all your needs, not just satisfaction of what we can afford to, given the limited amount of stuff/services which we have available. It is supposed to be a place of plenty, not just a place where thin gruel is shared fairly.
I suppose you can, if you want, define “communism” so narrowly that nothing counts as communism unless it brings about an early paradise of perfect plenty. To me, that seems much too narrow a definition.
Imagine that someone tells Karl Marx that the economic system he advocates will not bring about a permanent end to all kinds of want. Which is the more likely response, supposing he believes them (of at least is willing, arguendo, to stipulate that they’re right)? “Oh, then it turns out that what I’ve been advocating isn’t communism after all” or “Oh, then it turns out that communism doesn’t work as well as I hoped”?
This is the canonical, traditional, classic, orthodox, and correct definition of communism in Marxism.
I feel we’re veering into the If my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle territory...
I am far from being an expert on Marxism. But my impression is that what you say is at best an oversimplification. For instance, in the Communist Manifesto I find no claim that nothing should be called communism unless it successfully offers limitless plenty to all. I do find things like this:
and this:
You will notice that nowhere in that second quotation does he add “3. Communists believe that they will successfully bring about an end to all forms of economic scarcity.”. (So: Marx may perhaps have believed that an end to scarcity was inevitable, or something of the kind, but he doesn’t appear to have thought that such a belief is a requirement for someone to be called a communist.)
I don’t (of course) deny that an end to scarcity was a goal of communism. For that matter, it is (or should be) a goal of capitalism too. And Marx, fond as he was of the idea that his preferred system was a matter of historical inevitability, may well have believed—or at least found it useful to say—that when communism is fully implemented scarcity will be at an end. But none of that is the same as saying that if you abolish private property, social class, etc., and this regrettably fails to bring about a total end to scarcity, then what you did wasn’t communism after all.
First, let me point out that there is a terminological mess here. I was careful to specify that I was talking in Marxist terms which do not match terms used in contemporary Western political discourse. Note, by the way, that we are not talking about theories (one of which is named “communism”), but about forms of society.
Marxists call “communism” a particular form of future society which has never (yet) been realized. It’s an aspirational form, the carrot in front of the donkey, the light at the end of the tunnel, the heaven in which the worthy will find themselves. The realized, intermediate form is called “socialism”. The USSR was a socialist country.
In Western political talk, “communism” and “communist” refers to real societies like Soviet Russia and Communist (!) China, while “socialism” means a capitalist state with a generous welfare system, e.g. Sweden.
In any case, a Google search will give you lots of Marxist definitions of communism. Let me quote you Wikipedia to start:
-
It wasn’t. The Russians, for example, who abolished private property, etc. did not call their society “communist”. They called it “socialist” and said that they are only building communism.
Well, as I say, I am not a Marx expert, so let me stipulate that you’re completely and perfectly correct in what you say about Marx’s use of the word “communism”. Then … well, so what?
Looking back at the context in which the perfect-abundance-or-not question arose, it looks to me as if it was right when you said this:
But up to that point, no one had been talking specifically about a Marxian end-stage perfected communist paradise. Xyrik’s question was broader: what if there were no private property and everyone just did whatever was needed? Now, for sure, one implausible imaginary future in which that’s the case is Marx’s end-stage perfected communist paradise, but there was nothing in what Xyrik wrote to imply that particular implausible imaginary future.
And you brought in “the whole point of the communist paradise” in order to foist upon Xyrik an idea not—so far as I can see—either explicit or implicit in the original question, namely that our hypothetical communards would be engaged only in “meaningful conscious-expanding profound activities” to the exclusion of mundanities like growing food. I don’t really see how you get there even with the assumption that Xyrik is talking about Marx’s specific utopia, but without that assumption I think it’s hopeless.
So, granting you literally everything you say about Marx and Marxism here, I don’t see that it actually gets you near the conclusion you were trying to support.