i dont think so but what do you think
I’m doing it right now
you don’t even know who I am.
The place where every other user is crying out that elections are useless and we’re all doomed?
Nah
yeah, but if we believe hard enough in communism or similar, the world will be a magical paradise where money grows on trees but also nobody will ever need it, or something.
clearly the issue with all of society is people not believing hard enough in the ‘right way’.
I’m like practically 40 and still don’t really know what communism means in practice.
Omg, this is beautiful. Apparently your comment is the lemmy version of a kid on sesame Street looking sadly into the distance and saying “boy, I sure wish I knew how to count”
Communism is a future society based on highly advanced productive capacity where production and distribution are totally collectivized and run according to a common, scientific plan. Communism as an ideology is the path of building towards that, which requires working people having control of the state, and building up productive forces to where such an organizational structure is feasible.
In addition, no communist believes communism will come about simply by convincing people of it. This is referred to as utopianism, which stands in stark contrast to Marxist scientific socialism.
There’s literally a book, it’s pretty short, a manifesto if you will
You can even just listen to the John Lennon song.
Communism is a political and economic system that seeks to create a classless society in which the major means of production, such as mines and factories, are owned and controlled by the public. There is no government or private property or currency, and the wealth is divided among citizens equally or according to individual need. Many of communism’s tenets derive from the works of German revolutionary Karl Marx, who (with Friedrich Engels) wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848). However, over the years others have made contributions—or corruptions, depending on one’s perspective—to Marxist thought. Perhaps the most influential changes were proposed by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, who notably supported authoritarianism.
There is administration in communism, just not special repressive forces meant to control working classes. Lenin didn’t “support authoritarianism,” he extended Marx’s analysis of capitalism to its imperialist, monopoly stage, and came up with many of the strategies for achieving socialism practically.
Communism is a more extreme subset of socialism, where socialism, broadly, is an umbrella term for “we want government oversight on companies.” Socialism can take many forms, such as government having direct oversight on companies, or government passing binding guidelines on what companies can or can’t do, or government operating a company (while still allowing competitor companies to operate as normal). Note that government policies under socialism can and will depend on the industry. Healthcare might be subject to more government oversight than steel manufacturing, for instance.
Communism takes this idea and applies it to all companies in all industries. ie, the government has oversight on all companies. Note that there are also many forms of communism that interpret “oversight” in different ways. More classical forms of communism, for instance, recommends that the government directly manages companies and operates as executives
Communism is a fully collectivized system run according to a common plan. Socialism is a trantional process between capitalism and communism characterized by social ownership as the principal aspect of the economy and the working class in control of the state.
Communism takes this idea and applies it to all companies in all industries. ie, the government has oversight on all companies
Except Communism is supposed to be stateless, there wouldn’t really be any sort of central government to have oversight over anything.
Broadly speaking, there is no practical difference, hence I didn’t make that distinction. Even in a stateless society, there must be some sort of regulatory body. Even a regulatory body made of the common people is, by definition, a regulatory body. And if this regulatory body has the power to enforce its will onto the entities that it has control over, then I fail to see how that is any different from a government.
It’s not a governmental structure that we would be used to, but it’s a government nonetheless. So at that point, what we’re really arguing over is what methods the people should use to influence this regulatory body. Which is something that I explicitly did not comment on.
If we acknowledge that some form of government must exist in any form of communism, then we can roughly summarize Marxist communism as “the government, which consists of the people organized in a nonhierarchical manner, exerts total managerial and executive control over all industries.” I consider this to be an accurate assessment of Marxist communism, just not phrased in the way that a leftist typically would phrase it
Eh, that’s a misreading. There would still be administration in communism, just no special bodies to uphold the ruling class and suppress the non-ruling class, as society would be classless. Most would recognize this administration as a government, but it would be stateless in the Marxist conception.
This is actually an incorrect definition. Communism is the final state of socialism.
The problem with capitalism is that it inherently disenfranchises most people. It pits capitalists against workers in a tense arrangement where both sides are trying to gain the upper hand in negotiations over salaries/benefits. There are obviously more workers than capitalists. Capitalists own stuff that can be used to make more stuff. Workers own their own labor. Workers are the ones whose labor leads to the production of stuff.
Governments develop as a result of the tension between the two classes. They exist to mediate conflicts between the capitalists and the workers. However, politicians/rulers are traditionally drawn from the capitalist classes and capitalists are able to lobby governments for rules that are favorable to them. This is easier for capitalists because capitalists individually have more stuff to bribe the government with. Also the politicians and the capitalists tend to be from the same group.
This is obviously a problem because for the workers to get anything done favorable to them, they need to all agree on what needs to be done. Since there’s more people in the working class, this is harder to do. There’s fewer capitalists, so it’s easier to get them all on the same page.
Marx predicted that this unfair relationship between the capitalists and the workers would lead to constant conflict between the two classes. Eventually the workers would win (just by numbers) and assume control of the government. Since the government is designed to support the capitalist class, that means that this would produce a lot of tension as trying to shift a government to favor the workers is difficult. A lot of the rules that the workers would try to implement won’t really make sense in the context of a capitalist structure. This period immediately after the revolution is called “socialism”. It’s marked by governments trying to strike a balance between supporting capitalist structures but also enabling workers, which is very difficult to do.
Marx theorized that eventually society as a whole will realize that the two cannot truly coexist. We can’t both support the masses and pursue profit at the same time. He theorized that eventually we will realize that the capitalist machinery(including the government, borders and nations) must be shuddered in order to truly free everyone. When that happens, that’s when “communism” will begin.
All governments that call themselves “communist” are just “socialist” with the expressed goal of achieving communism.
The way you define it is part of the American red scare definitions which inherently tries to discredit communism and push workers to not rise up against their bosses.
This is fascinating. I wonder if there are any Trump voters out there that are Communist accelerationists? The only way to get the numbers to overcome it would be to make everything so bad as to force everyone.
It also makes it sound like Communism is more of an ideal to strive for then an alternative governance model.
I wonder if there are any Trump voters out there that are Communist accelerationists?
I’ve never voted for Trump but that’s the only argument I could make to vote for him.
It also makes it sound like Communism is more of an ideal to strive for then an alternative governance model.
I agree. Tho I do think it might be achievable in the distant future, I doubt it’ll be achievable in my children’s time.
Sci Fi author Ursula K Le Guin has imagined what that might look like in several of her works, most notably “The Dispossessed” which I highly recommend.
Is Star Trek communist? Seems to be parallels
I fail to see how what I said conflicts with any of what you said. You give a more detailed summary, but what I said, from what I see, is still completely accurate. I make no claim for how society will develop over time, only that societies that operate under socialism or communism should operate in this manner. I also make no claim that the government under communism is the same continuous entity as the government that we currently exist under, only that a government must exist to enforce its will onto companies (a collective of the workers is still a government if it has the ability to enforce its will).
Your comment is informative for sure, and also a good summary of Marxist communism, but it does not directly answer the question posed, ie, how does a society theoretically operate under communism?
I fail to see how what I said conflicts with any of what you said.
I think the differences are subtle but meaningful. I think another way to interpret “communism” in the Marxist sense is “anarchy” meaning there’s no central deciding body.
Communism takes this idea and applies it to all companies in all industries. ie, the government has oversight on all companies.
This is different from what I mentioned in my post.
He theorized that eventually we will realize that the capitalist machinery(including the government, borders and nations) must be shuddered in order to truly free everyone.
I did forget to mention that there would also be no money. And there is no government to oversee all these industries. (I understand that in our capitalist world this sounds like libertarianism, but without money there’s no profit motive).
how does a society theoretically operate under communism?
Marx doesn’t actually postulate what this might look like, but one of my favorite sci fi authors ever did. In Ursula K Le Guin’s brilliant novel “The Dispossessed” she imagines what a truly communist society might look like. I highly recommend it if you’d like to see what she thinks it might look like.
But just a a brief description (which doesn’t really do it justice). There’s no government. The main character is a scientist who works with the university as a collective. Students and teachers have ad hoc discussions about what classes might be interesting to have. Farmers collectives post requests for work during harvesting season. Kitchens request help to areas where they need help. Everyone has some skills and has a culturally ingrained belief that they should help the whole group. They also believe that everyone is equal and nobody should hold power over other people. Nobody is paid for the work but they all see each other as brothers and sisters and so working is something you do, like when your parents ask you do to yard work while one parent cooks and the other parent fixes the car. (This is simplified from the book, I don’t think it truly captures the whole of it).
Thanks for your comment, I appreciate our conversation.
because it likely is just shit made by dictators that isnt even real
but only to justify their rule
“Communism isn’t real” wasn’t on my Lemmy-bingo card for today.
i mean that communism is impossible to maintain
🤦♀️
If everything was free I could have everything I wanted which would keep the workers employed building all the stuff people want.
Don’t you understand how a communist utopia works?
This world will never be a magical paradise and we deserve all our suffering for what we did to the mammoths.
Humans suck and are stupid which is why everything sucks and always will, no matter how hard we believe. Every solution is just a bunch of worse and bigger problems until the earth becomes uninhabitable.
Yeah but since there’s like maybe 100 comments on any given post, and if I want more posts I have to hit “next” then it actually does a pretty good job of preventing me from truly doomscrolling.
That “next” button is like asking my brain if I want more doom, and I often don’t actually so I end up doing something else.
To be fair we’d be doomed even if elections worked.
Humans are a mass extinction event.
What do you think I’m doing right now?
I do it all the time
Im doing it right now
if you’re screentime on fediverse apps is less than 4 hours then mayeb not
oh so it is higher than 4 hours, okay
I have a problem (made worse by an insatiable desire to know what’s going on in the world and whatever the fuck’s wrong with my brain)
This does neither account for my PC screen time nor account for my usage of some public Lemmy instances as a guest (as I have no Lemmy accounts anymore) through the Fennec browser for doomscrolling the New comments feed.
Wait, it has uses other than doomscrolling?
yeah, it’s pretty chill if you block 90% of the content and only focus on the 10% of communities that about something other than how oppressed and doomed they are.
I am suspicious that there is a disproportionately-high-to-society-at-large ratio of people who have clinical depression on here.
I’ve never run into as many people in any group, in real life or in online communities, who show up and persistently take bleak outlooks on damned near everything. It’s not just “the glass is half empty”, but “the glass is half empty and probably what water is there is contaminated and it’s going to dry up and if I drink it I’ll probably choke to death and…”
I live in a city full of wealthy progressive liberals who talk like that non stop. Everything is awful all the time and if you don’t agree you’re awful too. if you point out annoying good happening they will tell you how awful it is or it’s colonialism or imperialism.
their second favorite topic is what smart geniuses they are and how everyone else should be like them. and nobody else has had a harder or more difficult life than than did, because their parents only made 500K a year! and now they only make 200K a year! they are living in poverty!!
i have lived here 20 years and 10 years ago it wasn’t like this… because it was more diverse and people were not so self absorbed.
I can’t speak as to all areas, but I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is pretty wealthy and progressive, and if anything, I’d call people in the area generally upbeat relative to people I’ve run into elsewhere. Certainly nothing like the kind of “everything is awful or probably will be, doom doom doom” stuff that I’d say I see a disproportionate level of on the Threadiverse.
I have wondered before whether maybe it’s correlation with some of the userbase.
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I’d say that there are probably more furries on here than I run into elsewhere, but I don’t really notice the pawb.social home instance being attached to downbeat comments.
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Ditto for Linux users, but I’ve been on a lot of Linux-oriented online forums, and that doesn’t normally seem to be a particularly depressed or negative crowd elsewhere.
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The Threadiverse is more European than most groups I’ve run into, and maybe I could buy some correlation there—there is correlation between less sunlight and depression, and Europe is home to the world’s biggest concentration of people who get less sunlight—but I’m confident that the continent as a whole can’t be this negative. I also spent a lot of time on /r/Europe prior to moving to the Threadiverse, and it was nothing like this.
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There’s a higher concentration of far-left users than anywhere else I’ve been. Maybe I could buy that. Like, if your life is heavily-focused on wanting The Revolution to come and private industry dissolved and all that, okay, the world, which isn’t doing that, is maybe a disappointing place to be in.
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I’m pretty sure that there’s a higher concentration of transexual users than on any other group that I’ve spent a lot of time around. Maybe if you figure that a disproportionately high percentage of trans people are unhappy with their body, that could really be weighing on people, making them unhappy. Or maybe from medication…hormones can affect mood, and maybe hormone replacement treatment can cause negative moods?
searches
It sounds like maybe HRT can be a factor in depression: https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/9g68zm/is_depression_a_possible_side_effect_of_hrt/
EDIT: I have seen articles that show correlation between social media use in general and depression, and obviously everyone here is a social media user. Maybe that could explain some difference between real-world groups, but that doesn’t explain the discrepancy with the many other online forums I’ve been on.
The issue is insular identity groups tend to be assholes towards anyone who isn’t like them. The have a circle the wagons mentality, and develop outsized hostility towards people outside the group.
When you are in a more diverse space, people don’t get this luxury as much. They have to moderate their attitude and behaviour because they can’t just dismiss and demonize everyone who isn’t like them. As a group becomes more insular, this starts to erode and self-selection happens where moderate folks don’t want to be around the miserable angry identity focused people. Eventually a tipping point hits and the diverse space becomes highly insular and ever it’s members more extreme and becomes totally hostile to diversity.
That’s a well-documented psychological/anthropological thing in real world and online communities. And it’s happening in a lot of places, especially those that were previously bastions of diversity and inclusion, like college campuses and online communities.
And SF suffers from the same issue as where I live, the population is very insular in terms of demographics and identity. You can’t live here anymore unless you make like 100K+ a year, which severely restricts the types of people who can live here to very similar demographics.
The way I see it is if you started using lemmy you’re probably either a(n)
- Open source purist: thus, extremely negative about anything proprietary.
- Extremely political (in large part ChapoTrapHouse refugees), so extremely negative about anything seen as capitalist or reactionary.
- Terminally online: just generally either mentally ill (cause or consequence) or brainrotted, which makes you more negative naturally. I think this explains most of the negativity I’ve seen.
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Obvious troll is obvious :p (op, not you)
Gods yes
sure. its got enough postings.
maybe because i have used lemmy for 3 hours (from a screen time extension thing on firefox) yesterday
Same as users deleting their own posts: yes.
most news/politics communities here are nothing but doomerism.
i like news and politics but I can’t do it here because it’s so insanely one-sided doomerism to the point it’s just vomit-inducing. Nothing good ever happens to anyone, according to the lemmy view of these things.
Things we think are good happen. But they are terrible given time. Like agriculture.
you may want to follow communties and also block some people who maybe not the best
i’ve been here for 3+ years.
no amount of following/blocking can ever combat the endless need of average users to post ragebait slop for clicks, and constantly play morality police for everyone else here who doesn’t 120% agree with their ignorant viewpoints about the world.
this place is reddit-lite now. give it another 5 years and it will be reddit all over again. people do this shit to themselves.
we aren’t ever going back to the internet where you could be chill, folks don’t want it that way.
folks don’t want it that way.
I do
Tell me why
…Ain’t nothing but a heartache
Tell me why
Yessssss
that maybe also why some lemmy instances are not the best, they haven’t learnt from the other/orange site
they havent made rules or anything to make sure that people arent like the people from the other site
but i think that the instances shouldn’t be beehaw either
folks don’t want it that way
I do.
Ain’t nothin but a heart ache
The fediverse is where I go to vent my doom.
I pretty much only use Lemmy on the fediverse, and the All feed is plenty after I’m done with my subscriptions.
How do you doomscroll Mastodon or other parts of the Fediverse?
Obviously yes.
As everyone else in the thread, yes, but at least it’s a bit more limited… as in, you’ll run out of content quicker.
I think the Fediverse shows that it’s not only algorithms that push sooner content; the core issue is humans. We’re a lot more likely to share and like/upvote something that upsets, and some days I think that is very noticeable on here…
