Communism
Back in the middle of the industrial revolution, Karl Marx took a look at the way the working class were living and was not impressed. Clearly they were poor, and living hand to mouth in most cases, whilst on the other hand those with their hands on the means of production were extremely wealthy. These wealthy capitalists could not be challenged by the working class, unless the working class rose up in a revolution and took the wealth back from the capitalists by
force. Marx believed that once this was done everybody would live as one big happy classless family. He was totally wrong however, as was demonstrated by the first real-world implementation of Marxism which was to be known as communism.
In the communist system it is realised that all the rich people have their hands on the means of production. As a result they are in an unassailable position whereby the rich keep all the wealth to themselves and eveyone else gets the scraps from the table. Communism sought to address this by taking ownership of the means of production off the wealthy and collecting it all together in one place. These "collectives" of ownership needed to be controlled by someone - and that someone would be a representative of the communist state. So now you can see the clear difference. In the capitalist system all the means of production and hence all the wealth
is controlled by a small number of people and everyone else is a slave to the system. In the communist system all the means of production and hence all the wealth is controlled by a small number of people and everyone else is a slave to the system. See the difference? In the former case the people on top are called "capitalists" and in the latter case they are called "communists". Big deal. In fact you can already see that the capitalist system at least has the advantage that the power that goes with wealth is slightly separated from the power that comes from politics.
Now, it gets worse...
As I said, I believe society is like a living biological mechanism. If you take the head of that organism and swap it for a completely different head you are asking for trouble. The new head is unlikely to know anything that the old head knew. The patient is likely to suffer severe trauma during the operation. And yet that is just what a communist revolution does. Wise heads are despatched and replaced with fresh new, but unwise heads - and this is done wholesale.
Consequently nobody knows what they should be doing (but nobody wants to admit it). A lot of people are killed during the process of revolution.
And the problems continued, because it was not just the head of the biological mechanism that was replaced, but many of the internal organs were transplanted to, leading to rejection of those new organs...
Communism started to suffer from the Laws of Unintended Consequences. The point of a communist revolution was to make the employees better off by reducing the "inefficient" cut-throat competition of the capitalist system. The state would set the prices of production in order to alleviate the burden on the employees. The problems of this become obvious with farming. If you reduce the incentive to sell more produce but suggest that under communism farmers should not work so hard then the farmer will simply produce enough food for his own family and then take a long rest. This is a very bad thing. And when the communists realised that food production was falling they needed to do something about it. They couldn't blame their own system (due to the psychological problem known as an "escalated commitment to a failed course of action") so they had to blame the farmers. Obviously it must be a conspiracy. The farmers need to be oppressed. Send them to the gulag. Replace them with new "communist" farmers. The communist farmers don't know what they are doing so farm production falls again. It must be another conspiracy right? So more oppression and murder and imprisonment results. Production continues to fall and what is worse the employees are now working under the threat of the gun where previously under the capitalist system they were working merely under the threat of being layed off.
Communism appeals to the emloyees by reason of making their life easier, but inherently if you make their life easier then production must fall. If production falls then the employees must be materially worse off. To raise production without re-introducing the incentives that would lead to class distinction that communism attempts to avoid, you must resort to brute force. Simple.
The fact is that all revolutions of any kind are primed to expect resistance and primed to oppress that resistance by violence. Consequently the failings of a revolution will be seen not as failings in reality but as "resistance" which must be violently repressed.
You were probably taught in school that Stalin was a violent man that oppressed his people. But the reality is that communist revolution always results in failure, which is then perceived as "resistance" to the revolution, and this always results in continued violent repression of the people. Right now it is happening in Burma, and Cuba, and Zimbabwe and many other places. It is the idea at the base of these revolutions that is fundamentally flawed, which results in a need for the regime to impose its failed beliefs by force, which in turn means that there must be a violent oppressor at the top of the regime. If the leader of the regime doesn't fulfill that requirement by becoming increasingly violent, then the regime will tend to replace him with someone that is prepared to be a violent oppressor. This is why all these communist regimes have gone the same way. They are trapped in a mechanism of their own creation where the violence and oppression and failure are inevitable right from the start. Once again a "god" created from the mechanism of society.
Capitalism is bad, but communism is far worse, because it is fatally flawed and in the end can only be imposed by continued brute force.
But what of that flavour in between pure communism and pure capitalism we usually refer to as socialism? More about that tomorrow....
force. Marx believed that once this was done everybody would live as one big happy classless family. He was totally wrong however, as was demonstrated by the first real-world implementation of Marxism which was to be known as communism.
In the communist system it is realised that all the rich people have their hands on the means of production. As a result they are in an unassailable position whereby the rich keep all the wealth to themselves and eveyone else gets the scraps from the table. Communism sought to address this by taking ownership of the means of production off the wealthy and collecting it all together in one place. These "collectives" of ownership needed to be controlled by someone - and that someone would be a representative of the communist state. So now you can see the clear difference. In the capitalist system all the means of production and hence all the wealth
is controlled by a small number of people and everyone else is a slave to the system. In the communist system all the means of production and hence all the wealth is controlled by a small number of people and everyone else is a slave to the system. See the difference? In the former case the people on top are called "capitalists" and in the latter case they are called "communists". Big deal. In fact you can already see that the capitalist system at least has the advantage that the power that goes with wealth is slightly separated from the power that comes from politics.
Now, it gets worse...
As I said, I believe society is like a living biological mechanism. If you take the head of that organism and swap it for a completely different head you are asking for trouble. The new head is unlikely to know anything that the old head knew. The patient is likely to suffer severe trauma during the operation. And yet that is just what a communist revolution does. Wise heads are despatched and replaced with fresh new, but unwise heads - and this is done wholesale.
Consequently nobody knows what they should be doing (but nobody wants to admit it). A lot of people are killed during the process of revolution.
And the problems continued, because it was not just the head of the biological mechanism that was replaced, but many of the internal organs were transplanted to, leading to rejection of those new organs...
Communism started to suffer from the Laws of Unintended Consequences. The point of a communist revolution was to make the employees better off by reducing the "inefficient" cut-throat competition of the capitalist system. The state would set the prices of production in order to alleviate the burden on the employees. The problems of this become obvious with farming. If you reduce the incentive to sell more produce but suggest that under communism farmers should not work so hard then the farmer will simply produce enough food for his own family and then take a long rest. This is a very bad thing. And when the communists realised that food production was falling they needed to do something about it. They couldn't blame their own system (due to the psychological problem known as an "escalated commitment to a failed course of action") so they had to blame the farmers. Obviously it must be a conspiracy. The farmers need to be oppressed. Send them to the gulag. Replace them with new "communist" farmers. The communist farmers don't know what they are doing so farm production falls again. It must be another conspiracy right? So more oppression and murder and imprisonment results. Production continues to fall and what is worse the employees are now working under the threat of the gun where previously under the capitalist system they were working merely under the threat of being layed off.
Communism appeals to the emloyees by reason of making their life easier, but inherently if you make their life easier then production must fall. If production falls then the employees must be materially worse off. To raise production without re-introducing the incentives that would lead to class distinction that communism attempts to avoid, you must resort to brute force. Simple.
The fact is that all revolutions of any kind are primed to expect resistance and primed to oppress that resistance by violence. Consequently the failings of a revolution will be seen not as failings in reality but as "resistance" which must be violently repressed.
You were probably taught in school that Stalin was a violent man that oppressed his people. But the reality is that communist revolution always results in failure, which is then perceived as "resistance" to the revolution, and this always results in continued violent repression of the people. Right now it is happening in Burma, and Cuba, and Zimbabwe and many other places. It is the idea at the base of these revolutions that is fundamentally flawed, which results in a need for the regime to impose its failed beliefs by force, which in turn means that there must be a violent oppressor at the top of the regime. If the leader of the regime doesn't fulfill that requirement by becoming increasingly violent, then the regime will tend to replace him with someone that is prepared to be a violent oppressor. This is why all these communist regimes have gone the same way. They are trapped in a mechanism of their own creation where the violence and oppression and failure are inevitable right from the start. Once again a "god" created from the mechanism of society.
Capitalism is bad, but communism is far worse, because it is fatally flawed and in the end can only be imposed by continued brute force.
But what of that flavour in between pure communism and pure capitalism we usually refer to as socialism? More about that tomorrow....
Labels: capitalism, communism, law of unintended consequences, oppression, revolution, socialism
posted by Schadenfreude at
17:23
4 Comments:
I think its in The undercover economist where the newly De-Communised leaders of Russia are taken around london to get a an idea of Democracy.
'Tell me again, I can't quite understand. Who organises the bread supply for the people of London?'
And the answer, which is far from helpful to a central planner.
"No ONE"
Look forward to Communism II. Why doesn't it work even on an economic, never mind political, level.
I think the basic problem with communism is that it cannot use a carrot to incentivise "work". This is because if some people worked hard, they would earn more, and then form a new class above those that were indolent. However, this means that there is a tendency to work as little as a the most indolent employee, causing output to fall. To compensate for this the communists realise they can't use a carrot and still call themselves communists - so they end up using a stick instead. And the problem with this is that whilst you can whip someone into doing hard work, you cannot whip someone into doing innovative work. In any case you have undermined the original goal of communism, which is to make employment easier and more rewarding. In the end it can do neither.
In your little anecdote you have touched on something that troubles me about our society. London grew to house 7million people because it COULD. Nobody ever planned it. People moved there in order to get better paid jobs and food distribution grew up in ever more complicated ways to service their needs. That seems great - but is it what we really want? We are working our socks off for a system of society that we never really planned but took control of us. We are scared to take a grip of it and change it because that's what the communists did - and look what happened to them. Thing is if we are not in control of society, then it is out of control. And if it is out of control it can crash.
Excellent post. I read Bartrand Russell's "Power" years ago and he said there were three forms: political, financial and religious.
Thanks Sackers. I think I will stick with the first two forms for now!
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