Is Communism Inherently Toxic?

[columbus]

One of the biggest ironies of western Christendom is that if Christians actually put Christian morality into practice we'd be small c communists by next year this time.
Tom

 

[Penumbra]

I might be wrong, but I don't think thats what OP meant by toxic.

In what way do you mean?

(and, while im responding, I will point out that all economic systems are guaranteed to break down.)

Why do you think that is? Are you sure it's true?

 

[columbus]

long ago

Long, long ago...
Like in Constantines time.
Popes and kings and captains of industry have been using it ever since.
Tom

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I say first find a place that has had actual communist principles (not right-winged totalitarian states, as communism is stateless), and then answer the question.

 

[Jumi]

I think saying anything influenced by Leninism is a bit extreme, but I definitely agree more or less with the later part of your post.

I may be biased, but I don't think my view of him as an extremist are unfounded. Same I would say of some religious extremists today. They might have some good ideas mixed in with the bad.

 

[Penumbra]

I perceived toxic as a synonym for oppressive, I may be wrong though.

And you think oppression is fully unrelated to the system breaking down, not working well?

Yeah. Crashes and depressions will be a reoccurring thing throughout history despite economic foundation. The more uneven and bubbly an economy gets the more unstable it gets and the more fair an economy gets the more unstable it gets. As long as people have differing opinions on how an economy should work or be handled there will be economic crashes.

So because it happened in the past, it's guaranteed to happen forever?

Human civilization has been short. And civilization in the industrial era has been even shorter. Several countries have continued to exist throughout the entire industrialized age so far.

Anyway, your point seems very speculative to me.

 

[Laika]

North Korea, China, and the USSR—all totalitarian states, the common factor between which is their communist foundations. There are prosperous socialist countries like Canada, Sweden, and France, and there are capitalist countries like the U.S. and England that have thrived for a long time despite struggling in certain areas. But what about communist countries? Why do you think almost all of the major communist states have either devolved into dictatorships or lent themselves to fascist, bloodthirsty regimes?

Put differently, do you think communism as an ideology is inherently toxic, or has it only been misunderstood or misused this whole time?

The short answer is "no". The long answer would be one that a lawyer defending the Nazis at Nuremburg could easily have made which can be summurised as something like this: as long as Liberals get off scot free with whatever genocide suited their "humanity" at that particular moment, there isn't a valid objective or universal ethical standard by which to judge Communists by.

 

[Penumbra]

I thought OP was reffering to oppression done by the totalitarian states that have been coined "communist"

And you don't think oppression is any way related to economic failings?

Were those states oppressing people when everything was prosperous?

I have little reason to believe it would stop now.

Well, unless I am given evidence that there will be positive change, why should I think things will positively change?

Some current nations have existed longer than the industrialized age so far. We have current examples of societies that keep moving forward without total breakdowns.

People in this thread have made the claim communism will only crash, due to history.

I don't see who in the thread made that argument. I could have missed one, though.

And if they did, I think that's a poor argument, that communism failed in the past and so it will fail in the future.

So I see no reason to not make the same history based assumptions about capitalism.

I guess my view is, even if I see someone making a poor argument, like the one previously described about communism, I don't feel compelled to make equally poor arguments about something else. I think each argument should stand on its own.

For an argument about this to be decent, one would have to try to find the underlying reason for past failings, and a reason why that underlying reason must continue.

An underlying proposal for why communism hasn't been working, or even becomes toxic, is that without personal incentive, large state-level economic systems likely won't do well. Especially for jobs that are not fun, why would anybody do them without something in return? Or being forced to? Hence toxic, oppressive. A notable exception, as some in here pointed out, is hunter gatherer groups. Communism on small levels, kind of. Groups of 100 or so individuals, mostly consisting of extended relatives, have more incentive do work as a team and take care of non-contributors, than a huge nation state.

Now, we can take capitalism. An underlying problem with capitalism is that unregulated persons or organizations will try to externalize all problems from themselves. Too many groups will try to optimize their environments at the cost of the public environment. Simple examples would be a profitable factory that pollutes, or a fisherman that overcatches fish for profit at the cost of damaging the ability of the fish to replenish themselves at an equal rate. Another problem is that wealth tends to concentrate and concentrate into a smaller and smaller number of hands, until revolution or collapse happens. The more money people have, the more they can control society to ensure that they get even more money.

Now, let's take your exceptionally broad claim that "all economic systems are guaranteed to break down". So my question is, what is the underlying reason for that? Simply because it's happened in the past, over our short history of civilization? That, in my opinion, would be rather sparse evidence for such a massive claim.

For one example, a modern compromise has been to have capitalist societies that also have social programs like healthcare, welfare, charities, along with environmental regulations and labor laws. What is the underlying reason that they are guaranteed to fail?

 

[Laika]

The short answer is "no". The long answer would be one that a lawyer defending the Nazis at Nuremburg could easily have made which can be summurised as something like this: as long as Liberals get off scot free with whatever genocide suited their "humanity" at that particular moment, there isn't a valid objective or universal ethical standard by which to judge Communists by.

For the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to add a bit to this. Having had this argument a great deal, the above is the "best" possible defence of communism. And it is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. It isn't a winning argument because the definition of "liberal" and "genocide" have to be usd fairly broadly to have any credability. So, to use a Chess metaphor, it's a "stalemate". There is no "winning" argument unless basically you chose to take the side of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and argue their case for them and that communism was not "toxic" (which I'm not prepared to do).

Virtually all human rights abuses that occur under communism are used to discredit it, whilst virtually all human rights abuses that occured under liberal regiemes have little or no discernable effect on it's moral evaluation. The reasons for that are deep rooted in western ethics and notions of individual responsibility which mean that only a single individual is held responsible under liberalism, whereas under communism- because it is collectivist- it is said to reflect on the entire system of government and ideology. We are able to personify the system for the great purges or the cultural revolution and the killing fields and therefore hold them responsible. The reality is much harder and more complex as the moral 'agency' is much more diffuse and so the very notion that Communism is toxic, relies on assuming a virtually god-like level of omnipotence on the part of its leaders. we equate the system and its ideas with its leaders, in a way that is notdone for their anti-communist and liberal counter-parts. all communism's adherents- irrespective of their actions- are treated as if they are demonically possessed by the "devil", whether that is identified as following the instructions of a given person, institution or idea. they are assumed to have no moral agency of their own because we assume they are not free. In any other circumstances, this would be laughable and nonesense, but there is an acute habit on the part of liberals to dismiss any ideological alternatives in interpreting the problem as "unrealistic" because it is assumed they have some special relationship with 'reality' that every other belief system does not have.

the very way the question is phrased almost inevitably leads to an answer which exonerates liberalism as a system of government from any 'intrinsic' capacity for evil or toxicity because it does not recognise either the diffusion of individual moral agency or responsibility. Therefore it is "common sense" to think of communism as instrinsically evil, toxic, totalitarian, etc, but common sense does not do justice to the moral complexity of the problem.

 

[Sunstone]

...as long as Liberals get off scot free with whatever genocide suited their "humanity" at that particular moment, there isn't a valid objective or universal ethical standard by which to judge Communists by.

(1) Is it logically necessary to have an "objective ethical standard" before one can judge communism? Isn't an objective ethical standard an impossibility for epistemological reasons? And cannot one legitimately judge communism according to a subjective standard?

(2) Would the fact that x goes free due to an error of justice logically imply that y should go free? If Jones gets off the hook for murder because of a corrupt judge do we say there is now no valid ethical standard for convicting Stevens of murder?

Just some concerns...

 

[Laika]

(1) Is it logically necessary to have an "objective ethical standard" before one can judge communism? Isn't an objective ethical standard an impossibility for epistemological reasons? And cannot one legitimately judge communism according to a subjective standard?

(2) Would the fact that x goes free due to an error of justice logically imply that y should go free? If Jones gets off the hook for murder because of a corrupt judge do we say there is now no valid ethical standard for convicting Stevens of murder?

Just some concerns...

1) Yes. it is necessary to have objective ethical standards by which to judge communism. Primarily because you're not simply judging an individual, but an entire ideology and system of government. it is one thing to put an individual on trail as you can point to them and say this person did X and Y and X and Y are bad; it is quite another to attrbitue guilt on a collective basis for an entire system of government or ideology. There has to be something that takes precedence over their belief in the "rightness" of their cause, for you to say that what they did was wrong.
You have to cliam that your values have supremacy over the values which legitimse human rights abuses. Without this, there is no basis for common agreement for international law and for ethical standards by which to judge other cultures.

If you tried to judge another society based on subjective standards (i.e. "this feels wrong"), your essentially saying that because you have the power to do so, you can impose your will and ethical standards on everyone else. The cliam to objectivity, gives these standards their legitimacy as something other than a brute exercise of power.
Moral relativism takes you into very strange territory, as the United States can invade North Korea and call it "liberation from the tryanny of socialism" because they fit the ethical standards of the US. The reverse is also true. North Korea can invade the US (if they had the power to) and impose their ethical standards on the US inorder to "liberate them from global imperalism". its a reciepe for anarchy, violence- and consequently human rights abuses from the ideological conflicts that result.

And the notion of "objective" ethics is a tricky one as the concept of "universal human rights" has its roots in Christian and Liberal natural law. So of course, the USSR wouldn't recognise it as valid basis to be judged because i) they aren't liberal because they don't support free markets and have a very "different" definition of democracy and ii) they don't believe in god. Why should Militant-Atheists accept to be judged based on protecting the sanctity of human life if they don't believe there is a god to create man in his own image and make life sacred?

To them it would be an imposition of western imperialist values and "bourgeois" standards of legality. In practice, they have to accept the legitimacy of the authority which is judging them in order for them to ever accept "guilt".

2) Assuming that the criteria for justice under a liberal system is equality before the law, the fact that there are people who above the law by virtue of being the ones who impliment or make it is a serious challange to its legitimacy. We put the Nazis on Trail for War crimes at Nurumburg; so how did Harry Truman get off for bombing hiroshima and nagasaki? can that be considered equal or just? The notion of equality is therefore central to saying that it is not simply the justice of the victor over the vanquished and is the one distinction that stops the law from being "corrupt" and political power. the protection of human rights is therefore dependent on the rule of law.

But if the United States for example were able to use its power to be above the law, it can engage in widespread human rights violations because international law does not apply, (e.g. Guantanamo bay). this therefore nullifies any cliam to superiority that liberalism has to "protecting human rights" because in practice liberals are above the law, no matter what they may cliam. it ceases to be legitimate basis for law and is corrupted as a political weapon.

it is also exactly what happened in Communist countries where, with the exception of Albania, all constitution protected freedom of religion in writing, but not in practice. They also had a right to privacy and personal property, even as the Stasi walked into your house when you were out and re-arranged your furniture to better reflect "socialist values" and fabricate evidence to meet their targets for the number of arrests they have to make. They had a system of rule by law in which the law became a weapon of class struggle. If Joe McCarthy can put communists on trial because be believes that the law should serve as an instrument to defend the American way of life, what is the difference between the two sides and how can liberals cliam the superiority over their opponents to make those sort of value judgements? it ceases to be equal and universally binding on all parties concerned and is the same as the communists in all but name.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I think we need to take another step back and first ask who has actually read communist literature, and not just accepted third-party information at face value.
And then with that out of the way, the OP question can be asked again.

 

[Laika]

I think we need to take another step back and first ask who has actually read communist literature, and not just accepted third-party information at face value.
And then with that out of the way, the OP question can be asked again.

I like where this is going.

 

[MARCELLO]

My father (R.I.P) used to tell me that if the entire world experiment fully communism milleniums ago,all the world would not be different than a village self sufficient illiterate african banana community,because you can live on bananas and needn't more. The consumerism would be so lower that you would not even need arts or books; books are product of consumerism,too,not for knowledge needed,actually.

As you know (probably bored to hear again,sorry to re announce) I live in the 3rd world where capitalism is the keyword since there is simply no capital enough,although the government here ''thinks'' they are a sort of communist. It is always always and again always that the minor enterprises steal from you. The bigger companies are entitled with some rules so that you can complain abouth your stolen overtimes,but for the minor ones,no way!.

So that means that in order to establish some sort of socialism at least,you still need to have some capitalist background.

See Nigeria and then compare it with Sweden. Who wins?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I like where this is going.

It's just a matter of factual statements. If no labels such as democratic, communist, totalitarian, or others were used and you just described the societies, if you were to describe the features and characteristics of places like communist Chine or the USSR, communism is not what would come to mind even if you have just read a few pieces of communist literature. But, even still, it's really bad that you find many of the things you do in "communist" countries but not so much in capitalist societies. Technologically, about the only thing Russia didn't do better was getting to the moon first. Other than that, they excelled far ahead of America. Throughout the smaller countries you can find things like transportation, health care, education and improved literacy rates, and other efforts to alleviate poverty. But you also find these things in more socialist leaning countries, something that America is terrified of, even though it's the wealthiest nation on the planet.

 

[MARCELLO]

I am from the socialist wing of Europe,when the socialism ended,we have seen our valuable doctors stealing indian kidneys and selling them to west of the west. We have seen our beautiful cello players (playing best of Mozart; playing Mozart is really hard,if you have some ideas about classical music ) to prostitute for a few pieces of flashy garments. We have seen our esteemed police kissing the back of the shoes of smugglers . The pharmacy world went crazy.A good pharmacist was the one who made the best '' dope'' to get more dollars.

But the worst thing is that, they have done more horrible things while we were ruled under socialism,just we were untold.

It was not a nice experience. And I can never put the blame on capitalism. It's the guilt of communism.

You have to consume to be nicer and it simply works. The first time I ate real good bananas from deeper Africa,it was late 80's and I thought they could have been from outer space as the ones I have eaten before were as little as lighters.

I still do LOVE socialism and communism,but I have never seen they worked .

 

[columbus]

when the socialism ended,we have seen our valuable doctors stealing indian kidneys and selling them to west of the west. We have seen our beautiful cello players (playing best of Mozart; playing Mozart is really hard,if you have some ideas about classical music ) to prostitute for a few pieces of flashy garments. We have seen our esteemed police kissing the back of the shoes of smugglers . The pharmacy world went crazy.A good pharmacist was the one who made the best '' dope'' to get more dollars.

This is all capitalism.
Here in the west we have all kinds of "socialist" restrictions to prevent the worst excesses of capitalism. But many of them remain.
I don't understand your point.
Tom

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I am from the socialist wing of Europe,when the socialism ended,we have seen our valuable doctors stealing indian kidneys and selling them to west of the west. We have seen our beautiful cello players (playing best of Mozart; playing Mozart is really hard,if you have some ideas about classical music ) to prostitute for a few pieces of flashy garments. We have seen our esteemed police kissing the back of the shoes of smugglers . The pharmacy world went crazy.A good pharmacist was the one who made the best '' dope'' to get more dollars.

And in America you see one announcement after another concerning law suits against medications because pharmaceutical companies buy, encourage, and pay for doctors to prescribe their medications. And they've been known to encourage their pills be used to treat things they aren't intended for (which is illegal as it is using the medication in an unintended way), or may even be dangerous, or even if there is no science to back up their claims. When Mitch Daniels was a top guy in Eli Lilly, he said he was going to make Prozac profitable, and studies would later find it doesn't work nearly as good as claimed. Or we just let our doctors give us opiates, meth, or stuff that can mess with the mind in dangerous ways, but we'll demonize anything illegal even though several illegal drugs have great promise for treating certain conditions. Mozart and Shakespeare have little appreciation, but we love watching over sized ogres get beat up, seriously injured, and often dying early. Our police are a danger to the general public, and they violating your rights on a regular basis. And we also allow dangerous additives into our food, and allow cruel treatment of farm animals.

 

[MARCELLO]

1) Yes. it is necessary to have objective ethical standards by which to judge communism. Primarily because you're not simply judging an individual, but an entire ideology and system of government. it is one thing to put an individual on trail as you can point to them and say this person did X and Y and X and Y are bad; it is quite another to attrbitue guilt on a collective basis for an entire system of government or ideology. There has to be something that takes precedence over their belief in the "rightness" of their cause, for you to say that what they did was wrong.
You have to cliam that your values have supremacy over the values which legitimse human rights abuses. Without this, there is no basis for common agreement for international law and for ethical standards by which to judge other cultures.

If you tried to judge another society based on subjective standards (i.e. "this feels wrong"), your essentially saying that because you have the power to do so, you can impose your will and ethical standards on everyone else. The cliam to objectivity, gives these standards their legitimacy as something other than a brute exercise of power.
Moral relativism takes you into very strange territory, as the United States can invade North Korea and call it "liberation from the tryanny of socialism" because they fit the ethical standards of the US. The reverse is also true. North Korea can invade the US (if they had the power to) and impose their ethical standards on the US inorder to "liberate them from global imperalism". its a reciepe for anarchy, violence- and consequently human rights abuses from the ideological conflicts that result.

And the notion of "objective" ethics is a tricky one as the concept of "universal human rights" has its roots in Christian and Liberal natural law. So of course, the USSR wouldn't recognise it as valid basis to be judged because i) they aren't liberal because they don't support free markets and have a very "different" definition of democracy and ii) they don't believe in god. Why should Militant-Atheists accept to be judged based on protecting the sanctity of human life if they don't believe there is a god to create man in his own image and make life sacred?

To them it would be an imposition of western imperialist values and "bourgeois" standards of legality. In practice, they have to accept the legitimacy of the authority which is judging them in order for them to ever accept "guilt".

2) Assuming that the criteria for justice under a liberal system is equality before the law, the fact that there are people who above the law by virtue of being the ones who impliment or make it is a serious challange to its legitimacy. We put the Nazis on Trail for War crimes at Nurumburg; so how did Harry Truman get off for bombing hiroshima and nagasaki? can that be considered equal or just? The notion of equality is therefore central to saying that it is not simply the justice of the victor over the vanquished and is the one distinction that stops the law from being "corrupt" and political power. the protection of human rights is therefore dependent on the rule of law.

But if the United States for example were able to use its power to be above the law, it can engage in widespread human rights violations because international law does not apply, (e.g. Guantanamo bay). this therefore nullifies any cliam to superiority that liberalism has to "protecting human rights" because in practice liberals are above the law, no matter what they may cliam. it ceases to be legitimate basis for law and is corrupted as a political weapon.

it is also exactly what happened in Communist countries where, with the exception of Albania, all constitution protected freedom of religion in writing, but not in practice. They also had a right to privacy and personal property, even as the Stasi walked into your house when you were out and re-arranged your furniture to better reflect "socialist values" and fabricate evidence to meet their targets for the number of arrests they have to make. They had a system of rule by law in which the law became a weapon of class struggle. If Joe McCarthy can put communists on trial because be believes that the law should serve as an instrument to defend the American way of life, what is the difference between the two sides and how can liberals cliam the superiority over their opponents to make those sort of value judgements? it ceases to be equal and universally binding on all parties concerned and is the same as the communists in all but name.[/QUOTE

This is all capitalism.
Here in the west we have all kinds of "socialist" restrictions to prevent the worst excesses of capitalism. But many of them remain.
I don't understand your point.
Tom

Because you don't want to understand,I dunno why. I am telling you that socialism does not work unless your are in norwegia or Sweden,which are the richest per capita of the world. Socialism where there is simply no capital is worse than a hell. I say that you need some really good capital in order to establish some socialism.

Is it clearer now,Tom?

 

[Revoltingest]

Technologically, about the only thing Russia didn't do better was getting to the moon first. Other than that, they excelled far ahead of America.

What makes you think that?
In the engineering world, I recall that where they really excelled was at making do with limited resources.
They weren't ahead of us....they merely coped well with being behind.
(Note that I make a distinction between science & technology.)