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It's important to consider the fact that an economy does not have to be entirely Capitalist, Socialist, or Communist.
Most countries already have Socialist and Capitalist components at this point.
What I'd personally like to see is Land be a communist system. Necessities be Socialist. Luxuries be Capitalist.
Every citizen of a country should own and share in the land of the country equally. It should not be possible to privately own land. If land is leased or rented from this pool for individual or corporate use, that money should be given to everyone equally. Likely that would be handled by a government in reality, but it should be fairly hands off other than facilitating the transfer of value.
Necessities like Basic Housing, Basic Food, Public Transportation, Medical Care, Parks, Rec Centers, Schools, Police, Courts, etc. should be all handled with socialism. Where the government collects taxes from the land value and capitalist markets, and operates these systems itself for the benefit of everyone who needs them.
If you want more than necessities, capitalism should stick around to handle those desires. Want a bigger fancier house, some fancy oranges from another country, a suit made of silk, go ahead and buy it on a capitalist market either with the money you receive from your portion of land ownership value, or through participating in the capitalist market yourself.
This is completely wrong. Social welfare and shared infrastructure have nothing to do with Socialism. Socialism is an economic model where the means of production are owned by the workers, nothing more, nothing less.
You clearly don't understand how many countries operate. Or you're somehow misunderstanding what "means of production" or "workers" means.
My local electricity provider, and all of it's power production equipment, transmission lines, meters, etc. are owned by the government. So is every hospital in the country. Almost every road is public.
Means of production is any sort of capital used to build value, so things like infrastructure, buildings, factories, machinery, tools, etc.
Workers does not mean the people that work in a particular building or factory, it means the class of people as a whole.
It's pretty obvious that if the government owns something, under a democracy that thing is is owned by the citizens of the region. Even Marx mentions that socialism would use the state for collective ownership.
Yes, they may be state-owned, but you still live in a bourgeois state with capitalist ownership structure, so the state doesn't act in the workers interest, but to uphold the capitalist order.
By the way, would you mind telling me what country that is? Most EU countries with strong state-owned infrastructure that I'm aware of have been forced to liberalize, so for example in my country lots of former state enterprises are now private profit-bound businesses that are just 100% owned by the state.
Canada
You're stretching the realities here with your assertions. The vast majority of what the government does is in the interest of workers. It could be better, absolutely, but it's a far cry from some dystopian corpo-state. The government could move towards more positive worker benefits, but a lot of those workers won't actually vote for them if they did because people aren't entirely rational. So we're essentially getting what we deserve right now.
Profit-bound but still owned by the state would still be socialist. There's no requirement that the means of production not generate profit to qualify as being owned by the workers.
So you're a Social Democrat, got it. Those are pretty out of fashion over here and gave up pretending wanting to achieve Socialism long ago. Sorry, but I don't really think that what you're talking about is Socialism, it's liberal reformism.
I want Communism for Land, Socialism for Necessities, and Capitalism for Luxuries.
I don't think that puts me into any of the existing labels to be quite honest.
It makes you someone who doesn't understand what those terms mean, so a modern liberal.
It makes me someone who treats them as economic systems, usually referred to as an economist.
Have fun being morally outraged by my proposal, but at least it's grounded in reality. Humans are not capable of making or maintaining a full Marxist communist state. Our desires are limitless, reality is finite.
Socialism is a mode of production and distribution where the working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal (rising and dominant) aspect of the economy. Communism is a post-socialist mode of production and distribution where the entire economy is collectivized and planned, and there is no longer a state, class, or money. See Cheng Enfu's diagram:
You have a horrible understanding of socialism, communism, and social democracy, that frankly makes things more confusing.
You have a horrible understanding of reality.
If two people get together and put all of their earnings into a pot together, then each take out what they need. That's a type of communism. It's also usually called a family.
Marxism/Leninism are specific type of communism as well, that reach well into the political space as well as the economic.
What you're trying to do right now, imposing your own singular view of what communism can be, is the same as saying Catholicism is the only type of Christianity just because it's the most well known.
There's a whole wikipedia article detailing dozens of variations of Communism, from Marxism to variations on Marxism, to variations independent of Marxism. Just because he did a lot of thinking on the whole thing doesn't mean he's the only one who gets to define the word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies
The fact of the matter is that Marxism-Leninism is what communism means for 99.9% of historical practice. Someone trying to describe sharing as "communism" when OP is talking about actual modes of production and distribution is missing the forest for the trees. Marx didn't define communism, he created an ideology that better understands how to actually achieve it and why it is historically compelled, what gives him validity is that the only socialism that has actually existed at scale in real life has come from Marxism-Leninism.
You clearly didn't read the links either. There are actively practiced forms of communism listed in there. You're the ones just being so narrowminded about it's definition.
For most of historical practice, gay meant happy. We decided to use it for something else only recently in terms of language. That's how language works.
Not a single one of the ideologies listed on that page has successfully established socialism except for the derivatives of Marxism-Leninism, such as Juche. The closest is Zapatismo, but Zapatismo does not consider itself communist, nor socialist, nor anarchist, and instead is a primarily indigenous ideology related to the Chiapas region.
Both religious and primative communism both exist today, just not at a state level.
"Religious communism" is not a thing, and early communalism exists in micro-pockets. Neither is the same as what is understood as communism, the theoretical mode of production that predates Marxism.
The problem we're arguing about here is "understood as communism"
I understand both of those to be Communism, because they are in fact types of Communism. That's why they're referred to as "Religious Communism" and "Primative Communism."
You are trying to Pidgeon hole Communism as just Marxism, when the word frequently has far broader implications in common use.
Even the dictionaries have definitions that extend beyond Marxism.
I already said the concept of communism predates Marx. I am not redefining communism to Marxism. OP is asking about socialism and communism as they actually exist and are understood, and further "primitive communism" as described by Marx is misleading and instead is better described as "communalism."
This is all incredibly hypocritical coming from you as well, considering you were adamant that China had abandoned communism over in this thread. Why are you now trying to say, essentially, that "communism is in the eye of the beholder?"
How is it hypocritical? China HAS abandoned communism. What part their current policies is moving towards collective ownership?
China's State Owned Enterprises are at less than 60% of the total production of the country, down from well over 80% during the peak in the 50s and 60s.
Hell, Xi has opened up SoE to a hybrid mix of government and private ownership in 2013.
How is that Communism in any of it's definitions?
I already answered this over on Late Stage Capitalism, so I'll just copy and paste my response over here:
I'm sorry, but this just reveals that we aren't on the same page when it comes to Marxism. Your primary error is with erasing all of the advances of historical materialism and scientific socialism from Marx, and returning it to the utopianism of pre-Marx socialists such as Robert Owen. Essentially, you are treating capitalism as "private property," socialism as "public property," and communism as "big socialism." This is dogmatic, and erases that modes of production are NOT their finite parts, but instead are determined by which aspect of the economy is principal, ie dominant and rising, and which class controls the state.
When you say China is a "mix of capitalism and socialism," this horrendously misrepresents what a mode of production actually is. In China, public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. Huge state industry forms the backbone of the economy, and governs the large firms and key industries. This is because public ownership and planning is more effective at higher levels of development.
The private property that exists in China is relegated to small and medium industries, and highly competitive ones. This is because of the key development in Marxism advancing it beyond utopianism: the form of production suits the level of development of the productive forces. Rather than taking the Utopian path, which was to "model build" and create a system outright, Marx observed that capitalism came from feudalism with the rise in industrialization, and that markets themselves were centralizing, in other words socializing production while keeping profits private!
To return, your position that "the more communist you are, the more you dogmatically collectivize, regardless of level of development" is distinctly anti-Marxist, and moreover was already tried by China! Under the Gang of Four, there became a fetishization of equality in poverty. They were dogmatic in trying to collectivize as much as possible, with little regard for the level of development. Reform & Opening Up was a return to more classical interpretations of Marx, and thus saw a stablization and slight acceleration in development. This strategy and understanding is reflected in Cheng Enfu's diagram, here:
When Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party, their basic advice to any successful revolution is to nationalize the large firms and key industries, develop the productive forces as rapidly as possible, and gradually nationalize the rest of the economy as it develops. This reflects the exact path the PRC is charting, right now. This is why it's important to read and understand theory, as if you became a leader of a new socialist country with your current understanding, you'd likely commit the same mistakes as the Gang of Four.
Well said, comrade! Even if I don't think it'll help this person understand...
I hope it will, so who knows!
You seem like you're suffering from a bad case of Dunning-Kruger. You've been explained very basic terms multiple times, but you keep repeating your completely wrong understanding undeterred, with brazen authority.
Are you saying that I made up an entire Wikipedia article with dozens of variations of Communism?
That page has existed for 2 years, not sure I'm playing that long of a game to win an argument on Lemmy.
It's like you're intentionally just ignoring everything I show you because it doesn't conform to your world view.
Literally the first sentence of your wikipedia article explains that these are different ideologies trying to achieve the same thing, a communist society.
You didn't ready very far clearly.
There are variations in there that are not trying to "achieve" a communist society without classes. Religious communism for example often still has "classes" in the priesthood and worshippers, and they're often far more about sharing resources or a lack of private ownership of land.
I'm not religious, but my views are very similar to that theory of communism, as well as sharing aspects of privative communism.
You seem to be set in your categorization of things, you realize that ideas are not an all or nothing type of situation most of the time?