#gosposting

[fauvester]

i wish i could subscribe to communist theory in the same way that i genuinely wish that I could be religious.

i have an easier time buying into the idea of a semisocialist/socialist economy that i would Like To Be In, but honestly, more than that is probably not going to happen without a substantial internal paradigm shift

i should do more reading, but I don’t think my central feelings on the issue will change drastically

[fauvester]

One thing that I find very attractive about communist/socialist theory is that it doesn’t tie one person’s measure of ‘deserving’ to survive with their ability to produce goods and services deemed to be ‘valuable.’ as an economist/liberal arts student who is perpetually concerned with the advancing rate of technology creating mass joblessness and therefore mass suffering (despite how ahistorical that fear is), it’s a sensible philosophy.  technological advances that increase our production capacity should benefit everyone, especially if it also decreases the opportunities for people to make a living at a job that they’re skilled at.  a non-capitalist system (as I understand it?) would ensure that by providing a floating baseline level of subsistence that relies on total production output, so even if you don’t have skills to offer at present you aren’t put at existential risk.

I guess that, personally, I wouldn’t want to be relegated to poverty as an academic just because the caprices of the market don’t value what I have to contribute to it.  and it seems like an extra kick in the gut to know that that would happen in conjunction with one of the largest expansions of global PPC that the earth has experienced.  more stuff per person should mean a higher living standard, both on average and per individual.  no one person deserves more of the bounty of technological advances for some inborn skill or status-related position

[fauvester]

I actually think that the Communist Manifesto is a pretty great piece of work, from a literary, historical and economic perspective, esp. when paired with some of Marx’s other works that more thoroughly explores the modern economy and where he extrapolates its path.

I don’t necessarily agree with him, but i think his ideas are cool and also interesting.

[fauvester]

there are so many better arguments for capitalism than ‘human nature!’ and so many better arguments for socialism than ‘human nature’

[fauvester]

that one post about ‘human nature changing depending on the background it’s placed in’ makes me sigh a million times-

a.) why are you generalizing the entire human experience like that? i’d like to see some psychological studies to back this up, thanks.  If some behavioral economist/psychologist has managed to perform an unbiased international difference-in-difference test w/r/t the entirety of a country’s character under competing economic systems i’d be happy to take a look, but I feel like most people making this argument do not have the requisite proof to back this kind of claim up. it sounds true in theory, but in theory the capitalist system works perfectly as well oops

b.)  if that’s true then the second socialism fell in post-socialist countries, especially those that had been socialist for decades, you should see everybody being kind and supportive and definitely not interested in ‘capitalist’ things like making a quick buck on speculating on vouchers or screwing over your fellow citizens. That, it suffices to say, didn’t happen.

And, ironically, the most violent forms of capitalism emerged in the countries that had been socialist for longest.

[fauvester]

genuine Q to people who know more about the issue than I:  why do people call countries under a socialist system communist countries?  I see people on here, even people who are very well versed in political and economic history, calling China and Russia communist countries.  is it because they’re ideally going towards communism? is it because you think socialism is just a primordial form of communism? because they definitely aren’t de jure communist states and I’m really curious.

?

[fauvester]

also, it begs mentioning.  the soviet foreign exchange bank was called VNESHTORGBANK

that sounds like a transformer, not a ForEx repository

[fauvester]

in Soviet Russia, ‘gos-’ was used as a prefix for bureaus or departments, like ‘gosbank’ for the central bank, ‘gosplan’, which formulated the 1, 5 and 20 year plans, ‘gosnab,’ which acquired building materials, ‘gosten,’ which controlled building costs, etc.

whenever we were feeling particularly mirthful in that class (very very hard to do) we would amuse ourselves by adding ‘gos-’ as a prefix to everything