this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
175 points (78.5% liked)
Showerthoughts
29678 readers
1281 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics (NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out)
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The problem with that and most other proposals for whatever other moneyless utopian society is that they all implicitly require some manner of all-powerful central authority to ensure that the rewards get distributed, the labor gets allocated, and the rules stay followed.
And we already know how well that's going to turn out.
True meritocracy also leaves the disabled, elderly, or otherwise unable to contribute in the cold.
And yet here you are, in the fediverse.
that really isn't the case..
Communism by definition is not only moneyless but also stateless and classless (if there is an "all powerful" anything - it isn't communism).
anarchism by definition abolishes all hierarchy, so again, no one person or even group gets to a point of having any significant power over anyone else.
In both cases (which are the two most notable far left ideologies I would say, along with socialism which is inherent to both) not having an all powerful central authority is literally the point.
Attempting to have no authority may be the "point," but here in reality that doesn't actually work as long as humans remain what they are. It can only function so long as everyone involved cooperates to the very letter of the classless-moneyless-stateless social agreement and there is no outside disruption from anywhere else that doesn't subscribe to the ideal. The moment someone figures out they can cheat to get more than others, it falls apart.
And what they want more of does not necessarily have to be money. It could be land, or crops, or coconuts, or a bigger hut, or more sexual partners, or shinier rocks, or internet post likes, or more prestige, or whatever.
One of two things then happen: They succeed, and become the authority. Or an authority has to be formed by some type of agreement by everyone else to stop them. This also inevitably begets violence.
You can try as hard as you like to evade this, but unless you lobotomize literally everyone or have magic mind control powers or something (which would require you to be... the authority) it is guaranteed that you will fail. Maybe not immediately, but the larger in scale your little social experiment gets the sooner it will happen. You can get 5 or 10 or maybe even 100 people to perfectly agree with each other and play along. If you're lucky, you might even make it last for more than one generation. Don't even try to argue that you could do it with a million people. Or ten million. Or 332 million (the population of the United States). Ceaseless cooperation in numbers beyond those of our immediate tribe- or family-sphere is not a trait that is found in humans.
Listen. I'm far from the worst human out there. But if I was introduced to a fair, classless, equal society, I would become their dictator faster than you can say "utopia". No force to stop me, no one allowed to stop me, I'd be like smallpox to the Indians.
Hahaha imagine thinking no one would stop you. You're an utter clown.
Well then it's no longer fair, equal, and classless, is it?
Yes it is.
It does not mean you do nothing to protect your way of life and sit back like a hapless pacifist.
Ok. I try to take control. Who stops me?
Everybody, anybody?
How do you think you're going to magically take control? You'll just rock up to a community and say "I'm your leader now muahaha"?
Well I'd start by taking people's stuff. Then I'd say, "hey, I'll give you some of your stuff back if you help me go take that guy's things and give me half". Then I'd proceed in this fashion until I have a group of people who can take whatever they want. Then I'd be able to start ordering people to do things.
If at any point anyone tells me "hey you can't do that" then I'd just get a group of people to hurt or kill them.
They would then get together a group of people to try and stop me.
Then the rest of people would start to pick sides aaaaand ah fuck we have a rudimentary government. And war and social stratification.
So you'd start off by getting shot? Or do you think people are just going to give you their stuff?
Problem solved.
Even if you managed to somehow get a group of people to follow you (why would they want to?), you're now in a state of war. Look up the Zapatistas in Mexico and their conflict with the cartels for an example of why you won't win.
You're approaching this like you're a villain from the walking dead, real life is a bit more complicated than you 'well I'd just get an army and win' mentality.
It's an equal society, so if they have a gun, I have a gun. So I'd shoot them first. Or I'd point the gun at them and tell them to drop their gun and then do what I told them to if they don't want to get shot.
"reality" is what capitalism has indoctrinated you to think it is, meanwhile in actual reality, humans are and always have been hardwired to cooperate
lol, so you acknowledge that attempts at communism couldn't have succeeded because capitalism wouldn't allow it (because capitalists consider communism, or any cooperation that isn't for profit, an existential threat, which is precisely why they invest so much in to making people like you think it's not only a bad idea, but an "impossible" one).
https://medium.com/international-workers-press/misconceptions-about-communism-2e366f1ef51f
You can try as hard as you like to evade actual reality, and the fact that capitalism is not only guaranteed to, but is already literally destroying humanity and the planet, or you can keep licking its boot that is not only stomping on your neck, but on all our necks, because you're too scared or even unable (but definitely privileged enough to still find comfort in it - we aren't all that lucky) to think outside of the box it created for you, but falling for the propaganda will never make you right, only demonstrably easily manipulated, and wilfully ignorant and resistant to change (when you refuse to even try to understand, let alone seriously contemplate the alternatives, you don't get to dismiss them since you clearly don't know what the fuck you're talking about).. That's a you problem, not a communism (or even "reality") problem.. ¯\(ツ)/¯
That's odd, me and my housemates can distribute our housekeeping jobs amongst ourselves without having someone come along and tell us what to do.
Yet when it comes to the country I live in, this is suddenly unimaginable because who would want to live somewhere functional of their own volition.
It works for 4 people. It does not work for 4 million.
You've tried?
There's this thing called democracy, where people can come together as a community to discuss issues and work out solutions - such as allocating work loads as need be, you see this in many large community projects across the world. That's the same underlying principle my house uses, communication not authority.
I'm genuinely curious, how could communism be applied to millions of people without any central authority to oversee the system? Say, the sewer need to be maintained, and the people assigned to the work by the community decided "nah, I don't want to clean the sewer" and not show up to work, what would the community do? What if the people assigned to mining coals decided they don't want to mine coal anymore because it's a horrible job and no one volunteer to replace them? Will the community force them to work or face punishment? If so, who make the decision if not a central authority?
Yeh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Communism_in_the_Soviet_Union
That is literally an authoritarian system.
What do you think the role of ‘General Secretary’ was? Its tankie shit.
Huh, wonder how they went from communism to authoritarianism. Well, surely that was a one time coincidence and not indicative of a systemic failure of communism as an ideology.
They didn't actually, they got trapped in the centralise everything under a state model of socialism.
Also I've been arguing for anarchism, so you're really just hitting and missing non-stop today.
Ooof, not many ideologies dumber than communism, but you picked one
I doubt you even understand what it is, considering you thought the S.U. wasn't authoritarian.
So I'm not offended by the remarks of idiots.
No one does, because stupid ideas, in order to keep adherents, have to become protean. Every time someone points out an obvious flaw in your ideology, you'll say "that's not what it is" and shift it to something else.
I can tell you what it really is. You won't like me telling you. It's angst. It's rebellion. That's all. You'll probably grow out of it.