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Under capitalism
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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Antiwork/Work Reform
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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
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Date Created: June 15, 2023
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Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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It’s not a bug that capitalism is based on greed, it’s a feature. It works (relatively speaking) because it leverages humanity’s shittyness.
Communism has failed to operate without corruption or authoritarianism, because it depends on people actually giving a shit about each other long term.
Has capitalism operated without corruption or authoritarianism?
has any economic system ever operated without corruption?
that's a fair question. it seems like corruption is universal to all systems of organization and therefore not a good measure of the validity of any given system
In a way: when you legalize the most common forms of corruption and gaslight people into thinking of your favorite kinds of authoritarianism as normal and necessary, suddenly you don't officially have a problem!
That's how the US and many other supposedly free and uncorrupted capitalist nations do it, anyway.
Relatively speaking, I’d say yes.
The communist systems I’m aware of have failed hard on these due to not having built in outlets for negative human characteristics.
Seems like your understanding of communism comes from cold war propaganda
Actually from people who lived through it in the eastern bloc… the propaganda was mostly right.
No, we tried communism, the weird dielectric system of government that Lenin came up with.
Communism, the market ideology, can exist within a capitalist framework - all we have to do is say "companies are owned and operated by employees. From now on, we cap ROI when loaning money, no more infinite payout because you provided startup capital".
Communes and entirely employee owned/operated companies exist, and they do well. They just don't grow until they implode - they grow to a point and then stop letting people in
Communism is a market system, not a system of government. It doesn't need to be centralized - and centralization is the real problem IMO
Yeah, agreed. I don’t think purism in either direction is great. To me well regulated capitalism with strong unions seems like a good balance.
I feel like you're misrepresenting or misunderstanding what communism is. You might base your opinion on the soviet union but they never actually achieved communism, and some would even say it was state capitalism and not even socialism. In fact it's unlikely we'll ever see what an actual communist society would be because it's very much a vague utopia, and just a goal to strive towards.
Communism by definition actually isn't very clear because Marx never actually got into the details of how a communist society day to day life would look like. But he did postulate the primary idea of communism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." One idea of communism is that it's stateless and classless, meaning there literally couldn't be a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth. Marx himself actually said that future communist institutions should be designed to be decided democratically by the people.
I think it is interesting that when talking about systems designed to organize people, their labor, and what to produce, that you are blaming people. It's kind of like blaming water for flowing down hill when you want it to go up into your kitchen sink. Maybe use pipes and pressurized water instead.
If these systems don't work, the issues are with the systems and not with the people.
I don't think they blamed people. I think they said the issue is that the systems didn't account for people. That's saying the systems are inadequate solutions for the scenario.
It's like saying an iron rod rusts when placed in salt water because it didn't account for the salt water. The iron rod might be a good design but it's not designed for that use.
Thanks for the thought provoking reply!
My impression is that all systems fail long term and need to break down and be renewed after crisis. Once it becomes entrenched, I think odds are heavily against being able to try social systems.
Have you seen a system like you describe, where a structure to continue change and experimentation is built in? To me capitalism with strong controls seems the most stable and successful (assuming your benchmark is population qualify of life not just GDP), e.g. some European systems.
Your sentiment is why I don't consider myself a communist. Capitalism can work well but it requires extraordinarily powerful regulations. Communism is maybe a bit better but still requires the same amount of regulation we're failing to implement now.
We need to fix capitalism before we make the move to communism.
Term limits for everything. If the morons are going to pick an idiot to run their village at least there's a chance they'll elect a smart man, if only by mistake.
Okay, so how do we get everyone to actually bother to vote? In the US we've been having problems trying to get equal representation at the polls and so far haven't really done a great job of fixing it.
Having a team of lawyers to draft and submit legal terms is a great idea, in fact it's kind of the point of lawyers. The issue is having the people who vote on them be able to both understand them, and to check both the writer and the representative check each other for corruption. If you give the representative the ability to remove the lawyer then the representative holds the real power, if you don't, you give the lawyer more power. We need a balance in there somewhere.
Let's also not forget that direct democracy has lead to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the election of theocratic and fascistic leaders. How do we balance that?
Capping terms at 1 or 2 prevents people from being able to consolidate and exploit their power. But we'll still need leaders to vote on our behalf so how do we prevent corruption? What if we had a new institution whose sole job was to check the government and maintain an open forum where all opinions can be shared and argued.
More than any of this, I really think the rich just need to be scared of the poor again.
I disagree that people would somehow be more compelled to vote for issues they care about. Most people care about who the president is but that still doesn't get everyone to the polls. Forcing states to have more reasonable access to mail in ballots would be a step in the right direction but the problem in my opinion is really a out getting people to see it more as a duty than a chore. Say we used a tax credit to incentivize voting?
As for the idea of just letting political parties do what they want, they kind of already do, see DNC primaries 2016. That system already exists and is being actively exploited by the ruling class. I don't think that's a fix.
Again, we come back to term limits, people who are elected to office need to be forced out of politics after a set amount of time to prevent career politicians. And more specifically we need to make it so they cannot accept a job offer or payment for services from anyone who could have benefited from their decisions while in office. Maybe we have a pension for ex-representatives to live on for 8 years after leaving office, and make it illegal for them to have any other income? It should be a service to our country, not our country serving them.
Part of the issue with this take is that communism isn't a system for organizing government, but rather that of labor and resources. It is not true that communism has failed. Rather it is true that communism under totalitarian regisms has failed. True Communism requires that the people have the power, which in turn would require a true Democracy
If a certain type of government is not possible to install is that a feasible form of governance?
How is it impossible to install?
Everytime someone tries it always gets co-opted into an authoritarian regime?
It's my understanding they began as authoritarian regimes, so they have yet to be implemented. An authoritarian regime isn't necessarily easy to install but it isn't impossible, nor is a full democracy or some variant of it.
One of the key tennents of a well governed body is that leaders (if there are any) should be easy to remove by the governed. An authoritarian regime immediately fails that requirement.