Why are people against communism?
- Thread starter United for Communism
- Start date
alternately, if we care to be topical, just tune into fox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCqQRflUWd4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pilG7PCV448
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That is feeding the machine. You don't think that's wrong? You must be just another enemy of the working man. (UfC)
:massive fucking facepalm:
So, like, do you read a sentence--or clause--then go out for a bite, take a walk, whatever, until you've completely forgotten what you had just read, and then continue reading?
If I were to ask, "What is your name?" Would you respond, "Why, that would be the appellation to which I respond" ?
Most people take in the context when reading, not you apparently. Let me guess: "business" man, computer "science" guy, lawyer? Gotta be one of 'em.
I suspect that whatever problem you are having is your own. In fact I will provide strong evidence of it in just a moment (right below).
In post #177 2nd paragraph it is quoted. In post #177 3rd paragraph it is responded to. Tying back to my former statement above, this apparent reading comprehension problem is exlusively yours.
How it becomes dishonest and a disregard of science to remove paranormal/crank escape cards with video cameras seems to be a process that is unique to your mind. I would suggest first comprehending the definitions of the words you are using and then presenting your argument to support your case.
Really? So you honestly thought that I was asking for a Merriam Webster definition of "human nature"? Something about context goes here.
My bad then. You did in fact quote that part, but your response doesn't really address the tendency make blanket judgments based upon appeals to "human nature." And, as Signal noted above, what you did post was a trifle over-simplistic and suggests that you disregard work (both by behaviorists and other social scientists) done within the past half-century or so.
The thread (I'll dig it up, if you're that interested) had nothing to do with "crank/paranormal" claims.
Communism works best, at the smallest scale of the nuclear family. The central power structure are the parents, with the children analogos to the common people. The nuclear family is not a democracy, since the parents have goals and experiece of age and will need to make hard decisions the children need to follow. This form of communism works because parental instinct allows parents to work instinctively hard for their family. Children has a special connection to their own siblings and parents that binds the communal team. Parents may do all the work and give freely to their children.
As you scale up the Communal nuclear familty unit, the relationships between the people become much less instinctively connected. Now it takes more will power to deal with the grind. One will not work as hard for the unknown child down the street, as your own. Very few people will take a second job to put a strange child through college accept under unique circumstances. There is already trouble in paradise. You will not want the parents down the street telling you how to raise your child or trying to raise them for you, without your permission. You don't want your work efforts distributed to others at the expense of the needs of your own familty. This starts to remove the ease of parental instinct, so the becomes more and more of a chore.
Communisim is the big family, with dad and mom charge, looking over the children. The children have their chores, seldom can vote, but the family is able to move forward. When you enter a diversified culture, composed of many sub-cultures, like USA, the parental instinct gets lost due to different needs.
In the USA, one is not suppose to be proud to be an American which defines the biggest family unit. This outright sabbotages the big family needed for communism, while liberals still expect this broken familty to pull together as good communists.
Communism could work well the more everyone has in common. If a group was all one language or one culture this is a shot at this. If everyone was related as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th cousins, maybe. Then there is the family state of mind needed.
The USA, as a whole, was not set up for communism, by default. It was set up for the mini-commune of the nuclear family, but the overall structure is based on freedom and free enterprise.
Liberals got rid of the basic unit of communism (family). Then due to longing for that commune, try to get this back through communism, while creating the very social conditions that make this not possible (division). Atheism is irrational.
As you scale up the Communal nuclear familty unit, the relationships between the people become much less instinctively connected. Now it takes more will power to deal with the grind. One will not work as hard for the unknown child down the street, as your own. Very few people will take a second job to put a strange child through college accept under unique circumstances. There is already trouble in paradise. You will not want the parents down the street telling you how to raise your child or trying to raise them for you, without your permission. You don't want your work efforts distributed to others at the expense of the needs of your own familty. This starts to remove the ease of parental instinct, so the becomes more and more of a chore.
Communisim is the big family, with dad and mom charge, looking over the children. The children have their chores, seldom can vote, but the family is able to move forward. When you enter a diversified culture, composed of many sub-cultures, like USA, the parental instinct gets lost due to different needs.
In the USA, one is not suppose to be proud to be an American which defines the biggest family unit. This outright sabbotages the big family needed for communism, while liberals still expect this broken familty to pull together as good communists.
Communism could work well the more everyone has in common. If a group was all one language or one culture this is a shot at this. If everyone was related as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th cousins, maybe. Then there is the family state of mind needed.
The USA, as a whole, was not set up for communism, by default. It was set up for the mini-commune of the nuclear family, but the overall structure is based on freedom and free enterprise.
Liberals got rid of the basic unit of communism (family). Then due to longing for that commune, try to get this back through communism, while creating the very social conditions that make this not possible (division). Atheism is irrational.
Well said.
UFC claims to want freedom. Well, as you entered Auschwitz you'd see a sign saying, " Work sets you free". That's the freedom UFC wants for us all. On his terms, under pain of death.
It was intended to be and reward is a personal gain resulting from investment of time and energy.
Dogs can be trained in a variety of ways and the motivations are as you say linked to their nature.
Correct. It is of course no surprise that a rat can be motivated to navigate a maze with simple rewards.
Correct.
Correct.
I agree.
I meant "dishonest" and "disregard".
You got that right.
Then I did a bad job explaining it. I'll try another method of communicating the idea. Communism requires a very specific set of human behaviors and values to always be present and at the forefront. Those specific behaviors and values aren't even present and at the forefront half of the time. This is why communism fails terribly (and it's not like it hasn't been tried before).
It was intended to be simplistic and not mentioning additional knowledge on the subject doesn't imply it is disregarded.
I am interested.
It's a bit simpler than that
No, he is attempting to ignore the record in order to preclude any response from communist sympathizers by applying a moral accusation to all of them, without reading what is already on the record.
Signal said:
No, he is attempting to ignore the record in order to preclude any response from communist sympathizers by applying a moral accusation to all of them, without reading what is already on the record.
I mean that communism is both highly efficient and highly moral from a social justice point of view. That is what you were getting at, weren't you? That communism wasn't efficient...but it is, and that is what I am saying, in addition to being fair.
Then republicanism and democratism must be flawed, since Rome and Athens collapsed.
The United States was founded from the get-go as a nation of rights and enterprise.
Russia existed under a feudal monarchy; how, exactly, do you think the peasants would have achieved "democracy and capitalism" under that sort of oppression?
Of course, but we have also evolved compassion, and it clearly assists in our survival.
Hold on a sec, we're getting a little bit mixed up here. You meant the above, but I was referring to your response to the first part of my post (#146) in which I wrote:
And you'll note that I clarify what I intend by that query both within post #146, as well as in my responses to the characteristic trolling by John (you know, that guy who claims that the moon can't possibly influence tides 'cuz it's too little and too far away--oh, and it's made of cheese) in posts #147 through #153
Yet in post #177 you respond with this:
So I repeat: you honestly didn't think that I was asking for a Merriam Webster definition of "human nature," did you? If so, I can only conclude that you were either trolling or that you simply were not paying attention.
Sure.
This is debatable, hence my contention that it is absurd to posit the inevitable failure of such-and-such an endeavor (in this case, communism) by appealing to a little understood, ill-defined, and likely mutable and evolving "human nature". There are certainly refutations to be found within the annals of psychology, but I'm partial to anthropology and sociology (though moreso ethology; unfortunately, there are a number of contemporary scientists who seem to be arguing against Darwin by positing some sort of human exceptionalism, so we'll stick with the anthro stuff). So a few refutations of your contention can be found in my post #240.
But I would also note that if it is required that "a very specific set of human behaviors and values... always be present and at the forefront" for an -ism to succeed, then very few -isms would succeed. Hence, it is a moot point.
Again, this is debatable--that is, both "thises." Unless we define the parameters--a nation? a state? a commune?--one can't maintain that communism (inevitably) fails terribly. Likewise, unless we reach a consensus as to what precisely constitutes a communistic experiment, we can't even necessarily maintain that it's "been tried before." (Sure, I'm playing the "Rand card"--that is, Randians often contend that we cannot judge the success or failure of capitalism because we've never had true laissez faire capitalism--but, why not?)
But when the additional knowledge offers something which either refutes or calls into question that which you've claimed, one might reasonably conclude that you are willfully ignoring or disregarding said knowledge. Likewise, as Signal noted, one has to clarify what is intended by "reward."
The work of early/mid-twentieth century behaviorists has spawned a mountain of scathing criticism challenging both the naive methodologies as well as some of the absurd conclusions drawn--I've always been partial to Arthur Koestler's critiques, esp. in The Sleepwalkers and Ghost in the Machine. But when a text which is a few millennia old offers more sophisticated ruminations and observations upon both human and non-human behavior, it becomes even more difficult to take the work of certain behaviorists all that seriously. Here I am referring to The Book of Job--the god stuff and the voice from the whirlwind don't mean a whole lot to me (as an agnostic, that is), it's what the voice from the whirlwind says which I consider insightful and, in fact, a good bit more scientific than the work of many a behaviorist. Keep in mind, the text was composed by pastoralists with an intimate knowledge of the animals with whom they worked.
OK, found it. And my apologies, for it's actually like two years old. That little scar on my left temporal lobe makes all memories, whether they be two days old or thirty years old, seem as though it were just from the other day.
Anyways, it's Wes Morris's "Existence of Logic" thread, beginning around page 3 and continuing all the way to the end at page 7. I haven't had a chance to review it carefully, but it seems to me that you are suggesting that ontological claims can be derived from logical inferences--which would be fine were we discussing, say, a form of Madhyamaka logic for instance--but the logic under discussion is contentless, and hence does not pertain to ontological concerns. But like I said, I haven't reviewed the thread carefully yet.
You got it. And Communism is even more flawed. No system is perfect.
Yep. And nowadays that is expressed, in part, as charity. It would surely be foolish to choose a system of government that abolishes it.
instead one can vote for a govt where charity is redundant for no one is found wanting
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That is feeding the machine. You don't think that's wrong? You must be just another enemy of the working man. (UfC)
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That is feeding the machine. You don't think that's wrong? You must be just another enemy of the working man. (UfC)
If your schoold are anything like ours, I could make some suggestions...
It sounded like you were looking for the definition of "human nature" that I was using and I provided it. Why you keep referencing Merriam Webster's definition is a bit of a mystery. As you can see, that definition is not what either of us are using:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/human nature
There is a lot of knowedge right now about why we behave the way we do and why we think the way we do. Rather than focus on what you think we understand very little of or think we have ill-defined, why not focus on the things we do know?
What if I made you a lifetime offer whereby you must always and without question do as I say, sacrafice your freedoms, sacrafice your interests, and sacrafice your autonomy in exhange for enough food and shelter (of my chosing) to survive. You could even have the added bonus of knowing that you are serving the "good of the community". Would you take me up on that life-long committment? Probably not. The reason is because I am asking you to give me everything today and in exhange I will reward you by letting you give me everything tomorrow. Unless someone can maintain loyalty, a sense of debt to the community, and a desire to do as they are told at all times then this type of offer will fail.
It is a valid agument to state that in the absence of modern society, humans develop differently. As a human brain develops, it will develop the parts of it that are needed... for example the brain of a rainforest inhabitant perceives depth differently than someone who lives in open plains, and if you were to have these people switch places, they would both have problems just seeing the environment the same way as an inhabitant would, but over time they may adjust.
The point of course is that developmental differences can affect thinking, behaviors, and values. Of course, this can actually turn into an advantage because it can be used to contrast values and behaviors against modern socities to see what really exists, what is transient, what is common, what is long-lasting, etc.
Even so and even after looking at those essays, I have yet to see genuine objective evidence that a society will survive and prosper by substituting reward for anything but.
Unless of course those -isms don't have that kind of heavy obligation reliance.
The thread creator defined and refined the parameters. He started off with USSR communism and added modifiers such as:
"true egalitarianism"
"enthusiastic about the opportunity to serve their community"
"true equality for all men"
"moral"
"materially equal"
"given what they need and work for the community, out of their own desire for work"
"compassion, sharing, community, loyalty, and a sense of debt to society"
That's the context I have been working under.
I understand and I don't consider anything I left on the sidelines as contradictory or a significant mutator. I would agree that it was incomplete and I intentionally chose a very narrow focus.
Let's say that I wanted to show you how to use logic manipulation to swap the contents of two variables without using a third variable. I would very likely narrow the focus down to a couple of symbolic manipulations while leaving out any pre or post operations/descriptions that could provide a completer picture.
Naturally if I felt that the exlusion of information prevented visibility into something contratictory or mutating then I wouldn't exclude it.
Which I did in my last response to Signal. I am always happy to define the terms I am using.
I can understand the position.
Wow, that sucker looks old. From what I remember, Wesmorris was having difficulty dealing with the notion that objective reality has relationships that simply "are" and logic is a subjective symbolic representation that accurately represents basic relationships of objective reality.
Doreen somehow got onto the topic of how she could not possibly know what happens when she isn't around to see it. I think this is where I suggested using a video camera; however, the video camera was rejected under various guises. As I recall, it reeked of some kind of distraction to avoid having to deal with some strong underlying implications she had set up... something along the lines of "I can't possibly know what is possible somewhere if I am not looking" (basically a bizarre assertion that that existing knowledge can't be applied to what's right behind you when you are not looking).
I'll try to recap:
Is your stance that Communist theoreticians and institutions have an understanding of the complexity of human nature and that they have proposed and/or taken theoretical and practical measures to gradually channell and stabilize it, but that some criticisms of Communism (such as Marquis' stance here) fail to acknowledge these measures?
What we do know is that people's values are developed over time and can be greatly influenced - in fact, created from nothing sometimes.
People can be conditioned to like a particular flavor of ice-cream, for example. They can also be conditioned to believe they are nothing but advanced animals, and they can also be conditioned to believe they are children of God.
Schools have served to produce like-minded individuals.
All in all, humans appear to be extremely malleable, in their beliefs, values, practices.
So it is only to be expected that social reformators are trying to capitalize on this inherent human malleability.
The problem is, of course, how to set the parameters for reform when there is the attempt to reform the whole society - ie. people who are currently of different ages, different social and economical status, different health, different political outlook etc.
The parameters would get prohibitively complex.
Basically, I think it comes down to the problem of how to create a monoculture - whether it be a Communist or a capitalist or humanist or a Christian or whichever.
Individuals or small groups have shown that they can and want to live as monocultures (Christian, humanist, Communist, etc.) and have even come to the status of monoculture after starting out as a pluralist one; and they seem to thrive as a monoculture.
The question is how to do this on a larger scale.
I was just using Merriam Webster as shorthand for "generic dictionary definition." I'm kind of a Luddite though, I guess the modern equivalent would be Dictionary.com
I think it basically comes down to which methods offer more "truth," so to speak: the more rigorous and controlled behaviorist or psychological studies, or the less controlled ethological/anthropological/sociological type studies, which offer the advantage of being undertaken in the natural environs. IOW there may be things that you consider rather iffy or ill-defined, but by my own criteria they are satisfactorily resolved and established.
My background is in Continental philosophy, anthropology, etc. and I've spent a lifetime working with animals (in natural settings, that is), so I'm partial to the latter. Likewise, I believe we've gained a lot of knowledge and answers from these, but I can well understand how a someone coming from a very different background might find the methodologies somewhat suspect (just as I consider some of the methods for the former suspect.
An example would be a "popular" science bit of "news" that emerged a few years back: some behavioral scientists purported that dogs, when they appear to be showing remorse or contrition over having committed an "offense," are oftentimes in fact simply manipulating their person in order to regain favor. I mean, c'mon--anyone with half a brain who has worked with dogs, or even just lived with dogs, figured that one out ages ago. Moreover, I think most are well aware that people often do the same: if I apologize to you during the course of a conversation, I may very well be expressing regret and remorse, or I may just as well be trying to get the conversation to move on.
There may be issues of anthropomorphism here, but that's a whole 'nother discussion and I've got my own strong views on such matters; moreover, if we are to consider Morgan's Canon, we must also for humans as well, as last time I checked humans were still animals.
I very much agree that this will likely fail, but (and you remark upon this below, as well) for persons reared in radically different cultures from our own, it could play out differently.
I'm especially fascinated by gift economies, which have often in the past been overlooked owing largely to the anthropologist's own cultural biases and presuppositions. Different theorists offer different criteria for what constitutes a "gift," but in many instances there is obligation but no expectation.
I think it becomes problematic in that when and where it works (that is, the society survives and prospers) falls outside of that which we term "civilized"--and here I mean "civilized" as denuded of judgments and positive/negative connotations; that is, outside of what we term "civilization" which is necessarily hierarchical, having social classes, etc.
True. But don't most? That is, if we consider the "pure" -isms (as UfC seems to be insisting upon.
Yeah, it's kinda difficult keeping track of what UfC considers "communism" as he keeps amending--and significantly altering--his definitions.
I've been working under his insistence that no "true" communism experiment has ever been undertaken. I'm inclined to agree, albeit I suspect for very different reasons from UfC's. (Although there have been a few sizable--though not nation-sized--and long-lasting Syndicalist endeavors in Spain.)
I think we were all approaching the issue from very different perspectives. Doreen and I were considering it from a sort of neo-Kantian perspective alanoumenon/Ding an Sich, whereas you and glaucon seemed to be approaching it from a more empirical science epistemological perspective. I still strongly object to glaucon's contention regarding other logics (various Buddhist and Jain logical systems, in particular)--they may not be of value in science, but neither do they purport to be!
Is there something about the question that is hard?
I think you're making an awfully big deal of it, Signal. What gives?
The Marquis simply didn't want to discuss what was already on the record, whether because it was too complex or confusing or stupid or whatever we don't know because he didn't tell us. Rather, he drew a line in the sand and asserted incorrectly.
Yes, I have listed for you already part of what he attempted to brush aside.
I don't understand what about this is so confusing. Although I will note that this is one of the reasons people have such a static view of communism; no matter what the thinkers, sympathizers, and believers say or do, there is always a specific image, such as our man The Marquis has invoked, a stereotype that people fall back on.
It's one thing to declare a general failure of a group. It's quite another to insist that it goes on while deliberately disqualifying from that group anyone who violates the stereotype.
Signal said:
I think you're making an awfully big deal of it, Signal. What gives?
The Marquis simply didn't want to discuss what was already on the record, whether because it was too complex or confusing or stupid or whatever we don't know because he didn't tell us. Rather, he drew a line in the sand and asserted incorrectly.
Yes, I have listed for you already part of what he attempted to brush aside.
I don't understand what about this is so confusing. Although I will note that this is one of the reasons people have such a static view of communism; no matter what the thinkers, sympathizers, and believers say or do, there is always a specific image, such as our man The Marquis has invoked, a stereotype that people fall back on.
It's one thing to declare a general failure of a group. It's quite another to insist that it goes on while deliberately disqualifying from that group anyone who violates the stereotype.
superstring01
Moderator
An interesting point, Mr. Tiassa.
How, then, does one judge a group--in this case Communists--outside the varied track record of communist regimes?
A side note, communism isn't a failure, humans are. We just aren't that evolved yet--and I know I'm going out on a limb here--but I happen to believe that we'll reach some stage of communism, in which each delivers according to his ability in a century or two. . . if we survive the bottleneck (probably sometime next century given the rate of technological advancement in genetics). It's just that there is no way, at our current stage of development, to judge a person's ability except upon their raw productivity, usually measured in wealth (admittedly, not the best way but the only feasible way, IMHO). I happen to think, after a bit of internal tinkering, we'll end up seeing that glorious stage. . . just not yet. Any attempt to reach it before we gain the internal mechanisms for success would be like dropping a two year old into the ocean and demanding that she swim a half mile to shore. We've seen those attempts. Right now, the best we can hope for is something like exists in Sweden, but--for me--not as far as too many people leach off that system, causing irreparable harm.
~String
How, then, does one judge a group--in this case Communists--outside the varied track record of communist regimes?
A side note, communism isn't a failure, humans are. We just aren't that evolved yet--and I know I'm going out on a limb here--but I happen to believe that we'll reach some stage of communism, in which each delivers according to his ability in a century or two. . . if we survive the bottleneck (probably sometime next century given the rate of technological advancement in genetics). It's just that there is no way, at our current stage of development, to judge a person's ability except upon their raw productivity, usually measured in wealth (admittedly, not the best way but the only feasible way, IMHO). I happen to think, after a bit of internal tinkering, we'll end up seeing that glorious stage. . . just not yet. Any attempt to reach it before we gain the internal mechanisms for success would be like dropping a two year old into the ocean and demanding that she swim a half mile to shore. We've seen those attempts. Right now, the best we can hope for is something like exists in Sweden, but--for me--not as far as too many people leach off that system, causing irreparable harm.
~String