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Comment by quadrangle | Hacker News Reader

There have been nowhere near enough actual trials of communism to conclude anything fully. The core examples were all poorer countries with various problems, corruption… To reject communism as a concept over the atrocities of Stalin et al is as reasonable as rejecting capitalism because the U.S. was built on slavery and the genocide of first peoples.

The atrocities were real, and they did connect to economics, but to just assert that capitalism is the slavery of U.S. history or that communism just is gulags and bread lines is extremely short-sighted. Neither system was anything like the core principles of the economic models (which are just models, so we should reject anyone who focuses only on the models and not on practical reality, but we can't treat each real-world case as the definitive case either).

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While you are right, many people (e.g. Hayek) argue that collectivism entails authoritarianism and control. That the two are inextricably linked, due primarily to the local knowledge problem.

I'm not necessarily arguing that that is the case just trying to explain why people make this argument. The idea is that, logically, any economically communist country will, by definition, eventually come to resemble the Soviet Union, China, and other negative instances.

We can debate whether or not that is so, but I think it's a legitimate debate to have, especially being that all known examples have in fact worked out that way.

Review "The Black Book of Communism" for a catalog of the death and misery from communist countries, over and over.

Voluntary communes and Kibbutzen have failed as well - none have been capable of operating without subsidy.

All you're saying is that attempts at communism have all had major problems. That's true, but it's not enough to be conclusive.

If you want to pick examples that point various ways, you can note that Cuba has corruption, lack of democracy, is an impoverished island suffering the effects of significant economic embargoes in the global system and yet still vies for having one of the best health care systems. They even a top country in providing doctors to serve abroad in troubled places!

And the Soviet Union was a horrendously corrupt place that failed in most respects to live up to communist ideals and yet still managed to compete technologically with the richest countries on the planet despite being economically far far far weaker in fundamentals. The U.S. only barely beat the Soviets in the space race etc while being massively richer. The Soviets had many orders of magnitude more losses in WWII also.

The history of Communism is one where anti-communists did everything they could to undermine any success, the trials were full of corruption and abuse, and even still they had notable successes.

The kibbutzen failed not strictly because all the ideas were unworkable. They failed because they had to function economically in a larger context. None of them had wealth along the lines of successful capitalists either. Capitalists have only ever operated capably by controlling a lot of capital or getting subsidy, at least in the form of law enforcement that serves the side of capital.

We can conclude that all attempts at communism so far have had serious flaws. We can also conclude that capitalism has always had serious flaws too. Anyone who takes a polarized one-sided view on this stuff can be rejected as just being dogmatic. Piketty is not one of these one-sided dogmatic people, he's actually interested in studying empirical evidence and not concluding more than the evidence can truly support.

> major problems

That's a bit of an understatement. It has a pretty much 0% success rate, for both coercive and voluntary attempts.

> capitalism has always had serious flaws too

Yes, but nothing like the communist failures, and capitalism has had incredible success stories.

> The Soviets had many orders of magnitude more losses in WWII also.

Nobody doubts the heroism and sacrifice of the Red Army in WW2. That's a whole 'nother topic, though.

> The U.S. only barely beat the Soviets in the space race etc while being massively richer.

The USSR was able to direct massive resources at single problems, at the sacrifice at most everything else, but the US could do it with little sacrifice.

> did everything they could to undermine any success

Nobody made the communist countries perform mass slaughter.

> The kibbutzen failed not strictly because all the ideas were unworkable.

They couldn't feed themselves. No communist system has ever been able to feed itself. All have required imports from capitalist economies, or starved, or tolerated capitalist farmers.

> Nobody made the communist countries perform mass slaughter.

And communist ideas also had zero to do with those countries committing mass slaughter.

Communism, even in a very flawed form, has indeed succeeded. See Cuba. The main reason they would be wealthier with capitalism is because the U.S. would have proactive economic ties instead of working to isolate them. Given their isolation and inherent lack-of-wealth relatively speaking, communism there is at least in a state no reasonable person can describe as 0% successful, even if you have points of criticism.

In terms of kibbutzen, you do realize that the entire premise of self-suffiency, i.e. sustinance farming, is basically the definition of poverty, right? I mean, the whole premise that a small community can achieve for themselves in isolation a whole decent standard of living is nonsense. We acheive the greatest standards of living through widespread connection in larger groups on larger scales. Trade and all and specialization… No effort for tiny isolated communes could ever achieve the quality of life of large cosmopolitan economies, That issue isn't a strictly communist vs capitalist one.

Communism is indeed a simplistic model that is unworkable in a rigid dogmatic sense, just like anarchy or capitalism. There's no example of pure version of any of these ever existing.

Being closed to discussing the actual ideas of communism by just talking about Stalin's atrocities or tiny communes failing is a good way to just close yourself to actually engaging with the intellectual questions. Obviously, all philosophical / political principles are distinct from the complexity of real-world economic practice. We can still discuss the principles as a way to think about and explore the issues. Communist principles, as ideas, have nothing to do with mass slaughter.

> kibbutzen..

..simply do not produce enough to sustain themselves. Capitalist farmers do, with a surplus they sell. All such voluntary collectives have collapsed (unless they get subsidies from the government).

> have nothing to do with mass slaughter

I strongly suggest reading "The Black Book of Communism". Every advocate of communism needs to read it, if only to prepare an answer.

You're right that nothing in the principles of communism suggest mass slaughter. But those who try to implement it time and again resort to it. The reason is fairly straightforward - people resist having all their property expropriated and being forced to work on collectives. The response is to kill them.

Again and again.

I'm not an "advocate of communism". And it's nonsense to say that capitalist farmers produce enough to feed themselves as a response to my point about internal isolation. No capitalist farmer with the same amount of resources and wealth as a kibbutz would be all that productive without utilizing the benefits of the rest of our complex market economy and what that provides to them. In other words, it's the larger context that is the factor, not the internal structure of the farm. The kibbutzen were only communist in an internal way, not living in a communist world.

"having all their property expropriated and being forced to work on collectives" is also not a principle of communism. Forced labor is not a communist value.

> nonsense

In simple terms, capitalist farmers produce a surplus, kibbutz farmers produce a deficit. Kibbutzen operate within a market economy and have all the resources of it that are available to the capitalist farmer - they still can't make a go of it.

> not a principle of communism.

Collective ownership of the means of production means confiscating it.

> Forced labor

When the collective decides that certain work must be done, and with no market forces, that means assigning people to the jobs. I.e. forced labor.

Anyone who views any of these ideas with a rigid dogma is misguided. The broad scope of varied ideas that fall under the concepts of communism do not exclude the concept of markets. Markets are extremely valuable.

If you wanted to say that there are major fundamental problems with having no markets, I'd agree completely. Communism is not a set of ideas necessarily anti-market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism

Or, to be pragmatic, if we agreed for this exchange that "communism" meant precisely an economic structure without markets, then I'd agree that's simply unworkable. All of my points in this thread rely on my assumption that the term "communism" refers to a wider scope of ideas and models, some of which have some merit but which nobody ever should dogmatically advocate (nor should they dogmatically reject as being synonymous with Lenin/Stalin/Mao).

To the best of my understanding, market socialism is just worker coops operating within a traditional market economy. That would mean it's not an actual political ideology.

Not at all to weigh in on the general topic, but the plural of kibbutz (in Hebrew or English) is kibbutzim.

How many more millions of test subjects must die before you accept the negative result?

The only important question in terms of test subjects dying is whether they don't die under some other circumstance. The U.S.S.R and Chinese dictatorships were/are horrendous. On the other hand, Cuba has major ethical problems but subjects dying isn't these days really among them. Cuba does a better job of keeping people healthy and secure than the U.S. does. There's no homeless sick people in Cuba basically. Everyone gets quality medical care even though the country is massively poorer in fundamental resources than the U.S.

The people dying in the cases you are referencing did not die because of the ideas of communism. The atrocities were carried out in the name of communism but had no basis in actual communist ideas.

You can say the same thing about National-Socialism or any other ideology out there. There are just not enough countries to try them all on, and I am not sure why should we...

National Socialism (i.e. Hitler) was based fundamentally on nationalism and racism. We can reject it because the principles themselves are unethical. We can reject it even if it had succeeded economically!

If you want to make an argument that the principles of communism are unethical, that's an independent argument from the claim that certain historic attempts had various atrocities and therefore you reject the principles (even though many of the atrocities are not related to the principles — Stalin disappearing his political enemies has no basis in communist principles…

1. My argument was about "National Socialism and any other ideology out there", you focused only on the first part. Even if you filter out unethical ones (not sure how, but let's say you can), there would still be too many to try, and not sure why should we keep trying theories instead of letting the society evolve in a natural way.

2. Specifically about giving communism a fair trial despite all past failures because it is "ethical": no thanks. I find its principle of "dictatorship of the proletariat" unethical and proven disastrous.

3. Stalin disappearing his political enemies was rooted at least in part in Lenin's cornerstone principle of "democratic centralism" which was critical ingredient for the success of the communist revolution. Trying to decouple the two doesn't do history justice.

The point is that you should argue why you find "dictatorship of the proletariat" unethical and not confuse the difference between ethics and economic viability.

There's definitely philosophical problems with communism and communist thinkers of various sorts. No denying that. But the screwed up crappy attempts at something like communism simply don't invalidate all of the principles which must be considered separately.

Basically, if you run a shitty version of an experiment, you don't get to then claim you proved the null hypothesis. It's one thing to say "we can't afford to experiment" and another to say "we had [shitty] experiments and so now we can conclude things."

You could argue for no more trials and still accept the fact that we never got any good trials from which to conclude enough about the real principles.

> We can reject it because the principles [nationalism and racism] themselves are unethical

I'd also contend that it's unethical for a society to reward all people the same regardless of effort and talent.

Should I make as much money as a singer as Taylor Swift? I have terrible pitch. I can't write music. I can't play an instrument. I have no stage presence.

Now, you might say that based on my talents, I shouldn't be allowed to be a singer at all. But not allowing someone to choose what they do with their life also seems unethical.

> I'd also contend that it's unethical for a society to reward all people the same regardless of effort and talent.

That's not the premise of socialism, so it's strawman argument.

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