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Comment by crankylinuxuser | Hacker News Reader

> Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely, and initially to uplift the proletariat, the working class.

Precisely. And the Communists did one thing grossly wrong - they substituted the Capitalist class with the Communist "Elite". It was from an older owner to a newer owner. The people saw little difference in who they were required to work for.

A new Communist thought is that of worker collectives. The idea is that they are better than unions, with the capitalist class continually picking and clawing at any reforms. With a worker cooperative, the owners and managers are the very workers which eliminates that avenue of strife. And it is one step closer to the proletariat owning the means to production.

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The problem there of course is you end up with a defacto ruling class made up of the most motivated workers, which will often end up being just as undemocratic with fewer means of non-political (in the office politics sense) intervention. You run the risk of everyone having to become a middle manager. Not to say it wouldn't be a better system, but we fallible humans are far from being ready for the enlightened fully automated communism some predict.

True, but we're already seeing the ugly side of the capitalist choice already - machines making decisions that we proles can't argue with. Look at Google, Amazon, Microsoft. If their automated systems say X, it doesn't matter if X is true, neutral or false. X is a fact and that's that.

Oh and if you quit using their services and then try to later, they will collect. But yeah, this is the "bad" side of capitalism - you not only will be automated out of a job, but will have decisions automated. And seriously - of course they will be decided against your favor. The capitalists didn't get in their place by loosing money.

And yet, I get downmodded for talking communism. It's about time someone talks of different economic theory. We've gone down long enough of "trickle down", and it doesn't work - or it works beyond the elite's dreams.

> True, but we're already seeing the ugly side of the capitalist choice already - machines making decisions that we proles can't argue with. Look at Google, Amazon, Microsoft. If their automated systems say X, it doesn't matter if X is true, neutral or false. X is a fact and that's that.

You don't have to argue with them - you can always take your money elsewhere. Big corporations are already AIs (although slow and made of people) that are optimized for one thing - their customers.

> It was from an older owner to a newer owner.

Many people have a fundamental liking to be in positions of power. What system are you proposing?

> With a worker cooperative, the owners and managers are the very workers which eliminates that avenue of strife.

I'm sure you've been to Linux/OSS meetup. Linus rules with an iron hand, as does Guido for Python. Why does that eliminate strife? IRL, forking is not relatively painless.

Sounds very like - ‘All power to the soviets’ - part of the Russian communist program (until the Kronstadt rebellion).

The unfortunate problem with most systems yet devised is that they fail to account for humans actively subverting them and coopting them.

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