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Comment by formatkaka | Hacker News Reader

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We have a lot of evidence it works on small scales (something like half of marriages work out). That might seem silly, but I would call it "minimum viable Communism".

I'd like to see a concerted effort for many small-scale communes (sub Dunbar's number) to be more legally viable in the US. The problem with Communism at scale is that the logistics and planning beurocracies end up authoritarian, but it seems optimal at smaller scales.

Our implementation of capitalism has experienced a lot of regulatory capture and that needs some work. Democracy and capitalism are also totally compatible with a bit more public infastructure and an a more accessible healthcare system.

You are misunderstanding the Animal Farm. It was a criticism to the Soviet system and not socialism, Orwell literally fought for the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.

He also became very disillusioned with the left there.

Also took a bullet through the throat, which he rather miraculously survived.

He still wrote the book as a critique from a socialist standpoint. The whole point of the book was that the USSR was not real socialism and was damaging the Socialist movement.

He explains it in this preface: http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/epfc...

A wonderful and informative read, thankyou!

I'm reminded that I need to read his Catalonian book.

How many do overs does socialism get? You can only say "that's not how REAL socialism is supposed to happen" so many times.

What are you actually defending here? A version of capitalism that is imploding under the weight of usurious debt, that considers widespread homelessness around the bases of empty "investment" apartment towers a feature and not a bug, that bankrupts half a million families a year because of health insurance sharking, that is regularly implicated in unquestionably immoral scandals and corruption (Boeing, opioid sales, Enron, S&L...), that is linked to violent wars and oppressive regimes around the world, and has also been the single biggest driver of climate change, and climate change denial, in the last century?

Do you really think these are somehow justifiable with a glib "But socialism!"

Anyway - the Scandi countries do a nice line is social democracy, which includes policies that seem to be considered outright socialist extremism by US standards.

You should find out how they're doing. By all accounts they're not particularly unpleasant places to live.

Marx was so popular because he's really great at identifying problems. He could pinpoint exactly what was wrong with far more insight and acuteness than you did. What he never ever could do was propose a better one. We have tried his plan of having the government temporarily seize the means of production several times, and it never ever ceases and becomes Socialism. He's like a philosopher version of the hipster who will mock your taste in music, but never tell you what makes music good.

I don't love our problems. But I hate every single other large country's problems more. I am open to change, but if your change wants to be some minor variation on the old, perpetually failing socialism-like ones that we've seen kill tens if not hundreds of millions of people, I'll pass.

Most socialistic societies fell due to outside interference in an already weaker society. (Weaker because of their starting position, not because of socialism).

This was for example the case with Venezuela, to name a recent one.

See: https://www.ozy.com/flashback/venezuelas-downfall-isnt-about...

You'd need a country with an already strong economy to try socialism to see where it goes. We have western civilisations with some socialist aspects (European countries) but they're all still majorly capitalistic.

A lot of countries labelled as socialist/communist were/are really just state-capitalist countries (China, to name a good example. Communist only in name, same way the nazi party was socialist)

Venezuela's failures were primarily due to the usual incompetence and corruption. Outside interference was a relatively minor factor. In fact they actually received significant assistance from some other countries.

That have a shitload of oil which I would have thought put them in a rather strong staring position.

Oh!

I read the book with conflicting views on communism/socialism/fascism in mind. Need to read in more detail. Thanks for the clarification.

There has never been a truly communist society, they were marketed as being socialist (nazi party) or as communist (lenin and mao). None of those were what they claimed to be at all, or at best a corrupted version of what they were supposed to be.

See: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/cpml-ussr.htm

So there hasn't been any communism that turned into fascism, as there hasn't been any communist society. Most of the misconceptions about communism stem from post-WW2 propaganda, which boils down to "Capitalism = good, Communism = bad". (at least on western side of the iron curtain)

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