Our institutions are not the problem, our policies are the problem. I want to see a transition to UBI, but a dramatic overhaul that dismantled WIC and SNAP before we got UBI in place would be an unmitigated disaster for the very people we were intending to help.
It’s not the reform that I’m skeptical of. It’s the lust for revolutionary destruction as a path to reform that I’m skeptical of. It’s emotionally satisfying without regard to its actual efficacy in accomplishing the proposed reforms. Because history does not show us evidence that this works out well in the short nor the long run.
I’m proposing a revolution entirely led by the people, as that is the only true kind of revolution. The people who would then rule themselves with no intermediaries. Real grassroots organisation.
That fallacy only holds when it’s a retroactive and also incorrect claim of category error. This is neither retroactive nor incorrect. The USSR is not communist by any definition, not now, or before it existed, either. Marx himself wouldn’t have been a fan.
To oversimplify, there are three criteria for communism:
The state must be abolished. That means no government, no class of rulers, no individual or group with a monopoly claim on force to achieve their ends. People self-manage and organise their affairs and business by common agreement and consent based on mutual aid and co-operation.
Classes must be abolished. There can be no class distinctions remaining; specifically, no owners who can exploit workers. All are workers, and all commonly own all materially productive components of society. Nothing is privately owned by individuals (meaning nothing is gatekept for the purposes of gaining materially from doing so), but is democratically organised on the basis of need.
Money itself must be abolished. Once democracy has prevailed over the economy, the common ownership of the means of production has been achieved, and thus everyone has reached the stage where they can freely consume what they need and want without worry of whether they can “afford” it, money will be seen as the arbitrary constraint that it is, and cease to be useful, and disappear completely.
None of these things happened under the USSR. If Marx were a teacher and the USSR his student, they would get a failing grade.
Our institutions are not the problem, our policies are the problem. I want to see a transition to UBI, but a dramatic overhaul that dismantled WIC and SNAP before we got UBI in place would be an unmitigated disaster for the very people we were intending to help.
It’s not the reform that I’m skeptical of. It’s the lust for revolutionary destruction as a path to reform that I’m skeptical of. It’s emotionally satisfying without regard to its actual efficacy in accomplishing the proposed reforms. Because history does not show us evidence that this works out well in the short nor the long run.
I’m proposing a revolution entirely led by the people, as that is the only true kind of revolution. The people who would then rule themselves with no intermediaries. Real grassroots organisation.
Well, it better have some kind of mechanism in place to keep the grocery stores full or it’s going to fail on its face.
Couple things for you to look up:
These two things would likely do it.
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Yes, but they also had a dogmatic and limited view of the theories they adapted. This inevitably led to corruption and revisionism.
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That fallacy only holds when it’s a retroactive and also incorrect claim of category error. This is neither retroactive nor incorrect. The USSR is not communist by any definition, not now, or before it existed, either. Marx himself wouldn’t have been a fan.
To oversimplify, there are three criteria for communism:
The state must be abolished. That means no government, no class of rulers, no individual or group with a monopoly claim on force to achieve their ends. People self-manage and organise their affairs and business by common agreement and consent based on mutual aid and co-operation.
Classes must be abolished. There can be no class distinctions remaining; specifically, no owners who can exploit workers. All are workers, and all commonly own all materially productive components of society. Nothing is privately owned by individuals (meaning nothing is gatekept for the purposes of gaining materially from doing so), but is democratically organised on the basis of need.
Money itself must be abolished. Once democracy has prevailed over the economy, the common ownership of the means of production has been achieved, and thus everyone has reached the stage where they can freely consume what they need and want without worry of whether they can “afford” it, money will be seen as the arbitrary constraint that it is, and cease to be useful, and disappear completely.
None of these things happened under the USSR. If Marx were a teacher and the USSR his student, they would get a failing grade.
.