Well hey there, welcome to our channel of...
[Intro Music] D-D-Death.
Death of a Notion.
Today we'll be asking ourselves a question that may bring a mental conundrum inside the minds of
Vietnam War and Cold War veterans, and that question is: "Isn't Communism just Economic Equality?"
This is one of those episodes where I hope to kill two opposing notions and come up with a decent
middle ground notion, where both sides may find either contentment or contemptment
depending on how open to change they are. And these notions can best be summarized as:
"Communism is good, and will create an idealistic society," while the opposing notion is:
"Communism is evil, and will destroy the very fabric of society!"
Say WAR! HUH! Good God, ya'll! War what is it good for? KILLIN'! Say it again now...
DING-DING-DING. And in the left corner over here, we have Communism;
A notion that presents all of the goods and supplies to be created and evenly distributed among the state.
They had an amazing kill-streak in the 20th Century. Low-balling estimates of communist regimes killing
anti-communist individuals estimating around 70 million victims.
I guess idealistic and futuristic utopias can justify bringing a hell of sorts in the present.
And in the right corner over here we have Capitalism, or as far as their 20th century kill stats say "Anti-Communism."
From the different sources I found, I guesstimated that the number of anti-communist regimes killing
communist individuals or communist sympathizers would be around 4 million people during the 20th Century.
However, both of these stats by both sides could be actually kind of unreliable.
Because although the number we see by official group killings is around 4 million,
and Capitalism has, if we are to say "won the war," wouldn't we be seeing
higher numbers of death towards communists? And lo and behold if you take into account that World War 2
was started because of capitalism via the Great Depression, all of the deaths from World War 2
can account for 70 million deaths alone. Now I'm not saying as a premise for this argument that
because World War 2 is caused by Capitalism, therefore all deaths caused by World War 2 were deaths
in the name of Capitalism. What I am saying is that what exactly counts as death in the name of Capitalism
could be broad or narrow. You could say the prohibitionist mob killings were killings in the name of Capitalism.
You could say that every murder committed by someone who considers themselves a capitalist to be a murder
in the name of Capitalism. Where is the line drawn here for this matter?
Where is the line drawn on the other side for this matter?
Assuming that if we state that an ideology based killing counts if the victim will not conform to the
ideology-in-question's way of thinking, and that assumpt- ion is what drove the perpetrators to murder them.
We can bring in other causes like Revolutionary Wars of Nations who were conquered by
capitalistic nations in the colonial empire conquests and the like.
With those kind of wars to add to the total death, it is kind of hard not to ignore this fact:
that Capitalism's killing spree is at least on par with Communism's.
It is just under the guise of other deadly statistics. Plus, knowledge of mass death in the name of Capitalism
isn't exactly good for Capitalism. People would much rather spend their capital on peace rather than on war.
And concerning the Cold War as far as who is right and who is wrong,
Here's a quote for you hardcore capitalists to chew on by Nathan J Robinson:
"If Soviet atrocities indict socialism, then principled and consistent belief would hold that the U.S. support
for the killing of 500,000 to 3,000,000 Indonesian communists indicts American capitalist democracy."
Basically what he is saying is: "If the evil that Russia supports nullifies communism, then the evil that the
U.S. supports must nullify Capitalism." And as a good segway into the next part of the video,
here are some commonly used definitions of communism.
If you simply read the goals and means of communism,
you can see that it actually has a very pure and alluring feel to it (on the surface at least).
As you can read up here
It says its ultimate goal is to create a communist society,
Which is just a socio-economic system based upon equal ownership of the production of goods while also seeking to:
1) Eliminate social classes (which you could say is all men are created equal),
2) Eliminate money (the love of which is commonly thought to be the root of all evil),
and 3) Eliminate the state (DOWN WITH BIG GOVERNMENT!!!)
Actually the elimination of the state isn't very justifiable since the state is the one that reinforces the laws,
without which everyone can do whatever without any consequences...
which would arise a need for a police force who would then create rules...
but then the police force wouldn't exactly have a police force watching over them
and then all men are not created equal again, and basically totally anarchy ensues.
So semantically, Communism definitely has one thing going against it
because the state of the state can and should, and dare I say must be changed, but it should never be eliminated.
Let's see what Karl Marx had to say about what would happen to a society before it
reached its grandiose idealistic utopia that every communist society is striving to be.
"In a higher phase of communist society,
After the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor,"
Okay
So make slaves of everyone. Check. Go on...
"and there with also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;"
Okay. So slaves don't choose to be white-collar or blue-collar
Workers they just go wherever they're told. Check. Go on...
"after labor has become not only a means of life, but life's prime want;"
Okay, so make sure that the slaves don't actually know that they are slaves. And motivate them to work...
How exactly are we gonna do that Karl?
"after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around
development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly-"
DARN IT KARL! ANSWER MY DANG QUESTION!
THEIR ANSWER IS THE ONLY WAY WE CAN MAKE THIS THING WORK!
"Only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe
on its banners: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.""
[Facepalm]
Duck you, Karl...
Duck you...
Basically what I'm trying to get at is this: Even though THIS part sounds nice, You have to get past
the individuals' motivation to even work in the first place. And to not let them know they're slaves
because who in the world would just hand themselves over to a state like that?
French utopian Etienne-Gabriel Morelly, who we'll call E.T. proposed in his 1755 Code of Nature
"Sacred and Fundamental Laws that would tear out the roots of vice and of all the evils of society"
Include the three following notions: "Nothing it society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or
as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work.
And what exactly will stop someone else from coveting one of my quote unquote "pleasures" and stealing them.
Because I'm pretty sure the Dutch-bag who stole my bike in this capitalistic
Society that we live in would've still stolen my bike in this society.
And what exactly is stopping individuals from hoarding public possessions on their allotted
property and hiding it from authorities?
Sounds a lot more like a way to channel vices into a new direction, if you ask me.
"Every citizen will be a public man
sustained by, supported by, and occupied at the public expense."
Wait, hold up. Every citizen will be a public man at the public expense?
Oh my gosh, there's people living inside me!
Or even worse, and on a much harsher note, E.T. in his bad language expression just justified gang-rape.
Again, this is just another way to channel vices into a new direction.
Every citizen will make his particular contribution to the activities of the community according to his capacity,
his talent, and his age; it is on this basis of that his duties will be determined in conformity with the distributive laws."
Honestly E.T., this one ain't worth killin'.
Let E.T. phone home and say:
"Death of a Notion spared my 3rd Sacred Law from the shames of illogicalness."
and have home say "Well what happened to the first and second Sacred Laws?"
and E.T. would say: "They are no more..."
Anywho, all of communism shares the analysis that the current system of society
Stems from capitalism. And that within capitalism, there is a conflict going on between the working class and the
Capitalists. And that this conflict is the basis for all conflicts in society...
which I would like to call a quick bull-shiznit on because conflicts can and often times happens because
just of bad communication, and bad communication has nothing to do with money. So we can say for the question of the day:
Yes; in its ideal form Communism is just economic equality.
Communism is Robin Hood. Having the poor start a revolution to steal from the rich in order for the wealth
to be evenly distributed amongst themselves, the needy. Communism is equal market shares.
Where if the group as a whole does good and using capitalistic terms "profitable",
then the whole community benefits in equal amounts and not like a capitalistic pyramid scheme where
only those at the top get the main money and then distribute it probably a little less amongst the workers.
Communism is Christianity.
So just for those of you who are Christians, know that the early church was
A good and decent form of communism. If you don't believe me,
here's a good example straight from the Bible in Acts 4:32-35:
"And the multitude of them that believed (A.K.A. the Church) were of one heart and of one soul
Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.
And with great power gave the Apostles
Witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any
Among them that lacked for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought
the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the Apostles feet and
Distribution was made unto every man according as to his need." Now in sight of that,
there is one distinguishing factor separating, let's say the U.S.S.R. from the 1st Century Church.
The U.S.S.R. was based on the macro-scale and was attempting to be self-sufficient
While the 1st Century Church was based on the micro-scale and WAS self-sufficient.
What I'm saying is that in order for the 1st Century Church form of communism to work,
it had to operate within the capitalistic macro-setting that was the Roman Empire.
As you can see in verse 34 "Those who were possessors of land or houses sold them..."
(A.K.A., they used capital.)
So just as a thought experiment,
imagine if the Roman Empire had operated with the communist mindset
and imagine the church a sub-set commune, operated the same way as we are told in the Bible.
The Church's love and care for each other would have increased productivity of all of their goods
but then the Roman Empire would come in and swoop
All of their excess goods that they had manufactured, and distributed those excess goods
amongst the rest of the Empire. The Empire as a whole would have been stronger as a result of the Christians'
work, but the Christian group itself would have been weaker. Because initially, the excess goods that were
produced were supposed to be used for certain members of the group
But now they have to share with the Empire the exact same amount of finite goods
and not to mention that those who were possessors of land or those who owned houses would not have been
able to sell them because their land and their houses would not have been their own in the first place.
So the church would have had to suffer with a little less thriving due to the lack of instant monetary boost the
rich provided for the church.
The Church therefore would only be equally a strong person per person as the secular Roman citizen
and if the Empire as a whole saw Christianity as a threat to the Empire, Christianity may have more likely than not
die out pretty early on. I mean no point being the salt of the earth if the
secular government keeps diluting you to just be part of the great salty ocean that is the rest of the Empire.
And all of these thought experiments so far haven't even touched on the anarchious side of
communism, or even why they prefer
Anarchy in the first place. Their main defense for this aspect of the notion can best be summarized by this
quote that I got off of Wikipedia: "In many stateless societies, conflicts between families or individuals
are resolved by appealing to the community. Each of the sides of the dispute will voice their concerns, and the
community, often voicing it's will through village elders, will reach a judgment on the situation..."
Even when there is no legal or coercive authority to enforce these community decisions,
people tend to adhere to them, due to a desire to be held in esteem by the community."
One main problem with this notion is the idea that the majority of the community will have any
unique voice to say [speak] to the community. The majority of individuals
in the community won't have any voice at all. In this situation, it is actually the village elders who speak their
will to the community. And the community adheres to it, whether the elders are right or wrong on the subject.
The village elder's right is the new right, and their rightness can change off of a whim, whether that whim
be intuition or their own personal desires. And these are not based off of written case laws.
And another obvious problem with this notion is that
it assumes that because people tend to adhere to the community guidelines,
therefore there does not need to be any community guidelines in the form of legalistic authority.
As an outlier in many respects myself, I know that as far as people go there will always be that
Individual who thinks that they are the exception to the rule. And I say rules are in fact
NOT for common people, but rather for those individual outliers.
Rules are in place so that outliers are held accountable to a systemic judgment if they happen to hurt an
individual or the community in some form or fashion. And going back to the issues that I had with Karl Marx's
statement on communism, and therefore an underlying assumption of communism is that people will
when all other desires and needs are taken care of, people will do nothing else but work.
It's as if these guys think that the motivation to better society
will be enough to motivate one to go to work.
Unfortunately, Marx was an optimistic idealist, and his ideas actually cannot be rationalized,
simply because people generally, like to take it easy.
If we know the bare minimum work that is required of us to meet our
Prescribed quota, we will achieve that bare minimum, then stop.
If for example, we work in a sweater making factory
we don't really care if little Johnny is unable to get a sweater in order to meet his personal needs.
If 1) our needs are already taken care of and 2) we don't know that Johnny needs a sweater.
Or for example, we work in a communist McDonald's.
We won't care if our few "good" co-workers are getting swamped
by an hour long line of customers, as long as we are personally provided and guaranteed
Maslow's Basic Survival Hierarchy of Needs from working earlier in the week, month, year,
or whatever unit of time the communist society says you must work
this amount of hours within this amount of time to get your prescribed quota.
All I know is this: if I didn't have a
guaranteed and measurable and assured way that my personal standard of living would be increased
as a result of my extra work at work (A.K.A. more money for more work), then
I have no incentive to help out my co-workers if they are short-staffed (same money for more work).
Plus another issue that I have with communism is that innovative stagnation or rather innovative
retardation is not only a theoretical
result of communism, it has shown to be the result. Without economical competition to make technology
smaller, faster, and more aesthetically pleasing, the Communist society proves the lag behind in innovative
technologies compared to their capitalistic counterparts. (Links in the description if you want to
see my sources on how a capitalistic society proves to perform better innovatively than their communist counterparts.
So far, we've looked at communism in general and there are some minor issues that appear to pop up
But now let's look at some proposed systems that combine
socio-economic systems based off of communist thought. And since we've already debunked like
Marxism as a legit notion to hold onto, let's judge these systems as their own individual sub-notions.
Who knows? Something good might come out of it.
The first system we are going to judge is Economic Democracy and it says that that is: a model of
market socialism where enterprises and natural resources are owned by a society in the form of
public banking and management is elected by the workers within each firm.
Profits would be distributed among the workers of the respective enterprise.
Ok, this kind of sounds interesting;
so every business would in and of themselves become kind of a micro-communist society
the success of the business can motivate Individuals to recruit from
other businesses not doing so well for the purposes of keeping up with society's demand.
And I have two questions of concern regarding this:
1) Exactly How would the management election process work?
I mean if you want to be in charge, say "Vote for me!"
Just to find out that you get equal resource allocation later? For doing more work?
I think there's a reason that managers get paid more than lay-workers. And if the managers themselves
distribute the resources to the rest of the workers, what exactly is stopping them from holding a little extra back
for themselves. Cause if they do this, they would slowly become richer than everyone else
creating the 1% versus the 99% disparity again. And the second question I have is:
When does an enterprise become a franchise? Can franchises even exist in an Economic Democracy?
Like let's say for example, there's a CEO, we'll call him a CEO because he is actually just Manager #1, and he
wants to expand to a new location. And he wants a certain person to be in management at this second location.
Because this second person worked at company #1 with the CEO.
But once the workers start working at location 2, all that they would have to do is vote a different manager.
And the whole concept of what the CEO originally wanted to expand upon becomes
taken over by people who do not spend their resources to start up this second location
I mean, I like this idea in general, but I think little things like that would cause that system to fail.
Just a little foresight would be nice.
The second system we're going to judge today is the Lange-Lerner Model and that involves:
"the public ownership of the means of production, and the utilization of a trial and error approach
To achieving equilibrium prices by a central planning board."
Hold up...Trial and error approach?
Is that the best you got?
Why not simply set the prices a particular commodity had in the last year of
capitalism as the base price of the first year of communism. Then adjust those rates to
fit with whatever new monetary system you had in mind.
"Managers of the state-owned firms would be instructed to set prices to equal marginal costs
so that economic equilibrium would be achieved." Ok
so the prices would actually be a lot lower than what they were in the
capitalistic setting, which makes the trial and error approach a little bit more reasonable.
But you can still attain these prices from the original manufacturing companies
You could put a lot of hearts at rest knowing that the stability of the entire state economy
is not based off of trial and error. The third system we're going to be judging today is the
Self-managed economy and it is: "A form of socialism where enterprises are owned and managed by their
employees, effectively negating the wage labor dynamic of capitalism,
and emphasizing the opposition to alienation,
self-managing and cooperative aspect of socialism. Members of cooperative firms are relatively free to
manage their own affairs and work schedules." This notion sucks. Where do I even begin?
"Emphasizing the opposition to alienation" In this system,
it is not the best, the smartest, or even the most good-looking who is in charge,
We are all in charge in this system. And this ain't no hive mind connected to the Borg either.
All the individuals will manage at the same time, and either vote the best course of action
of every minute detail that goes on in their joint, or they evenly distribute
the managing labor, which will indefinitely contradict how someone else would manage that minute detail...
Causing strife and OH MY GOSH!! Just look at this cluster duck of logic.
No, do not ever try the self-managed economy, communists...just no...
The fourth system we're going to be judging is called Feasible Socialism and that involves:
"A combination of publicly owned and centrally directed enterprises for large scale industries,
autonomous publicly owned enterprises," wait "autonomous" means self-running,
"Publicly owned," everybody owns it, "enterprises," businesses. So self-running businesses owned by everybody?
What the duck exactly makes the enterprise autonomous? Ducking robots?
and it continues on to say: "consumer and worker owned cooperatives for the majority of the economy.
So Walmart will become in the best case scenario a glorified Farmers Market and Flea Market combined.
I can just imagines someone getting frustrated about
just wanting to buy one item, and having to go over a bunch of different areas
Just to look for this one item that is sold by one person.
Well, I guess essentially that means that the money would go directly from the person who
wants the item to the person who originally made the item.
I don't necessarily like the idea of having to pay each
individual person for each individual item or a group of items. You may end up having to do
20-plus transactions with 20 different people rather than the simple one that Walmart has right now.
Adopting complexity over simplicity doesn't sound very efficient to me.
The fifth system we'll be judging today is called Pragmatic Market Socialism, and it was invented by
American Economist James Yunker, who detailed a model: "where social ownership of the means of
production Is achieved the same way private ownership is achieved in modern capitalism, through the
shareholder system that separates management functions from ownership."
Ok, it sounds pretty promising so far, go on...
"Yunker posits that social ownership can be achieved by having a public body
Designated the Bureau of Public Ownership (BPO) owning the shares of publicly listed firms
without affecting market-based allocation of capital inputs."
So basically imagine Wall-Street, where businesses are guaranteed not to fall under
and lose all of their money in a market depression, because the public owns the parts of the shares that
the BPO bought. Normal capitalistic investments would still occur, yet the mass of the public
would still get benefits from these companies. The quote goes on to say that "Yunker termed this model
Pragmatic Market Socialism, because it does not require massive changes to society and would leave the existing
management system intact, and would be at least as efficient as modern day
capitalism, while providing superior social outcomes as public ownership of large and established
enterprises would enable profits to be distributed among the entire population rather than going largely to a class
of inheriting rentiers." Wow, it's just like I said, I did understand it correctly.
James Yunker, I applaud you for your brilliance in trying to combine capitalism and socialism,
and I personally don't see any holes in your notion.
Except for this one thing that may just be out of ignorance on my part. In this system,
how exactly does the money transfer from the people, to the BPO, to the market, and then back to the people?
I mean the middle transaction seemed very well explained, but it's the first and the last one that seemed kind of blurry.
Would taxes  be the form or would retirement work?
There can be a few different ways to do it, I'm just curious on your thoughts.
See Creatures, how do you think that money would best be transferred within this system?
The sixth system we're going to be judging today is called Computer Managed Allocation
And it "proposes for utilizing computer-based coordination and information technology
for the Coordination and optimization of resource allocation within an economy have been outlined by
various socialists, economists, and computer scientists." I don't exactly see how allowing computers to allocate
resources has anything to do with communism in particular.
Capitalism can also benefit from this sort of Computer Managed Allocation too. I mean, it's a good idea,
and it would maximize efficiency. So just as an idea to throw out there:
maybe have the head of the BPO in the Pragmatic Market Socialism be a computer?
Just a thought. The final system that we'll be judging is called Negotiated Coordination,
which is "based upon the social ownership by those affected by the use of the assets involved
with decisions made by those at the most localized level of production."
This one sounds a lot like the Economic Democracy, the first one that we went over.
except instead of managers being elected, a group of managers, each over a small chunk of the whole
choose how to coordinate the company by negotiating with each other.
I mean, I guess this could negate the two questions that I had about Economic Democracy.
If you combine the Negotiated Coordination of the managerial process with Economic Democracy,
I guess it could work. Now as a result of all this research I, and now hopefully you,
can feel more comfortable not yelling at communists for being communists or consider the phrase
"You're a communist!" to be a tragic insult, since the idealized form of communism is a utopia society.
Very much like the society shown to us in Star Trek.
Hey, wait a minute!
Hey internet! Was Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, a communist?!?!?
OOOooohhh.
Yep.
[Outtro Music] This video was made by Tim and Kaiida Snavely on a channel called Death of a Notion.
and definitely not by a couple of communists, because we like capitalism at least a little bit.
and if you want to reinforce our capitalistic notions, you can support us on Patreon (links in the description)...
And if you are new with us, and would like to become more enlightened, depressed or enraged with us
(depending on your previous notions), please do us a giddy and click on those Like and Subscribe Buttons
to join fellow See Creatures who live in the Notion Ocean.
And until next time, Kumbayah mother duckers.
Gene Roddenberry was himself a communist,
so if you're a Trekkie...COMMUNISM FOR YOU!!!
