The Principles of Communism

This is one of the earliest definitions given and I cannot say I was expecting it to already have been a reality almost 200 years ago that corporations would make underpaying their employees core to the capitalistic values.

A controversial point I believe and one I struggle to fully support as it suggests that by a slave being owned they are guaranteed a consistent existence with a roof over their head and food but something I can only truly see in the ancient greek and roman slavery times rather than the more modern European and US slavery model.

This is something I hadn’t considered in the past as serfs were in my mind generally living inferior lives than average working people however this mindset was based on the increased standards of living I experience in modern times (which takes nothing away from the capitalist proletariat vs bourgeois paradigm) and not in relation to the ownership of a serfs’ working tools.

Another part I was very surprised by or hadn’t thought of in that way, the concept of possessing the means of production is key to both of communism and capitalism and I hadn’t considered that before the institution of centralised factories, the tools of production were almost wholly in the hands of the working people.

This is one I struggle to understand fully, it seems to me presented as a positive comparing it to purely monetary relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. I would assume that the patriarchal model supports a level of personal investment compared to the purely exploitative model of capitalism but this seems a stretch to me.

I love this bit, capitalism is presented as having polluted the world through its model of over production and thus economically invading and forcibly integrating anyone who isn’t part of capitalism yet to it. This goes hand in hand with the Disco Elysium quote “Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.”

This is particularly interesting as it is usually presented as a positive of capitalism, the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want…assuming you have the money for it but that last part is usually kept quiet.

One of the rare elements society has actually made progress on, whilst communism presented here already promotes a universal democracy, it is relatively heart-warming that we managed to get to this level of democracy within the capitalist system.

I think this is brilliant forward-thinking and particularly relevant in the times of “AI” becoming more prevalent. People have half seriously commented on the irony of focusing AI on creative writing and art creation instead of using it to help people with more mundane tasks or increasing standards of living, these preferred uses of AI however do not serve the bourgeoisie and so it is perfectly expected that AI’s development will follow the less useful path to humanity.

I’ve seen this in economic theories a few times but had never fundamentally associated it with capitalism itself, it’s interesting that economic crisis are expected but not just that…

…but are also something the bourgeoisie wants to keep happening as it doesn’t affect them and maintains capitalism into existence. It’s also interesting to note here that “big industry” is endorsed by communism. Communism doesn’t want a return to individual artisans but rather a national and people led large manufacturing effort taking advantage of the industrial revolution to facilitate the manufacture at large scale.

Every worker a member of the board? This is one of the points that communism hinges on but feels particularly weak, it’s tough to get everyone to agree on how one thing should be operated. It is addressed and answered in the point below whereby if everyone’s fundamental needs are met and manufacturing capability exceeds demand, individual preferences can then be addressed but the transition to that society would be extraordinarily difficult as it is laid out here.

It seems obvious to state but offer and demand and its effects on affordability and availability is intrinsic to capitalism. What isn’t so obvious but said here I think is that making it so offer doesn’t exceed demand is key to maintaining the bourgeoisie-proletariat paradigm.

In response to “can we change to a communist society immediately”. This is a common oversimplification in the capitalist argument against communism where the switch to communism is always presented as sudden, violent, and traumatic in comparison to the current way of life under capitalism. The idea that communism has to come through a revolution, a word often associated with the violent and traumatic French revolution reinforces the antagonistic ideas that communism cannot work.

It’s interesting to me how much rhetoric has changed our view of the words used in this context. Being part of the proletariat is generally seen as a negative nowadays and ideologies usually refuse to show any sort of self criticism as the image of a strong perfect ideology is more likely to get voted in, that’s a big part of how fascism presents itself. Here not only do we have an ideology that acknowledges the difficulty and struggles that could be caused by it, it is also one that sees the proletariat as the only class that needs existing.

Following the majority is democratic, expropriation as presented here could be seen as totalitarian. It’s unclear to me if “confiscation of possessions” here means simply the enforcement of the deconstruction of private property or means abandoning people without supporting them with the production of the proletariat.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

The nature of the education isn’t disclosed which could be problematic (Nazi Germany also “educated” its children at national cost) but assuming that the spirit of liberation that communism pushes also applies to liberation of thought, I see pushing education in that direction as a positive particularly as it would do away with the classist privatisation of education.

I was surprised that cheap landlords getting cheap houses to build regardless of quality and health implication was already a problem then.

this is the end goal, this is also the best explanation why private property isn’t a necessity but a consequence of the unequal access to “property” in a capitalist society. Interestingly the loss of old economic habits suggest the loss of greed and thus infers that greed is also not an innate property but a consequence of capitalist society; I don’t know if that’s true but I also don’t know how one would go at proving it either way.

Communism is meant to mirror capitalism in its range, if capitalism can economically invade and integrate all by simply existing in one country then so will communism as capitalism relies on the globalisation of exchanges across the free market. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, whilst on one hand we have become very dependent on dozens of countries for various imports, capitalism has also built a level of redundancy for most products where a single country stopping exports would have a relatively small impact. Exceptions would apply if a country like Taiwan turned communist whilst being responsible for 90+% of electronic chips in the world, maybe then the dominoes would start falling…

This is the answer to the “your smartphone can only exist with capitalism”, the idea that innovation only happens when pushed by competition is a capitalist idea and if all needs were to be met with margin for production capability, that margin could then be used for innovation and improvement to the human condition. At least that’s what communism suggests, but this goes back to greed not being innate whilst altruism would arise naturally from a communist society, getting people to innovate, push boundaries and try new things without the inherent pull of additional riches as is the case in capitalism.

This encourages my thoughts regarding the education of children by communism. The system presented here wants people to understand the system in full and to be as polyvalent as possible, it does not support obfuscation or limitations of education.

This is brilliant because there is a perfect example of this in modern day France. The over-development of Paris in comparison to the rest of the country has led to an issue where the non-Paris areas cannot catch up to Paris whilst Paris itself is systematically still not developed enough to fully support all the systems and people present in it. An unstable but manageable system has been the development of high speed train lines between Paris and the rest of France, offloading development of Paris to non-Paris areas. One area was left behind though, the Midi Pyrenees area which has no direct fast access to Paris and is underdeveloped not only relative to Paris but also to the rest of France with no sign of improvement.

It is insane to me that one has to go all the way to the extreme left of communism to find one party that says “sex is yours and your partner’s concern only and nobody else’s”. Every single modern day party has at some point in one way or another shown evidence of homophobia, transphobia and/or religious zeal and an almost 200 year old text here suggests a “just let people be” idea, it’s baffling that we went backwards so much since then.

Women just like men are owned through their need for employment and salary to live. Communism abolishes the need for employment and so abolishes prostitution. We then go back to the previous point that if someone wants to have sex with someone else, it’s only their concern and so sex is free regardless of what religion or other people might think of it. I can see however how this wasn’t a particularly popular idea as humanity is generally quite fond of prostitution as a guaranteed easy way of having sex with a person of choice without having to be pleasant, charming or physically attractive; I’d call it paid rape in most cases.

Another point that is unsurprisingly unpopular and I’m not even sure I can fully support. Mingling without borders is a great way of educating oneself but dissolving nationalities in full can also come at the cost of losing elements of culture something we have seen with the EU where the loss of individualism is greatly protested.

Not only is this another unsurprisingly unpopular idea, I feel like it also misses the point of religions. Whilst religion has roots in an unequal, classist and wealth accumulation based system, its existence isn’t fundamentally capitalist or bourgeois, people will always want or need reassurance of religion in times of challenge or to face more existential questions such as life after death.

This is how the text describes “Bourgeois socialists” and is a delightful way of naming and describing centrists.

There is some humour to be found here that for communism to exist, bourgeoisie first needs to win against monarchy and so communists must work in support of bourgeoisie to bring down monarchy before pulling the reverse card on them.