Again, do you have a system in mind where wages are paid on the basis of effort? — Isaac

As far as I remember, there were multiple attempts to build such a system, and they failed. There's a simple reason for it. The same amount of effort made by people of different abilities make different amount of value. And the things are even worse than that: actually, no one can tell whose effort "really" costs more or less, there's no way to measure.

Unfortunately communism, like it's foundational father socialism, is grounded in covetousness and theft. Regardless of whether or not those in authority in this form of government were hypothetically not greedy or unable to er, the moral-ethical dilemma still remains. Theft. — Contra Mundum

Theft is unambiguously the basis of capitalism. Our ancestors could walk the land and hunt to provide for themselves and their families until someone had the wicked and clever idea of saying, "Actually this is mine now. If you want to eat, work for me." That is the great theft, the single greatest heist in history. Your "theft" is taking it back from the thieves, or the inheritors of thieves.

Which makes me sound like I'd vote for communism, and yet... I'd just rather be an honest capitalist than a dishonest one. My preference is for stable, non-growth-oriented capitalism with UBI (there, someone mentioned it), the latter based on the fact that stolen shared land and resources should be paid for. The thieves disagree, but that's criminals for you.

:up:

Our ancestors could walk the land and hunt to provide for themselves and their families until someone had the wicked and clever idea of saying, "Actually this is mine now. If you want to eat, work for me." — Kenosha Kid

More like people started congregating in permanent villages, giving rise to the city state. Once people have permanent digs, ownership becomes more meaningful, as does the division of labor, money, accounting, governments and so on.

Communism cannot work because property is a basic part of human psychology.

"Mine, Mine, Mine!": The Psychology of Property

So many decent enough points. Yet many easily refuted. What one must first ask is why is free and open press such a rarity in these societies? More importantly than that even is realizing in the 1800s (the prime age of such giants of the concept) there were 1 billion people IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Barely 200 years later there's nearly 8 BILLION. Nearly half of the 1800s world population living in the United States alone. Long story short what worked hundreds of years ago probably doesn't work now. The system is far from perfect. But I'd like to see one argument that communism prevents people killing OR and this is the ticket, from being killed, by the state, for greed or to otherwise gain more. See the trick is in a closed society the reported deaths are always 0.

Edit: Perhaps I'm being biased. I know little of communism I know people work (usually?) to, much like capitalism, be a sturdy and efficient gear to power a larger system/nation/idea. Still, you have 1 million people in one continent and 1 million people in another. Side by side. Friendly, yet competitive. Actually, if someone could help me further understand the differences I'd appreciate it and be able to offer a more informed response.

More like people started congregating in permanent villages, giving rise to the city state. Once people have permanent digs, ownership becomes more meaningful, as does the division of labor, money, accounting, governments and so on. — Marchesk

The precise history will depend on the place you're talking about. Here in England, land was seized by force by Roman forces and distributed among Roman officers and favoured locals. In the Americas, land was seized by force by European states and distributed between them, and sub-distributed via various means.

I think you'll find that generally means of survival are seized by force and force alone.

I think you'll find that generally means of survival are seized by force and force alone. — Kenosha Kid

You're still thinking in the mindset of people whose finest accomplishment was defecating in holes surrounded by wooden barriers. It's easy to take something, sure. I can snatch a hat off a professional wrestler in a casual setting. Keeping it however, especially from others who would do the same, is a whole nother ballgame.

You're still thinking in the mindset of people whose finest accomplishment was defecating in holes surrounded by wooden barriers. It's easy to take something, sure. I can snatch a hat off a professional wrestler in a casual setting. Keeping it however, especially from others who would do the same, is a whole nother ballgame. — Outlander

But there's no going back. It just goes from thieving bastard to either offspring or another thieving bastard. It's still theft.

But there's no going back. It just goes from thieving bastard to either offspring or another thieving bastard. It's still theft. — Kenosha Kid

Or a rich bastard obvs.

But there's no going back. It just goes from thieving bastard to either offspring or another thieving bastard. It's still theft. — Kenosha Kid

From which pious innocent saints was land stolen from first? Or is this an original sin that you are talking about?

And from who have you stolen your wealth, Kenosha Kid?

From which pious innocent saints was land stolen from first? Or is this an original sin that you are talking about? — ssu

I don't see any religious element to my response.

From which pious innocent saints was land stolen from first? Or is this an original sin that you are talking about?

And from who have you stolen your wealth, Kenosha Kid? — ssu

I am one of the multitude who must labour for others in order to provide for my family. I am a peasant :)

I am one of the multitude who must labour for others in order to provide for my family. I am a peasant — Kenosha Kid

As opposed to laboring for yourself to provide for your family? Let's say at the end of your labors your children inherit enough to start a bakery. At first they do all the labor, but after some success, they're able to hire others to help do the labor. Eventually, the business becomes very popular, with multiple stores, and now your children are managing the business instead of doing the day to day labor.

However, in the deep dark past one of your ancestral groups came across another group camping out on a fertile tract of land. That group refused to share, so your ancestors killed them and took the land for themselves.

Should your children's bakery be considered some form of theft because of that? We can't know, but probably all of our ancestries have various crimes in their past. Maybe the crime is civilization itself, but then again, it's not like hunters and gatherers never have conflicts.

But what does any of that matter to us now? We can't go back and undo it. We only know the more recent crimes recorded in history, to the extent they were. Recent in terms of all those thousands of years humans have been around.

And I'm talking about history where everyone involved is dead, and thus nobody can actually be held accountable.

I am one of the multitude who must labour for others in order to provide for my family. I am a peasant :) — Kenosha Kid

If you are a peasant, then you farm land. And so, from who have you or your family stolen the land?

If you are a peasant, then you farm land. And so, from who have you or your family stolen the land? — ssu

Eh? You think peasants owned the land they farmed? What?

Should your children's bakery be considered some form of theft because of that? — Marchesk

Did you really think I'd be pro-inheritance with that viewpoint?

Being ugly myself, I think I can safely poke fun at the aesthetically challenged. So, here's my two cents on the issue of government: If you're ugly, there's no such thing as the best clothes you can wear - you're going to look and be ugly no matter what. The problem isn't with the type of government as much as it's with us, our nature. Not that I have that much money but I'm willing to bet all the diamond mines on earth that humans, left to their devices, will turn paradise into hell.

If you say YOU are a peasant, then really, do you or your family own the land?

As subsistence farming has long gone except in Third World countries, fewer and fewer people actually farm. Or are genuinely saying that you now farm rented fields without any fields of your own? Renting land a profession for few farmers and mainly large company-like farms. The 2 million farms in the US employ only 2,6 million people. Agricultural production is really transforming to an industry just like others.

If you say YOU are a peasant, then really, do you or your family own the land?

As subsistence farming has long gone except in Third World countries, fewer and fewer people actually farm. Or are genuinely saying that you now farm rented fields without any fields of your own? Renting land a profession for few farmers and mainly large company-like farms. The 2 million farms in the US employ only 2,6 million people. Agricultural production is really transforming to an industry just like others. — ssu

Yes, technology is not kind to peasants. No, I'm a peasant only insofar as I must labour for someone else in order to feed and house my family. I may not take what the world has given us all as my ancestors did because The Man took it from them, gave it to his friends, and said we owed him for some reason.

No, I'm a peasant only insofar as I must labour for someone else in order to feed and house my family. — Kenosha Kid

Right. I thought you were being poetic as a peasant is a more of a historical name, but the correct definition is simply that you are an employee either working in the private or public sector. And of course you don't have to work for someone else. You could be the most annoying type of person to communists, social democrats and trade unions: namely an entrepreneur, a plumber or carpenter working for yourself. So your profession isn't really chained to the ground as with some historical peasant. (And do notice, peasants could own their lands, just like here in Finland and usually in the Nordic countries.)

Besides, being an employee doesn't at all make you part of any class. CEO's are employees, you know.

You could be the most annoying type of person to communists, social democrats and trade unions: namely an entrepreneur, a plumber or carpenter working for yourself. — ssu

Plumbers and carpenters do work for someone else for the money they need to feed their families. It's just nicely abstracted now. Communists have plumbers, it's just that their ability to survive is not based on finding enough work to stay afloat. There aren't many self-employed plumbers left here, don't know about where you are.

As for entrepreneurs, it's a myth that you can just decide to become a successful entrepreneur. I was going to list lucky bastards in my enumeration of bastards, but they're only really lucky if they get rich, so I guess rich bastards covers it.

It is without doubt much more fair than the feudal system, which is why I'd prefer to be an honest capitalist than a communist. But all of this is still based on that original theft. People who inherent wealth believe they deserve it, but they don't. They are no more deserving of their inheritance than a trouserless scally playing in a gutter in a street, not entirely sure if its mother is home or not.

Welfare is a partial repayment of that theft, but UBI would be better. Perhaps because this is the world I have grown up in, as we all have, and therefore it seems to me to be reasonable, but a system that guarantees you will not starve because of that theft is actually better than the theft never having occurred, in which case we'd merely starve through our own incompetence. I am sure of one thing: when the zombie apocalypse happens and its down to personal survival, I am absolutely screwed!

Or are genuinely saying that you now farm rented fields without any fields of your own? — ssu

He probably lives on rented land or else is renting money to pay for it with, and effectively rents the capital he works (no longer land since we’re no longer all farmers) inasmuch as he has to cede a portion of the value he creates to the owner of that capital. Just like a serf had to give a portion of his crops to the lord in order to be permitted to live and work on the lord’s land.

Who is this man? When did he take what he took? What technological advances and society were present when it happened?

Would you give up everything created and provided as a result to live back in that time under its boundaries and threats?

Plumbers and carpenters do work for someone else for the money they need to feed their families. It's just nicely abstracted now. — Kenosha Kid

All people who provide any service to others do work for someone else. Plumbers, carpenters, lawyers, personal trainers, engineers. Whoever. Remember that theoretically there's not much difference in you buying a haircut and you employing a barber.

There aren't many self-employed plumbers left here, don't know about where you are. — Kenosha Kid

Thanks to capitalism, obviously you can CHOOSE a person or a firm, big or small, you want to provide the service you need. Or better to have that state plumber to fix your pipes at your home, who comes 5 months from now?

As for entrepreneurs, it's a myth that you can just decide to become a successful entrepreneur. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, you do need things like a free market, the ability to choose a profession and be an entrepreneur in the field you want. Some professions naturally need regulation like doctors, pharmacists or layers. But training and official certificates aren't the major way to control a market as feudal corporations were or what limits a centrally planned economy creates.

It is without doubt much more fair than the feudal system, which is why I'd prefer to be an honest capitalist than a communist. But all of this is still based on that original theft. People who inherent wealth believe they deserve it, but they don't. They are no more deserving of their inheritance than a trouserless scally playing in a gutter in a street, not entirely sure if its mother is home or not. — Kenosha Kid

Original theft or original sin? It's correct actually to put it in religious terms as the issue is quite religious in my view. The viewpoint comes more from a religious aspects than from practical measures of making the World better.

Welfare is a partial repayment of that theft, — Kenosha Kid

Why?

What is so utterly wrong in the fact that the seller of a service and the buyer of a service can reach an agreement what the price of the service is? Other one gets the service, other one gets income and both are happy.

And are you utterly incapable of thinking that a person that employs people is happy that he or she employs people that then get income? Or that people are genuinely happy if they have satisfied customers? Or is THE ONLY religiously acceptable form of employment a cooperative, as if any company is just theft? This is the problem in viewing any transaction as basically theft, original sin.

Just like a serf had to give a portion of his crops to the lord in order to be permitted to live and work on the lord’s land. — Pfhorrest

Just like a serf?

The problem is far too easily people interpret today to being serfs working for a lord. For them it's just a trendy figure of speech. For historical serfs this was something different. Remember that the lord in feudal system was also the judge and the law around. You simply didn't have the option to pack your stuff and work somewhere else. You couldn't just like that move into a city and start a business there.

What is lacking typically is the understanding just how feudalism was abolished by modern commerce, which is only replaced by very eager figures of speach of "modern day feudalism". As if our current time in the prosperous West with it's democratic structures and welfare state resembles the feudal past. We may have problems today, but they don't anything like under feudalism. Just as our present day farmers, those usually old people who work still with agriculture, are far away from the subsistence farming peasant of the past.

Your response to KK is emotive and irrational.

It's hardly debatable that the concentration of the ownership of land, and capital in general, can be traced back to theft in the form of such legal measures as enclosures and clearances, with accompanying punishment and repression of the victims (vagabonds, Luddites, etc).

The question we have to address is: radicalism or reform? That land ownership originates in theft might not justify the wholesale dispossession of the owners in one fell swoop. Conservatives and moderates can point to the Bolsheviks' terror-frenzy of dekulakization, starting with Lenin and culminating under Stalin, which I agree was a crime that no original theft can justify (even if the victims had primarily been rich landowners, as claimed). Also, such radical projects usually turn out to be disastrous. And yet, we do live in societies whose unequal distribution of ownership is a legacy of that original theft. So, what to do eh?

What is lacking typically is the understanding just how feudalism was abolished by modern commerce, which is only replaced by very eager figures of speach of "modern day feudalism". As if our current time in the prosperous West with it's democratic structures and welfare state resembles the feudal past. We may have problems today, but they don't anything like under feudalism. Just as our present day farmers, those usually old people who work still with agriculture, are far away from the subsistence farming peasant of the past. — ssu

Feudalism was "abolished by modern commerce" in a specific way that I think justifies drawing a parallel between feudalism and capitalism in terms of the inequality of ownership, property relations, and the relations of production, despite the huge differences between the two systems in other ways.

The bourgeoisie didn't simply cry "feudalism is unfair and we hereby abolish it!", even if it seemed to take that form in certain places and historical moments (where the Enlightenment took its most radical and progressive form (jeez I do sound like a boring old Marxist eh)). What happened is that nobles, even e.g. Scottish clan chiefs, gradually began to find the benefits of capitalism more attractive than their traditional obligations as patriarchs, nobles, or vassals, and became capitalists, alongside and competing with the new capitalists who arose out of commerce. The peasants were out of luck: thus the working class was born.

I don't think anyone is denying that there are huge differences, or that we formally have freedoms that are often beneficial. They key point is, despite that, each of us is thrown into a world in which a small part of the population holds the land and capital, thanks to inheritance and class dominance. Whether one is an owner or, on the contrary, depends on the owners for one's livelihood, with virtually no say over the situation, is an accident of birth--also rather like feudalism.

Or better to have that state plumber to fix your pipes at your home, who comes 5 months from now? — ssu

That rather appeals to contingent qualities of a particular communist country, doesn't it? Which is irrelevant anyway, since my stated position is on the capitalist side of the argument. Or is your point that, since capitalism gets me a plumber more quickly, I have to concede that a moron who inherits half a billion dollars -- enough to buy a Presidency, say -- deserves that inheritance more than a Projects kid who could change the world if only he could stop his stomach from rumbling and hurting long enough to focus on class? It's difficult to join the dots on that one.

Yes, you do need things like a free market, the ability to choose a profession and be an entrepreneur in the field you want. — ssu

It's not a question of merely making the landscape correct. This is a psychological malfunction called the illusion of expertise. 200 people try to become successful entrepreneurs. Due to a thousand factors outside of anyone's control or consideration, one person makes it.

"Wow, that guy did something right! We should get him to write a book on how he did it, then we can read it and do the exact same thing and become rich!"
:D :D :D :) :) :) :| :| :|

Original theft or original sin? It's correct actually to put it in religious terms as the issue is quite religious in my view. The viewpoint comes more from a religious aspects than from practical measures of making the World better. — ssu

Yes, I'm sure the Romans thought so to, without particularly strident religious views too, and certainly without the concept of original sin. If it makes sense to you, though, you and you can talk in those terms. I am not obliged to entertain such silliness.

What is so utterly wrong in the fact that the seller of a service and the buyer of a service can reach an agreement what the price of the service is? — ssu

You mean what is so wrong that we went from a condition where we could walk the land and hunt and gather to one where, if we wanted to eat, we had to labour for someone who suddenly claimed that land was his? Just that it's theft. Ask the Native Americans how they feel about it.

How is capitalism responsible for colonialism or land ownership?

It's hardly debatable that the concentration of the ownership of land, and capital in general, can be traced back to theft in the form of such legal measures as enclosures and clearances, with accompanying punishment and repression of the victims (vagabonds, Luddites, etc). — jamalrob

Sorry, did the vagabonds or, ahem, Luddites own the land? Who was it stolen from? Or is the argument, as Proudhon put it, that property is a theft?

The question we have to address is: radicalism or reform? That land ownership originates in theft might not justify the wholesale dispossession of the owners in one fell swoop. — jamalrob

This is a different and vastly complex issue starting from things like annexation of whole countries or whatever, are the rights of small landowners or actual dwellers on the land upheld or not. When have people the right to own land or do they even have the right in the first place.

Feudalism was "abolished by modern commerce" in a specific way that I think justifies drawing a parallel between feudalism and capitalism in terms of the inequality of ownership, property relations, and the relations of production, despite the huge differences between the two systems in other ways. — jamalrob

And capitalism surely has had it's problems too. But with forgetting that anything actually has happened between the time of feudalism and the present day, we don't look at the present problems, and possible solutions (especially from history) correctly.

The bourgeoisie didn't simply cry "feudalism is unfair and we hereby abolish it!", even if it seemed to take that form in certain places and historical moments (where the Enlightenment took its most radical and progressive form (jeez I do sound like a boring old Marxist eh)). What happened is that nobles, even e.g. Scottish clan chiefs, gradually began to find the benefits of capitalism more attractive than their traditional obligations as patriarchs, nobles, or vassals, and became capitalists, alongside and competing with the new capitalists who arose out of commerce. The peasants were out of luck: thus the working class was born. — jamalrob

Have you read Adam Smith? I think so, but I can be wrong.

Of course large transformations happen during a longer time scale than we notice.

I'd say that the ruling class, the aristocrats, were hoodwinked out of their power by the lure of capitalism which was a good thing, because otherwise you would have had in the UK a bloody Civil War again. The peasants and the poor? Well, let's remember again that they weren't as slaves forced into the factory. Likely as factory workers, however bad the conditions were then, did get better salaries than working the fields and literally facing hunger.

I don't think anyone is denying that there are huge differences, or that we formally have freedoms that are often beneficial. They key point is, despite that, each of us is thrown into a world in which a small part of the population holds the land and capital, thanks to inheritance and class dominance. Whether one is an owner or, on the contrary, depends on the owners for one's livelihood, with virtually no say over the situation, is an accident of birth--also rather like feudalism. — jamalrob

OK. And thus even my conservative party here is an adamant supporter of the welfare state.

So, is the answer Communism or is it capitalism, where we try to fix the problems, jamalrob?

How is capitalism responsible for colonialism or land ownership? — Judaka

Did I say it was?