- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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How about (instead of communism) aiming for an economy made up predominantly of co-operatives, like in the Basque country in Spain? The Mondragon federation of co-ops.
That way money is distruted quite evenly but you don’t have to get into the whole politics thing.
The thing to understand about Christianity is that it was originally a reaction against the Roman empire and then got co-opted and integrated into it. As a result, ever since like the 4th century Christianity has been about basically the opposite of what Jesus talked about. It turns out all that stuff about turning the other cheek stops being relevant if the emperor has his soldiers paint crosses on their shields while they’re out conquering and enslaving the Gauls. Of course, you can keep all the mythological stuff, who cares, but anything relevant to politics or the material world mysteriously seemed to reverse once they entered the halls of power.
The carrot of being accepted into the empire was matched with the stick that if you didn’t go along with the imperial-approved form of Christianity you’d be burned at the stake as a heretic. Any sects still clinging to anti-imperial sentiment get hunted down and exterminated just like when they were being fed to lions, but it’s the Christians doing it to each other now, so you don’t even have to get your own hands dirty. This approach worked way better at suppressing dissent than just trying to ban Christianity altogether.
Of course, a lot has changed over the centuries. And originally it wasn’t perfect or anything either. But imo, it was when Rome Christianized that Christianity Romanized, and ever since its real values have had more to do with Rome than with Jesus. The meme’s, “moneyless, classless, stateless” ideal of heaven is a relic of the original teachings that gets shunted off to the purely mythological side, where it not only doesn’t matter, but also occupies a place in their brain that could have otherwise been sympathetic to making good things happen in the material world. That’s already resolved, there’s no need to worry about it, there’ll be pie in sky when you die.
Oh it makes sense now, recuperation is not a capitalist concept, it is an imperialist concept!
This is why christian fascism should not be the least bit surprising.
They didn’t keep the mythological stuff, that got edited out too as needed once it started disagreeing with the State and the Church.
Great writeup comrade, I also wanna share this really interesting article from Roland Boer, going over this history a bit, and also outlining the historical intersections of communism and christianity.
That’s because there are no brown people in their version of heaven.
Ah now it all makes sense
Heaven was literally [re]invented to be a description of utopia specifically so that toiling workers wouldn’t get distracted trying to create it on Earth.
“oooh heaven is a place on earth” take that shit literally, fam
Pie in the sky By and by
And no one has to work, they are provided with everything they need. Almost like a universal basic income or something.
More like post-scarcity. I don’t think even the wildest leftist thinks we’re quite there yet.
On calories housing and most everyday things we are post scarcity if we ignore distribution. In fact we over commission and under deliver all these things. We over produce food by a factor of around 1.5, housing is much less transferable but even there we’re unbelievably wastefull, energy is basically the only thing that isn’t outright overproduced but really only because when we have cheap energy we just tend to use it, often to produce more stuff.
So imo we are by bookkeeping standards post scarcity, delivery/distribution is just fucked and partially because of that we are creating tons of waste.
We could all live in comfort and those who want to could work less, and none of this would break. The real world economy(things, energy, housing , food, water, logistics capabilities…) is so large and secure it could support the world population. If not for the barriers and assumptions, the intrinsic I’ve got mine fuck you of the systems.
For me that is being there, and I hope that even if you can’t agree on that point, it at least illustrates that we are incredibly close to post scarcity.
I stand corrected. I guess some people do think we’re there.
Personally, I don’t think we’re close yet, but there could exist a better system where we’d at least be closer.
I’m pretty sure most of this is is loosely from “Half earth socialism”, which might not consider us already in post scarcity, but is at least sympathetic to the position while trying to approach the arguably more important factors,- climate change and biodiversity decline- through such a lens.
Examining how our lives could be lived, in accordance with the natural world systems, with a socialist organization of the world economy.
It’s pretty readable as far as these books go, I think it might even be the first explicitly socialist book I read /listened to.
I actually take a critical eye to the word “work” itself and think that it’s too encompassing a term. In our society it’s a blanket word that covers all labor. From punitive, fruitless toil all the way up to invigorating, actualizing applications of trained skill. Lots of what we call “work” are actually things we could want for ourselves in a utopia and would miss without, while IRL we’re currently on the crest of an economic trend in which the majority of society are trapped in ultimately meaningless and forgettable toil under wage coercion. Literally just being kept occupied and oppressed.
Put very simply I think you can slice our current idea of what work is into two halves, work that removes happiness from ourselves and society and work that adds happiness to ourselves and society. As utopians I think a society that contains only the latter is a reasonable prize to keep our eyes on.
Communism is just people trying to create heaven on earth but without God.
“Not like that!” My dads response when I tell him Jesus was a communist.
Well, something that the Mormons have is they tried out communism. They called it the law of consecration. They had some fun times with trying to handle being productive and redistribution and poligamous. They ultimately concluded that they weren’t ready for it yet so they went back to default capitalism with tithing and poor/fast offerings.
Tl;dr: Mormons believe in a kind of communism in heaven, and they go hungry for 2 meals (24 hrs) to remember to give generously to the poor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_consecration?wprov=sfla1
‘They’ didn’t decide they weren’t ready. It was used to fleece the pathetic true believers for a short period until the inner circle felt sufficiently capitalized.
I don’t think communism is a moneyless system. Pretty sure people paid money for things in the USSR. Have there been any communist countries without money?
Yes, which is why the USSR never once in its history claimed to have built communism. The best they claimed was “developed socialism” with promises to build Communism someday
something that I don’t get about communism: how do you prevent people from redistributing their wealth unequally over time?
I don’t really have any politic views because the discourse on it is so big and the issues so complex, but lean more towards socialism
By the time we reach Communism, that is, the Marxist vision of a fully publicly owned and planned world economy, distribution of wealth will likely be based on need. There is no necessity for equal wealth, as humans have very unequal needs. Equal ownership of property is certified through public ownership.
If you’re asking what’s preventing someone from starting a business, it would be the sheer difficulties of actually starting one that can compete with the highly developed productive forces in the rest of the economy. Communism isn’t so much about outlawing private property, as developing beyond it.
Communism is a post-Socialist society, it must be global, highly developed, and have full public ownership, or close enough to those. The Soviet Union was, instead, Socialist, ie an economy where public ownership is the principle aspect. That being said, there were attempts at Cybernetics, and moving beyond money. These are actually incredibly interesting, and anyone interested in Socialism should look into those attempts.
If you want to learn more about Socialism and Communism, I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list.
There is also the great Documentary by Plastic Pills Project Cybersyn & The CIA Coup in Chile
Oh shit, I need to watch that! Thanks, comrade!
It’s great, it goes further into how post coup the nascent proto-neolib ghouls went down to examine cybersyn and essentially stole the whole idea behind it which eventually became the model for just in time supply chains at places like amazon and walmart. Oh what could have been.
Interesting, and heartbreaking, of course. I never knew about the link to JIT from Cybersyn, I’ll have to give that a watch. Thanks!
I mean that stuff wouldn’t emerge for the next couple decades, but you can certainly see where the capitalist vampires saw it and went “damn that looks real efficient, bet if we made a privatized version we’d make more money than god”.
Of course as we know it was only so efficient because of its socialized nature which made such supply chains less prone to disruption as the computational power could be used to centrally monitor supply chains between all sorts of different nationalized industries, that could then be allocated in an agile manor so as to minimize any one industry or population running out of materials or basic needs. It was so efficient materials could even be reallocated mid route. It was a really sophisticated system and could serve as a blueprint for large scale socialized economies.
Absolutely! It’s kinda surreal seeing Marx get vindicated, he predicted markets would eventually develop these kinds of technologies in order to deal with ever-increasing complexity in production.
Marx mentioned
I do be mentioning Marx
To understand this you need to understand the theory. Marx outlined that socialism and communism each had to be transitioned to after reaching a given level of social/economic development. In particular there is the notion of “withering away of the state” which would happen after a global revolution, which is the aim of this classless/moniless society they outlined.
The communist manifesto is a short read!
In fact the USSR implemented explicit market policies, a sort of contained capitalism, which was designed to facilitate reaching the necessary preconditions for socialism and communism. Essentially all of the “communist” states we’ve seen so far have been some play on the notion of just “socialism in one country” in the Marxist-Leninist version of communist parties, who have/had the goal of eventually reaching communism.
What’s probably most interesting is that the idea behind the USSR wasn’t initially to have the state direct everything from the top, but in fact to facilitate worker councils (soviets) to direct their workplaces.
But you have to remember this all happened in the context of a state which had recently undergone a revolution, was rife with counterrevolutonary action (see revolutionary France and civil war Britain to see how this played out during the birth of liberalism) and was then plunged into WW2 where most states involved were acting fairly dictatorially for the duration of it. Followed shortly by the US making it an explicit goal to prevent world communism through e.g. CIA intervention because they feared “domino theory”
Marx outlined that socialism and communism each had to be transitioned to
No. Socialism is an economic mode of production. Communism is a set of social relations that are theorized to appear out of material abundance. Communism uses socialism as a mode of production. There is no transition from Socialism to Communism.
difference is that in heaven people dont have need to produce, so presumably no means of production even exist
That only works when there’s no scarcity. Then its up to communists/capitalists/anarchists/dictators how to slice the cake
There already is no scarcity for basic needs
Yeah, pretty massive fundamental difference, lol.
Well, it does not have an economy, so why would it have money?
Also, it doesn’t have politics and society in the conventional sense, but men are clearly subordinate to God. Christ is king, this is the way Christians think, so I am not sure this is a correct comparison.
The question of “should Christians strive for a classless society” is a complex one. Egalitarian ideals are very new compared to Christianity, but some Christians now think that in the “fallen world” authority is undesirable as it can be abused. This is not common though.
However, Marxism is an anti-religious ideology. Marxists both believe that religion will disappear after “the base” changes and it will become, ultimately, obsolete, and also have historically persecuted and enacted violence on Christians. So I am not surprised there are not many Marxist Christians.
“the question of “should Christians strive for a classless society” is a complex one.”
Not to the early Christians it wasn’t. The early Christians movements (before they were co-opted by Empire) were radically egalitarian.
You could literally describe early christianity as the spiritual arm of a revolutionary front.
Actually sir, have you considered that religion bad?
I have read a quote by Marx, and am very smart.
Sure, but comparing what people thought 2000 years ago to what they think now is a fruitless endeavor.
The concept of democracy came about around that time too (at least the Greek one, which arguably wasn’t the first but I digress) but should we exclude women and foreigners from it? That’s what the early proponents of democracy wanted.
The concept of democracy came about around that time too (at least the Greek one, which arguably wasn’t the first but I digress)
The Athenian concept of democracy had existed for the better part of a millennium by the time Christianity appeared.
Hmm you’re right. I thought it was closer to 0 ad, but it looks like it was closer to 600-300 bc.
Doesn’t change my point though.
Yes, just because it was written in a book doesn’t really means anything, we can change it, create bew editions of the book, even invert the meaning of inconvenient passages. These old code need to be made ambiguous and adaptible, endlessly reinterpretable to suit any situation that the priesthood needs to get themselves out of
Not to the early Christians it wasn’t. The early Christians movements (before they were co-opted by Empire) were radically egalitarian.
That would be irrelevant even if it was true. We are not in the second century. It is a very controversial position either way.
Egalitarian values certainly did emerge out of Christianity, and there was a change in that direction even then, but they were not egalitarian in the modern sense.
Also, please be careful when generalising early Christianty, as it was a very diverse group of sects that hardly agreed on anything.
Early religious communities sometimes were very accepting, and women played a role as well, but they still existed in a very patriarchal culture, so you should not expect their women to be equal to men in society, and there were absolutely positions of authority.
They opposed the empire because initially, they were not perceived by anyone as a group distinct from Jews, which were very hostile to it. However, there were appeals made by powerful Christians later to be recognized as a non-threat to imperial power, and ultimately, they succeeded.
Even so, the Jews simply wanted independence, not equality. The idea of social equality did not even exist then. They were equal in Christ, not in society.
Christianity was not coopted by the empire, it conquered it.
The idea that early christianity was somehow “more pure” I do not accept as well. I would say the Christian tradition has only been enriched over the years, and without a unified basic set of dogmas it would really make much sense.
But the original interpretation!!! /s
Hey, do you mind telling me why I got down voted, if you have an idea why, of course?
I do not believe I said anything particularly contentious this time, and I do not believe I said anything factually wrong either.
I feel like the majority of Lemmy users are non-religious and definitely a good bit of us are antireligion, so when you make a post sorta outlining that modern Christianity is better then a more egalitarian and less dogmatic society it doesn’t sit well.
Not sure if that’s the case fully, and you’re only at like -2/3 lol
If only these nonreligious people recognised how little they know about religion.
I might have changed my views on certain things after coming to the fediverse, and now I see that Lemmy is an echochamber. It seems like right wing and even moderate people just stayed on twitter and “truth social”, which are echochambers as well, especially the latter, clearly, and I end up arguing with everyone all the time.
Egalitarian ideals are very new compared to Christianity
Run that one by Jesus and I think he’d be surprised
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Well that description suits better anarchism. Also Heaven doesn’t exist it was invented by catholic church like many other stuff they made out of nowhere. Christian God wants to make a non-human monarchy (so God and Jesus as king) and remove all human based States. So pretty much not a communist. Of course you can argue is not anarchism either and is just common monarchy, since there is still some form of authoritarianism, even if not human-based, but from my personal perspective if it truly were a perfect reign I wouldn’t mind at all
if it truly were a perfect reign I wouldn’t mind at all
You wouldn’t care about somebody else having total control over you?
if it were a truly perfect reign, I imagine it would be more about balance and harmony, not control in the traditional sense. After all, if such an entity exists, it would ideally know what’s best for everyone. But yeah, I understand how the idea of total authority, even in a utopian context, can raise concerns. It’s a pretty complex topic.
Communism is stateless ?? LMAO. OP has no clue what communism really is
Communism is stateless, but not without government, or what Engels calls “The Administration of Things.” For Marx, the “state” is made up of the instruments of society that uphold class distinctions, such as private property rights, and special bodies of armed people for those purposes. Public ownership and socialized ownership quite literally makes those aspects of society redundant, and thus “whithers away.”
So it’s stateless but there’s a state according to the common definition but not according to a different definition that is less common. Got it.
Basically. Marx wrote in the 1800s, so there can be confusion from those who only keep a surface-level understanding of Marxism, say, by sticking to Wikipedia summaries. If you want, I can provide sources that help elaborate on what I’m talking about.
Yes, and eggs are perfect spheres in Vacuum. In real world, any and every attempt at communism will lead to a situation where government becomes an all encompassing over bearing State. that’s why Socialism is a far better and much more practical model than communism ever will be.
I think you’re a bit confused on terms, here, as well as history.
Socialism is just an economy where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, rather than private. It’s a transitional system towards Communism, because markets naturally cebtralize and create efficient networks for central planning all by themselves. Cuba, the PRC, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, former USSR, etc are all examples of Socialism.
Communism, the point at which the entire global economy can be publicly owned and planned, has not been reached. There have been Communist parties in charge of Socialist economies, but Communism itself is still in the future.
I think if you’re going to be discussing the practicality of Communism and Socialism, you’d do well to familiarize yourself with the systems more. Socialism is not in opposition to Communism, and is a prerequisite for it. I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list if you want to become more knowledgeable about Socialism and Communism.
