/biz/ - Business & Finance

We can all be paid in LINK for fully automated luxury smart contract communism

ive had this idea for a coin.
itd be called worker coin.
youd earn worker coins by filling captchas.
there would also be a demurrage fee to help with inflation.
Good idea bad idea?

>>14336342
No, because although communist governments still use money, they have invariably been highly centralized. Since pretty much the only thing that distinguishes crypto from fiat is decentralization and lack of government control, it isn't compatible

>>14336342
No because bitcoin actually makes sense

It's hard to tell. The decentralization could be considered leftist. The way it's community-driven and anti-establishment are leftist traits, but it would need to adopt a new form to fully fit socialism.

It's compatible with market socialism in its current form, but that's about it.

>>14336455
oh but you see.
the idea behind worker coin is that the workers(people who fill in the captchas) would determine the money supply not the government.
making it a more genuine form of socialism.

>>14336342
Fuck no BTC distribution will follow a pareto distribution like anything else in nature and commies will be BTFO forever and always

>I understand that the end goal of communism is the abolition of money
Please read some Lenin. Communism in its initial stage (Socialism) will being by seizing the means of production from the bourgeoise, and full communism will only be achieved when private property is abolished, or, in other interpretations, when all property is owned by the collective (workers, unions, etc).

So ask yourself: can workers collectively own cryptocurrency and the means to distribute it? Selling would of couse have to be strictly controlled, you'd have to ensure that a new "crypto-bourgeoise" doesn't rise up.

Curiously, I'm not even a communist, yet here I am educating you in your philosophy.

>>14336455
>socialism is when the government does stuff

>>14336481
>The way it's community-driven and anti-establishment are leftist traits
That doesn't make sense though. All leftist governments have been the exact opposite of this in every way. "Liberalism" is not the same thing as "leftism".

The only thing socialism and communism are compatible with is abject poverty and food insecurity

>in before Glavlit propaganda

blow it out your ass you weak dick control freak loser faggot lmao

>>14336501
"Workers" can't decide anything because "workers" is just an abstract idea representing a group of people, and an abstract idea can't make decisions. Only individuals make decisions, whether you're in a communist or a capitalist system.

>>14336342
The whole point of communism is that there is no private property, and the whole point of currency is that you're trading it for someone else's property.

>>14336562
>>14336562
And this is precisely why communism doesn't work. Still, OP has brought up some interesting food for thought.

>>14336528
Look at a political compass

>>14336521
Yes, that's correct.

>>14336582
I'm sure you have some idea of what you think "leftist" means, but if you use a word to mean something different from what everyone else means by it you can't effectively communicate.

>>14336455
Sounds like you are unfamiliar with mutualism, syndicalism, and libertarian socialism.

>>14336504
HIGH IQ BASED AND REDPILLED POST

>>14336504
BTC will be good for poorfags though(after the economy recovers from the financial system collapsing) because a return to HARD MONEY will encourage wealth saving and real investment instead of out current ponzi economy based around radical wagecuckism and planned GDP growth via obsolescence consumption

>>14336611
Tell me about a country that provides evidence against what I said in the post you replied to.

>>14336585
No that is incorrect. Socialism and anarchism where synonyms until the latter half of the previous century. See the Spanish Civil War for historical context.

>>14336607
>>14336585
Please refer to >>14336611
Libertarian forms of socialism and communism exist. anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism to add to the list.

>>14336642
Theory is different than practice. You are posting about practice, which is fine, but OP is asking about theory.

>>14336562
well semantics aside.
the point is that people would be able to mint their own currency.

>>14336642
Paris Commune
Free Territory of Makhnovia
Zapatistas

>>14336645
So Bakunin was just Marx's gay lover when Engels was busy?

>>14336439
>incentivize non productive "labor"
yikes

>>14336645
>people had some idealistic ideas about how socialism would work when they were just getting started and they only had experience so far with rapacious robber barons and feudal lords
You don't say
>>14336665
What's the point of theory if it's completely contradicted by practice? Usually that's when you throw out the theory. Don't coopt scientific terms like "theory" if you're going to do the exact opposite of what a scientist would do

>>14336702
These will actually provide some real evidence that I was wrong in my post, right? You're not just wasting my time, right?

>he unironically believes in communism in [current year + 4]

What kind of weak, pathetic retarded ingrate cock sucking fruit could be so stupid? Naturally the same kind of people that raid this board daily from their tranny owned and operated closet on 8gag

>muh anarchism

Christ

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm

>>14336707
well the people mining the worker coins would probably be neets that would earn a fraction of what people with jobs earn so there would still be an incentive to work.

>>14336342
>I understand that the end goal of communism is the abolition of money,

Shit at last someone who gets it.

>>14336455
>communist
> governments

>>14336342
>is Bitcoin a system built on transparency and honest compatible with Communism a system built on deceit and theft

No, now gtfo commie.

>>14336832
Communism is a crackpot ideology that has never taken off anywhere and so is no different from something like anarcho-capitalism in that sense, or it's a real ideology that has taken off around the world and has led to the results it has led to. Pick one.

>>14336505
Educate who you will, Lenin is a piece of shit, and he prooved. He is not a communism, rather a dictator. He killed the Kronstadt workers.

Lenin plagiarized Marx.

>>14336810
Yeah, they want to replace money with "labor credits" which are shoveled into a furnace after being used, distributed based on "social averages" by a volunteer labor ministry that micromanages the minute by minute performance of hundreds of millions of people.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>14336927
>revisionist petit-bourgeoise
die cis scum

>>14336895
>Communism is a crackpot ideology that has never taken off anywhere

Communism cannot take off before capitalism has finished it's development. It's pretty soon (a few decades).

>>14336701
What does that have to do with communism though?

>>14337046
Well, obviously I'm not arguing here in order to convince you since that's never going to be possible with this kind of debate, but all I can say is that a LOT of people have written extensive scholarly treatises on all kinds of subjects, and almost all of them are completely wrong. That's just how things work, finding the truth about things is hard and is rarely done by armchair theorizing. The only thing that makes communism special or even notable in any way is that it was popularized by various horrifying murderous regimes. That doesn't mean that Marx's theories and predictions have any basis in reality.

>>14337063
well the workers would own the means of mobey production.

>>14336931
What can possibly micromanages the work of hundreds of millions of people in the decades to come? What could constitute the function of a volunteer labor ministry in the near future? Ah you're right. We don't have the technology...

>>14337104
Not communism. Money is just numbers or paper. You don't need any labor input to produce it. Communism means the workers have to own the means of production of actual things people use, in some fashion or other.

>>14337137
>inb4 someone gets on my case about saying that paper doesn't require "any" labor input

>>14336342
Cryptocurrency is the antithesis of communism, or that it disproves communism can ever truly exist

>>14337081
Yeah of course. It's communism which is responsible for USSR.
Take a alternate timeline without Marx, and even without that POS Lenin.
Of course, in this alternate reality, Russia would have been peace, harmony, joy. Undoubtedly.

>>14336342
I LOVE TO TALK ABOUT POLITICS

>>14337173
As usual for these sorts of arguments, you read the words I said but substituted some completely unrelated argument that you would have preferred I had made instead. I didn't say that communism was "responsible" for the USSR. I said that without the USSR, communism would be an unremarkable pet theory of a few intellectuals that never went anywhere, and would be relegated to the dustbin of history just like a thousand other such theories.

>>14336931
No, a communist society (in the Marxist sense) is post-scarcity. There would be no ministry to micromanage labour credits in such a future, ministries are for a dictatorship of the proletariat that's hoping to build a communist future, not the communist future itself.
>Marx and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable to a communist system
>Marx also wrote that between capitalist and communist society, there would be a transitory period known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. During this preceding phase of societal development, capitalist economic relationships would gradually be abolished and replaced with socialism. Natural resources would become public property, while all manufacturing centers and workplaces would become socially owned and democratically managed. Production would be organized by scientific assessment and planning, thus eliminating what Marx called the "anarchy in production". The development of the productive forces would lead to the marginalization of human labor to the highest possible extent, to be gradually replaced by automated labor.

>>14337201
How can you prove that? That's like saying if Christianity wasn't adopted by the Roman Empire, it'd be just a fringe Judaism cult that'd have died off by now. Like, maybe, but who the hell knows? There's no way to argue that. And clearly there's something particular about it that this wasn't its fate.

>>14337203
>Production would be organized by scientific assessment and planning
Beautiful application of the passive voice there

>>14337225
I can't prove it, but I don't doubt it either. If it was a good set of ideas, then it should have produced good long-term results, at least once. Why hasn't it?

>>14337201
It's not a theory. It is verified in economy. It's classical economy which is false. But you haven't read Das Kapital. So it's pretty useless to discuss with you. And you won't read it. Not because it's not interesting, but because realistically it's hard and takes a lot of time. Nobody has read the book anyway. And out of those who have, the majority agree with it's author.

>>14336342
No.
A post-scarcity society like Star Trek doesn't use money.
But from a Marxist perspective, using a socialist govermnent to get at communism, a Libra coin managed by the gov would be better than be private coorps.

>>14337203
Thank god someone who gets it and are not talking shit.

Imagine being so fucking stupid you think communism is a good idea.

>>14337286
It's actually making its way to the front of my to-read list, but "reading a book and agreeing enthusiastically with the author" is THE quintessential pleb behavior. Nothing is ever simple, or black and white. I bet if you read a book by L Ron Hubbard, you'd find a lot to agree with in there too.

>>14337251
It was attempted a century too early. Communism, as Marx wrote about in the 1800s, depends on automation to free people from labour. The Soviet Union built a dictatorship of the proletariat to last over a century and automation still wasn't ready to free people from labour.
>Karl Marx, in a section of his Grundrisse that came to be known as the "Fragment on Machines", argued that the transition to a post-capitalist society combined with advances in automation would allow for significant reductions in labor needed to produce necessary goods, eventually reaching a point where all people would have significant amounts of leisure time to pursue science, the arts, and creative activities; a state some commentators later labeled as "post-scarcity". Marx argued that capitalism—the dynamic of economic growth based on capital accumulation—depends on exploiting the surplus labor of workers, but a post-capitalist society would allow for: The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.
Attempting communism in the 20th century before the tech was advanced enough was as insane as an attempt to implement capitalism in the stone age.

>>14337251
>Why hasn't it?
Because capitalism was/is still deplying it's force. Marx was clear a new society can only exist when all the forced labor created by capitalism has created the condition for a new society to rise. He was clear about this. The time has not come year, but hopefully we are not very far now.

>>14336755
I think you’re the one wasting our time. The easiest way to understand the anti-government left and how it is different from neo-liberalism or on the other hand, social democracy is to read Homage to Catalonia.

>>14337331
That's probably not entirely wrong, but it's also meaningless. The only way to get to the kind of communism Marx envisioned is to go full AI, and not only could he never have anticipated something like AI, it pretty much makes his entire theory obsolete from beginning to end. Capitalism may not withstand the rise of AI, but I'll bet you 1 million labor credits to one satoshi that what we get instead isn't going to be based on this old fart's armchair theories.

>>14337315
Coincidently, I just got done reading a study that concluded the left is more intelligent than the right inb4 “but the Jews lied!”

>end goal of communism is the abolition of money
This was always retarded and Marx, as wrong as he was on some things, never said this either.

>>14336481
>The decentralization could be considered leftist

>>14337348
>Homage to Catalonia.

Am i dreaming or 4channers actually become smart?

>>14337361
> full AI, and not only could he never have anticipated something like AI

The fragment on machines

>>14337419
This anon >>14337348 comes across as legitimately smart and has made a few interesting posts. You, on the other hand, are Dunning Kruger to the max

>>14336342
Socialists and Communists get the fucking rope.

>>14336481
Bunch of nonsense

>>14337376
Yes he did in The critique of the Gotha program.

>>14337435
I'll read it, but I'll tell you right now that if he had anticipated AI he would not have focused his theory around labor in the first place.

>>14336342
No
Communists are subhuman
Fuck off

>>14336342
no, (((you))) will have no ability to force people to do what you want if you do not control the money supply. communism has been permanently BTFO by satoshi nakamoto

>>14337366
This only applies to social issues. In economic issues Libertarians/Conservatives beat out Socialists, which proves my point.

>>14337286
In fairness its a self selecting group that are almost always friendly to the ideas of the author that read Das Kapital. More people should, but people dont like to read things they think they will disagree with. People just crave confirmation bias. I'd recommend some passages from Wealth of Nations to someone hostile to Marx. Smith does not proselytize capitalism, he basically just describes it (including its faults). Or maybe David Ricardo, pic related. Both are even downright hostile to capitalism.

Reading any major economists evaluation makes is pretty clear that capitalism is just a modern version of feudalism. The land holders realized that having serfs farm land isnt the best way to make money. Its way easier to make money building factories and warehouses and have the serfs work in those.

Communism is what we had in the early days of humanity. No state, no currency, just tribes hunting gathering food for survival and distributing accoring to each tribe member's needs. Why some people wanna see humanity devolve to such an early stage of human development is a mystery to me

>>14337444
>You, on the other hand, are Dunning Kruger to the max
I don't need to be smart. My talent is to follow smarter people than me, and pretty often i hope, the good ones. I hope you have a talent on your own.

>>14337366
The left is more fashionable among NPC midwits (IQ: 110 - 120) who just want to lead their pathetic lives. Most above that range lean right. There's an autist with the world's highest confirmed IQ who is very right of center.
If the right had an iron grip on cultural institutions, the same midwit cohort would skew right and you'd see "studies" showing that conservatives are "smarter."

>>14337591
I'm good at trading, critical thinking, and FPSes. However I admit I don't think I'll ever understand the psychology that leads people to "follow" someone else as if they're not just another flawed human being, instead of trying to improve their own ability to understand the world for themselves

>>14337466
>I'll read it, but I'll tell you right now that if he had anticipated AI he would not have focused his theory around labor in the first place.

Marx's own words, you tell me:
>“Once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the… automatic system of machinery… set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.”
>“Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal or oil just as the worker consumes food to keep up its perpetual motion.”

>>14336388
Fuck those who didn't check you.

>>14337553
In fairness its a self selecting group that are almost always friendly to the ideas of the author that read Das Kapital
That's true, but what if you also read classical economy and you find it pretty lame? In any case, in classical economy, they don't explain why capitalism is the best system, they explain why it is good because it created wealth, prosperity etc..., but wealth, prosperity are already capitalist categories. So classical economy is not in favor of capitalist, in opposition with another mode of production not based on exchange value, but it starts from the fact that there is only capitalism, and then explain why it's so cool.

>Smith does not proselytize capitalism, he basically just describes it (including its faults). Or maybe David Ricardo, pic related. Both are even downright hostile to capitalism.

Marx work is based largely on Smith an Ricardo. In Das Kapital, he quote them constantly.

Cryptocurrency works like this. You carry around your hardware wallet with your savings on it and type in the numbers you need to send it to on the computer at a place you are going to buy stuff at. Moral of the story is it's going to be gay

>30% tax rate (that's with zero net investment or products going to public services-the author admitting it would be higher, and probably far higher, than his model shows)
>l*teral supply and demand economics for what consumer goods are allowed to exist
>wages dependent on how "intense" your labor is-as determined by your peers (the ugly incel Virgin enthusiastic wage slave undoubtedly being underpaid relative to the Chad slacker)

Wow it's almost like what we have now except the entire economy is controlled by the same people that run the DMV instead of entrepreneurs. SO PROGRESSIVE OMG

>>14337746
Communists unironically hate success based off merit.

>>14337623
Interesting, but again - if he could have anticipated AI, he wouldn't have focused his theory on labor. What does it mean for the "workers" to own the means of production if human labor is economically worthless anyway? We seem to be on the verge of skipping straight from capitalism to full-scale AI based automation, without any intervening communist stage. All we got was some brutal "dictatorships of the proletariat". Once you have AI automation, humans get cut out of the production cycle entirely. The only question is how to implement some kind of democratic governance to control the AI systems and distribution of resources, which is certainly just what he would have wanted for a communist society, but isn't something we actually need his theory for.

>>14337777
checked
commies are parasites

>>14337619
Some people are just too much smart for you in a particular domain. Take FPS. If Fatal1ty was to coach you like every day, wouldn't you just shut up and listen to what he says, allowing him to format you into a beast, or would you systematically criticize and overthink every advice he gives?

The guy who introduced me to Marx is extremely smart. He has read and mastered almost every modern and ancient philisopher. So i admit, i accept a lot of what he says. Doesn't mean i wouldn't be able to criticize him in like 20 years, or in other domains that economy/philosophy. But for now, it would be like a 12 year old child trying to fight mike Tyson.

>>14337845
Imagine being such a mindless NPC that you can't even form your own opinions on things. You just listen to whatever "experts" say and then give up.

Thank god I wasn't born a brainlet retard like you

>>14336342
It wouldn't necessarily be communism, but you could use a blockchain to help manage a free market worker led economy.

I could see blockchain tech being used in small scale worker owned collectives as a better way to do the complex bookkeeping that's required to pay dividends to workers or make worker led decisions. Like using the blockchain to keep track of worker owned stocks and to initiate anonymous worker votes via their individual stock managed on a blockchain. Or even keep track of their individual hours worked per week and their productivity and use that to weigh worker votes in a way that the collective has agreed upon. You could do this now but the amount of record keeping to pull it off would be a nightmare for a small company. Eventually someone will turn it all into a phone app that the workers can download and use to manage their holdings individually and initiate votes.

>>14337845
>wouldn't you just shut up and listen to what he says, allowing him to format you into a beast, or would you systematically criticize and overthink every advice he gives?
I would shut up and listen to what he says, then systematically criticize it and think about it. That's how you learn, bro. If you aren't doing that, you aren't learning - you're just parroting words you don't understand.

>>14336342
I can't believe people are sitting here in this thread still trying to unironically claim they have the secret knowledge to make communism work. I bet there are people out there with cushy university jobs that just wank about this bullshit all day.

>>14337986
Note how these faggots always imagine themselves as the directors of labor, never the peasant working in the collective farms. Their fantasies always amount to control and an over inflated sense of their own intelligence

>>14337845
>>14337975
I mean, you seem to be imagining I would pick up Das Kapital and hiss at it like a vampire in sunlight and try to force myself to read it through deep emotional pain because he's a dirty commie. In fact it's exactly the opposite, just like you when I read an intellectual book I invariably find myself agreeing with almost everything that's being said. I'm sure I would have just the same result with Marx as I have with everything else. That's why I have to make a conscious effort to suppress that impulse and actually think. Critical thinking and forming counterarguments to stuff written by a serious thinker is actual work, reading a book and feeling good about it is not.

>>14337714
Smith and Ricardo were describing Capitalism in the shadow of full on feudalism. At least in capitalism the workers could quit the factory if things got really bad. In feudalism the serfs couldn't leave the land they had to work without permission from their lord. That's a pretty big upgrade as far as the serfs were concerned. On the other hand it was a big upgrade for the feudal lord too, he didn't have to provide housing or protection for his new independent contractor workers.

Marx was right to criticize capitalism aka: the idea of an investing class that owns the means of production. He was right about the labor theory of value too. But his solution proved to be kinda unworkable and just led to a new different ruling class, new boss same as the old boss.

I dont know what the solution to the capitalist class owning everything is. But i cant help but think ANY decentralization introduced by crypto into the system has to be an improvement.

>>14338119
I forgot to mention Marx and historical materialism, probably Marx's best contribution. He and Engles basically invented a new way to look at the arc of history. I think it has a lot of merit and is better than the this happened then this happened way of looking at history.

People's actual everyday life and their lived experiences drive history forward, this shit isn't just some grand coincidence of a bunch of stuff that happened. It sounds super obvious because it's become the modern lense that we view history through.

>>14337975
You only criticize when you have reached a certain level. Before it's just subjective opinions based on pretty much nothing.

>I understand that the end goal of communism is the abolition of money
being this bluepilled

>>14338411
That's absolutely right, which is why I haven't ventured a single opinion in this thread about the details of his theories. There is one way however that you can judge a person's ideas without being at any particular level, which is empiricism. Empirically, Marx hasn't done well.

>>14336342
Not really. Can't have centralized control of a decentralized currency.

>>14338119
>But his solution proved to be kinda unworkable and just led to a new different ruling class, new boss same as the old boss.

Marx always criticize surplus labor in Das Kapital. I'm sure he would have criticized the bolsheviks who just took the surplus labor of the working class and gave them to the USSR State.
He was always clear that there shouldn't be 2 class of people.

>I dont know what the solution to the capitalist class owning everything is.
The solution should be to abolish exchange value, the State, money, delegation of power, and of course proletariat. Of course this take decades of thinking how it can be done.

>>14338466
>Empirically, Marx hasn't done well.

Capitalism is stronger than communism. Communism can only appear when capitalism crumble on it's own weight (tendency of the rate of profit to fall in technical terms).

>>14338550
As I mentioned before in this thread, I'm about 95% confident that communism will never appear because capitalism will easily last for the next 10-50 years, which is enough time for AI to really get going. Once it does, all categories like capitalism and communism will be obsolete, because they pertain to a material situation that simply doesn't exist anymore. If so, that completely falsifies Marx's entire theory of historical progress.

>itt: the mental gymnastics of central planning leftists trying to rationalize their belief in decentralized currency with inherent free market properties

communism = 1 global decentralized coin

capitalism = 1000000 shitcoins competing with each other

>>14338601
>I'm about 95% confident that communism will never appear because capitalism will easily last for the next 10-50 years, which is enough time for AI to really get going. Once it does, all categories like capitalism and communism will be obsolete, because they pertain to a material situation that simply doesn't exist anymore.

I'm all for this path. However, should capitalism crumble before this, people will look very dumb, and won't even understand what hit them. Understanding how our mode of production works won't lead us to post scarcity on itself, but it could accelerate the process. In case of a capitalism final crisis event happening before the AI, Marx idea could help us to organize production without needing exchange value and proletariat.

>>14338684
The thing is, I know you think that Marx and Marxists are really smart and know what's up. And I'm sure you're right - Marx was certainly very smart, and many Marxists are as well. I'm quite confident that he was much smarter than me.
But capitalists are ALSO really smart and know what's up. I've worked as a trader, and am gradually learning a lot of economic theory, and these people are no slouches. So I think your idea that we're just bumbling along under a wrong economic theory and Marx had the right idea all along is quite misguided. In reality, capitalism HAS produced prosperity, while all attempts at implementing communism HAVE produced poverty. This is incontrovertible fact, whether you like capitalism or not. Marx would not have predicted this. Even in the mid 20th century, many smart people in America were terrified of the Soviet Union because they seriously thought that the communist system would be BETTER than the capitalist system at producing wealth. It turned out that they were wrong to worry. That is real empirical evidence.

>>14338760
It's an other frame to view reality for sure. To be sure that Marx was right or wrong, i would need to read every economist that existed, master them, and confront them to Marx ideas.

In the end, being Marxist or not is pretty subjective, except for someone who has read everything about economy and considered every point of view. But i don't like money. I think it's a fake way to organize human relationships. And Marx is the first who imagined a society without it.

>>14339005
I can't be absolutely sure who's right either, but with my ability to feed and clothe myself and my family at stake, any day of the week I'll bet on the system that has worked so far over the system that has never worked but only "might" work in the future.

>>14337623
>Marx believed in machines building machines building machines building machines and building the parts for those machines down to the microscopic level and transporting machines and affixing machines to other machines and repairing machines in a big technological rat king that will literally never exist but if it did it would only be made possible through the ingenuity of a capitalist and the surplus created through a capitalist system that his system will eventually claim credit for

Color me surprised; a completely simplistic and childish outlook from the bearded couch surfer.

On that very subject, its latest pied piper Yang is full of shit; our employment participation rate isn't anywhere near the lows it was at when the data first started being recorded, and that's even after foreign countries absconded with tons of potential capital and the necessary labor to facilitate it through competitive tax and currency exchange rates, all of the automation that's been developed up to this point, the presence of 25 million illegal immigrants (about 10% of the recorded 18+ population), and the fact that the median age and life expectancy are over 10 years higher than they were in the mid 20th century.

>>14337553
>Modern workers are serfs

That is so wrong and gay

Feudalism wasn't about producing goods or performing services in exchange for money, it was about taking others' money at sword-point often for obtuse superstitious reasons, and to that end it has more in common with an intractable centralized command economy than it does capitalism.

China's progress for its people in every objective measure since adopting capitalist reforms including wages, literacy, life expectancy, overall HDI etc. by actively courting capital into their country through political stability, competitive tax and currency exchange rates and so on proves what a comparable failure Maoism and all other earnest command economic models (of which feudalism is itself one) are.

>>14338760
I'll push back on the idea that communism automatically produces poverty. The USSR went from a literal feudal state to a major world economic power in like 60 years. That's a break neck speed, even compared against contemporary capitalist countries. And before you point out bread lines in the USSR, that was a rare phenomenon just like bread lines in the US during the depression. I think the ultimate problem with soviet communism is the same problem that we have with capitalism.
Its that power accumulates power and power is ultimately indifferent to the powerless. We have to find a way to break the chains of self reinforcing leadership and decentralize power to the workers.


>>14338515
>bolsheviks who just took the surplus labor of the working class
I agree that Marx wouldve hated these people. The real issue here is the nuts and bolts of how we decentralize power and make collective governing more transparent to the average worker. Perhaps some blockchain tech can be utilized to do this, especially using it for quick and easy voting. But, the idea that Marx had a workable alternative to a ruling class just isnt true. He WANTED an alternative (and i think its important to find an alternative), but he didnt have a good one.

>>14339060
It's taking a huge leap, for sure. I would take it for sure. I hate money.

In Catalonia, (1936-1937), millions took it, and nobody starved. Production didn't stopped. It was chaotic, less efficient, but it worked. It failed because, like i said, capitalism is more efficient (for now). Modes of production comes and go. Capitalism (the 4th one), is no different. It had a begining, a peak, and one day, it will end.

>>14339125
>Perhaps some blockchain tech can be utilized to do this, especially using it for quick and easy voting.

I wouldn't be Marxist if i thought there wasn't a technical solution.

>>14339125
>I'll push back on the idea that communism automatically produces poverty.
It was poor phrasing on my part. I meant it in the sense that in the alternate universe that I obviously can't know anything about in which Russia replaced its Tsarist system with a western-style democratic capitalist system, they would likely have done much, much better economically and quite possibly even btfo the west entirely. I like to think Ruskies are really quite a smart and resourceful people, being one of them myself. Russians love their autocrats so maybe they'd have had to settle for the capitalism without democracy, but I'll bet they'd have been richer.
>>14339138
The thing is you wouldn't be talking the leap for yourself, you'd be getting together with your friends to try to take the leap for everybody. There's no sugarcoating this, it's an issue on which you have to take a side and can't be wishy-washy. Being a first generation immigrant to the US from Soviet Russia, I would oppose you and your friends to my dying breath.

>>14339259
So you're Russian and you don't know that bolshevism wasn't communism but state capitalism?
Look, in USSR, there was money, exchange value, a state, delegation of power, and even proletariat (lol). Yeah that's right. They didn't even abolish proletariat.

>>14339397
Yes, and your point is...? Call it what you will, people banging on about your cancerous ideology nearly destroyed my former country. You think this friend of yours whom you decided to "follow" who is also banging on about your cancerous ideology is going to do better? Bitch, please

>>14339259
Well, Russian since the 1990s under insane cowboy capitalism has not fared well. Basically every meaningful way to measure health and prosperity has shown that things are worse now than under the soviets. You could blame that on russian oligarch gangsters or capitalism. It's the same problem as communism, just accelerated.... power accumulates power and doesn't give a fuck about the powerless.

>>14339489
Having the country's power and resources basically split up among the former top brass of the Soviet government and rearranged into a "democratic" "capitalist" system that from what I hear is almost closer to the Tsarist autocracy of old than anything else isn't necessarily good for economic development. I'm told there's barely even any rule of law in the country. United Russia operates the exact same kind of bureaucracy as the Soviets. Maybe Russia has been doomed to be this kind of clusterfuck ever since the Tsarist days, but I am absolutely convinced that the attempt at communism did not help at all.

>>14339463
Look you don't understand. It the proletariat, and only the proletariat, which will abolish the Capital. Not me, not my friends, not a group of guerillera.
What is the proletariat? People who work for the owners of the means of production.
If you want to side with the capitalistic class, it's your choice. I honestly don't hate you for it.

>>14339633
I understand perfectly. See >>14336562. Although the guy I was talking to called it "semantics", in fact it's not semantics at all. It's very convenient to be able to hide behind abstractions of groups and classes, claiming that "the group" will make the decision, "the group" will rule, "the group" will do this or that. But groups don't exists except as an abstraction. Individuals exist as a reality, and individuals are the ones who make decisions and take action. So "the proletariat" is never going to do anything, because "the proletariat" is only a word. The people who are or are not going to do something are some particular group of individuals who need to be imprisoned if it comes to the point of them putting the whole country in danger, or just shot if they become violent. Maybe that's just the Russian in me talking, but that is reality.

>>14339726
>or just shot if they become violent.
The proletariat is used to be shot at. Paris commune (1871), 40000 death. Hungarian revolution (1956) about 2500 death and 13000 injured.
Recently, in France, Yellow jackets, one dead, 4 hands destroyed, 23 gouged eyes.

>>14339900
The working class has been victimized and abused since time immemorial, and that's a terrible thing. However, that's also irrelevant to the discussion, which is about you diffusing responsibility among an abstract "proletariat" so that it isn't really anyone's fault that they're staging an inevitably violent confiscatory takeover. Fucking weasel. I don't hate you either bro, but as this conversation continues I sure am developing a healthy level of utter contempt for you.
Now if you think you can pull off a communist revolution in a nonviolent democratic way through lawful elections, then be my guest. Good luck with that.

>>14339997
The proletariat is not something abstract. The working class is something real. Which have real aspirations. It is not the sum of it's individuals. Of course some proletarians don't want to change the system. Like some capitalists want to abolish the Capital (like Engels).
However, a time will come when everything will be obvious for the vast majority of the proletariat.

>>14340531
It's amazing to me that after 5 back and forth posts you're still not grasping my point that revolutions are instigated by a particular small group of individuals, whom the masses then go along with. Since these revolutions are violent, and yes taking stuff even from the bourgeoisie really is actual stealing, it follows that it's in the interest of right-thinking ethical people to undermine and suppress this small group of individuals who would do violence to their country and their people. It's easy to understand how people could have thought that Communism was truly the "right thing to do" in the early 20th century, but hindsight is 20/20. There's nothing wrong with being a Marxist, any more than there is something wrong with subscribing to any dumb theory, but taking action to start a communist revolution is a deeply unethical and obviously criminal act, now that we have some examples from history.
In any case, I think we've just about said everything we have to say to each other on this subject, so it's time for me to sleep

>>14336342

The golem protocol on ethereum is a good example of mutualism. So yes, elements of smart contracts are good from a leftist perspective if we consider that leftism is more broad than just socialism and communism. Even from a more orthodox leftist perspective golem specifically brings the means of production closer to the workers than it would should they rely on corporate servers.

>>14336342
nah
end goal of communism is 3 things:
abolition of private property
abolition of family unit
abolition of religion
its not abolition of money
please read marx manifesto.

>>14336521
Socialism is violation of property rights. Which is what happens when the government does stuff.

>>14339118
>HIV infections
LMAO don't show the US statistics

>>14339118
Marx acknowledged that capitalism can renew itself indefinitely, and that automation freeing people from labour is not an inevitability. Left-accelerationists recognize this too. You're right, people are working and will likely continue to work. The point is that this doesn't HAVE to be there fate. If there was the will, we could build a society that would completely destroy the retail industry, put every single person bagging groceries out of a job, and essentially have every store like those AmazonGo physical stores. But if there isn't the will to do that, it won't happen, and people will be bagging groceries and doing menial shit for low pay until the end of time. And yes, life expectancy will be good, and quality of life will be whatever it is for a person who gets paid to put things in bags or to drive things from one place to another even though we could effortlessly build machines to do this shit.

It's pretty compatible with a lot of the leftist anarchist streams of thought like anarcho-syndicalism. It's not compatible with communism for the same reason its not compatible with state capitalism like we have now.