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A Critique of Communism
by AGinsberg
08-30-14

"Communism" has gotten quite lot of hate for reasons ranging from
"Communist States" (which is an oxymoron) to idiots who try destroy
Free Speech, oppress the current oppressors (some feminists are an
example of this), etc. Most of this criticism is not justified at all,
since the real problem in these cases are the people who claim to
adopt so-called Marxist et al. views. There are however, very
legitimate criticisms of Communism. This essay attempts to criticize
valid problems within Communism and create a philosophy that is based
on these criticisms.

The major ideas behind a genuine Communist society is common ownership
of the means of production, lack of money and class, and lack of
state. It should be noted that this essay is not a critique of
Marxism, but of Communism. Marx had a lot of ideas which I think are
wrong, for example, he thinks the dissolution of money and class will
come naturally, but I tend to disagree.

Let's start by talking about the lack of money and class. Money has
been the cause of much trouble, many people have completely thrown
away ethics to make a quick buck. The "profit motive" is the cause of
much legislation that is anti-freedom. In the US, the big business has
quite a bit of political power. They lobby to get bills passed that
help them destroy freedom. Many people have dead-end jobs that make
them miserable. Some people are suicidal because they lack money. Some
people have real ambitions, but in this society (speaking from the
point of view of a person in the USA) they usually just get a shitty
job.

Some people might want to work at a Fast Food restaurant, but a lot of
people working at such places now do not want to be. Just go to a Fast
Food drive thru (actually don't, the company is probably very
unethical) and see how miserable the people working there look. Of
course, in a moneyless society, would such places even exist?
McDonald's and other fast food joints are preying on the poor. They
give food that is convenient and cheap. But they also give food made
that is very unhealthy and made with palm oil sourced with
deforestation [1] (probably a ton of other bad things too.) I agree
with Communism very much on this point, society should indeed have no
money.  Wage labor leads to misery even more so since horrible greedy
assholes own the means of production (see the paragraph about means
of production for a more in-depth discussion of this.)

Some people think that without money there would be less incentive to
work and therefore nothing would get done.  First of all I would like
to point out I do things that could be considered "work" and even a
possible contribution to society that don't make me any profit (this
work is an example.) There was a study done where children were told
to do activity A before they got to do activity B, the children
liked both activities, but when they were told this they enjoyed
activity A much less. [2] People do not just do things for money. Some
people also want a break from the family (even if they love them they
might want some time away) a good excuse for this is to have a job. It
seems that many men (I'm not saying that women aren't capable of
feeling this way, but this is from the perspective of the society I
live in) are happier when they get to go to work and get some time
away from the kid(s) and/or spouse. This in itself is an incentive to
work.

Also, in my proposed system, there can be government enforcement in
case a person tries to leech from public goods without contributing
anything to society. [3] I should note I do not think it is extremely
likely that the person will refuse to contribute anything. I do see
how some bad things might come from government enforcement of this
though. I want to be very clear that this should not effect if someone
wants to live self-sufficiently. If someone wants to live alone (or
with there family, but not connected to society), as long as they
aren't leeching from public goods it is perfectly fine.  So, in this
system people aren't required at all to contribute anything but, they
must not take from public goods if they don't. For example, if a
person wanted to live as a hermit all alone, produce their own food,
etc. there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to do that. Also,
if a peer were to give food they produced to someone who doesn't
contribute to society at all this would also be fine.  However, if
person X was to go to an organization where food is given away (like a
store, but with no money) they must be a contributor to society. This
is similar to how in the current system people are allowed to produce
their own goods, but not share and are allowed to give gifts for free,
but must buy goods (in the case of the proposed system they need only
to be a contributor to society and do not need money.) I will go into
more detail about some of these topics in later paragraphs.

Once money is gone and the means of production is owned by the
workers' (see next paragraph for more on this), I think class will
become increasing irrelevant. There will be no bourgeoisie to prey on
the proletariat. Although  much of class distinction has come from
money, even if the economy is changed how Marx wants it to be (or how
anyone else proposes it to be) I do not think that class distinction
will seize to exist. Class distinction may also arise from things like
social prestige.  Perhaps, someone who went to a certain college would
be considered more important in society than someone who did not go to
college at all or went to a shitty one. Even without money, there
might be other reasons someone might not be able to go to the best
college. For example, maybe there are no colleges nearby where you
live. Also, a college will still not be able to accept everyone. If
everyone wants to go to that college, then it wouldn't be practical to
accept every student. There will still be only so much space, so many
teachers, etc. In the case of online college, this is a different
issue.

Although, just like a business, it wouldn't be very good if a college
had a monopoly. So even if the college could fit all the students,
it wouldn't be a good thing for society if there is only one college.
People could still choose to just not go to college. I question the
possibility of abolishing all class distinctions, however, I think
the amount of relevance class would have in the society I propose
would be insignificant. It's not as if you will become the victim
of wage slavery just because there is some prejudice against you
because you weren't educated at a certain college. It might also be
worth pointing out that even in this example of education, a large
part of the reason why people have so much prejudice against someone
who wasn't educated in X way or X place might be because of Big
Business propaganda.

Next, I think we should discuss means of production. In a capitalist
society means of production is usually not owned by workers, but
instead by greedy businessmen, in a Communist society the means of
production is supposed to be owned commonly. I do not think either of
these will likely turn out very good. Neither of these types of
ownership are likely to look out for the workers'. In a capitalist
society where means of production is owned by greedy individuals only
interested in making a quick buck this is surely to end up in things
like sweatshops and wage slavery. In a communist society the means of
production instead is owned by all individuals in a society. The
latter is a kind of direct democracy a "dictatorship of the
proletariat", unfortunately direct democracies don't work. A classic
example is 2 wolves and 1 sheep deciding what's for dinner. A more
real example is a society where the majority hate gays, how does this
end up? The gays losing their freedom. Majority rule democracy just
does not work, it will not lead to freedom. [4]

Common ownership is majority rule democracy of the means of
production, do you really think the majority will be looking at for
the workers in an organization? Sadly, people aren't perfect and we
don't live in an ideal world so common ownership most certainly will
not work. Instead, what I propose is worker ownership of the means of
production in the form of something like a Workers' council. [5]
According to Wikipedia, a Workers' council is: "a form of political
and economic organization in which a single place of work or
enterprise, such as a factory, school, or farm, is controlled
collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core
principle of temporary and instantly revocable delegates." [6] This
way, someone will be looking out for the workers, the workers!

I do not know if something exactly like a Workers' council is the
answer, but I am fairly certain that something similar to it would be
the best solution. I think that each organization should still be
regulated by the government in this system, for example I do not
think that an organization should be allowed to have a monopoly. Even
in a society with no profit motive if there is only one source of food
this will likely lead to the lose of freedom. The monopoly could have
other motives besides profit, for example, they might try to poison
all food that will go out to people that disagree with some of their
ideas. A monopoly is generally a form of unjust power (of course, the
state has a violence monopoly which will be discussed later) therefore
a monopoly even in this system would not be okay.  In this proposed
system there would still be a kind of competition, which is a major
part of capitalism (despite the fact the unregulated capitalism will
lead to a lack of competition), since non-profit monopolies are still
bad.

Finally, we must discuss the idea of statelessness. First, we must
define what a state is, a simple explanation taken from Wikipedia is
"A state is an organized community living under one government." Max
Weber defines the state as "compulsory political organization with a
centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use
of force within a certain territory." [7] Previously, I mentioned how
a monopoly is a form of unjust power, however, this one case where I
think a monopoly can be justified. I see two alternatives, the popular
alternative in political philosophy is usually something like majority
rule democracy. In the popular anti-state theories, the monopoly is
given to The People. But this assumes that The People will do the
right thing with this power and this is bullshit. The People will most
likely abuse this power just as The State has.  If The People have
free reign to use violence, they will probably make use of this
freedom and use it often. Of course, they could be punished by some
unstable authority, but not nearly as well. If the majority of people
hate blacks and the person tortures a black person, there might be no
punishment at all. Even if some rogue person tries to punish the
person, society will probably either stop them or punish them if they
succeed. Another possible alternative is for there to be another
State-like organization, but I think this would probably lead to
instability.

Even in this society where workers own the means of production, etc.
there still will be property disputes. How do the workers get
ownership of those means of production like land in the first place?
And if someone wants to use some land for personal use, who says they
can? These are issues of practice not theory, but if a political
theory cannot be used in practice, what's the point? The best idea I
can come up with about what to do about property disputes is The
State, of course there might be a more localized authority that is
fixing these disputes, but the authorities will still be under the
control of The State to some capacity. We also need some sort of
organization that stops things like monopolies from emerging. I think
it's important that The State doesn't gain too much power though.  The
State should not get into matters of individual freedom and should
only exist to protect the freedom of others from other people. Some
people want The State to be a sort of parent figure that protects
people from themselves. As soon as you give The State that power you
are giving away your freedom.

In conclusion, although I think there are several good ideas in
Communism, I do not think a genuine Communist society would lead to
freedom. I think that we should indeed abolish money (which to some
extent I think would lessen the importance of class in society), but I
do think there should be a state and I think that the means of
production should be owned by the workers themselves not by everybody
in society.

Notes:
[1] The deforestation part is according the "Union of concerned
scientists", sadly they not only have non-free (as in freedom)
JavaScript code, but also have Google spyware, so I won't list the
link here.
[2] Study referenced: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivations.html
[3] I think it's very important to mention that if there is government
enforcement that we should be very careful not to let this lead to
government spying.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers'_council
[5] That is to say majority rule democracy will not work on a large
scale, on a smaller scale I think it's possible it would work.
[6] A Workers' Council should be not be confused with a trade union,
in a trade union the workers are not actually in control of the
workplace.
[7] Both quotes about what a state is were taken from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)

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