Two great tastes

2005 May 19

by thudfactor

I really wish the neo-conservative movement could make up their minds. Are we communists “or Nazis”:http://www.oliverwillis.com/node/2490? I mean, we can’t be both, right?

Ah, liberals. The SweeTarts of politics.

*Update:* In the comments, Kyle says communism and facism are indistinguishable from each other.

Comments leave one →

2005 May 19

Kyle Bennett permalink

Actually, there’s no meaningful difference. While communists advocate state ownership of property, fascists advocate full state control of property, while leaving it nominally in private posession. It’s a distinction without a difference – ownership is meaningless without the right of control. The one distinction might be that communists are much more thorough and efficient murderers than fascists. So take your pick, it won’t change much.

2005 May 19

John permalink

I think you’ll find there are plenty of communist thinkers who would dispute this, as communists tend to think in terms of eliminating the state altogether, whereas fascism elevates the State and State leadership above everything. Again, and I’ve said this before, the authoritarian tendencies of communism are a failure of a particular instance of communism—no communism sets out to be a totalitarian state. Fascism, on the other hand, is totalitarian by design. When the failure of one is the success of the other, it’s hard to see how they are ideologically the same.

2005 May 19

Kyle Bennett permalink

But since communism provides nothing of value that anyone capable of producing their own value would choose voluntarily, the only voluntary participants would be those not capable of producing their own values. This leaves little to the common onwership unless the participation of the producers is forced upon them. Hence, the totalitarian elements of communism, while not of the original design, are a necessary and unavoidable consequence of any attempt to maintain a communist ideology in practice. The failure is that of the original design in not accounting for the neccesity of totalitarian methods from the start. A cohesive and self-consistent communist ideology would incorporate these as an integral part of the original design, thus avoiding the societal dislocations of their later ad-hoc implementation. Thus, communism, rigorously and concientiously formulated, does not actually differ from fascism in this regard.

2005 May 20

MEL permalink

Kyle, your conclusion depends on this premise: that “communism provides nothing of value that anyone capable of producing their own value would choose voluntarily.” If some people who are capable of producing value choose a communist society volunatarily, your premise is invalidated. Since voluntary communist socieities, such as kibbutzim, exist, and since those societies could not exist without the production of value, your premise is invalid. Therefore communism does not necessarily lead to totalitarianism, even if some communist societies were totalitarian. QED.

2005 May 20

Kyle Bennett permalink

“If some people who are capable of producing value choose a communist society volunatarily, your premise is invalidated.”

“Some” is not sufficient. Only if productive people stay in enough quantity to support the others can the system survive with purely voluntary participation. But when any productive person bows out, it increases the burden on those productive people remaining, as well as decreases the benefits to all. Those who are most productive have the least incentive to stay, as the differential between their abilities (from those…) and their benefit is the greatest. At any given time, the most productive of those remaining are the most likely to leave, and so their departure damages the collective the most.

As this process continues, the marginal benefit of staying decreases, causing further defections from those who might have otherwise stayed. The process continues, with subsequent defections causing even more people to leave. There is no lower bound to this process, and no mitigating incentives to stop the rapid descent. In fact, the incentives created will accelerate the process, rather than dampen it.

The kibbutzim have several elements in it that make it inappropriate as a conceptual proxy for a universal system. First, they are relatively small groups in which there is a greater social and familial connection between the members, along with a common religious background that values production. This creates social pressure that can nearly eliminate the use of force to assure not only remaining in the group, but for all to be as equally productive as possible.

Second, the small size allows for a smaller controlling class. Bureaucracy in a centralized control paradigm increases exponentially with population. It must scale to, not the number of people, but to the number of connections and interactions between people. With even a small increase in the size of the collective, the number of people devoted to management will increase so rapidly that, aside from regulatory burdens and imperfections, the loss of otherwise productive people to the efforts of managing the collective has the same effect as outright defections (since we know that 100% of the value is produced by the workers, and none by managers)

Finally, the kibbutzim have access to external capitalist resources both to provide supplemental value that they cannot produce for themselves, and to leverage their collective production on the open market.

None of these things scale. A universal commune would not have access to external capitalist markets, would contain a less homogenous mix of cutlures, religions, and attitudes toward work, and would have a parasitical management overhead that drastically diminishes the collective productive output even in the absence of defections.

The process, once started, cannot be checked except by forcibly overriding each individual’s calculation of what level of work/benefit ratio they will tolerate. Only by forcing all to remain can the system prevent this process from starting.

Again, the failure is in the original formulation of the system. Not incorporating totalitarian elements from the start dooms the system to a rapid decline. So, in effect, any communist system that does not incorporate totalitarian elements can be dismissed as a counterexample – because it will almost immediately dismiss itself by virtue of its own extinction.

2005 May 21

Fred permalink

”’Oh that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.” – Douglas Adams

2005 May 21

Sarah permalink

The failed communist government and the successful facist government are not different in their effect upon the population. However, the communist government does not become like the Facist government “necessarily.” I am not a fan of adverbs, but when we use one we should get it right, and “necessarily” implies a requirement. “Historically” might be a better word.

A communist government becomes like a facist government when its leaders are corrupted by power. It becomes so not “necessarily” in any theoretical sense, but rather exploitatively, opportunistically, covetously, greedily, sneeringly, and arrogantly, by the same familiar means by which power corrupts the powerful in any system, even a constitutional democracy. In a democracy with separation of powers, separation of church and state, and fair elections it is more difficult to acquire a corrupt level of power.

A democracy with separation of powers, separation of church and state, and fair elections is a form of government superior to communism or facism because these keystone elements make it sustainable, balancing the human tendency to exploit power by a set of constitutional rules that protect recognized human rights. With the erosion of these elements in the current administration, our democracy is beginning to look like everyone else, and that creates the fog around the definitions of communists, facists, and elected governments.

2005 May 21

Kyle Bennett permalink

Sarah,

I used “necessarily” very deliberately and precisely, and supported it quite thoroughly. Totalitarianism is not a result of corruption, it is a result of the facts of communist ideology. Historicity is not an alternative explanation, it is the empirical validation of the necessity of forced participation to the preservation of a communist society. If anything, freedom and voluntary participation is a corruption of communist ideals.

Fred,

Could you elaborate on your point? Are you saying that my logic is flawed? Or are you saying that logic is not a valid way of proving anything, since it can “prove” that black is white. If the latter, then what is it you use to determine that black is not white? If the former, than please point out my error.

2005 May 21

ME-L permalink

“But since communism provides nothing of value that anyone capable of producing their own value would choose voluntarily, the only voluntary participants would be those not capable of producing their own values.” Emphasis added. Now you’re saying that not all producers would defect if given the chance—only that enough of them would defect so that the system would collapse. I think your new argument is better and stronger, which was my point in trying to invalidate your initial position.

Now we’ve got a set of criteria for what would make a communist system “work”—a homogenous culture, social pressures that discourage leaving, ability to trade with capitalists, and relatively small scale. We can argue with point 1, but I agree with 2 and 3. Four is a matter of degree: how large can a communist society be before it breaks down? I would argue that the same question can be put to a democratic society. The Greeks (OK, so I forget which one at the moment) posited that anything beyond a city (I think the rule was, you needed to fit all voters in one coliseum) wouldn’t work. Does that mean that the bureacracy rule you’ve posited has similar effects in democracy? Or capitalism? I’m not arguing “against,” I’m just curious.

Oh, and I think Fred was just putting up a funny quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, he may have had some point to make, I don’t know since I’m not Fred.

2005 May 21

John permalink

A number of things to keep in mind, Kyle.

First of all, no one needs argue that the principles of Communism operate on a scalable or universal level in order to distinguish it from Facism. It does point to the infeasibility of a world-wide Communist utopia, but it does not mean there is no effective distinction between Facism and Communism.

Secondly, you have not defended your position that totalitarianism is necessary to a communism. It may be necessary for a Universal Communism, but it is certainly not necessary to communisms that can and do exist elsewhere. It is only necessary if one hopes to grow a communism past a certain size.

In any case, even if Facism always totalitarian and Communism is always totalitarian that does not mean the two are then necessarily indistinguishable. It means they have a point of similarity. The language, aims, philosophy, implementation of the social contract, attitudes towards race and religion, and even justifications for the creation of a totalitarian society are significantly different between the two, just as they are in other totalitarian systems.

You have chosen two points of similarty—that they are both totalitarian and that they have both participated in massive holocausts. Excellent academic phrasing aside, you are making a gross generalization on an extrodinarily limited set of data and I don’t think you can defend your position. To do so you are going to have to come up with a more nuanced argument than “they are both mean and they kill people.”

2005 May 21

Kyle Bennett permalink

Mel and John,

OK, I’ll agree that a small-scale voluntary communism could be meaningfully distinguished from fascism. I don’t believe that even a small such system can be viable without access to external capitalist resources to the point where the communist aspects are limited to a narrow range of production retained mostly as a social construct.

However, I can’t provide any solid validation of that. It’s an educated guess. The same economic dynamics apply, even in the smaller system, including some loss of the most productive members, but there is some evidence this could be checked without force in very small communities.

Similar dynamics do apply to a mixed economy (which a democracy always is, at least historically, and I believe necessarily), in that greater and greater force is required to maintain the collectivist aspects against the capitalist. But that is a very complex situation, and I am not prepared to argue it.

The dynamics of capitalism are completely opposite, and tend toward stability, growth, and equalization in the absence of force. There are no pure historical examples of this – the few historical examples have always been tainted by collectivist elements – but careful analysis does support this.

I stand behind my analysis of large scale communism – even at as small a scale of Cuba, if it is effectively isolated by the dictators (with the short-sighted assistance of the nominally capitalist world) – and that the totalitarian elements along with the other necessary consequences that are similar to fascism completely overshadow any philosophical differences between them. That the criteria for choosing between the favored and the oppressed is different is hardly a meaningful difference.

John, I was not generalizing from empirical data, limited or otherwise, I was generalizing from sound logic, using historical data merely as validation. The “academic” phrasing was an attempt at clarity and the avoidance of inflammatory rhetoric, not obfuscation.

2005 May 22

Benjamin Solah permalink

We can’t be both. Communism, or the more purer form, Socialism is totally opposite to facism. If anyone has the stupid idea that the two are connected, they are sadely mistaken.

2005 May 23

(: Tom :) permalink

“The dynamics of capitalism are completely opposite, and tend toward stability, growth, and equalization in the absence of force. There are no pure historical examples of this – the few historical examples have always been tainted by collectivist elements – but careful analysis does support this.”

I would respectfully disagree with this statement. The robber barons of the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are and did generate considerable instability and inequality, unless they were regulated. The gap between the rich and the poor has been increasing of late, and the middle class are slowly being squeezed out of the middle (three guesses as to where most of them have been heading). And individuals no longer have much in the way of stability in their work environment. I would have to believe that this is due to the lack of rules forcing those capitalists to foster stability and equality.

I have no method of determining growth, but I see a stagnant economy over the past five years – precisely when the capitalists were unshackled from those pesky regulations by the current regime.

Perhaps you could give us the benefit of that careful anaylsis you speak of here?

2005 May 23

Kyle Bennett permalink

Tom,

No, I’m not going to give you the benefit of that careful anlysis. I’ll leave it to you if you care to do it yourself. We could argue the historical “facts” you presented ad nauseum, and not get anywhere. It involves too many high level abstractions that, frankly, are too easy to evade if someone is determined to evade them.

That the dynamics of communism/socialism and capitalism are opposite is undeniablly true. In a communist or socialist system, when a producer leaves, it reduces the incentives on the remaining producers to stay and to increase production; in a capitalist system, when a producer leaves, it increases the incentives for other producers.

Those are clear opposites. If you disagree with that, respectfully or otherwise, then there is no basis for discussion.

2005 May 23

ME-L permalink

Just a question for you Kyle—why is it that capitalism has almost always been tainted by collectivist elements? Is this some kind of logical outcome?

2005 May 24

Kyle Bennett permalink

Mel,

That’s an excellent question that I’ve thought about a lot, without finding a satifactory and fundamental answer. The obvious answer is to blame it on the deliberate undermining of freedom by those who want collectivism. But that begs the question of why some people want collectivism. There’s several hypotheses about this, from intellectual laziness, to fear, to outright evil. My guess is a combination of all three, though there must be some even deeper fundamental cause.

2005 May 25

MEL permalink

So here’s where I find myself, Kyle. Why is it that when “pure” communism devolves into totalitarianism, it’s out of logical necessity—but when “pure” capitalism devolves into a capitalist-collectivist hybrid, it’s due to the evil or stupidity of individuals? Were I a Marxist, I could make the case the the “collectivist” elements that historically have (nearly always) become part of capitalism are a logical necessity.

2005 May 26

Kyle Bennett permalink

Mel,

â€œWere I a Marxist, I could make the case the the â€œcollectivistâ€? elements that historically have (nearly always) become part of capitalism are a logical necessity.â€?

You could only if you abstract away all of the things that make the two systems different, and only argue at the level of â€œsytem Aâ€? and â€œsystem Bâ€?, equivalent in every way â€“ morally, ethically, and in the social and economic dynamics and incentives created â€“ with only some insignificant superficialities to differentiate them.

So hereâ€™s where I find myself. Capitalism is right, morally, ethically, and logically; collectivism â€“ including communism, socialism, and mixed welfare-statism â€“ is wrong morally, ethically, and logically. Itâ€™s a basic premise that we wonâ€™t agree on, and, thought I can thoroughly support it, we still wonâ€™t come to any agreement by arguing about it. But I have a small piece of that argument here if you are interested: http://www.humanadvancement.net/blog/index.php?itemid=20

Move aside, and let the man go through.

Two great tastes

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