Jimmy Higgins

At what point was Stalin a true communist? At what point was the USSR ever even a socialist nation? The USSR was a dictatorship!
How is the prole supposed to rule? You still need the bourgeois to be making decisions that the proleteriat can't. A steel worker is as likely to be as good a business man as a business man is to being a steel worker. Each has their strength.

Every worker is equally valued. The system of now rewards the economic power more than the hard working power.

Aerion

So you have thousands and thousands of Proleteriats each with a different idea of what is do be done next. Somewhere, someone has to take charge and lead the masses. At that instant, you have given birth to a "Leader Class".

elwoodblues

Just to expand on this...

Depends. An experienced steel worker might be just as good (or better) than a manager at making purchasing and inventory decisions. And a high-level foreman might run a 30-ton crane pretty damned well. But a packaging-line laborer probably can't run human resources or negotiate with the union. And the CEO probably doesn't know how to run the tempering machine, and would likely kill himself after an hour on the slitter.

The major difference is that, if done right, upper-level management generally requires college education, experience, and some level of intelligence. Factory floor jobs require maybe high-school education, perhaps a second language, and a week of on-the-job training. Some machine operation jobs are more complicated than that, but not just a whole lot.

Me and Me

You are trying to confuse Leader with Private owner of the means of production. The two are completely different.

The Soviet Union was a dictatorship, which I a Marxist-Leninist support a Dictatorship of the proleterian, and work to overthrow the current Dictatorship of the bourgeois.

Jimmy Higgins

Nice to agree with you, seeing it happens every once in a blue moon.

August Spies

YOu don't seem very interested in what you opponents actually believe, but with you ideological saftey (it seems to me) but if you are actually interested in how socialists deal with this kind of issue why not read up on spain 36 or Makhnovist russia or some other historical example? I could recommoned some books if you wish.

theyeti

The years right before the Spanish Civil War? Somehow I don't think that makes for a good example of how to run a country, at least not securely...

theyeti

Cretinist

This is not true.

Economics is defined as the social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Any conceivable way in which production, distribution and consumption could happen would be an economic system.

It is easy to conceive an economic system that doesn't use a form of currency or even a bartering system. For example, the government could own everything and just kill people who refuse to comply with its wishes. In this system, the government forces citizens to produce things and perform services. It could then conceivably distribute all materials and services by lottery, and the citizens would then consume them. It would be a strange, brutal and probably inefficient economic system, but it would be an economic system without money.

I assume the question in the opening post is asking something more like "How do communists get people to do stuff without some sort of monetary incentive?" Well, it's fairly obvious that people do useful work all the time without the thought of monetary reward. Anyone who has ever had friends help them move or has helped friends move has experienced this first hand.

To answer the question though, it will have be more specific. Are you asking say, moon, how he would get people to build a factory? Well, maybe moon will ask a bunch of his friends to help him build a factory. Or, maybe moon could start his own cult and get his members to do it for free ($cientology's SeaOrg, anyone?). There are a lot of ways to get free labor out of people.

Are you asking how a Communist government would get its citizens to do useful labor without money? Well, there any number of conceivable ways to do this. They could shoot them if they refuse to work, for one. They could also use other coercive methods like with-holding food or other less vital necessities, a somewhat similar motivation to work under capitalism.

I don't see how this question is supposed to be hard for a Communist to answer.

August Spies

The years right before the Spanish Civil War?

um... no 1936 is the year the spanish civil war started. A large part of the spanish civil war was the anarcho-syndicalist revolution, and its very interesting to see how they ran things (they ran a large part of "republican" spain).

theyeti

Okay, I don't know much about this particular bit of history, but it seems to me that being 1) a revolution and 2) a losing revolution doesn't make this a good example of how to run a state (or how to live in the absence of a state). BTW, were these people different than the communists who were also fighting? If so, how did their goals and tactics differ? Thanks.

theyeti