Comment by ue_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ue_ | Hacker News Reader

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> if I were to develop a machine that manufactures widgets in my spare time at home, that machine would have to be seized since communism is the public ownership of the means of product

No. That's personal (not private) property. The MoP are manned by labour supplied by the proletariat. If you are having people working with that widget maker (aside from yourself), and you are paying them wages (or slavery), then it qualifies as MoP and the workers would seize it.

In the same way, a programmer's computer, provided the owner is not using it as MoP for wage-labour, belongs to the programmer.

>When asked how any decision would be made by the collective, since it is a system run by "society" not by any individuals, the answer often hear is through democratic means

Our experiences differ; usually the response is that people can organise themselves freely into collectives or communes. There is no police force to force you to join a commune or obey their rules.

But if people can freely organize themselves into collectives or communes, then some of those collectives will be more successful than others, and without mandatory redistribution, you'll have inequality again. Also, if people can leave collectives, then inevitably there are going to be collectives with few or only one single member left, and you're back to individual ownership.

A lot of communists posit that capitalism (and perhaps in some cases statism) cause and/or arise from something kind of resembling a mental illness. Marx's "Alienation" and especially Delueze's "Desire" have this flavor. I think this is one reason why there's a whole brand of communism that's closely tied to Freudian/Lacanian style psychology.

That psychological aspect usually plays some role in transitionary theories for certain brands of communism, especially anti-statist brands. Although nailing down exactly what role it's supposed to play is usually pretty difficult, it's fair to say that the answer to your question would -- for a lot of anarcho-communists -- boil down to something related to these psychological theories.

This post may sound uncharitable to those communists. And I don't agree with their theories. But I also think that their work contributes something very important to discussion of fringe political theory:

Flipping a psychological switch in the minds of the masses is an absolute pre-requisite for most anarchist theories.

IMO that includes anarcho-capitalism. The communists at least recognized this way earlier than everyone else and are very careful about identifying psychological theories that match well with their sociological theories.

We can argue whether psychological switch-flipping is a realistic expectation -- I'd argue not. But any time I read political theory, I try to identify where the author invokes a form of switch-flipping. 99% of the time the author just makes overly charitable assumptions about human psychology -- that's usually the case in mainstream politics. Communists sometimes have some Freudian psycho-analytical flavored theory. Anarcho-communists like Molyneux prefer weird pseudo-logical reasoning about moral axioms.

Implicit assumptions of switch-flipping show up in mainstream politics as well (IMO "drain the swamp" and "black lives matter" both make implicit assumptions about switch-flipping that under-estimate the stubbornness and importance of human psychology...)

Well, that's a big weakness of these theories, I think. My question is not terribly complex or dependent on unusual or unrealistic situations.

I would also note that sometimes, people operating off a 'psychologist' basis like you've identified, misunderstand the critiques of others as being also 'psychologist'. For example, the Hayekian critique of central economic planning is often characterized as a psychological argument that "people are naturally selfish and greedy". Thus, if you can get them to stop being so selfish, the objection is overcome. However, what the critique is actually about is inherent limits to knowledge and information, which would apply regardless of psychology.

> My question is not terribly complex or dependent on unusual or unrealistic situations.

No, usually the psychological arguments are needed to hand-wave away crucial but obvious problems.

> Well, that's a big weakness of these theories

No, it's not. It's perhaps their most important insight.

I mean, IMO they're wrong, but the insight about the need for a psychological aspect is important and correct.

Libertarians and especially anarcho-capitalists need similar psychological arguments (the fact that they often hand-wave over this need not-withstanding).

Let me clarify: I'm saying that the "well, your objections are just psychological" aspect is the weakness. Sure, to have a psychological theory is fine, but too often it drifts into essentially "objections to our theory are merely based in the same psychological malformation that is produced by the current system - therefore when we get rid of the system, the objections will go away too". This is a weakness, I think.

Ah, I see. Yes, I agree with you on that.

Except maybe there's a system for which that's really true, and you and I prevent us from ever getting to that system because we reject arguments like this on the basis of form? Oh dear ;-)

> IMO that includes anarcho-capitalism.

No it does not.

(Most) Anarcho-Capitalism assumes humans as they are now.

It uses the same analysis as do political scientists and economics use now to model systems.

Most AnCap explicitly reject "Socialist Man"-type stuff.

> (Most) Anarcho-Capitalism assumes humans as they are now.

No, most anarcho-capitalism that is analytical (rather than holding anarcho-capitalism directly as a first principal) relies on outdated idealistic models of humanity.

> It uses the same analysis as do political scientists and economics use now to model systems.

In that, despite its well known flaws, the rational choice model is still frequently used (either as a tolerable simplification in some contexts, or simply from inertia in others) in both political science and economics, this is true. OTOH, it remains an known-to-be-false idealized model.

Your argument has nothing to do with Anarcho-Capitlaism.

You are simply arguing against most political science and micro economics. I use those disciplines to explain why I think Anarcho-Capitalism makes sense.

If you don't except these then I can not convince you of anything, not even that dictatorship is bad or anything else. There is no point arguing.

If that 'collective of one's legitimately only needs one worker, then that isn't a problem. If someone else joins him later then he has to share the MoP.

I fail to see the logical inconsistency.

But are collectives allowed to exclude people? If not, how will they select appropriate workers? If you can just show up at a collective and say "I want to work here, and you can't exclude me or kick me out" then how will they be able to function? People will just leave collectives with poor returns and make collectives with good returns take them on.

You CANNOT freely organize yourself in an communism.

This is because as soon as you start "freely organzing" a whole bunch of my property now apparently becomes "means of production" and gets siezed from me.

What if I and a group of other people want to organize and work together, in exchange for wages with fully voluntary other people?

>What if I and a group of other people want to organize and work together, in exchange for wages with fully voluntary other people?

There's no problem with that, but the people working for you wouldn't be very clever - there would be no reason to sell your labour under Communism. In fact, it would be so backward, the exploitation so evident, that nobody would even bother. Why would you want to work for wages when there are no wages under Communism?

Nobody is going to stop you from doing it. Communism is stateless. But you'd be pretty stupid to be doing it, and it would be a massive waste of time and resources. Nobody in their right mind would work for wages in a system where everyone else gets the product of their labour.

In this wonderful future, there will still be scarcity. There isn't going to be an infinite number of things.

Sure, maybe all my food and housing is paid for. But what if I want more stuff, that I couldn't normally get?

What if I WANT to work for a wage, in order to get these other things? That doesn't sound stupid at all.

Or perhaps the person who I am working for, due to him having a really good business model, or idea, or skill set, produces so much product of labor that I rather get a small portion of my product of labor from him, than get an even smaller product of labor the "normal" way, even if the normal way I receive is my "fair" share?

I as an employee do not care a single bit about getting my "fair share" of product of labor. I care about MAXIMIZING my absolute amount of product of labor.

As in, I'd rather have 10 percent of 100,000$ than 100% of 1 ,000$. Why would I care if my boss gets 0 dollars or 90,000$s?

I don't care if my boss "exploits" me, as long as it is a better option than working for a "fair" share anywhere else

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