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Why is meritocratic more "fair" than equitable? Perhaps more precisely, why do you deem meritocratic to = fair? Someone could just as easily (and supportably) deem equitable to = fair.
Hearts!
Would you rather go to a doctor who's good at surgeries or one that's bad at surgeries? One that got into medical school because of affirmative action, or one that was discriminated against and still got in (e.g. Asian doctors in the US)? Would you rather go to a car mechanic that's amazing at juggling but bad at fixing cars, or one that's bad at juggling and good at fixing cars? See, the "definition of merit" just takes care of itself (driven by the self-interest of customers).
So it's ok if I come to your house and take your stuff because I'm bigger than you?
Because that's what meritocracy does - it gives more resources to people who fit an arbitary definition of merit.
No, stealing is immoral.
> Because that's what meritocracy does - it gives more resources to people who fit an arbitary definition of merit.
The system itself doesn’t give anyone anything, the market is free to determine that. A doctor who helps more patients (your arbitrary definition) will face higher demand than one who doesn’t help many patients, since people are free to place the value they see fit on their personal health.
a) So is stockpiling resources that other people need. b) Who's going to stop me?
> the market is free to determine that
So we don't drag this out any further, I'm going to explain the place I'm trying to get to, as best I can: markets aren't physical laws of the universe, they're human constructs that are defined, regulated and policed by governments (I'm using a very wide definition of government here, think "governance").
If you think the market is the fairest way to allocate resources, you have to accept that people who "cheat" the market (inside traders, muggers, etc) are subject to state-sanctioned violence. That's the violence that a "free" market, and your vision of meritocracy, requires.
Owning property is not immoral. Stealing and coveting your neighbor's property are sin and very immoral.
>Who's going to stop me?
Any authority we've democratically elected to uphold that task. Probably the police, in many cases. Or me with a weapon of course, seeing as you're bigger than me in this hypothetical. In reality, you are not bigger than me.
>That's the violence that a "free" market, and your vision of meritocracy, requires.
Yes, societies require laws that are ultimately enforced through the use of physical violence and restriction of freedom if it comes to that. Mostly to stop people from doing immoral things at the cost of other people.
Insider trading is a tough nut to crack, since it could be seen as just another tool to reach a more efficient market. Envy comes very naturally to humans, and if someone makes more profits than you in the marketplace, it's very easy to call it unfair and get mad about it. Then you're looking at the definition of "fairness" - in my opinion it's fair that anyone can pursue the kind of information that will help them make better sales in the market. Deceiving or lying to other people are different topics entirely, but the term "insider trading" doesn't entail those things.
>markets aren't physical laws of the universe, they're human constructs that are defined, regulated and policed by governments
I don't really understand your point here. Yes, our society runs on top of some underlying systems that we've agreed upon. Freely trading your labor and property go all the way back to the beginning of our evolution, and for good enough reason - it's the best system we've ever come up with and used.
People use the term Communism (both upper-case and lower-case) in various ways nowadays, but Marx’s original ideal form of society was "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" The ultimate goal is to create an affluent productive society that can provide all amenities for all people, so they can unleash their potentials as individuals without being enslaved by capitalists as wage workers just to survive. And socialism is only an intermediate step before realizing this ideal state, socialism wasn’t intended to be ideal even for the leftists (In this sense communism has never been tried anywhere yet).
From my knowledge of European history, this is not true.
Marx also said that there should be a dictatorship of the proletariat, who should seize the means of production.
The difficulty is, is that absolute power corrupts absolutely, to steal a phrase.
The worker's union movement working inside a capitalist system has brought more benefits for workers, than communism, which proved to kill millions wherever it is attempted.
You will need to elaborate on that.
> Marx also said that there should be a dictatorship of the proletariat, who should seize the means of production.
Which should be temporary, right? Do you have an example where it was actually temporary? That would answer my point above.
My particular familiarity is with the German Democratic Republic. There were many true believers in communism, who in their attempt to construct a communist utopia created and contributed towards a police state.
Jordan Peterson said it shows arrogance to suggest that people just weren't doing communism right, and that if only they got the theory right, then they would usher in the utopia.
I would tend to agree.
> Which should be temporary, right? Do you have an example where it was actually temporary? That would answer my point above.
Your point was to assert that communism has never been tried.
Mine was that it has been tried, and is always unsuccessful. So the failure of temporary dictatorships is proving my point, not yours.
Don't you think that you risk missing interesting ideas if you reduce communism to temporary dictatorships?
No, I'm saying it has inherent problems that means it doesn't work, and "doesn't work" is putting it lightly, given the number of people who have suffered and died under the ideology.
> Don't you think that you risk missing interesting ideas if you reduce communism to temporary dictatorships?
No, I've already mentioned that workers unionising under a capitalist system has brought more benefits to workers than communism.
Communism has been tried. Again and again. The utopian endpoint it tires to get to is not possible. The consistent result is mass death and poverty.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
Violence is not bad. Violence to oppress is bad. Violence to seek justice is good.
That's why the 2nd amendment exists.
> Something that is non-consensual and requires violence
War is ultimately dispute resolution between two parties, at least one of which, has decided "might makes right."
Ukrainian violence is justified and good, while Russian violence is abominable and evil.
So it's important to think past words like violence or war or 'take' and instead frame conversation around justice.
If a billionaire bribes a supreme court justice to rule that they can pollute drinking water with a chemical that causes cancer, is that violence? A billionaire should not have enough money to corrupt the fabric of society. Extreme wealth inequality is injustice, especially if they use their power to say "we'll crash the economy if you don't bail us out."
Taxing the rich and funding social programs while otherwise retaining property rights isn't communism.
Everyone deserves equal investment, yet investment is not distributed equitably at all.
Education, internships, mentorship, etc are all investments, but more importantly, they snowball.
An executive branch cabinet official likely had a high profile job, and a high profile job before that, and a job with mentorship before that, and several internships before that, and admission to a great college before that, and potentially private school before that, and potentially community clubs or community help before that, maybe they had a parent in a position of power.
Every opportunity helps you get more opportunities in the future, and those who have capitalized on opportunity are those people you would say "have merit."
So merit ultimately does not measure productivity, but investment. With this understanding strictly "meritocratic" systems are systems that do not promote social mobility.
Communism is often maligned (and it should be, because it empirically always results in authoritarian rule) and our schools did indoctrinate us with "communism is bad" and "there must be profit motive for people to work," but we have a blindspot for oligarchy which is a system with no social mobility and little public investment which is a much more likely outcome than communism. Wealth disparity results in oligarchy and we are very much on our way.
If people have no hope for their future they become a drag on society as a whole, so it is important that it is not just productivity, but willingness and ability to work that is taken into account. It is our responsibility to lift our fellow man up, so they do not drag us down.
If merit is the sum of opportunities capitalized on, then it's important to distinguish between those who have merit because they had many opportunities, and those who have merit because they capitalized on the limited opportunities they were given.
Not even a single Gulag...
I think there are very good reasons that every time some regime self branded as communism it very quickly devolved into dictatorship. Reasons that many of the solutions proposed were unworkable and naive. And I am not sure those reasons can be overcome.
Communism should maybe be more of an ideal to be strived for but impossible to ever achieve.
I think it is fair to at the same time accept the self labeling of historical regimes as communist when discussing history yet also recognize that none of them ever achieved the communist ideal and became dictatorships instead when discussing philosophy.
The values of communism are aligned with democracy yet a democratic communist regime has never been implemented.
The reality is that communism requires centralised power, centralised power attracts bad actors, and bad actors are significantly more comfortable wrestling control of that power by force than good ones are.
Communism isn't inherently totalitarian, but according to all the experiments we've run so far as a species (at the cost of several hundred million lives), it does seem to inevitably lead to totalitarians.
Capitalism works as a socio-political system because its decentralised.
You mean what happens if people vote for the capitalists. Why do you assume that people will vote for the capitalists?
Historically, we know what happens if people vote for the communists: if this happens at any scale, the US steps in and sets up a capitalist dictator. Examples:
1. The US displacement of Lyuh Woon-Hyung to set up Syngman Rhee. Rhee was "democtratically" elected in a US-controlled election which was boycotted by other candidates because voting was limited to property owners and tax payers or, in smaller towns, to town elders voting for everyone else.
2. The 1948 Costa Rican civil war, where the CIA helped stage a coup against Christian Socialist Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia. However, the most conservative leader they could find was still pretty close to a communist, and he reinstated democracy, leading to a more equitable democracy, albeit still hampered by CIA interference, in 1950.
3. The 1949-1953 failed operation to overthrow the democratically-elected Albanian government with US/UK trained Albanian anti-communists.
4. Operation Fortune, the 1952 CIA operation to overthrow democratically-elected Jacobo Árbenz, followed by the more successful 1954 CIA coup which instated the capitalist dictator Carlos Castillo Armas, after the US-based United Fruit Company approached the CIA with concerns that Árbenz's anti-exploitation laws would hurt its ability to exploit workers in Guatemala.
5. The 1953 CIA/MI6 Operation Ajax/Boot (a.k.a. 28 Mordad coup), which overthrew a constitutional monarchy headed by Mohammad Mosaddegh's parliamentary government after the parliamentary government nationalized the Iranian oil pipeline. The coup saw the transition of Pahlavi from a constitutional monarch to an authoritarian, who relied heavily on United States government support. That support dissipated during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, as his own security forces refused to shoot into non-violent crowds.
6. The 1961 overthrow of democratically-elected Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, followed by the systematic US-supported genocide of democratic separatists in two separate rebellions.
7. 1970-1973 Chilean elections. Both the US and USSR were funding elections in Chile, so it's difficult to describe this process as purely democratic, but ultimately Salvador Allende was elected along with a right-dominated congress (i.e. congress was capitalist-majority, while the president was communist). This balance wasn't acceptable to the CIA, who in 1973 helped enstate Augusto Pinochet as dictator. Pinochet went on to commit one of the largest genocides in history.
8. The 1976 overthrow of democratically-elected President Isabel Perón in Argentina, starting the military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, which committed multiple crimes against humanity, with explicit support from the US including multiple visits from Kissinger during its reign of terror.
> The reality is that communism requires centralised power, centralised power attracts bad actors, and bad actors are significantly more comfortable wrestling control of that power by force than good ones are.
Capitalism is just centralized power by other means, where power becomes concentrated in those with enough wealth to enforce their will. At least with communism there's a chance that the centralized powers can be democratically elected--with capitalism, there's no pretense that corporate executives are democratically elected, with corporations being able to withhold people's basic needs if they don't comply.
> Communism isn't inherently totalitarian, but according to all the experiments we've run so far as a species (at the cost of several hundred million lives), it does seem to inevitably lead to totalitarians.
As seen above, this is not the case. Numerous large-scale democracies have elected communist leaders--followed by US interference and instatement of capitalist dictatorships. At a smaller scale, there are numerous examples of successful democratic (or even consensus-based) communism. With corporations funding political disinformation and buying candidates, it's questionable whether a capitalist democracy is even possible.
But, if people really vote for the capitalists, you have a capitalist government. That's how democracy works: the majority might not be correct in their beliefs, but they still get to put those beliefs into action. The question is, why does the US brand of capitalism not seem to believe that? Why is it that when communists get elected, western capitalists suddenly don't believe in majority rule any more?
All you posted was a long list of things that failed because of interference from the west. That's not what the question was though, show me ONE that didn't fail... ONE
To see why, you can categorize the forms of government as so:
- Monarchy/Dictatorship: Power in the hands of one, one person is authority
- Oligarchy/Republic: Power in the hands of a few, aristocrats are authority
- Democracy: Power in the hands of many, majority is authority
- Communism/Anarchy: Power in everyone's hands, everyone is equal in authority
In particular, notice all the forms of government (except for communism) has a way to settle disputes without resorting to violence. For example, in Democracy, you settle disputes by voting, where the majority wins, and the rest don't get their way. This ability to settle disputes without violence, is what makes us civil and what makes society a society. Without it (such as with communism), you are in complete anarchy, where raw might/ability (eg successful violence/persuasion) is the only thing there is left to settle disputes. Thus, those who wield it typically end up becoming the "authority", and is why over time, communism/anarchy will naturally change into one of the other forms of government.
In the US only 50% of the population votes. The church doesn't pay taxes but lobbies the gov via proxies. Rich people definitely have more rights than the others. Just because they fight in court doesn't mean it's not called violence. Rich people are the authority in the US. They decide what you watch, what you buy and where you can spend your money. Just because they work for corporations doesn't mean there isn't a hierarchy. Rich people own America and they behavior of it's citizens, because they shape the contexts in which you live. They also own the rest of the world via Hollywood.
The issue came in because the US wanted to break up the soviet bloc so the World Bank went to town and made sure that happened.
We will never know what would have happened if Tito and Ceausescu would not have been squeezed by debt and foreign interference.
Maybe the reason you don't see a good example of Communism besides maybe China/Viet Nam is because the west is actively engaged in making sure that doesn't happen.
I would argue that China and Viet Nam aren't good examples either.
That said can you give me an example of the communism you described as
"Power in everyone's hands, everyone is equal in authority"
The best example i can think of is a 'proto' communist fraction in Spanish civil war as Orwell described in Homage to Catalonia.
Also that quote really does not describe either the ideal of communism nor does it describe the historical regimes under the communism brand. In fact, I think none of the 4 categories Rury described are truly correct.
1. "Monarchy/Dictatorship: Power in the hands of one, one person is authority" is wrong simply because no one ever rules alone. Monarchy is just oligarchy with extra steps. Most historical communism is here.
2. "Oligarchy/Republic: Power in the hands of a few, aristocrats are authority", equating these two is wrong because the second is supposed to have time limits and accountability. Oligarchs are aristocrats, senators are not aristocrats.
3. "Democracy: Power in the hands of many, majority is authority", democracy is much more diverse than that.
4. "Communism/Anarchy: Power in everyone's hands, everyone is equal in authority" this is anarchy not communism. And anarchy is indeed inherently unstable. There were branches of communist thought that were anarchist but by being anarchist they were doomed to failure.
In practice we have only ever had variations of oligarchy that were more or less disguised and variations on democracy that were more or less direct.
What has not been tried and is unlikely to be tried is a democratic communism.
> perhaps humans have been conditioned to operate within a power hierarchy
Yes, exactly! No human, nor animal, wants to be perpetually in violence, as it is very risky to living. So, if they wish to avoid violence whenever a dispute arises, they naturally subject themselves and cede to the other as the superior authority in the matter, letting them get their way. However, if a human/animal ever thinks the reward for winning a fight outweighs the risks of violence, they will indeed risk the fight. Repeated disputes where one continues to be the victor, conditions those in the matter who is superior and inferior, and a power hierarchy is naturally established.
The only way communism can ever work, is if there is never any disputes. That is not a practical scenario outside a power hierarchy, and hence why it does not work in practice. And for those that don't see how "communism == anarchy", just look at how "public == many", and "private == few".
However, the examples of communism which capitalists like to point at as failures, such as Stalinism or Maoism, didn't ever actually distribute wealth, instead merely changing the concentration of wealth. This points to a failure to actually achieve communism, rather than a failure of communism to work.
Unfortunately I don't think there are very good explanations of this out there. The best I can find is this[1] but that's pretty dense, assumes a lot of prior economic knowledge, and is (ironically) behind a paywall.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/089692050809085...
From a philosophical pov, the well known regimes (Stalinist USSR, Maoist China, Varsovia pact regimes, DPRK) were dictatorships and they were failed attempts at communism.
From a historical point of view it is fine to call them communist.
That doesn't change that none of the well known historical regimes under the communist brand ever came close to the communist ideals. The betrayal of their original ideals was decried by communists themselves very early on.
My argument is actually that there are good reasons that humanity as it was 100 years ago and as it is now is incapable of achieving the communist ideal and therefore we need better philosophical theory on how to get closer to that ideal. I think the idea that revolution can bring about the communist ideal was naive.
There are comments here about smaller scale communist social systems claimed to have worked I did not know about and about which I will read.
Just to make it clear, I think the 10 planks/10 point action plan of communism from the actual manifesto is simply WRONG and would never have achieved the communist ideal (and nowadays it is also outdated). An authoritarian nightmare is the direct result of that plan, points 1, 3, 4, 8 and 9 ensure that. Even more damning and depressing is that many communist regimes did not actually implement point 10 by actually having mandatory child labour even if education was free.
But also note that most capitalist countries actually implement to some degree point 5 (having a national central bank) and many to various degrees implement point 10 (free education, no child labour) and several implement 6 (state controlled transportation and communication). And this was for the better.
Saying "communism fundamentally cannot work because I know examples that did not work" is similar to saying "democracy fundamentally cannot work, look: Hitler was democratically elected".
So I could ask it differently: why would you want anyone to spend a lot of effort keeping us in the direction that will globally make our society collapse?
Apparently, yes. That's called "rebound effect". I don't know of an invention that did not suffer from it.
5G is more efficient than 4G for the same usage, but it allows us to use more, so we will use more. Reusable rockets are more efficient, but they will allow us to launch a lot more rockets, so we will.
We don't know how to constraint ourselves. That's probably also why we won't be able to voluntarily degrow, and therefore we will just continue until it all collapses.
You mean the "why can't people invent <place here some cool technology we don't have>" part?
Not sure what to say to that, to be honest... would be cool to live in peace in a sustainable way, that's for sure. But I don't see that as an argument.
Some people want to dismiss the entirety of the thought behind communism and behind equity and use the historical regimes as justification even if those regimes did not in fact achieve or uphold communist ideals.
People will invent and will create regardless of whether that results in wealth or not. In fact the current capitalist regime is te perfect demonstration of this. People continue to invent things and continue to create art of all kinds despite the fact that most of the times the royalties are captured by corporations. And before IP was created, people did invent and create because that is simply what they do.
Also people will continue to work even without the threat of starving. An example of this is Japan where plenty of retired people engage in community work even if they have no personal need to do so, they do it for the community. This level of care for the surroundings and for the community makes Japan spectacular. Even the most anti-work will eventually get bored and start doing stuff.
This fallacy is used to dismiss all kinds of anti-capitalist ideas not just communism.
A society without intellectual property is against capitalism. A society with UBI is against capitalism. A communist society where workers can control the means of production and where things are redistributed according to needs is against capitalism. All three ideas are against a small group of people maximizing the captured (by themselves) value of the work of everyone else.
This view that humanity is some sort of herd of kettle that will not do anything unless threatened with starvation by a group of wealthy capitalists controlling the herd is bleak and disgusting. To bring it full circle, of course capitalists are against equity.
I'm down with any economic principle where your merit as a worker earns you leverage. It's a binary proposition.
It's 2023. The absurd idea that, for example, the billionaires pushing the Metaverse or burning Twitter to the ground got there by being productive, is thoroughly disproven. Stop pushing this motivated ideology.
It's not clear that capitalism was a necessary component of globalisation or the progress of technology, both of which are adequate to explain any benefits capitalism might claim.
What is clear is how many billions capitalism has kept in poverty while the top 1% get absurdly rich. 10 men had more wealth than 3.1 billion people in 2021[1]. The US, supposed beacon of capitalism, can't even provide housing, healthcare, or education for its people, despite having the largest GDP of any country in the world. You claim capitalism a success, but the only way you can do that is by turning a blind eye to the capitalism's total failures.
> Even China, who is communist in name, only started experiencing high economic growth once Deng Xiao Ping started reforming the state to be more market oriented, ie capitalism-lite.
You claim China has experienced economic growth: who in China has experienced that? Capitalists love to lump everyone in a country together in their measures of economic growth as if everyone is benefiting, but that's not the case.
And the thing is, I'm not even a communist, per se. But I sure as hell am against a few lucky capitalists getting fat off the labor of billions of people.
Some countries have to build (real or metaphoric) walls to prevent people from getting in...
Some countries have to build (real or metaphoric) walls to prevent people from getting out...