hello! this is the first communist theory thing I actually managed to finish and fully understand, I’m gonna move on to other recommendations next, but I did get quite a lot of doubts that I noted in a little text file. none of them are gotchas just things I genuinely wonder about/don’t understand

i apologize in advance if these are common annoying questions, feel free to point me to other resources that answer these things if it’s too much bocchi-cry you also don’t have to answer everything

here’s the text in case it’s useful!! https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Section 18

If competition is erradicated when every line of production is controlled by the state as Engels is proposing, will that mean an end of variety in consumer choice? I have indeed heard stories that people in socialist countries “only have one or two brands of X”, I’m not sure to what extent that is true but it seems like the natural conclusion from doing this…

Do you think this is better for an average person? main things that scare me are that, much like with companies in a market, how could we ensure the state produces things that benefit us and not benefit itself instead? this is what worries me about only having a single national bank too. Ideally if we only have one choice we have to make sure it’s the right one, no?

How would niche things, that benefit some part of the population but not everyone, be produced? Things like… fumo plushies, board games, or to put a less banal example, something that helps a condition that is uncommon and doesn’t spread but still exists, like special shoes to help some kinds of foot deformation for example…

thing is in a market system, niche things can make just as much or even sometimes more money than stuff that is produced “to be useful for everyone”, so they almost always appear in some way. but if all the production is controlled by the state, with very grand goals in mind, wouldn’t it not benefit them in any tangible way to invest in these kinds of things?

also, what would inspire innovation if it’s not competition? couldn’t the state just be satisfied with the results something is giving and not be interested in giving it resources to improve?

Section 19

I’m curious what communists think about this with a modern lens? AFAIK a revolution in a single country did happen right? And in Russia so none of the places Engels proposed. It didn’t really spread from there.

Section 20

do marxists think only economic class exists? wouldn’t there still be political classes? here it says that classes would end up disappearing because they only form due to division of labour. But isn’t there even in a fully realized socialist state a division of labour? even if everything is nationalized, isn’t there still a difference in power between, like, a furniture factory worker and the bureaucrat that oversees the state’s furniture building company? even if that bureaucrat is not monetarily richer than the worker per se.

also, it predicts here that education will give people the opportunity to understand the entire production system and thus jump from producing one thing to another, but since this book has written education has become a lot more universal, and that’s not what really happened right? people still chose one thing to specialize on and do it all their lives (or they study something that doesn’t have work opportunities and work something else). is there a difference in how marxists want education to work?

Section 24

I have one doubt about what Engels says about democratic socialists, mainly that small capitalists (“petty bourgeoisie”) in general tend to have the same interests as the proletariat.

i think one of the things that has put me off about revolutionary communism is precisely the attitude towards small capitalists, to be honest my parents are part of them, and I’ve always struggled to see them as a big evil the same way I view corporate giants, mainly because it’s just obvious their aims are not the same

I think the exploitation Engels is talking about where the workers always get the bare minimum that can be afforded happens mainly in big companies, especially the ones that have investors and seek infinite growth, but small companies like my parents’s basically just want to get by and survive, they only want to maintain themselves at an earning level that can support my family and the families of everyone who works there, if they can’t pay the wages with the weekly earnings they take out of their own savings to do it

in my parent’s case they are over 70 so they couldn’t really be part of the factory work either way, and I think what they do is still valuable (managing things, attending calls, organizing production and planning, supervising the design of new ideas, solving disputes, marketing, training new employees, etc…)

will these kinds of companies be treated any differently?

thanks a lot for reading, in advance!

  • ewichuu [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    thanks a lot for the very extensive reply, I really appreciate the effort you put into it…

    The upshot of this is that there were/are limited consumer goods because there were higher priorities, such as preparing for WWII and the need to modernise agriculture and industrialise the nation, meaning that often consumer goods were/are limited.

    I do definitely understand this, though the comments I’ve heard mostly talk about cold war USSR, so the 70s and 80s mainly, and current day Cuba and Venezuela, still it does make sense in retrospect why the army was given such a big focus

    Another consideration is that, while an abundance of choice in consumer goods may well be beneficial for the individual, this often is the opposite case for the environment and so we would need to be responsible and weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community, the world, and especially the environment.

    this is a very very good point, while I do think most of the damage in the environment is made by capitalists (didn’t they just announced they’d give one trillion dollars in subsidies to fossil fuels??..) if there is something that’s virtually the same but doesn’t damage the earth it really shouldn’t be a choice with how little time we have…

    A single national bank is about the state having total control over fiscal policy and the economy. That doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be regional banking institutions that could operate beneath a national bank at the consumer and/or industry level though.

    what I mean is, when you only have a single entity giving you a service, you have to take it and there’s nothing you can do, so that makes the entity capable of screwing you over in a lot of ways, that typically happens with banks that build up trust from their users and then start trying to earn more and cut costs by treating them worse. in that case you at least have the option of moving to another bank, and you can sort of parrot between them to find the one that treats you the least worse… but there is no such option if there’s only one bank

    I’m going to use the idea of money just to keep this example simple and easy to relate to but imagine if the government gave every citizen an allocation of credits to use in a national GoFundMe style model. Say each person gets awarded $1000 worth of non-transferable credits for use in this model per year. People could “donate” these credits to support a project and, if successfully funded, the project could be awarded a grant to create their new product.

    I think this is a really really good idea! it’s hard to conceive of systems like these still thinking everything in society has to make a profit somehow…

    In many ways the market inhibits innovation due to things like patent law (you know how we’re living through this huge boom in 3D printing, right? That’s only because the patent for 3D printing expired in recent years and for the previous decades there was essentially no innovation because of the way the market works) or financial competition, such as between pharmaceutical companies

    i’ve been an avid patent hater for a while, but I hadn’t considered what you said about pharmaceutical companiesd, it really is horrifying.

    I think what I’m concerned about is that with only one solution and one body overseeing it, that body can just be satisfied with the results given and say “ok this is enough” and not push for even more, since there is nothing forcing it to, and that can lead to stagnation

    but overall I think your comment sold me on a lot of things so I rly appreciate it, I’m definitely looking forward to you responding to everything else!!