In an ideal world people would not even argue about whether knowledge/research should be free and open to everybody. The current situation only shows how primitive the world still is.
No, the problem is that publishers take research that they didn't pay for, ask researchers who they aren't paying either to review it and then and put it behind paywalls.
Of course, researchers don't have their work "taken" by publishers; there are big incentives (via the citation count metric of academia) to provide their work to these publishers. This problem has been hashed out so many times, and I'm so upset that we're still at the status quo (especially since I'm at the end of my graduate student years, and will soon no longer have access to the university's library!)
> Things move quickly, and when half a year passes, you hardly have access to cutting-edge research.
Ah yes, things move very quickly in science... You have to keep up with the literature!
Define the group of people for who this is actually useful and then show me the subset (within the same population) who do not have access.
I.e. American scientists and American research i.e. American funding.
You understand that scientists agree to this when they choose to publish in journals like nature? And money is only a part of research. Can the scientists then not decide to go into these agreements?
(I don't personally have to agree with these agreements. Impact factor is a cruel overlord).
The argument that "most people wouldn't know what to do with papers even if they had access" is what perpetuates it. If discoveries are important enough to report about in the news, they're important enough for me to read the underlying research.
My formal training hasn't taught me the first thing about atmospheric sciences or gender studies, but my access to papers has allowed me to explore them. I'm no expert in either field, and I understand half of what I'm reading, but it's information I just can't get in a textbook.
There is not a professor, post-doc, or grad student that I know that would not publish in Nature or Cell if it meant that it would mean the brutal murder of an adorable basket of kittens, let alone over open-access.
Scientific publishing is a cancer, and the arguments I've listed aren't even the beginning of the problems I have with the industry.
You argued that it should be published in public immediately. You didn't say why this is important.
Clearly it's open important for those who actually have to keep up with the literature and they're in institutions that have access. (Again, limiting this to American research & American funding).
I like reading papers, especially in areas that I'm not trained in. But I don't need to keep up with research that was published in the past 6 month. There is no practical need.
> Scientific publishing is a cancer.
Without getting into specifics, I can agree in general. You should talk off the record (think conference) to some editors to see what they think about the whole situation.
But the paywall does not pay for research, nor does it pay the peer review. It used to only pay the paper and editing, costs that internet and arxiv have made obsolete.
>"To sum up, we have the following take-aways. Science, as a part of culture, is in conflict with private property. Accordingly, scholarly communication is a dual conflict. What open access is doing is returning science to its essential roots." (Elbakyan, ibid, translated)
Also note that at least one researcher in researchgate chose to mail their paper to me when I asked, once I found it wasn't available on sci-hub. This was extremely nice of them and made my day.
As a student I love this decade for finally having access to such a vast repository of knowledge that wasn't available to me in the previous years. I am also thankful for the researchers whose work I am accessing now.
If you write a paper, no one is allowed to copy the paper without your permission. When you patent writing papers, no one is allowed to write a paper without your permission, which is ludicrous (and I'm pretty sure you can't patent something like that). Meanwhile there are people sitting on great ideas that would be good for humanity or able to make lots of money or whatever, but are too afraid to tell anyone because they are afraid their idea will be stolen.
Rule #1 of entrepreneurship. There are at least ten other people out there with the same idea. With seven billion people on the planet it is highly unlikely that anything is so special and unique it requires hamstringing the rest of human creativity to reveal it.
Interestingly, most anarcho-capitalists are opposed to intellectual property precisely because it violates physical property. Being opposed to intellectual property is not unique to communism.
I think it's a shame that the HN article title was changed from something which is clearly expounded by the video i.e Communism, and mentioned several times even with quotes by proto-Communists and Communists themselves, and the attack on private property. Copyright is merely used as an expemplary in the talk. Why was the title changed? Is it that Communism is seen as "click bait" or too radical for the HN audience that it must thus be tuned down to something with less flare?
This is a tough call. As far as I can tell, the original title isn't misleading or click-bait so we've put it back. Unfortunately it looks like there's no redemption for this predictable generic flamefest that took the place of an actual discussion, though.
To add to what sctb said: obviously the word 'communism' in such a title is flamebait; one might wish otherwise, but the internet is what it is. Moreover, generic ideological battle is off topic for HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You yourself have badly violated the site rules by perpetuating it in this thread. Would you please not do that again? I presume there are other places on the internet where it's welcome, but it isn't here.
Speak for yourself. Also you have the option to move to socialist/communist countries whenever you see fit, they exist. Don't force your horrible ideology on the rest of us (which communism literally calls for).
"Also you have the option to move to socialist/communist countries whenever you see fit, they exist."
Actually, most folks don't really have that option. Not legally, anyway. And honestly, I think your statement is pushing a horrible ideology on others as well - capitalist societies have the same sort of hangups on closed-mindedness you fault communism on, evidenced by people's outcry that national health care is a socialist policy. It makes actual fixes nearly impossible.
More to the first point, it is expensive for folks to move, and expensive to find housing and work enough to meet immigration requirements. Even planning for schooling is expensive. Not to mention the fact that in many professions, you need to speak the local language. It is even an expensive prospect when you are moving for marriage (I've been through it, and it is still expensive). Sometimes the education from the US isn't quite good enough to transfer to the same job. Not really an option for large swaths of population making minimum wage or slightly more. Not when a flat tire messes up your finances for weeks or more.
This advice is as bad as telling jobless folks they should just move to a part of the country with jobs. It isn't reasonable or practical.
I was freaking lucky to be able to move out of the states and into a socialist democracy (Norway).
>Speak for yourself. Also you have the option to move to socialist/communist countries whenever you see fit, they exist. Don't force your horrible ideology on the rest of us (which communism literally calls for).
A perfect case of strawman.
In his comment, GP was never advocating that communism is particularly good. He was merely using the same logic as his parent.
Also, moving to different countries is not straightforward. The statement does not even come close to being an argument for anything, and does not contribute to the discussion.
Thank you for calling it a strawman when the person I was arguing just admitted that communism does call for forced confiscation of property. You people are delusional.
>Thank you for calling it a strawman when the person I was arguing just admitted that communism does call for forced confiscation of property.
Yes, it is a strawman, when you attribute something to someone who did not say it. That he agrees with you or not doesn't have bearing on what makes an argument a strawman. The discussion of property arose after you made your comment.
>You people are delusional.
Very consistent with strawman-like behavior. Tell me how I am delusional. Not the other commenters in the thread. Me. In what way am I delusional?
The idea that "if you don't like it, leave" can be used to excuse any injustice, such as against the Jews in Nazi Germany. What's your point, exactly? It's a farcical notion and I hope you can see that it is counter to the idea of human progress to expound it.
>Don't force your horrible ideology on the rest of us (which communism literally calls for).
No, it doesn't. Communism calls for the liberation of people via the abolition of private property, itself a concept which is forced on everyone, including the owners of private property. This is like saying that the abolition of slavery "forces an ideology" on everyone because now nobody can own slaves. Again, it's farcical. Oscar Wilde and Kropotkin have explained the individualist nature of Communism.
The fact that you're telling me to move to Venezuela (capitalist economy) or North Korea (a country that doesn't even call itself Communist or even Socialist any more) shows just how bad your argument is. It was perfectly valid for me to bring up an example of a repressive regime as an immediately understood example of injustice. However I could have just as easily used the example of Bangladeshi sweatshop workers. Should they just shut up or move away?
Moving is irrelevant, too - everywhere has become private property, everywhere is rented or taxed. One cannot escape capitalism.
>1. It calls for the forced confiscation of private property.
Yes. What about it?
>2. Explain how someone can be liberated by having their economic freedom removed?
People's economic freedom is not removed, rather, it is provided in the first place - higher stage Communism is the refined ideal of the free association of people as producers and labourers in the economic sphere.
> The fact that you're telling me to move to Venezuela (capitalist economy) or North Korea (a country that doesn't even call itself Communist or even Socialist any more)
sure, keep telling yourself that
> Yes. What about it?
Thank you for admitting that communism does require force confiscation of property.
You need to understand that I wasn't arguing to convince you, I'm making statements to point out for anyone reading that when you say "liberation" you actually mean state police going door by door and confiscating any valuables you have. Maybe lynching some property owners along the way.
>People's economic freedom is not removed, rather, it is provided in the first place - higher stage Communism is the refined ideal of the free association of people as producers and labourers in the economic sphere.
Communism is supposed to be ownership of the means of production by the people. Can you sell what you supposedly own under communism? No, you cannot.
This means that
A. You don't actually own it the state does. (The state in this case can be whatever organizational body is being used to manage the means of production).
B. You do not have any economic freedom under communism because you cannot sell what you supposedly own. Even under communism you do not have the option to sell your own labor freely. What occurs is that you are assigned work that the government believes is needed.
No; Communism is an anarchist ideology, and the workers through voluntary democratic institutions manage the means of production - so you, by extension manage the means of production.
>You do not have any economic freedom under communism because you cannot sell what you supposedly own.
No. These is no sale in Communism because the conceptions of freedom have changed, society adopts a different set of needs, namely, goods are not imbued with exchange value, as they are not commodities. It doesn't make sense to sell things in Communism. This is what Communism is - the bringing about of the condititions such that the current ones are obsolete. As Marx said, Communism is not an ideal to be achieved, but the constantly existing movement which abolishes the present state of things.
>Even under communism you do not have the option to sell your own labor freely.
This is a very good thing! You don't have to sell your labour to survive! And even if you wanted to, you can get higher returns by owning any more labour you do.
>What occurs is that you are assigned work that the government believes that you are most suited to.
Hilariously false. Please actually read Marx; I'll quote the relevant part here:
"He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now."
> No. These is no sale in Communism because the conceptions of freedom have changed
Oh yeah, the conception of freedom has changed so that slavery is freedom. It's amazing that there are people that actually fantasize about living under a dystopian government.
> Hilariously false. Please actually read Marx; I'll quote the relevant part here:
Marx says a lot of stuff in his worthless books, every implementation of communism has assigned labor.
>Oh yeah, the conception of freedom has changed so that slavery is freedom.
No; if anything, capitalism is the closest to slavery if we consider the case of the slave abolishing the ownership of slaves (the human component) of private property, the proletarian is the same in that he must actually abolish private property in general to be free.
>every implementation of communism has assigned labor.
Does capitalism not have assigned labour? You are free to move between jobs to some degree, but you are assigned labour in general, for without that assignment (by the capitalists) then you are liable to destitution or poverty or death or the charity of the State.
> Does capitalism not have assigned labour? You are free to move between jobs to some degree, but you are assigned labour in general, for without that assignment (by the capitalists)
Yes it does, and if you can't find a company that will let you do the job you want you can start your own business.
You lived in a country that was under Party rule of an emulation of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard state which operated on the functions of private property, money and was clearly a class society, I'm guessing, unless you lived in revolutionary Catalonia.
I am currently living in a country that's still under capitalism and I'm experiencing how bad it is right now.
Just to take you up on this, I do not think that Cuba is a Communist country, but it reports very highly on poverty and especially in comparison to other countries in South America.
>Despite this, the poverty level reported by the government is one of the lowest in the developing world, ranking 6th out of 108 countries, 4th in Latin America and 48th among all countries.[0]
Further, I see it as bad for private property is tyranny, the labourer is deprived of the full value of what he creates, and the class society creates artificial necessity to provide wage labour or accumulate sufficient capital just in order to survive. For these reasons I see the system as barbaric, as with our resources it is clearly enough to do better. To say nothing of the horrendous exploitation of those in Bangladesh for example, this only being the most visible example of the exploitation Marx tells us about.
The quote I used happened to be incongruent with the source I linked, so I'm sorry for that - I wasn't trying to be disingenuous. That said, you asked for statistics and I have provided them - Cuba in terms of poverty isn't as bad as most of its peers in South America.
Cuba's poverty is only relatively good (ie not actually good) when you restrict its peers to the countries of South America.
But when you consider that when Cuba transitioned to communism it was a fully developed economy not a developing country you can understand how badly they have regressed.
Your account seems like it's teetering on the edge of using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's destructive of what HN is supposed to be for, so if you would please (re)-read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and walk back from that brink, we'd appreciate it. The same goes for any other account in this position, regardless of their politics.
Could someone explain what Sci-Hub has to do with the common ownership of the means of production? The presentation didn't even attempt to explain this from what I gathered.
To me, Sci-Hub sounds a lot more like anarchism than anything (property is theft and so on..)
Communism is an anarchist ideology, and though some forms of anarchism stand opposed to it (such as Stirner's egoist anarchism) they are all in some sense against property; Communism isn't only the common ownership of MoP, rather, the Communists contend that this follows naturally from the abolition of private property, not such that everything becomes everyone's property, but that it becomes the property of nobody. Marx once said (I paraphrase) that the theory of Communism can be summed up in one sentence: the abolition of private property. Engels also said that just as the slave frees himself by abolishing the human aspect of private property, so does the proletarian by abolishing private property in general.
There is an ideology called anarcho-capitalism and it is definitely not against property. If there is any debate over whether anarcho-capitalism is a form of anarchism—it holds that there should be no State, and I think that means it qualifies.
I usually forget to include anarcho-capitalism for the simple reason that it does not exist in my consciousness as an anarchist idea as you note. Sometimes to avoid the ambiguity, I use "social anarchism" to refer to those espoused by the original anarchists and most organised anarchists today.
The reason why anarcho-capitalism is not regarded as anarchistic is because of its nature as being what the Socialists regard as hierarchical and its institutions as non-voluntary by espousing a hierarchy seen in the class distinction, that is, one class owns the property, the other does not. This, to them, is a power relationship, and one which cannot be justified. The social anarchists are against unjutsified authority, not authority in general. Parapharasing Bakunin, in the matter of shoes I defer to the authority of the bootmaker, not because he is more powerful, but because it's my choice.
To me it is clear that the mere abolition of the state is insufficient for human liberation, we must also stop the material conditions which manifest the state from coming into existence, that is, ownership of property, from which the state can derive its power most easily through the collection of tax or rent.
There are people who argue that land ownership in general is unjustified. One argument is that the areas of land in question are often many times larger than what the owner has used or can use; for example, in the early history of America, there were small groups of individuals (e.g. [1]) who found areas of hundreds of thousands of acres, surveyed them, and were then granted exclusive ownership of them by the reigning government. These people may have a point; no theory of homesteading could possibly justify those land claims. So let's concern ourselves with material goods for now:
The processes of making most useful material goods, today, involve long setups where you take input materials X and Y, use equipment A to do step 1, use equipment B to do step 2, add material Z and use equipment C to do step 3, and so on. The process wouldn't work if some people decided they wanted to use equipment B for something else and just took it. If there is no ownership of property, what is there to prevent that from happening? You mention a bootmaker. Why can't some random person decide he wants to use one of the bootmaker's tools for his own projects, take it, and stop the bootmaker from accomplishing anything? On the other hand, if the bootmaker does have some kind of right to prevent the rando from taking the tools he's accustomed to using—by force, if the rando is stubborn—then that's starting to sound like ownership, and I don't understand how this might differ from the conventional treatment of material goods as ownable property.
Remove the rewards as they exist in our current system and doom civilisations to massive turmoil, marginalization and technological stasis. You cannot flatten a society when inequality is the fabric of evolutionary forces, in essence subduing the genius workaholics to the same levels of award as the troglodytes. To ignore the universe, filled with lesson upon lesson that all life is in constant competition to survive, that life feeds on life and instead build a society that does the opposite is to invite an end to all hope of prolonged interplanetary existence.
>Remove the rewards as they exist in our current system and doom civilisations to massive turmoil, marginalization and technological stasis.
This sounds awfully theological to me.
>You cannot flatten a society when inequality is the fabric of evolutionary forces, in essence subduing the genius workaholics to the same levels of award as the troglodytes.
I honestly have no idea where you get this idea from, and I've had to explain it so many times; it's a popular misconception about Communism but I simply have trouble understanding where it originates. If you don't mind me asking, where did you get this idea from? As far as I know, no Communist espouses it. For a counter to your point, take a look at Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution[0] however your very premise is flawed; Communism does not mean the absolute equality of everyone, as even a child can see that people are different and have different strengths. Communism is merely a more equal system in which people receive the product of their labour in fully.
> To ignore the universe, filled with lesson upon lesson that all life is in constant competition to survive
This is a tired point, the fact that it is still trotted out reeks of naturalistic fallacy, and the idea that humans are no better than the universe, ignoring the fact that the forms of oppressive have changed but the relationships remain roughly the same. You seem to suggest that capitalism, or at least some class society, is necessary. I see no reason to believe this is true. You assume that these systems are natural, deriving right from the universe itself; again, you expound theology.
>that life feeds on life
This is a funny point because even though this is unavoidable, humans have created ways to minimise the extent to which this occurs, by consuming less life i.e vegetarianism. Do you see how this thinking can also apply to, say, capitalism? We may not eliminate certain pressures but we can certainly reduce them.
>build a society that does the opposite is to invite an end to all hope of prolonged interplanetary existence
Not really. I'd say that capitalism does this instead, and the reason is that within capitalism we could only hope to do that if it brings profit to the speculators. This idea that capitalism is a promoter of human progress is obviously false given the great amount of pollution, false science etc. which happens in the name of capital itself. If we can't even care for this planet, what makes you think that capitalism nurtures prolonged interplanetary existence? The very idea seems ridiculous to me.
In short, you've confused nature with a rather recent mode of production (which optimises for things that aren't natural at all) and used a theological argument to say that it must be this way or we'll be doomed to massive turmoil and never leaving planet Earth.
I admit I have a hard time imagining how an advanced economy could work without a government. Can you clarify your opinions here - in your anarchist utopia,
- Does money exist? If not, how are workers compensated for the full value of their labor?
- Does a central bank exist? If not, how is inflation & deflation controlled? (A common criticism of Marxists is capitalisms boom / bust cycle - how does getting rid of the government solve this?)
- Without a government, how are market failures solved:
Who discourages negative externalities such as pollution, violence, theft, human trafficking, pushing dangerous drugs on minors? It's in no-one's individual self-interest to prevent these things - they require collective action.
Who funds actions with positive externalities such as trash collection, fundamental scientific research, maintaining and protecting national parks, etc
- Many modern industries are extremely capital intensive. I get the idea that a revolution will expropriate existing capital. But going forward, who will create new capital if owning & profiting from it is impossible? Who pays the laborer who produces capital? In my understanding, we either need to incentivize capital production by having the government pay for it and own it (state-owned industries), or by allowing people to buy it and profit off of the ownership. How does anarchism solve this?
I get vastly different, mostly non-answers to these questions from different leftists.
>Does money exist? If not, how are workers compensated for the full value of their labor?
The workers own the products that they make, and if made in join production then I expect some calculation to be made in terms of socially necessary labour time to be used for calculation. Another option is labour vouchers, which are distinct from money because they are non-exchangeable with others and one cannot accumulate more than 365*24 per year (as they are hour based). This puts an end to the function of capital accumulation which is found in money.
>Does a central bank exist?
Probably not. I expect there to be multiple communities each maintaining their own banks of extra produce from which people can either withdraw freely (higher stage of Communism) or with labour vouchers (lower stage). Many would disagree with me on this point, and I'm by far the most well read in terms of distributive aspects.
>externalities
The absence of the state does not preclude collective action or sets of rules. In the same way that if someone appropriated means of production and forced people to work the machines for wage, I would encourage revolution against them, even in an anarchist society.
>trash collection, research, maintaining
Undesirable jobs would probably be allocated on a rota-like system, or some other democratically decided way. Research and maintenance doubtlessly people find motivating in themselves, so I think that would be covered by self-interested parties. I know a few people who would likely be interested to do one or the other. Education would naturally focus around the fulfilment of jobs which are short in supply.
>Who pays the laborer who produces capital?
There is no payment, this is the whole point of Communism and anarchism. Wage labour is off the table.
What kind of capital production are you talking about? If talking about the development of constant capital (materials, machinery, tools etc.) then the allocation of people to make these resources is probably allocated such that each person needs to do the minimal amount work, either in exchange for labour vouchers or a share of the products made with the materials, machinery and tools that were produced. The same goes for the maintenance of that capital, as a machine degenerates by its labour content leaving it into the goods it produces, and it is repaired by supplying it with new labour. This seems difficult to calculate.
>I get vastly different, mostly non-answers to these questions from different leftists.
That's mostly because "leftism" is a massive variety of tendencies, factions, parties, individuals, theorists, ideologies. They (like mine I assume) are non-answers because most people don't don't devote much time to think of this when they have more motivation to study the critique of capitalism, or just do other things. I have to say that most people are simply unmotivated, and I am one of them. People like the original anarchists, Zizek, Badiou, the Marxian economists etc. have much more time to devote.
I'm still a bit confused. If the workers own the outputs of their labor, then if I produce a tool, algorithm or machine, do I own it fully? What happens when someone else wants to use my machine to produce other goods - can I lend it or sell it to them in exchange for other goods they own, or in exchange for labor vouchers they own?
My point is that capital produces value when combined with labor - its multiplicative effect is why it is scarce to begin with. If it is to be priced efficiently, it seems to me that we are just re-constructing Capitalism from first principles.
> labour vouchers, which are distinct from money because they are non-exchangeable with others.
In the labor voucher system, why would anyone do hard labor when they could do easy labor for the same number of Hours? Who decides what labor is, and how are people incentivized to do scarce or useful work over non-scarce, non-useful work? The idea of all Hours being equal seems to intentionally flout the principal of comparative advantage.
> The absence of the state does not preclude collective action or sets of rules. In the same way that if someone appropriated means of production and forced people to work the machines for wage, I would encourage revolution against them, even in an anarchist society.
Oh, ok, so a State still exists, then. What attributes of this state make it "anarchism"?
> There is no payment, this is the whole point of Communism and anarchism. Wage labour is off the table.
I think you misunderstood me. By "who pays them" I meant: how are they rewarded for creating capital? Can they sell their capital on a market, or lend it out? If not, how do we reconcile the difference between the flat reward function for different types of work and their vastly different scarcities and social utilities?
Do you acknowledge the fundamental principle that not all labor is equally useful?
> To me, Sci-Hub sounds a lot more like anarchism than anything
The more I see people pushing the idea of communism lately, the bigger overlap with anarchism I see. Even explicitly mentioned. Maybe people are ok with that.
Communism as originally described by Marx is essentially an anarchist ideology. The idea of having a state attached to it before the complete transition to classless society worldwide is complete and how powerful that state should be, are areas of debate that came up later.
Given that we've seen most communist states fail or abandon non market-based economic models, the anarchist flavor seems to be in greater intellectual vogue these days.
Really? I know scientific publishing is terrible in a myriad of ways, but communism? Communism? We have to throw out the underpinnings of modern advanced civilization because Elsevier makes too much money?
No, the case made in the talk takes the example of Sci-hub and agreement with its principles into a wider scope to ask, if intellectual property is a problem (itself a radical idea, even on HN) what about property in general? And by this 'property' nobody means one's toothbrush, the Communists and anarchists mean private property. As Proudhon tells us the difference; near the beginning of his most important work (which went on to inspire Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Kropotkin and every other Communist and anarchist) he writes as follows:
"There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, naked property. 2. Possession. “Possession,” says Duranton, “is a matter of fact, not of right.” Toullier: “Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact.” The tenant, the farmer, the commandité, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor.
This double definition of property — domain and possession — is of the highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to comprehend what is to follow."
In my opinion, and apparently that of the person giving the talk, when we talk about science we don't only want the journals to be free (as in free speech), we want the "means of production" for it to be free. In this way, we believe, science can serve the broader community as a tool to advance knowledge rather than only when it's convenient for profit. As an example, look at how the funding was recently pulled (though I'm not fully up to date on the story) on a US government study into the effects of coal mining on health. I contend that there would have been less motivation to do this, if it was possible at all, in a Communist society.
I think that very much depends on what your communist society looks like in practice. If you actually somehow managed to create somewhere a successful communist society that actually succeeded at completing the revolution without a powerful state, maybe what you describe would happen.
But we never have seen that happen because in practice communist regimes tend to have strong states that engage in rather heavy-handed central planning of the economy. As a result, funding for scientific enterprises in these societies ends up being directed toward whatever the political priorities of the planners are. In the Soviet Union's case, that was military technologies and Lysenkoism.
Lysenkoism is a particularly troubling counter-example to your US coal mining example. In the US, the political inconvienence (presumably to the new administration) simply resulted in the project's funding being cut. In the Soviet Union, the political inconvience of natural selection resulted in thousands of scientists being jailed or killed, set back Soviet biology at least 150 years, and was partly to blame for the low crop yields that the Soviets kept experiencing.
So yeah, I don't particularly like the status quo in scientific publishing, but it's better than abolishing private property. Abolishing private property is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory and always ends badly in practice.
I agree, it's something that sounds difficult to get right, and if it's possible to get right, what's the best way to go about it? I contend that the model which the Soviets adopted was poor, not only for the reasons you mentioned (rigid central planning, authoritarianism, and opposition to recognised science in favour of nationalism-based "science"). It's important to ask why these things happened, so I think that the solution is not as simple as I perhaps made it out to be.
However we see that in the Soviet Union, places of science remained private property, administered by either private institutions or a state which claimed to be in control of the people, while it was clearly not. The whole Soviet model collapsed very early one because certain factions were banned, and their members executed. I do not think that this is the best that we can do. However I think that the solution, however utopian it sounds, lies in abolition of private property because otherwise we are still beholden to the whims of speculators and their profits rather than the interest of the community. Even if you only democratised science, this would be problematic; the scientists need to eat, and I would argue that they shouldn't have to eat only if the State or a private institutions tells them that they can eat.
There are other examples to go along with what you said. I can't remember the source, but there was a time in the Soviet Union in which scientists wished to implement a much better system of central planning which took into account input and output tables continuously; whether or not the computer power existed at the time I don't know, but the system was quickly shut down by the Soviet bureaucracy - I think because it posed a threat to the power of the State. This is why I tend to by more sympathetic to anarchist ideologies (as a questioner at the end of the presentitaion mentions), because by destroying the material conditions of the state then the state ceases, what you describe as happening has less chance to take hold.
This is why Communism is an anarchist ideology, in recognition of the very problem you have mentioned. Modern day Communists such as Zizek and Badiou accept this, and Badiou urges us to continue with the Communist Hypothesis[0]. The Soviet model was initially radical, but it was not radical enough to overcome the power structures which were much more entrenched than the founders of the revolution thought. So I still think Communism is the answer, but in what way is yet to be found out, and the debate fiercely rages. It's not that I think Lysenkoism is better than what we have currently (including all our junk "science" coming from here and there), it's that I think there is a solution superior to both situations, namely, in the reduction of power of the state and the diminishing of nationalism by making a global revolution as Marx's internationalist roots envisioned. It's not the abolition of private property that was the cause of Lysenkoism, it was exactly what we see now - rigid state bureaucracy and private institutions.
> it was not radical enough to overcome the power structures
there are issues that are even more deeply rooted than that. for example it completely eludes me how luxuries would be handled and distributed according to needs, or if it's ever recognized a need for luxuries and if it were how they'd be distributed to each according to personal interests and preferences
The issue is not Elsevir making too much money but that the current science publishing regime imposes a too high tax in terms of money, organizational overhead and excluding too many from quality information for decisions, education and furtherance of true progress. These externalities to Elesvier and similar are a huge burden on the society.
The science publishing business is not in that position due to skill, value add or investment but due to laws that grant monopolies on content for an extended period of time. Copyright on scientific discourse is not an underpinning of modern civilization. It is thus a valid consideration to change these artificial protections of their business.
Elsevier taking "too much" money is incidental, and not the main problem in science right now. And this Scihub solution do solve this incidental issue and more, but this is a fraction of all the issues in science (i can't explain this very well in english, so i won't, but the eastern/western culture clash, ego war, bureaucraty, lack of good HR that lead to depressed/apathic scientist, and the publishing race are some other issues not solved yet).
But this is not communism (i know lot of people in the US are confused by this, even the people that call themselve communist) but rather anarchism ("Libertaire" in french that is a left-wing libertarianism) with the idea that science is one of the common good. This new-wave anarchism take some old idea from Proudhon and enhance them. So you let behind the idea that private property is evil, but private property of the common is. You have the idea that people can't own what is used by other people. So you can have a hundred appartments in a big city, but you can't rent them. You can sell them, speculate on them, but you cannot rent them. And since it is anarchism, a more distributed/less powerfull government is needed too.
On the point of "no private ownership of the common good", this seems like communism, yes (Communism come from anarchism somehow), but communism is the idea that the state have to regulate this, scihub is not on any level a state initiative.
Sorry for the messy thoughts again, conversationnal english is a bit hard for me
I'd attribute those to mistakes in central planning (attempting to industrialize agrarian societies without securing the food supply) and to the usual death toll of authoritarian regimes (rounding up dissidents etc.).
Is it possible to work towards Communism without falling into those two traps? I have no idea. But if someone can give good reasons why their proposal would be different, I'm willing to hear them out.
>Here’s Marx in an 1848 newspaper article: “there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”
And commies seem to mostly follow Marx, hence perhaps the deaths. I've never been a fan of Marx - he seems to write reams of pompous twaddle. And then I guess when the pompous twaddley stuff doesn't produce utopia more revolutionary terror is the answer. Perhaps you could come up with a better socialist system without that stuff.
Comparing numbers nominally is a bit unfair, as communism is a much more modern economic philosophy than capitalism, and so operated in a much more populous world, but as to direct violent deaths by capitalism, you can start with many of these here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples
It's true that one could say that that kind of capitalism wasn't really capitalism, or that capitalism has changed since then, but the same could be said for communism.
A communist government is intended to be a dictatorship. In that sense, no different from a fascist government. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a myth of course simply because of human nature. It never happens. It cannot be otherwise. And someone will run the show - invariably an alpha male like Stalin, Mao, Mugabe, Castro, the list is long. http://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_dictators.
> A communist government is intended to be a dictatorship.
Not necessarily at all, and not only in theory but also in practice. The Kibbutzim[1] in Israel are a relatively successful form of communism -- granted, not on a state scale -- and lasted for about 100 years now (though they can hardly be called communist any more), and they have always been democratic (even if in practice they were sometimes oligarchic, but not much different in that respect from many democracies). The Kibbutzim were a particularly radical form of communism, where children were raised collectively, and lived away from their parents (this practice was particularly criticized in Israel and later stopped in most Kibbutzim).
> In that sense, no different from a fascist government.
There are really so many senses in which communism differs from fascism so completely (e.g. one is founded on exploitation and the other is founded on anti-exploitation) so that even if they were similar in one sense, comparing the two is not very useful. The only sense in which the two can be said to be similar (and this one applies to many ideals, even to opposing ones) is that they're both utopian.
Scientific advancement and technological innovation both greatly benefit from societies that have the greatest individual liberty and the least central control. The ultimate abstraction of this has yet to be designed but I'm thinking that it will be some form of ethical anarco-capitalism. I'll take a page from Dashcoin mining, where at the point of currency creation 10% goes into a general fund. The pseudo-central micro government functions solely out of it while the free market allows all companies to compete to ever decrease its market share. As transparency is a requirement of any truly ethical society, usage of blockchain technologies become ubiquitous in virtually every aspect of business and personal interaction. This then catalyses real time global value governance and regulation giving rise to a society entirety driven by dynamic hierarchies, where an individuals level of power directly correlates to their value to specific market / solution domain.
This type of dynamic global ethical anarco-capitalism has at its roots a resurrected US Constitutional based Republic. The transitional process is in its infancy but the forces of cryptocurrency cannot be undone.
As I said on 1490am Henry Raines show yesterday (slightly more developed), if we are to succeed we need to ensure that those allowed to regulate cryptocurrencies are as intelligent as those who created them. At the foundation of programmatic global value transmission are the keys to real time micro-economies that, by their very nature, foster the rapid evolution of dynamic hierarchies.
>Scientific advancement and technological innovation both greatly benefit from societies that have the greatest individual liberty and the least central control.
Communists agree, and this is why democratic Socialistts such as Oscar Wilde praised the fact that Communism nurtures individualism, especially for those in the arts and sciences. He wrote about this in The Soul of Man Under Socialism:
"What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture – in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want."
Your idea that anarcho-capitalism is a legitimate heir of the liberal ideas which were used to found the US is, to be honest, a silly one - as one can see the exact opposite in the writings of the Communists and anarchists whose whole idea was based on the freedom of individuals and their free association, something which even individualist anarchists such as Stirner realised is not possible with private property.
The entire foundation of America was formed on individualism and free thinking. Now all the sudden people are trying to spin the original intent as anarco-capitalism like its some new understanding. Too funny.
