What are the modern arguments for Communism?

Question

If this is too broad please leave suggestions and I'll try to narrow it down.

Although I don't always agree, I feel like I can follow the arguments for and from most facets of the political spectrum from the social democrats to the neocons. Outside of that spectrum band [center +/- 2 SD] that I can actually wrap my brain around, only one group seems to consistently draw intelligent, thoughtful, well-meaning people: communists.

Yet whenever I read people advocating communism it always centers around two things:

1. Appeal to moral intuitions that I don't share.
2. Appeal to Marx.

Marx was a brilliant visionary in his day, but that was ~150 years ago. I suspect that economists have built on his work since then but these days I only ever seem to hear about the Keynesians and the Austrians, not the Marxists.

What I'm not interested in

I often when asking questions along these lines I get a litany of grievances against capitalism, but that doesn't actually address the question: it doesn't really matter how bad capitalism is if the alternatives are worse. I'm also tend to get a lot of anti-US stuff. But capitalism exists on a spectrum from Finland to Singapore, I'm not sure focusing on the US is helping things.

What I am interested in

A lot of people (not just me) seem unable to understand the appeal of communism in a post-Soviet world, but again so many intelligent and thoughtful people have rallied to the red banner over time and even today that I suspect that we're all missing something. So how do modern communists address the following points:

1. Labor theory of value seems to be empirically inferior to demand pricing.
2. Communist countries seem to tend towards totalitarianism more than their capitalist counterparts.
3. Communist countries seem to have worse environmental records than their capitalist counterparts.
4. Communist countries seem to have lower standards of living in general than their capitalist counterparts.

These seem to me like pretty basic criticisms that any serious proponent of communism would have to address and has probably responded to a million times and has good answers to.

How do modern, serious communists respond to these criticisms? Would prefer links to credible sources.

Answer 1

I'm going to try to make an argument that a modern Marxist Communist could make.

Firstly, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that Marxist Communism has never been tried. Specifically, Marx considered Communism to be a stateless society "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

What has been tried is state socialism, the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat". The distinction (to a Communist) is important as they aren't the same thing; Marx considered state socialism to be a pre-cursor to his conception of communism.

More specifically, Marx identified that societies evolved over time and he hypothesized that state socialism would necessarily evolve into communism.

Marx also identified as a scientist. This is important because, by the time Marx died, no society had instituted either state socialism or his conception of communism. As such, the experiment (what state socialism evolves into) had not been carried out.

Subsequently, the experiment has been carried out a number of times. It turns out that, rather than evolve into communism, state socialism appears to naturally evolve into totalitarian dictatorship. In other words, Marx was partly right (in terms of societal evolution) and partly wrong (in terms of actual outcome).

Unfortunately, at this point most Marxist intellectuals (pretty much since the Hungarian uprising) have gone one of two ways. Either became apologists for the extant regimes or became resigned to having got it wrong/been misled. Eric Hobsbawm is a good example of the latter.

I believe there could be a third, more positive, way for Marxist Communists. The evidence strongly suggests that state socialism does not evolve into communism. But it doesn't follow that no society could evolve into communism. Similarly, there is strong evidence that societies both do evolve and have natural, evolutionary trajectories. So, it follows that a Communist could go looking for what that societal evolution should be. It's just unlikely to include state socialism in the mix.

If I was going to be controversial, I'd argue that this is a scientific Marxist position. As against the religious Marxist position that Marx couldn't have been wrong about anything. Unfortunately, the latter tend to be more common than the former in my experience but one can always hope.

Answer 2

Marx was a brilliant visionary in his day, but that was ~150 years ago.

That is very missing the point of Marx. He is the philosopher of the Industrial Era. Technology has dramatically altered our society, including how we earn a living. And it's reasonable to say that technology held that role fairly unchanged even up to 1981.

(Why 1981? I'm taking the IBM PC as the start of the Computer Era, in which technology suddenly becomes even more interwoven with society)

Specifically, technology changed the economy by the concept of factories. Capital became a second factor in the economy, augmenting human labour. It's no coincidence at all that Marx' Magnum Opus is called Das Kapital. This was of course a profound shift; for thousands of years the size of an economy was directly tied to its workforce.

What makes communism (as a theory) then relevant today? It's undeniable that capital is still a chief factor in the economy today. That's not just the case in factories. Entertainment is broadcast worldwide using satellites. Health care uses chemistry to create medicines and physics to make diagnosis. Even the quacks selling snake oil are using the Internet for that nowadays.

It's probably on its last legs, though. As I said, Marx is the philosopher of the Industrial Age, and we're moving to the Computer Age. The fundamental change is that factories need humans to operate the machines. In the Computer Era, machines operate themselves. Capital made humans more efficient by giving them machines, computers make humans redundant.

Is this a problem for modern communism? Far from it. Modern communism does not depend on just Marx. The balance between human labour and capital may have altered in nature, but it is becoming only more contentious.

As Fizz correctly summarizes in a comment, it's a common view that communism has never been tried seriously. Marx was the philosopher of the Industrial Age, and assumed a workers revolt in an industrialized country. None of the so-called communist countries were industrial at the moment when the communist factions seized power. Crucially, both Russia and China were peasant societies actively threatened by industrialized rivals. Many modern communists do propose the introduction of communism in industrial or even post-industrial countries. The whole "by revolt" part is a bit more troublesome, though. It can be argued that modern democracy has given every adult a vote, eliminating the historical need for revolution which has given communism a bad rap.

Answer 3

Speaking as a Conservative, I've also tried to have these arguments and read discussions by people who purport to support Communism. Here is basically what I've found:

The core change surrounding the growth of Communism in recent years is more or less tied to industrialization. In particular, automation. In the past, we needed humans to do jobs. There had to be a person standing at the cash register at the grocery store to take your money. There had to be a person on the assembly line to affix the door to the side of your car. There had to be a driver at the front of your taxi holding the wheel.

Today, these things are becoming less and less true. See, for example, automatic checkout at the grocery store, or specialized robots on assembly lines, or self-driving cars (well, that last one is still in QA, but they're certainly trying their best). Humans aren't needed to perform these jobs anymore. This causes a couple of changes:

1) Higher unemployment, especially of unskilled labourers. If your only employable skill is taking money at a cash register, and no store needs a person to take money at a cash register, then you're both unemployed and unemployable. In addition to this being just generally "bad" (from the point of view of those sympathetic to these people), it's especially worse because these people are the most vulnerable; these jobs tend to be low in reward, both ephemeral and physical, and thus given the choice between this sort of job and skilled labour, most would likely choose skilled labour. Thus, not only are these people unemployed, but they have a very hard time becoming employed, because they have a deficiency (perceived or actual) which prevents them from gaining the skills needed to perform "skilled" labour.

2) Higher production, despite increased unemployment. A factory which used to run on humans, and then fired all the humans and hired robots instead, still continues to run. The output of that factory has not changed, despite the fact that its workforce disappeared. Furthermore, robots do not need things like "sleep", "vacation days", "sick leave", "lunch time", and so on; this allows the factory to run longer and more efficiently than with humans. Not only has the factory decreased its cost, but it has also increased productivity, by firing its humans and hiring robots.

To recap, automation causes increased unemployment but also increased production. According to Communists I've heard and talked to, this means that (I am not saying this is true, but it is what they would quote to you) society would be able to support everyone based on the output of those who are "willing" to work in trades which require humans, plus the output of robots from trades which do not require humans.

What is interesting in the above statement is that word "willing". Communists presuppose that there exists a drive to work which is not limited to making money; a Communist would suppose that, for example, there are people who enjoy farming for the fun of farming, and even if they weren't paid to be farmers, then the rest of us wouldn't starve, because those people just like farming and could provide food for the rest of us. Again, this is what I've heard, not what I think.

Now, presupposing all of the above, Communism makes sense. Allow everyone to simply do what makes them happy. Some of those people will engage in trades which help support the rest of us, because that's honestly what they would like to do. Others may not, and that's ok too. Between those people who actually enjoy doing the things we need them to do (e.g. farming) and the robots doing work that robots can be specialized to do (e.g. manufacturing, low-skill jobs), everyone will get what they need. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

Now, to address your points:

Labor theory of value seems to be empirically inferior to demand pricing.

Pricing and value mean nothing to Communists. If you can have everything you ever wanted without impacting anyone else's ability to also have everything they ever wanted, what's the point of pricing? Pricing is specifically a barrier intended to regulate what people can have, specifically because not everyone can have everything they want. But we presuppose above that everyone can get everything they want, so this point is moot.

(In this answer I equate "want" with "need", this is intentional)

Communist countries seem to tend towards totalitarianism more than their capitalist counterparts.

Not related to Communism. Communism is an economic structure, not a political one. "In theory" it is possible to have a benevolent communist regime; it just hasn't happened yet.

Communist countries seem to have worse environmental records than their capitalist counterparts.

See above. Deflection argument.

Communist countries seem to have lower standards of living in general than their capitalist counterparts.

Because there hasn't been a Communist country which has modern means of production. As noted in MSalters' answer, the first IBM personal computer came out in 1981. The Soviet Union fell in 1989. The technology available to the Soviets was not even close to what it is today. The only Communist experiment country which has existed and has potential reasonable access to modern automation technology is North Korea, and that country has a host of issues which has prevented it from getting those tools. Among them is likely (my supposition) that the government actively wants its citizens to keep their heads in other endeavours such as work so they spend less time thinking about how shitty their lives are and don't start a revolt.

Therefore, one could say that Communism was tried (and failed) in an era in which it was not practical. However, one might say, if it was tried again today, using modern technology and modern sensibilities, it might succeed.

Answer 4

A lot of people (not just me) seem unable to understand the appeal of communism in a post-Soviet world, but again so many intelligent and thoughtful people have rallied to the red banner over time and even today that I suspect that we're all missing something.

You Are Missing That Communism Is Inherently Utopian

That is, the appeal is in the end state that it describes, the one where all of the social institutions that engage in "exploitation" have been overthrown and replaced with a new society where this "exploitation" no longer takes place.

Your four specific concerns are all apparent problems of existing communist regimes that can be excused away with some version of "we didn't do communism the right way yet." Communists may have more serious responses that are not varients on the tu quoque logical fallacy against capitalism, but the problems themselves do not matter greatly because they are questions of implementation that do not necessarily invalidate the desirability of the utopian goal of the whole process.

You say earlier in your post that most of the people you've talked to about communism who believe in it make appeals to moral premises you don't share. The moral premises are kind of the point of any given utopian belief system; the utopia is a thing to strive towards creating. Because you don't share those moral premises, your conversations aren't productive because you and your interlocutor are actually having two very different conversations. You are trying to have a conversation that is positive, that is, focused how things are, while most of the people you are talking to are trying to have conversations that are normative, e.g. about how things ought to be.

You are going to find it hard to have the conversation you think will be productive because you are talking about something the other side of the dialogue thinks has never been achieved, but is a thing to aspire to someday reaching.

Answer 5

In addition to the following arguments, a Marxist socialist could argue that Marxist socialism is a process towards the final stage of communism. As I described previously, the USSR and other nations practiced the dictatorship of the proletariat version of socialism described by Karl Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program where the state owns the means of production on behalf of the common worker and, to go against capitalism,the dictatorship of the proletariat would have to provide education, technological development, and standards of healthcare. Then, once the people and society became advanced enough, the state would erode away through a final revolution or natural human development, leading to the last stage of communism and a clean, stateless society where everyone would be paid in personal property based on the principle of according to their need. So the final stage of communism hasn't been achieved and some can even argue that some version of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' that still exist are not complete failures. While flawed, Cuba is a Marxist socialist nation with the 72nd highest Human Development Index in the world and the 8th highest in North America; high ranks in terms of healthcare (with healthcare so good, some people from places like the United States go there for the cheap healthcare for medical tourism) and education (99.8% literacy rate according to the CIA and United Nations); & has met the conditions for sustainable development set by the World Wildlife Foundation (so it has a better environmental record than most capitalist countries). To this day, Cuba isn't capitalist because it still has a command economy, unlike China and Russia who transitioned from a command economy based around the dictatorship of the proletariat to a private market economy where people outside of the state/community can privately own the means of production. In fact, it has one of the world's only planned economies. Combine this example of a form command economy socialism with some of the automation that is being developed for the workplace and embracing technologies that could help make a command economy more efficient like blockchain, you could have a nation that, in theory at least, could be able to advance to the final stage of communism. All you would have to do until either the collapse of capitalism or a final revolution is guarantee it has steady leadership, an education and healthy population, good implementation of new technologies, and enough stability to continue its existence without transitioning to a full-blown private market economy.

Also, in addition to the dictator of the proletariat method of using the state to achieve the final stage of communism, there is a democratic attempt at libertarian socialism somewhat inspired by Marxist-Leninist socialism called Neozapatismo being practiced in Mexico by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, who have been operating since 1994 to this day and show how you can have a democratic version of Marxist socialism that can still potentially oppose capitalist states.

Zapatismo was not Marxist-Leninist, but it was also Marxist-Leninist. It was not university Marxism, it was not the Marxism of concrete analysis, it was not the history of Mexico, it was not the fundamentalist and millenarian indigenous thought and it was not the indigenous resistance. It was a mixture of all of this, a cocktail which was mixed in the mountain and crystallized in the combat force of the EZLN… -Quoted in Nick Henck, Insurgent Marcos: The Political-Philosophical Formation of the Zapatista Subcommander

If they follow a similar path of advancement and automation, they too could potentially show how the final stage of communism can be reached.

Answer 6

One of the best arguments I hear is a visionary argument that they want a society like Star Trek, and Star Trek is working communism.

Then separate parts of communism, e.g. around why some things are production and others don't produce would make a very intelligent argument if it wasn't for stocks and other social constructs.

Being around communists a lot I think communism, as a whole, has been accepted at not working.

The best example is that if you go into a supermarket there can be a lemon for two different reasons.

1. In a capitalist system the lemon is there because you want to pay for it
2. In a communist system the lemon is there because the government wants it

And those I talk to have all given up arguing for bullet two because capitalism has won the mindset.

Answer 7

With the caveat that I identify as a US Conservative, I have endeavored to become familiar with communism and socialism because I was also curious with its appeal to those who are now in their mid-twenties (I have children that age). I will try to explain what I found.

The Id, Ego and super-ego

Being against communism, I have been told that conservatism is selfish. Similar to the phase of life characterized by the Id. Communism is akin to the super-ego, where you think of more than yourself and attempt to do more to help those around you. It is your duty to be a part of the whole community in a selfless way. A person with his whole life in front of him will identify with being part of a bigger whole, contributing to the whole so that no one is left out.

Survival and tribalism

It is difficult living and this era to realize that most of human evolution and history occurred while humans lived in hunter-gatherer bands. And when I say most, I mean 99% of homo-sapient history. So the argument for communism is genetic which is why we are the dominant species today. The band needed everyone to contribute selflessly and sacrifice so that the band may survive and continue. Even today, it is instinctual to form bands, we have neighborhoods, gangs, social clubs, membership clubs, congregations, etc. Finally, technology has the ability to form the ultimate band of associating people who are not geographically near each other into a greater band. For example awareness of man-made climate change is nearly universal and strangers from different cultures will feel kinship with you and part of your community through the cell phone we all carry in our pocket. For example, If I say Green Living to a Norwegian, he will know exactly what I'm talking about probably without translation. Because of that awareness in that greater community, it is easy to accomplish goals such as Earth Hour, etc.

Economy

Right now there is more economic prosperity than at any other time in history. Without going too deep into the weeds with Marxism, one of the requirements for establishing socialism was the leveraging of the wealthy merchant class (people with wealth that were not nobles or aristocrats) to fund the change into socialism and provide the leadership of industries after the industries become publicly held. A personal example, At my current salary I can afford to spend $2000 every month on entertainment, family things, nice car, clothes etc. You can take that $2000 from me a month and I still would survive by being able to buy food, pay utilities and mortgage and get to work using public transport. That means I could afford myself and 2 other people in the Universal Basic Income scheme. I am below the median national salary level for my profession so it stands to reason that there are more people like me out there.

The population is more educated than ever

This subject was a surprise to me but in retrospect it seems obvious. This ingredient to socialism has only recently became possible through technology and social media. It is difficult to explain so to begin with something basic. I hope you are aware of the tinder app. In tinder, you can see romantic choices and very efficiently make judgements in seconds based on your own personal criteria. The hook is the safety in the knowledge that if you make the wrong choice or simply change your mind, there are more choices available. Now the contrast: in the past, if your family were farmers, you were also a farmer even if you had the mind to be an engineer. Currently over 70% of the population has college degrees. So this works from both sides, central planning can tinder the degreed population for needed positions and individuals can tinder the available requirements of the central planners. Tired of working at the People's Iron Works of Soviet Florida? you can tinder to the People's Fisheries of Central Planning in Minnesota

The social-contract

We have all heard in childhood that the government should exist by the permission of the governed. Republicanism and representative democracies often cause an elite class that are out of touch with those that are governed. With technology every voice can be heard and a direct democracy can be established. The first goal of this direct democracy is to establish a social contract, where everyone feels responsibility for the community and through that responsibility will make the best choices for that community.

Victimhood prevention

It is the responsibility of all people to be welcoming to everyone else. The community should be ever expanding and take pains to include all persons. John Lennon said it best in his song "Imagine". These goals will remove the possibility of becoming a victim

These are all the arguments I could think of for communism again, with the Caveat that I don't believe any of them and find, in my opinion, deadly flaws in all of them. But I do admit that they are certainly attractive and would implement them if I had a magic wand.

Answer 8

This answer deals with the contemporary marxian libertarian communist perspectives, such as Operaismo, Autonomia, Solidarity (UK), the Wollongong thing, etc.

Labor theory of value seems to be empirically inferior to demand pricing.

Marxian LTV is not a theory of price designed to inform micro-economic decisions. Nor is it a theory of price movements designed to inform macro-economic adjustment of a nation-state's economy. It is a critique of the basic relations of capitalism. It is a critique designed to inform the self-emancipating working class how to burn capitalism to the ground. Marxian LTV is not a method for planning a communist economy: it is a guide to fucking up capitalism. (Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically)

Communist countries seem to tend towards totalitarianism more than their capitalist counterparts.

And? Totalitarianism was a category created by bourgeois researchers in order to differentiate disgusting moral abhorrences from identical acts committed by upstanding morally righteous regiemes.

Moreover, see Foucault on the question of proletarian immorality: morality isn't a category that applies to self-emancipation (Foucault versus Chomsky. Video. Second half. Chomsky asking what if workers commit abhorrent acts).

There are many, many moderations of this, such as the role of Love as Solidarity. (Nick Southall)

But the central point is that Love and Solidarity are economic endeavours: behaviours or rather actions and practices done for collective self-interest. They are amoral. Communism is a fundamentally amoral practice that adheres to the moral codes of the working class for pragmatic political reasons, and because it believes that the working class produces superior knowledge in collective endeavour (ie: praxis.)

Communist countries seem to have worse environmental records than their capitalist counterparts.

The Soviet Union was a wage labour society where the value form was reproduced in an expanded form and workers who enacted self-emancipation were brutally murdered by a class of persons who benefitted from their control over the value-form. Ie: it was capitalist. Wage labour existed. Wage labour existed to reproduce inputs in value form in an expanded form. This is the sin qua non of Marxian LTV's analysis of what constitutes capital.

Communist countries seem to have lower standards of living in general than their capitalist counterparts.

Asked and answered above. The more important question here is when will the Chinese proletariat conduct Prague 1968? The 1956 moment has already been and gone.

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In summary:

Libertarian communists influenced by marxism apply the wage labour and profit test to "actually existing socialism" and find that it was capitalism. They approach Marxian LTV as a tool chest to enact power. They approach morality as a power issue (power exerted by their class), and as a power issue (irrelevant compared to the power of their class).

Actual communist conduct is going to seem perverse to you because it fundamentally rejects the bases of what you view as politics, economics and morality. The fundamental elements of communist practices are solidarity, praxis and collective power. By us ourselves, not by a coiterie of bourgeois intellectuals.

Answer 9

Communism is essentially about bringing democracy to the work place. The Soviets were originally work councils. The etymology of the word is revealing:

Soviet is derived from a Russian word signifying council, assembly, advice, harmony & concord and all ultimately deriving from the Proto-Slavic verbal stem vet-eti (to inform) from which we have Slavic vest (news), the English wise, and the roit in ad-vis-or ... [and] the Dutch Weten, to know.

Democracy, although much fetished in the West, was not born fully formed but came out of a stuggle from below to establish rights with the franchise gradually extending from men with property, to all free men, to freeing all men & women (the abolishing of serfdom in Tsarist Russia and slavery in the West), to all women. It was achieved through both revolution and reform, against the ferocious opposition from the oligarchic elites, who instead of sensing the winds of change, merely attempted to entrenched their own position - this was not leadership.

Communism took it as granted that the democratic franchise should be extended to the workplace. This is after all where most adults spend their lives: nine to five, five days of the week, forty-eight weeks of the year, year after year for forty years...

One might say for a communist: To not have democracy in the workplace is to reify the term wage-slavery as actual slavery and not merely a satirical turn of phrase.