Core Elements of Capitalism, Socialism (Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced Stages), and Communism
Core Elements of Capitalism, Socialism (Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced Stages), and Communism
This graph is important
It’s based on the writings of professor Cheng Enfu, President of the Academy of Marxism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Director of the Academic Division of Marxist Studies of CASS.
Socialism and communism are not one and done processes. They are gradual changes, both Marx and Lenin have addressed this extensively. We can’t just instantly press the big communism button unfortunately.
Here’s a paper that goes way more in depth on the professor’s definitions: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.159
Communism doesn't mean a state-planned economy. There is no state under true communism.
Single ownership is centralized communism. Decentralized and multi-centralized communism exists. Correct me if this is a misunderstanding.
also if you look at the chart the last two stages of communism are pretty horrible with 'completely planned economies' those simply dont work and are unstable systems they're essentially equiv to late stage capitalism were oligarchs are making the market decisions.
The “boom-bust cycle” instability is inherent to capitalism, not to a socialist economy, planned or otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cyclePeriodic crises in capitalism formed the basis of the theory of Karl Marx, who further claimed that these crises were increasing in severity and, on the basis of which, he predicted a communist revolution.
Marxian view, profit is the major engine of the market economy, but business (capital) profitability has a tendency to fall that recurrently creates crises in which mass unemployment occurs, businesses fail, remaining capital is centralized and concentrated and profitability is recovered. In the long run, these crises tend to be more severe and the system will eventually fail.
In contrast, profit is not the engine of a socialist economy: meeting people’s needs is.
its inherent in any system with a monoculture / top down approach to planning. its not a problem that's unique to capitalism.
think of it in terms of decision making: who is making the decisions? are there methods for unique approaches to be tried without consent from said leadership? if not then you'll have boom/bust cycles due to errors in decision making by the leadership group because there isnt a way to allow alternate approaches that would amortize out the errors.
any system with 'centrally planned' is no different 'ceo runs company' and will have the same behavioral outcomes for the system.
it has nothing to do with profit motives. its about the motives of the individual making the decisions. just 'removing profit' from the list of motives (which profit is never the motivation, its power/ability to do whatever you wish) doesnt in any way impact the behavior of the individuals it just changes the justification used. but the system will still see the same behaviors / outcomes because you havent fundamentally changed the system
I feel like the big question is who is doing the planning? Because if it's the central government, not workers themselves, we're fucked. Communism is bottom-up, not top down. There can be organizers and public servants but there cannot be executives.
communism ends up top down in every implementation we've seen in the wild. but maybe you should think of the question not as 'who is doing the planning?' and instead as 'what do we actually need to plan centrally'. i think you'd be surprised about how little you actually need to plan centrally. I ended up settling on worker protections.
classical communism's take is its the economy and the state. both which means its ripe to collapse into corruption/authoritarianism and its very hard to protect. particularly once the system has established itself and is relatively stable. gives time for bad actors to start needling into the processes and abusing them.
You'll never be able to control 'who is doing the planning' in a reliable manner over a long term in a centralized system. just take a look at every tech company that gets majority market share. soon as it happens they begin abusing their control as people within the company shift. can also use political parties in democracies as an example, even with voters deciding on the final candidates there isnt really a choice. this is why communism in the wild has never had the bottom up result you're claiming it has, and no i don't care about the purist written version of communism I care how it plays out in practice.
and the distinction between public servant vs executive is fairly immaterial if they're both functioning as 'making the final decision for the group' what matters isnt who the decision maker is but how that decision maker was chosen to speak for the group.