Reality Rosa: A world where Communism works

[combatmedic]

A world where Marxism isn't total bollocks?
Sure. I mean, we accept fantasy worlds with magic, and SF worlds with rubber physics. Why not use voodoo economics and ignore human nature, thus allowing for Marxism to be something other than a colossal joke on suffering mankind.

:)

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Communism probably would work fine so long as it doesnt have fascists running it. "Communism" as we know it in the US (the USSR, Red China) had little to do with "the workers".

How would fascists be running a commie state? That's odd. Seems like a contradiction in terms, really.

[Xenarthral]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

How would fascists be running a commie state? That's odd. Seems like a contradiction in terms, really.

Only if you assume that people always are exactly what they claim they are
rather than what they appear to be based on words and deeds.
And use a strict definition of fascism rather than using fascism as shorthand
for all/various brands of non-democratic/oppressive governments.

Surely even you have noticed the difference between how communism and
communists are supposed to be and the leaders of the supposedly communist
states?

[Christian]

Combatmedic, it only seems so if you come from a "Uncle Ted" point of view. You know, Uncle Ted who still buys the "Anti-Communist" propaganda of McCarthy and Nixon.

What DocRailgun was probably refering to is the following:

Communism in its very basic memetic state is just that: an economic and political idea. Its a VERY old idea, mind you, and it did work for thousands of years ... on a small scale.

Marx did try to lay the academic ground work for a large scale communism. This ground work breed several children:

- Leninism-Stalinism, a rule of a bureaucratic elite (some call it fascistoid, as Stalin was closer to Hitler then to Luxemburg), examples: Russia, China ...
- Social-Democracy, examples being the scandinavian states
- social market democracies, examples being (Western)-Germany, and most western european countries, to a lesser extend the USA

All three of those examples are developing of course, and at least since the late 80s are going for "something else", this something mostly being a noliberal form of self-destroying Manchester capitalism.

The Latin-American socialism and the israelian kibbuz experiments are also examples of societies trying to apply communism at a larger base. They are working ... kind of.

Now you might say: "heck they failed". But didn't capitalism fail to? In 1929 and now again? Societies are NEVER stable, there is only one constant and this constant is change.

Communism on a large scale as tried till now indeed failed ... and it might be possible that communism can never be achieved on scales larger then a few hundred of people.

But unregulated neoliberalistic capitalism did fail as well ... and has the potential to kill as many people as has the stalinist fascisto-communism.

The world is ever changing and searching for new equilibra. For the last 20 years the world as a whole was moving more towards unregulated capitalism. Now it will swing back towards a more solidaric/communistic way again, till it buries itself in the problems of that approach.

To get back to the OPs idea:

you are assuming that a society can follow one paradigma for a rather long time. While this IS common to alternate reality design ... it seems to not be like "our" world is going, away from all philosophical questions.

History is not like a line going into ever greener areas. This paradigma, the paradigma of unlimited growth did kill both, russian style state-communism and it will kill us style neo-capitalism. History is osccilating between different possibilities. Usually the "turning points" amount to "interesting times" as in the chinese curse.

If you throw in this thought, and get an idea how this communist society survives the interessting times hat show up every 3-5 generations, you migh come up with a more "believable" alternate history.

Nothing lasts forever, but everything comes back one way or another.

[Cowd]

Soviets in Action

So how does it work?

No Marxist ever suggested that society, the day or even the decade after the revolution, would be able to let every citizen contribute "according to ability", let alone receive "according to need". "Communism" in Lenin, AKA "the higher stage of communism" in Marx, refers to an economy of superabundance, that is, in practice, the end of economy. The logical result of technological advancement is a level of productivity that abolishes scarcity altogether, permitting each citizen to consume as they please with no need for labor compulsion of any kind. At this point money and the state will be unneccessary and therefore disappear. Communion R&D efforts are directed expressly in this direction, as we shall see later. But such a society can only appear after a prolonged period of economic development. That is the task of the socialist planned economy.

The main political purpose of socialism, or the "lower stage of communism", is increasing labor productivity to reach communism as quickly as possible. At this point there can be no question of equal reward for inequal labor, one of the most persistent myths about Marxism. Competition, or in Communistic, "emulation", is a vital productive force that must be harnessed to the full. "One man is superior to another physically or mentally," as Marx put it, "and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognises no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right by its very nature can consist only in the application of an equal standard." (Critique of the Gotha Programme)

However, the starting point of socialism must be an economy that is higher than the most developed capitalism. This is the reason why no Marxist ever suggested, before Stalin in Homeline's 1924, that socialism can be created in one country alone, let alone an underdeveloped agrarian country like Czarist Russia. For this reason the Bolshevik revolution, from the very beginning, had the perspective of German revolution or bust. This was because of purely material factors. On the basis of a backward economy it was impossible for the starving, illiterate and numerically weak proletariat to take the running of society into its own hands. The cruel struggle for so much as a loaf of bread, descending at times to cannibalism, meant that a privileged layer would have to rise above the working masses, with property interests of its own. "This development of the productive forces is an absolutely necessary practical premise [of communism], because without it want is generalised, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and that means that all the old crap must revive." (Marx, The German Ideology)

Thus, economic inequality had to make itself felt one way or another, and with it, political inequality and "all the old crap" of class society. The Leninists believed the prolonged isolation of the Russian Revolution would lead to capitalist restoration. As it turned out, it did, but only after decades of degeneration where the state bureaucracy carved out a privileged position for itself and fortified this position with a terrible totalitarian dictatorship, in the process stifling independent initiative and criticism. On Homeline, this "command economy" could and did produce astonishing results, although at a terrible human cost and only so long as it was a question of building giant factories and dams. As soon as it had to deal with a modern consumer economy with a million different commodities, this system of top-down bureaucratic command, this dictatorship of the secretariat, stagnated and finally fell. Stalinism thus depends on the contradiction between a planned economy and a low level of the means of production.

With the German Revolution, however, that contradiction was solved. Her massive, cultured proletariat, and her extreme industrial dynamism, previously bound hand and foot by the Versailles peace, permitted Germany to modernize Russia with a minimum of fuss. In the process, economic inequality was not increased but decreased. The Communists and state functionaries were strictly disallowed to earn more than a workers' wage, and they were held in check by working class public opinion. The proletarian dictatorship remained in the form of proletarian democracy. And this is vital to the functioning of a planned economy. It's impossible for a handful of bureaucrats in Moscow to plan in detail the workings of a whole country, even if their names were Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. A Five-Year Plan is not an infallible revelation, but only a rough working hypothesis. It must be continuously adjusted from below. This requires the fullest freedom of opinion and criticism, as well as workers' control over the managers and the government. In Trotsky's words, known to every middle schooler, "a planned economy needs democracy as the human body needs oxygen". The basic political unit of this democracy is the soviet.

Arbeiterräten, conseils d'ouvriers, labor councils, shoras or cordones - such mass organizations have spontaneously appeared wherever the modern working class has been forced onto the road of revolution. The Ido term still pays homage to the soviet's country of origin. Every workplace has its soviet, where managers are elected by compulsory voting of the whole workforce. This soviet also sends delegates to the city or regional soviet, which in turn sends delegates to the national soviet, and so on all the way up to the 1101-strong World Congress of Soviets, which elects the sovieto popolkomisara, Sovpokom, the Council of People's Commissars. The current Chairman of Sovpokom (as of 2008 AD/40 EK) is the Indian Communist Rajan Bhandoo, who has governed the world for the past 14 years. State administrative functions are performed by the entire population round-robin, like jury duty. This so-called admindevo is inefficient, but considered necessary to prevent a permanent bureaucracy from developing. Soviet representatives are elected every 4 years, but they are also recallable at any time by the electorate. In other words, changes in public opinion make themselves felt instantly. This was the case, for instance, when Ekoplan was implemented in the 1970s. The Communist vote dropped by more than 10% in the week after the Ecologist overturn, giving way mainly to Proletarism (which places workers' immediate welfare before such 'starry-eyed schemes'), and only picked itself up slowly in the following months. The Communists remained in a majority, however, as always.

With 120 million active members and more than four billion registered voters, the Communist International is the largest political party on any known timeline. In China and the ex-colonial nations, where the Comintern essentially built the labor movement from scratch, it regularly polls upward of 80%. In Europe and America they are happy to get more than 60%, having to compete with everyone from Christian socialists to anarchists to proletarists. Only a handful of national republics don't traditionally grant an absolute majority to Communism. These include Persia, Poland and other countries where the revolution wasn't quite as popular as elsewhere. The Comintern itself is as far from a uniform monolith as you can imagine. Ever since (and ever before) the 1921-24 ban on Party factions, the Communists have been scrupulous about Party democracy, believing it the only way to maintain and train an educated leadership. While all members have to carry out majority decisions, these decisions are only arrived at by the most furious and uncompromising factional debates. Indeed it is a point of honor for every Communist to state his frank opinion in Party discussions. There are literally dozens of Communist factions, based on every divisive issue from the rate of space colonization (Mondists and Cosmists) to the rate and social intrusiveness of technological change (Homists and Progressivists). The factions have their own daily papers, congresses and in many cases TV stations. This acute responsiveness to events and public opinion, combined with its sensitive network of Party comrades in practically every workplace, is the main reason why Communism has retained working class support and avoided any serious splits. Another factor is the abject weakness of the opposition.

[Cowd]

Generally speaking, capitalism holds the same position as black slavery does on Homeline. It's a monstrously inefficient, cruel, immoral and long obsolete system that only a lunatic could seriously advocate. The expropriation and repression of the "bourgeoisie and their hangers-on", now generations past, is no more controversial than Homeline Lincoln's treatment of the Dixie plantationists. Historians may debate this or that measure of the founding comrades, but hardly anybody doubts the essential rightness of their cause. Public opinion regards restorationists as, at best, ludicrous Don Quixotes; at worst, dangerous fringe elements. Liberal democracy is regarded either as the midwife of fascism or a special kind of fascism. Although the latter is inaccurate from a Marxist point of view, the Comintern makes little effort to enlighten the masses on this point. The Liberal Democratic Party, which despite the name is a broad alliance uniting almost every anti-socialist under the sun from rightwing ex-Social Democrats to moderate ex-fascists, consistently fails to poll more than one percent of the global vote. Its "strongholds" apart from the United States and Britain include Poland, Persia and Georgia, in all of which they've gotten as much as 3% on occasion. The LDP holds a single deputy in the Congress of Soviets, the octogenarian Margaret Thatcher, and their constituency is similarly geriatric.

In addition to 'bourgeois' rights like freedom of speech and assembly, the Constitution of 1968 guarantees cost-free healthcare and education, as well as the right to work, to every citizen, that is, legally speaking, every human being. Of course, you can't just walk in anywhere you please and demand a job like you would demand a sack of flour, but the employment bureau is obliged to offer you some kind of employment, be it only trash picking. New social provisions, like free broadband, are amended into the constitution every few years. Basically, Reality Rosa has the welfare state to (literally) end all welfare states. The exception, of course, is prolonged, unforced unemployment, the subsidy of which is a feature of capitalism, not socialism. It used to be a felony, but with the second Great Relaxation in the first decade EK and the associated slashing of bureaucracy, was left to the discretion of impersonal economic forces. After all, there's no structural unemployment here, and morality suggests that whoever will not work, shall not eat.

Intellectual innovation is handled in an interesting way. An inventor can patent and thus own his idea. But since the means of production are publicly owned, he can't actually do much with the idea except sell it to the government, which immediately makes it public domain. Socialism eschews royalties in favor of single payments, for fear of creating privileged lifestyles. Thus, a groundbreaking innovation is rewarded by a couple million somi (somo = socialista mono, literally 'socialist money'), like a hefty bonus or winning the lottery, without the inventor ever having to prowl the corporate jungle or tangle with the tigers of finance. Wage differentials are a source of contention. The current max is 1:1.32, down from previous years, and some Communists want to abolish income differences immediately while the majority considers them a necessary spur to productivity which cannot possibly disappear until communism. The trick is to balance the creative force of egoism with the ethical demands of socialist equality. Of course, none of this applies to Communists, who by the revised Law of the Party Maximum (abolished by Stalin in Homeline's 1932) have to donate to the Party any personal earnings above minimum wage.

The shortening of the working day, not to mention the liberation of the Third World from the need to herd goats, has led to an immense flowering of culture. The kultdomo (culture house) is a feature of the smallest little town, providing citizens with free access to instrument practice, high-quality recording studios, writing courses, theatre groups and so on. Fatly subsidized from the public chest and subject to neither government nor market censorship, the arts present a picture less like Stalinist Russia and more like Belle Epoque France, or Classical Athens, only two or three orders of magnitude more extensive. It seems like almost every week some new school emerges and fights like a tiger for its right to existence, and its self-evident superiority to all previous schools. From the most individual like literature, to the most collective like film and the still adolescent interactive arts, Communion production displays amazing levels of creativity, daring and innovation. Not just in special venues but in the soviets, the press, the infonet, even on street corners, furious debates rage over the matist-novist manifesto of the followers of Zhang Beihong, or Izmailov's latest experimental synthetist installation. The place of advertising in public spaces is filled largely by art and science. A city bus might be an Impressionist gallery on wheels, or might be dedicated to explaining Einsteinian relativity. Streets, blocks and entire cities are often festively decorated by the local population. In Rosa, people take art seriously.

The basic economic unit of the Socialist World Communion is the public entraprezo (enterprise), which is Communistic for 'company'. The largest entraprezi are the few dozen that constitute the "commanding heights" of the economy, each overseeing assets of trillions of somi and employing tens of millions of workers. Beneath these megenti (mega entraprezi, 'great enterprises') stand millions of small and medium-sized firms. The public sector is, in fact, not wholly dominant. Private employment of labor is illegal, but independent non-profit enterprises, one-person companies and workers' cooperatives based on market principles, do exist. These elements are mainly, however, a source of nourishment for the public sector, like the public sector under capitalism is a crutch and fleshpot for the private sector. Public restaurants on every street corner provide cheap, tasty and healthy services. Apart from steadily supplanting the nuclear family, these communal behemoths are steadily outcompeting less resourceful bars and restaurants, which has provoked a measure of protest.

(Next: Reaction raises its head/the World Revolutionary War/Science and Technology)

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If there is some great socialist breakthrough that makes Communism work it needs to be something that makes collectively owned economies self-regulating.

How about Bellamy's _Looking Backward_ style of organization?

[Dangerious P. Cats]

How does the Spanish civil war fit in to all this?

I like the setting, though I can't see myself roleplaying in it though. mainly because the setting is too perfect, there is no conflict to resolve. Some scenarios for roleplaying would be nice.

[Cowd]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

I like the setting, though I can't see myself roleplaying in it though. mainly because the setting is too perfect, there is no conflict to resolve. Some scenarios for roleplaying would be nice.

Indeed. I find that the best possibilities are to be found back in time, in the epoch of the world revolution itself. I will include some striking reversals of our own history. You can also go forward to various SF settings, for instance Star Trek only more explicitly Marxist, or with a more transhuman style. (More on that later, let's just say Robert Heinlein turned out very different in this world)

[sn0wball]

Originally Posted by Cowd

Indeed. I find that the best possibilities are to be found back in time, in the epoch of the world revolution itself. I will include some striking reversals of our own history. You can also go forward to various SF settings, for instance Star Trek only more explicitly Marxist, or with a more transhuman style. (More on that later, let's just say Robert Heinlein turned out very different in this world)

As an Infinite Worlds setting, the timelines with parachronic travel could struggle to keep the secret out of the Marxists hand. I don´t know how Centrum feels about Marxism, but to them, the inhabitants of Rosa will be Democrats and therefore dangerous loonies.

Also, if along Reich-5 the secret falls into Rosa´s hands as well, things might get really wild on the parachronic level. Maybe Homeline and Centrum will need to cooperate to keep both of these from destroying too many timelines during their conflict.

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

How does the Spanish civil war fit in to all this?

I suppose it does not happen. If the insurgence of Franco & his brethren happens at all, there is no Hitler to support him and no Mussolini, too. Without that, the coup d´etat will fail without doubt.