@Mitchell that's the entire *point* of communism. That you need a government to organise people's behaviour for the collective good.

@Cond, are you talking about communism in theory or the way it actually was done?

MM:
Much of Marx's work was critical. He criticized the capitalist system. However in response to that I'm sure a Marxist could point to Marx's theory of history and say that such communities existed at the earliest stages of humanity in the form of tribes.

I'm a capitalist and I have to explain Marx to people.

If you look at Robin Dunbar's work, he would claim that the limit for social groups to effectively manage their own 'alturism' is ~150 people. About the size if a village, corporate department, amish community or similar entity.

He proposed that humans have a cognitive limit, based on the size of our brains - though he is an antropologist, not a neurologist, so we can assume his info on human settlements is more accurate than his assumptions about brain structures.

The idea is that these kinds of social groupings function on a form of peer pressure.

In corprations everyone needs a certain work ethic, and with peer pressure you can ensure that everyone pulls their own weight with only natural social pressures - and most corps don't have depts larger than 150 (or 130-170, cause +/-20 is a fair error margin) because that is when this natural social pressures break down.

Talk to anyone who grew up in a village where everyone knows everyone, and contrast with people who grew up in cities. (Also you will see that suicide rates increase dramatically when communities break down - whether that is rural communities being de-populated by outward migration, or urban centers not including people, social exclusion is one pretty major factor in suicide - what we might call an illness of civilisation, or we could talk about societal health)

So no, greed is not necessarily the most signifigant drive for humans. Unfortunately scale is a pretty signifigant issue.

There is no point in talking about democracy, capitalism or communism without recognising that the scale of the system will effect the overall societal health. (And FYI, i personally think that the extreme partisanship in the US is a sign of an unhealthy democratic system - Iceland, by virtue of difference in scale, seems much healthier).

@condescension. That is the purpose of democratic government also. Organizing society for the public good (eg preventing companies from poisoning people, managing the economy, etc.) is why we have a democratic government to put a check on private actors. That's a poor definition of communism.

Frankly, I am skeptical of this notion that there is a limit like that in any meaningful way. Many people are moved to altruism at vastly larger scales as a matter of philosophy. You find those willing to help far more and far wider a group of people based on altruistic feeling. Indeed there are entire philosophical traditions which are quite powerful and political movements based on larger scale altruism. Sure many people only care about their own group, but many other have a much wider perspective. So, reality suggests our anthropologist is missing a major piece of the puzzle

(And I think the extreme partisanship is more easily explained. It is the same old conflict between religious traditionalism and the enlightenment that's been playing out for centuries. Many people in the US are not at all committed to democracy because their religious loyalty is far more important to them. Others are very committed to democracy and oppose the first group. As the religious folks get more radicalized, so does the opposition.

@Ogion Democracies don't go far enough (according to communists). The notion (at least from my understanding of some communist arguments) is that we (the government) should control the means of production by the same logic that we control the means of violence.

And orathaic, this notion of sexist management being PC about it is totally ridiculous. There is no way to defend sexist power structures in a PC way. That's like saying it's harder to oppose Nazis if they say nice things about Jews as they murder them


The study cited by James (and it is one study) fails entirely to account for the fact that women are pushed out of lucrative careers particularly in STEM fields. Comparing pay when people are of equal position misses most of the picture where a lot of the gender discrimination happens before that.

For example, being successful in the tech sector as a woman is a vastly harder path than doing it as a man. So if we "correct" for the underrepresentation of women, we have thrown a major mechanism out of the analysis. (and even then the study still shows significant and indefensible pay disparities

For example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/12/silicon-valley-women-harassment-gender-discrimination

As another example, studies looking at how CVs of scientists are judged have shown that women need to be roughly twice as accomplished to be evaluated as equally competent as a man, which means comparing women and men at the same position is silly because it fails to recognize that women at a comparable stage are probably MORE accomplished and should be paid more based on merit, not 5% less, and also ignored that women are being given those higher paying jobs at the same rate or for an equivalent level of expertise

Same is true of race

So, working to eliminate bias, which operates at a cultural level, is a matter of constantly calling out cultural bias, including demeaning jokes etc, until we aren't having this conversation because the injustice that flows from it is gone

If asking nicely worked, then all people would have adopted anti-sexist and anti-racist positions uniformly decades ago. The fact that they haven't and that a huge proportion of the US embraces someone like Trump suggests that a more aggressive approach is needed. Or maybe asking nicely works but takes a century. I rather think that it will become a non issue when people get used to seeing all kinds of people in positions of power and when sexism and racism become as culturally unacceptable as child molestation.

So complaints about how bad "political correctness" is feels a lot the same way that complaints by pedophiles about how society views child molestation. Both are repugnant and both have defenders anyway.

If you're complaining about "political correctness" you are part of the problem here.

Yes, condescension. Communists want a particular economic structure. Tanya what distinguishes it, not that it organizes for the common good. Any government that isn't a straight up authoritarian kleptocracy does that.

Capitalism, in my view, is a lot like nuclear power. Incredibly powerful and incredibly useful but capable of causing tremendous harm if you don't encase it in lead and concrete and institute extreme precautions to prevent disaster. Some people feel that the risks are too great and want to ban it altogether. Others carelessly want to remove all safeguards because it "hurts profits". Sensible people recognize that there are dangers and take steps to safeguard against them.

@"Frankly, I am skeptical of this notion that there is a limit like that in any meaningful way"

I don't see this as a counter example to the suggestion that humans work well in peer pressure groups where you know everyone.

Cities obviously exist, abd function. And villages don't rely entirely in alturism. They just manage to curtail the worst greed-like behaviour by applying social pressure, the threat of ostracisation from the group.

It is merely that any behaviour which is seen dangerous to the group is curtailed by peer pressure, not that everyone is automatically alturistic. Infact free-riders may also be prevented by this peer pressure.

Oh, I see. I hadn't understood that. it's interesting that peer pressure is still a dominant force and operates at more local groups, although one gets a lot of local groups operating in parallel due to larger social dialogue and media. So, my friends and I reinforce our group norms, but we hold those norms in part because of a wider culture. So, if I understand right, both are operating simultaneously?

So with Amish communities they don't have police, the threat of being excluded from the community is usually enough to keep people in line.

In modern western cities you can leave your friend groups and join another without too much problem. So the same force can't be applied. And this is a simple matter of scale, your reputation may not carry with you to another group - whereas in a much smaller community where there is no alternative to being a member ofthe group, and everyone knows everyone, your reputation is something you can't escape.

Similar to your friends i guess, if you never pay for a round of drinks, or whatever your cultural equivalent, your friends will soon exclude you from that social activity. On a small enough scale the free-rider problem can be dealt with fairly well. In a city of millions this system breaks down. You may know someone for three months, get to know and trust them, and then be ripped off... Perhaps even new to involve the police, because reputation alone will not act as a sufficient deterant.

But yes, there are group norms among your friends and social norms among our society (there are even internet norms among webdip's forum, which you can see changing as the mods/owners agree to exclude people... However i doubt anyone who has been banned has starved to death as a result...)

TrPrado: not that interested in sticking up for Marx. He wasn't just critical; he made predictions about the future (which were wrong) and proposed a plan for creating a more just society (which didn't work for reasons that were obvious, and pointed out to him, when he proposed it). Like a lot of people, he did a good job of identifying a problem but a terrible job at coming up with an effective solution.

Just about sums it up, PastorAlan

"He wasn't just critical; he made predictions about the future (which were wrong) and proposed a plan for creating a more just society (which didn't work for reasons that were obvious, and pointed out to him, when he proposed it)."

There's a clear distinction between early and late Marx. As he grew older, he started moving away from his somewhat more idealistic youth. And his proposed solution, to use his own terms, wasn't inherently false. It's just capitalism adapted itself out of fear driven by strikes, demonstrations, and the activities of unions. It was capitalism adapting that leads to a lot of very specific Marx things being (like how we are able to participate in mass communication far more easily but still not revolting), and capitalism's ability to adapt that strengthens my support for capitalism.

Being false* right before the parenthesis.

We're probably not going to settle the argument here, but Bakunin told Marx that the people who violently overthrow a capitalist state and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat were probably not going to turn out to be benevolent rulers...and history bore him out.

I don't know where i heard it, but i believe Marx himself said communism wouldn't work in Russia (it being an agrarian society, not an industrialised one... Which Marx believed was a pre-requisite.)

Lol great video orthaic.

Very entertaining presenter being eastern European myself I love his typical East euro no bullshit dark humour light hearted outlook on life.