[camikazeg]

If communism could just be boiled down to "laborers own the means of production" then what stops that from happening within capitalism?

What prevents people from banding together to create factories that they then work in, for example?

[ue_]

These factories must compete with others which value profit as the highest motive. So because there is still a profit motive, the co-op factory must optimise on two fronts: money in order to keep itself afloat and still purchase the required capital (and labour power), and further to operate by "ethical" principles toward the workers (whatever those may be).

Thus co-ops will have a tendency to fail within capitalism, because they usually cannot compete sufficiently. In addition, unless everyone worked in co-ops, there would still be worker exploitation, and thus still need for Communism (in the eyes of Socialists). This is especially true in developing countries.

Exploitation happens at a class level, not an individual level, nor the co-op level. It is pervasive.

[Sacho]

Okay, but this competition is a benefit to the consumer, so you're arguing that the consumers should eschew this benefit in favor of "ethical" factories. From what you're saying you seem to believe consumers largely refuse to do this, so you would have to remove this choice from them completely.

The problem then(also identified by communists of old..) is that you can't compete with forces outside your control - so you either need a global communist revolution, or you need pretty strict isolationism.

Since you never convinced your consumers that ethical factories are worth supporting, how do you plan to deal with the resentment they feel when they see the wealth foreigners posses achieved through the harsher competition policies of capitalism? Will you be suppressing information and limiting access to the Internet? Maybe some propaganda pieces about how your ethical factories are better than slavery under capitalism?

Maybe the "horror stories" of communism were caused by its flawed leaders more than the ideology itself. But it seems that a lot of stuff that we wouldn't really be happy with needs to happen in order to implement "perfect communism".

[candiodari]

You forget what profit is. Profit is (the monetary value of) the benefit to society of the product being produced.

Now when you say "must optimize on two fronts: money in order to keep itself afloat and" ... that first one is NOT optional. If that first one is not a prerequisite to having the factory than that factory (or company, or ...) is a net loss for the economy, society, for the world as a whole. You seem to imply it is tenable for a society to have most or all companies operate under such conditions, and of course it is not.

That is of course the alleged problem with communism. Profit in itself is not a necessity, but having profit >=0 over the long run IS a necessity (but obviously for company stability having a decent positive profit most years is very much not optional, and any exceptions must be made for investment purposes, not for any other reason). Otherwise, colloquially, you're "eating your seed grain".

That is the problem, right there. Communist economists see communism as a system that can work because people would still generate profit. People, even communist activists themselves, see communism as a system that can deny the real world. And under those circumstances, of course communism fails. Under a communist system as understood in economics departments, profit would still be an existential necessity for any company.

So if avoiding profit and "instead get X" is why you're a communist, stop right there. That's not communism, that's fantasy. No matter what X is. Stop defending anything remotely like that as an advantage of a communist system, because it is not. The real world need for more valuable output than input from any long-term process, applies just as much to communism as to capitalism, mercantilism, ...

[aninhumer]

>Profit is (the monetary value of) the benefit to society of the product being produced.

No. Monetary value is not perfect measure of utility, because market demand is weighted by wealth.

A luxury yacht for one individual clearly provides nowhere near as much utility to them as an equivalently priced quantity of food would provide to a bunch of homeless people, but the market prices it as such because the individual is richer. If we could magically swap the yacht for the food, everything else being the same, society would be better off as a result.

We allow this inequality of demand because it is what drives the supply side towards efficiency, and for the most part I think this is a reasonable compromise.

But we should not confuse profit with utility.

[candiodari]

Again you're confusing some arbitrary ideological measure with utility. Social justice in this case.

Firstly profits of 5% of revenue are considered high, on average. That's what that yacht is paid out of, and that means that feeding many homeless with it wouldn't work in practice.

Second luxury articles provide firms with the rewards of motivation of their employees. Everyone in Silicon Valley keeps reminding us how that's the lifeblood of every company, and while I disagree with that, it's obviously useful, both to that firm and to society. So the yacht has more utility than you give it credit for.

[aninhumer]

> you're confusing some arbitrary ideological measure

Well I'm not using a well defined measure of utility here, but I thought it was fairly non-controversial to say that, at least in immediate terms, food for many people creates more utility than a yacht for one person.

That they're homeless isn't the point, and I should have left out that rehetoric. The point is just that they're less able to demand the food than the rich person is the yacht, despite it providing them more utility.

> luxury articles provide firms with the rewards of motivation

Yes, I said that. Inequality is what drives the supply side, and I agree that this may lead to better outcomes overall, but my point is that it complicates the process, and detaches money from being a raw measure of utility.

The possibility of a yacht may encourage someone to produce food more efficiently, but this is a lot harder to measure. Maybe the level of inequality doesn't matter that much as long as people perceive higher social status? Maybe the inequality reduces opportunities for many potential innovators, destroying more efficiency than it encourages? Or maybe the lack of security discourages people from taking risks even if they have opportunities?

I'm not asserting any of these ideas, just pointing out factors that confound measuring the utility created by inequality.