Who wants to talk about communism today?

There are a lot of alarms being raised by conservative media outlets about the left's "socialist / communist / Marxist agenda." (Plus some added hysteria about indoctrination into the LGBTQ+ community.)

Why are people so freaked out by communism, though? It's painted as the oppressive philosophy of Star-Wars-level evil empire; tied to the crimes done by Russia and China, and associated with dystopian, poverty-stricken scenes with malnourished citizens.

Which is insane. Communism is just a model for society based on cooperation instead of competition. That's it.

Capitalism = compete.
Communism = collaborate.

Capitalism puts the needs of the individual first and foremost.
Communism puts the collective good first.

Capitalism depends on an innate drive for personal gain.
Communism depends on an innate desire for community.

It's not that hard, it's not very dark, and it's not that crazy.

We've been taught over the past hundred-or-so years that human nature is fundamentally selfish. It's a dog-eat-dog world. We're prone to violence. We play a zero-sum game. We've been shown examples of chimpanzees, one of our closest genetic relatives, raping and killing. We've been told Lord-of-the-Flies stories about kids who scrap for alpha status.

Except: chimpanzees aren't our only close relatives. Bonobos share the same amount of our monkey-DNA, and they're the exact opposite of the chimps: living in so tight a community that they seemingly don't care whose kids are whose and just share everything.

And there's a real-life example of young boys surviving on an island. They were perfectly civil, cooperated, and all made it home.

Humans spent most of our species' history with no concept of private property. Capitalism still breaks the brains of some tribes living in remote areas of the world today.

Pause: I'm not campaigning to bring about a communist nation here in Canada. (I think I'll touch on why later.) For now, I'm just talking about the wild stigma around the idea.

Why is someone viewed as a deviant anarchist for even bringing it up? Why are "commies" the scourge of the Western nations? Why is it associated with authoritarian regimes and a total loss of freedom?

Propaganda.

The U.S.A. really broke peoples' brains recently. They got started with campaigns to demonize marijuana as "a drug that leads to Mexicans raping your wives and daughters" and makes "blacks forget their place in society. (Seriously: that is why weed was outlawed.) They then ramped up the commie slander with the "Red Menace" campaign. Films and posters depicting zombies and skeletal soldiers (once again assaulting women because, of course they were) were pumped out and plastered everywhere. Russia was the enemy, sure, but it was really a war of opposing ideologies: capitalism, freedom, and prosperity vs communism, oppression, and poverty.

Since then, no one has successfully disentangled the different things at play. Communism is still tied with authoritarianism—as if it's impossible to democratically elect a leader in a communist system. That...makes no sense. The economic structure of a country has nothing to do with the political system.

The Western PR machine will say, "communism has never worked," but the truth is: it's never really been tried—not in a way that actually maintains the spirit of it.

So should we try it? Probably not. Not right now, anyway

I like the idea in theory only. If I were to draw up a utopian society (as I have in some of my yet-to-be-finished stories), they're based in communism. The ceiling for a communist society is higher than the ceiling for a capitalist one. You get to a point when everyone has more than enough, and the need to be selfish just kind of...evaporates. And when technology evolves to a point where we don't need humans to perform most jobs, there's...the foundations of capitalism's incentive structure don't really function.

In my communist utopia, people don't have to work. Survival's taken care of. Robots mine resources, cultivate food, drive the hovercars, build the homes—there just isn't much "work" work for anyone to carry out. We don't have to coerce people to do things they don't want to do. They don't HAVE to do anything. Instead, they GET to do something they actually care about—primarily something creative. They invent things, explore, and make art.

But that's a sci-fi dream. Could it work now? Maybe. But we might not be ready for it. A lot of us would have to make "sacrifices" to bring it about, there would be a long adjustment period where a lot of people are just...lazy, and the logistics might be beyond our current leaders' capabilities.

Let's say we snapped our fingers and Canada was instantly communist. If we split everything equally, every adult in the country would get around $100,000 before taxes. That means everyone currently making more than that would, in theory, have to lower their standard of living in a communist society. That's not really fair. Some of those people worked hard and deserve to be where they're at. And if you're a two-person family living in, say, Toronto: you might lose your home with that little money.

There are arguments to be made that your quality of life wouldn't actually drop, since studies show every dollar you make above $75,000 doesn't move the needle much. That's a long-run thing, though. If I cut your income in half tomorrow, and you had to cancel your trip to France, and sell a cottage, and trade in your car: you'd be unhappy.

On the flip side: there will be a whole bunch of people who don't deserve $100,000/year. While I'm all for teachers and nurses making the same as bankers, there will undoubtedly be those who take advantage of a system with an unbreakable safety net. People will stay at home, drink, smoke, watch TV, and generally leach of society. That will happen—my belief is that it won't last, though.

Right now, a lot of people eject from society because they don't like the game they're asked to play. They don't want to bust their ass (and single their forearms) standing over a deep frier—just for enough change to buy garbage food and ride a crowded bus too and from that job they hate. So when freed from it, they might just take a little vacation.

But that's no way to be happy long-term. Most of us have a built-in desire to be of service. Part of our DNA—baked in from our time hunting and gathering—is contributing to the tribe. (That's why so many of us who've worked meaningless jobs face existential crisis’s. We fear that we're not actually of use to anyone.)

So that vacation will get old, and people will feel the need to do Something. Maybe they'll restring the guitar in the corner, or invest in some art supplies, or start a community for recovering addicts. That's something I take on faith: given guaranteed income, most people will still find a way to do something valuable for society. But that's a big assumption, and everything crumbles without it.

And then there's the last bit: if there's no private property, someone has to be in charge of distributing resources. I have absolutely no faith in our current public servants to do that job well. It would somehow cost twice what it should just to send cheques out. People would skim off the top. They'd find ways to rig the system and reward their friends and lobbyists.

It'd be easy to say, "let's just get good people in those jobs, then," but let's be real: that's never worked well. Hell, that's where capitalism is slipping away. In theory, it's also a fine idea. It's the people making the rules who're giving it a bad name.

So the only option there is to wait for the system to be automated. Fully-AI-controlled distribution of resources. Fully-roboticized labour. Those are the conditions in which communism can work.

So yeah, I think it's fine in theory. I think it's better in theory. I think it works best in sci-fi.

OH—but we should still definitely have universal basic income. That is not communism. That is not Marxism. That is not incentivizing drug users to leech off society. It's just a littttttle safety net to give everyone a better shot at being a more productive member of society. It empowers single parents to enroll their kids in sports and hobbies and send them off for an education. It keeps desperate people out of lives of crime. It enables people to take care of their health. It alleviates peoples' greatest fear—that they might not survive—and lets them focus on something more than their own immediate needs.

That's not fairy-tale silliness. Well...then again, I am just some silly guy sitting in a bar with his dog. So...maybe it is.

Oh well, made ya think!