Depends on the definition. Kropotkin, who self identified as anarcho communist, wrote a scientific book literally called Mutual Aid

It’s not “destroying all the enemies of the working class” but “destroying classes so we end up being working class”. The idea (as I understand it) is that working class is the one that creates things while bourgeois class is only a parasite. So everyone should be creating something and not sucking the blood of others.

You don’t tho because you still have people in power. Even if it’s a policeman. That’s enough

But it is that selfishness that communism can’t control for and that capitalism only dampens the effect of. You need a system that counteracts those selfish tendencies in order to reach lasting stability.

This is what I always find amusing about the Communist argument.

Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can’t be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we’ll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?

“One of the USSRs biggest mistakes was giving Ayn Rand an education”

“And when all those self made champions went away and created a new society, free of the old one, one of them asked ‘does anyone of us know how to cook?’. And then they screamed in fear”.

are you really saying emulsified rat lips, chicken trimmings, porkins, and beef slurry didn’t exist in 3500 BCE?

We will feed you if you believe in our religion and work our fields, your true reward for your good works and piety will wait for you in heaven.

It’s like your pension plan in the sky.

Charity can also be used as a tax avoidance scheme and weaponized for political purposes; this is why the rich love it, through charity they are able to help themselves even further

Kids don’t want to work these days

What on Earth are you talking about?

we need to abolish private property so everybody has equal power.

Abolishing private property isn’t about equalizing power, necessarily. It’s to end Capitalist production, which is necessarily exploitative and results in Monopoly Capitalism, aka Imperialism. Abolishing Private Property allows us to produce based on needs, not profits for a few individuals.

we class of people to maintain public ownership

Communists advocate for the abolition of classes.

After all, how can we enforce public ownership without a more powerful class of enforcers?

That’s a pretty terrible misreading of Communist structures. Communists advocate for abolition of the State, via creating a government as an “administration of things,” similar to how the Post Office functions, but for all of production. The goal of protecting the revolution is done by the Proletariat, the most advanced among them making up the Vanguard. There isn’t a separate “class.”

Having been the one who brought it up, (and since I got here first) I guess I will super duper reluctantly be the enforcer. I super don’t want to y’all guys! But this is for the good of the collective!

You do realise none of the examples you brought up are actual communism. Theyre all bad attempts that were taken advantage of.

Thats like saying religion in general is bad because christianity ruined it

Authoritarianism != Communism

Communism is about the power of the working class, seizing the means of production, and self governance. No government has effectively put into practice communist practices because the concept of government itself is contrary to communism.

There’s been a decades long movement in the US to demonise communism (and socialism) in favour of capitalism. There used to be overtly communist political groups in America.

Anyway, it’s an interesting read. I highly recommend you read up about communism and what it stands for. Also capitalism because we’re all more or less living in a crony capitalist world.

Maybe read up on the genocide of the native Americans

Maybe read up on American chattel slavery

Maybe read up on the Ludlow Massacre

Maybe read up on the Tulsa Race Massacre

Notice how all yours are perpetuated by differing countries. All mine are from America. Capitalism is poison, and you are its catalyst.

Even animals are not based on such “animalistic instinct”, most of animals cooperate on some level.

My take on this is that the greatness in humanity comes from being a bunch of egoistic assholes capable of doing the right thing and help each other.

A selfless person doing something selfless is normal. A egoist doing something egoistic is normal. An egoist doing something altruistic is what raises us from pure instinct to humanity.

You can see it all play out in a microcosm on reality shows like Survivor. People cooperate and compete. They cooperate TO compete. They cooperate when it benefits them the most, and betray each other when they think they’re most likely to get away with it. Some people are more trustworthy than others. Some are extremely likely to betray, but then they struggle to benefit from cooperation.

Groups of people engaged in a kind of eusocial super cooperation are very rare and tend to be fairly small. They also tend to act the most like a clique; being highly discriminatory against the outgroup.

I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcastic or not. There are too many people out there that sound just like this.

I agree with you. If I have anything to give when I see someone in need, I give it to them. Not because I have some grand sense of purpose or anything. I do it because it makes me feel warm inside, it puts me in a better mood for the whole day knowing that someone else’s life is now a little easier because of me. Does that change the fact that I’ve made someone’s life a little easier?

Communal narcissism

that’s a very grim way of looking at goodness. Of course doing things you believe are making a positive change makes you feel good, of course helping your community makes you feel good, and it does feel nice to be recognised and known as a good person.

It’s a strange ambient idea in our society, that to be truly good you must suffer, and never find joy in the good things you do. Not to turn conspiratorial, but to me it sounds like a cope from actually selfish people who look at people who do nice things and think to themselves “they’re only doing it to be popular and feel good about themselves, why else would anyone do anything”

People help other people because it makes them feel good. And people expect themselves to be noticed or praised or rewarded, even if they tell themselves and everyone else that they don’t.

People want their labor to be recognized. But you don’t need to wield an Elon Musk level of deranged dictatorial financial clout in order to experience self-actualization for your efforts.

Pride in your work also comes with a degree of autonomy and creative freedom. A draconian profit driven privatized capitalist restaurant or clinic or school isn’t going to care whether the staff feed or heal or educate anymore. All they care about is driving up profits. By contrast, a (good) chef cares that people like the food. They care about evolving their craft. They care about the experience they are producing, even when that may mean the dish doesn’t make someone else money.

There’s a balance to be struck between enterprises with scarce resources and people with a desire to feel accomplished in their craft.

But you can strike that balance with good administrative leadership. The reward for a day’s work can be a beautiful place to live and a happy neighborhood, rather than a single incredibly rich guy hosting an award show for his pet favorites and using these token elites as an excuse to make the rest of his staff live in poverty.

I mean, you’re not wrong, but your point is also kinda meaningless. Of course, you only ever do things because there’s something in it for you, even if that something is just feeling good about yourself. If there was truly nothing in it for you, then why would you do it?

But that misses the point of the “people are inherently selfish” vs “people are inherently generous” discussion, because it’s not actually about whether people do things only for themselves at the most literal level, instead it’s about whether people inherently get something out of doing things for others without external motivation. So your point works the same on both sides of the argument.

We hear that argument a lot, and though some people’s charity may be motivated purely by egoism I don’t think it applies to the majority at all. The argument assumes that if doing something makes you feel good, then that feeling must be the sole motivation for that action, which is dubious. And if we follow this logic to its natural conclusion, every action that does not make you feel bad is egoistic, and the concept becomes completely meaningless. Saving a child from falling down a cliff? Egoistic! Intervening when someone is treated unfairly? Egoistic! Giving up your chair for an elderly person on a crowded bus? Egoistic!

Let’s take this last (admittedly small, everyday, non-dramatic) example. Sure, you could give up your seat purely because you want to look like a good person to others (although it’s doubtful anyone would even notice). It’s also possible to experience this feeling called empathy, to see an elderly person struggling to keep their balance while standing up and to want to alleviate that particular suffering. Everyone else is sitting down looking at their phones, so there’s no community pressure to speak of. No one would call you out if you just pretended not to notice. And the discomfort from standing up on a really crowded bus on a bumpy road could easily outweigh that little buzz you get from doing good.

I’ll go even further; it’s even possible, in a scenario like this, to not even think about how it’s going to make you feel or your self-image or whatever. You just want to help someone else because it’s in your power to do so. If this isn’t an example of not being egoistic, what would be? What would be the opposite of egoism? To act completely dispassionately?

And what about someone sacrificing their own life to save another? Striving to do good in the world does feel better, yes, but empathy is also a burden. Still, there are genuinely good people out there, that do good deeds and do not take any credit for it, even do it anonymously. And I can tell you from experience, not all of them walk around on clouds feeling like saints. Some of them even experience crippling guilt because they feel they do not do enough. How is that egoism?

I remember looking at charity jobs when I was graduating with my humanities degree before I got into tech. Revealingly, the alumi I was speaking to who worked in the sector said something like, “At it’s core you need to remember that working for a charity is essentially a sales job.”

Made me nope tf out of there lol.

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Kind of. I agree partly. My mother used to knit winter clothes, for free, for some institutions and she wasn’t the one delivering them. They never knew who she was, and she didn’t bother.