I see this way too often here on Lemmy, so I want to post this. Starting a commune is legal in most countries. If you believe in communism, you can found a commune and show us all how great it is.
You lack money? Well, that is literally what stock markets and venture capitalists (capitalism) are created to solve. If you are ready for an IPO, you can sell shares to raise funds. If you are not, you can get Venture Capital in exchange for shares until you are ready for an IPO.
Getting rid of capitalism means you need to find a different way to obtain funding for new ventures. And if your system relies on government charity (some government board handing you money) or taking resources violently, than your system sucks.
Edit: I don’t mean that this is a replacement for full communist system. I mean this as a way to get some of the advantages while showing sceptics (like me) it can work and is better. A first step.
Seizing the means of production and putting it in the ownership of the workers will, realistically, require revolution or damn well near it. But, workers owning their work doesn’t require an end to our current markets. We can keep them mostly as is, besides, of course, the rich and powerful people who currently do no work and just “own” things. From that state, it can be a more gradual transition.
If you think this, you are likely severely underestimating how important modern financial markets are to doing anything. You redistribute the wealth suddenly enough and I expect the great depression will seem like nostalgic good times.
More importantly, is the difference between what we know is possible without a revolution (countries I listed above) so much worse than communism it would be worth the lives lost in a revolution? I don’t see it.
Plenty of people die daily in first-world countries that could have been saved in a different economic system, because saving them was not profitable. Even more die elsewhere, where the first-world countries have outsourced a lot of their miserable jobs. Cobalt mines in the Congo, used for certain lithium-ion battery chemistries for instance, have terrible working conditions and child labor. Another example is climate change: how many people will die this century from famine and water scarcity caused by a changing climate? Externalities don’t factor into capitalist profits, and the governments are usually under their control so they’ll just pay lip service to action or very slowly and reluctantly enact regulation.
Revolution is a one-time cost. It’ll suck, I hate it, but it seems to me like it’d be worth it in the long run. I’d also love to avoid revolution entirely, but that threatens capitalist profit so I really doubt governments (again, controlled by the interests of capitalists) will make it easy.
Another thing worth noting: revolution doesn’t mean financial markets have to immediately change. Companies can still act capitalist (at the start), they’d just be controlled by the workers now. Once workers own everything, and government infrastructure is set up to facilitate the sort of democracy and management communism would need, we can phase in changes. With control of the government, there could also be subsidies set up to help stabilize the market during transitions; for the US at least, there’s about ~$700 billion/year for the military as it stands, that seems like a sizeable fund to pinch from for such subsidies in the short term.
First of all, look at your government, your elections and tell me people will vote for sacrificing their comforts to preserve ecology under any democratic system…
Second of all, the global GDP per capita is $12.688. That is yearly. So after you redistribute the world wealth equally, you get $1057 before tax, capital investment and capital amortization monthly. The issue isn’t really the economic system, it is that there isn’t enough for 8 billion people to live comfortably.
Next, financial markets require investment money and traders with education and experience. You are really expecting the people whose fortunes you have taken and shot at during your revolution to keep running your financial markets? And run them in your best interests?
Finally, the same polarization that prevents a democratic change would prevent a violent one. Have you seen the US military? No amount of pitchforks and handguns is defeating that. Unless you convince most of the population to support you, you are doomed to fail. And if you do convince them, why do you need a revolution instead of an election?