I hope that the current circumstances trigger a renewed interest in thinking about how we organise our society. It would be great if that could be done rationally, without taboos. I don't have high hopes though. The people in power want to stay in power, and any hint at socialistic or communistic ideas are quickly shot down.
Communism as implemented by Soviet Russia was pretty bad and failed, but that doesn't mean that the ideas of Karl Marx are all terrible.
I like the idea of a centrally managed economy but I don't think it's a stable system. There's too much opportunity for abuse by the central power.
I hope we explore the spectrum between extreme capitalism and extreme communism.
Does anyone have any reading recommendations that explore these kinds of economic and societal system?
For example, the "soviet" system was a bottom up democratic system where labor unions effectively formed the foundation. There was a lot of thought into how the system was formed and even the CIA admitted Stalin was more of a team captain than a dictator. Hell you can get a lot of interesting tidbits into declassified reports on the Soviet Union. There's the famous one about how the soviets were better fed than their American counterparts, despite the claims of breadlines.
It's really quite sad that we are basically not allowed to learn from the positive aspects of these projects.
For example, people hate on Stalin a lot, but his 5-year plans were so wildly productive and successful, even a young South Korea deep in a western backed dictatorship copied the idea in order to boot strap their industrial base. China continues to use this idea, the simple method of setting goals in the short, medium, and long term in order to use resources effectively.
you mean productive as in Holodomor?
By all means Op can say that they agree with some Marxist ideas, but when the real human costs of that model are very well proven out by now it should be a red flag if someone doesn’t acknowledge those costs from the jump. I’m not surprised this quickly went to suggesting Stalin wasn’t so bad.
You literally proved my point, One can't say "Stalin's 5-year plans were overall successful and copied by other countries" without "but holodomor". Yet you can say all you want about Churchill or Britain's policies without a smug "Bengal famine" appearing.
The main issue being, our governments and society have made it clear that the opinions of those who hold Capital are far more important than the unproductive surplus. Our entire society now is based around consuming cheap products we don't need, because the previous cheap products wore out prematurely. The focus on a profit motive tosses aside great discoveries that are unable to turn a profit, while encouraging useless advancements that only degrade our lives.
IE advertisements make money, but I've never met someone who believes their life to be improved by ads, except for a minority of shareholders.
On the other hand, there have been many medical advancements all but scrapped because the lack of profit outweighed the human benefit.
The profit motive is incompatible with a robust society. I won't pretend to have the answers on what should be done and how to implement it, but I know that our current system cannot last forever.