[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, ...