Could Communism have worked?

[dANdeLION]

Yeah, that's your opinion--which might be best left in the Tank. The extended argument of Marx's original vision has been interperated to suppose (I'm sure people have heard this many times before) that one day a uptopian nexus will be achieved where machines do all the work and everyone can live a life of ease...so what you're infering is that I better get off my evil fat ass, stop playing on the computer all the time and get a JOB?!! Thanks alot!

Interperated? Uptopian? Damn those big words conplexicate me!!

[Loredoctor]

Simple answer: no. Human nature will always intervene to cause difficulties for any social system. We're naturally selfish and competitive creatures, so Communism never really had a chance.

[dANdeLION]

You say that like it's a bad thing...I prefer to say it thusly: Reagan would have defeated it no matter who was in charge of it!

[Loredoctor]

Communism defeated itself; Reagan was just president at the time, and American pride today rewrites history.

I don't believe Communism is evil.

[danlo]

Depending how you look at it nothing is necessarily evil...I personally don't believe in evil (psychics and other newagers say by doing this I'm opening up a hidden back door in my spirit for it to enter my and thus take over entirely, and Catholics tell me I'm going to Hell anyway, so... ).

We're naturally selfish and competitive creatures

So this infers that the communism inherently robs the individual of a very large degree of "free will"?

[Gart]

I'm with Loremaster on this one: Communism simply goes too much against basic human nature to have a chance of working efficiently. It's a lovely idea, everyone working together for the common good...but people aren't motivated by the common good by and large, they're motivated by their own good.
So no, I don't think it could have worked. People wouldn't have been committed to it without enforcement, and that's the road to dictatorial regimes and enforced ( and hence inefficient) labour...which is pretty much where it went.

[danlo]

The extended argument of Marx's original vision has been interpreted to suppose (I'm sure people have heard this many times before) that one day a utopian nexus will be achieved where machines do all the work and everyone can live a life of ease...

This theme has been knocked around in Sci Fi and Fantasy, primarily, Sci Fi (there's a great example in Zindell's The Wild), but it usually ends up where the society becomes lazy, individually isolated, and vunerable. So it other words it would turn us into blind sheep regardless?

[Loredoctor]

I'm with Loremaster on this one: Communism simply goes too much against basic human nature to have a chance of working efficiently. It's a lovely idea, everyone working together for the common good...but people aren't motivated by the common good by and large, they're motivated by their own good.
So no, I don't think it could have worked. People wouldn't have been committed to it without enforcement, and that's the road to dictatorial regimes and enforced ( and hence inefficient) labour...which is pretty much where it went.

Good post.

[Avatar]

Good posts danlo, LM and Gart. (Hey Gart! Haven't seen you for a while huh?)

I agree. Perfect on paper, spoilt by humans, but not evil.

--A

[Marv]

Firstly, I believe in property in the products of labor for the individual, so I am opposed to socialism.

However, I am against private companies or individuals OWNING natural resources. Those who want to use natural resources can "get hold of them" just fine by paying the community the market price for them, just as they now pay the wealthy, idle private owner the market price for doing nothing. It's called Georgism and it's the most efficient and most moral system there is.

As for Socialism/marxism/communism...well imo it fails because it is economically less efficient than capitalism. It collectivizes privately created value, while capitalism privatizes publicly created value. As privately created value creates far more capital, capitalism is far less unjust in theory, and as history has shown, far more successful in practice.


Ultimately Marxists, communists and socialists are the capitalists' patsies, nothing but a handy distraction from their real enemy: equal individual rights to access and use of natural resources.

Sorry for not answering the qestion.

[CovenantJr]

I think Gart said it very well; if I were to remark upon the broad topic at hand, I'd just be reiterating his post.

I do want to address this though:

But how do you get a big enough group to believe in the same thing that strongly, and sustain such belief over time?

Not as impossible as you would think. It is no coincidence that many people in the same culture tend to have the same beliefs.

There are two problems that occur to me right now:

1) It's easy for a large proportion of the population to share a belief if the act of believing is passive, but communism is something that requires willpower and dedication, since it (as eloquently described above) runs contrary to human nature, in general. In order for communism to function ideally, a consuming, absolute faith in the correctness of the system is required. In essence, communism would need to be a religion; but not just for some, or even the majority, but for everyone. This brings me to point two...

2) It requires only a few people to destroy such a system. Communism, as a way of life, would have to be enforced either by the personal belief of each individual or by the state. If enforced by the state, you end up with Stalinist Russia again. If left to the potency of each person's faith in the communist ideal, all that is required is a handful of people who don't believe but are willing to 'play the system'. If the only thing preventing self-interest taking over is commitment, those who aren't committed can easily bring the whole edifice crashing down. Again, there's no way to prevent this except by state enforcement. For those, such as Gart, who have read Gormenghast, I could use Steerpike as an example. Though Gormenghast is far from communist, it does demonstrate my point about faith: the sole reason the various earls are bound like prisoners in their own lives is because of respect for tradition; one person without this respect for tradition (Steerpike) is all it takes to bring the whole thing to the brink of collapse.

[dANdeLION]

Communism defeated itself; Reagan was just president at the time, and American pride today rewrites history.

I don't believe Communism is evil.

Ahh, don't take my attempts at humour as 'America rewrites history'. Frankly, every nation rewrites it, anyway.

[CovenantJr]

Indeed they do. For example, did you know we British have never even seen any tea? We only edited tea into our history to make us look refined.

[Cail]

I thought the tea was to kill the taste of awful British food.

[CovenantJr]

Oi! There's nothing wrong with tripe.

[Loredoctor]

Communism defeated itself; Reagan was just president at the time, and American pride today rewrites history.

I don't believe Communism is evil.

Ahh, don't take my attempts at humour as 'America rewrites history'. Frankly, every nation rewrites it, anyway.

If I was the moderator here I'd rewrite this post.

[Marv]

I do not think communism is a lovely idea precisely because it runs counter to so many things humans value. Namely, our individuality.

[Loredoctor]

It doesn't preclude individuality - Stalinism did that. Communism precludes imbalances of wealth.

[Marv]

It doesn't preclude individuality - Stalinism did that. Communism precludes imbalances of wealth.

Well, wasn't that the original question? Isn't communism so inherently flawed that it always becomes twisted in to something that runs counter to many things humans value? Or can it turn out differently?

I just don't see how it's such a great and just system if it's pre-requsite to actually working is that humans are completely different and care about completely different things. I'm not talking about lusting after more wealth necessarily. Don't we value the right to private contract between two individuals for instance? What about the right to private ownership of the fruits of labour? I think they can both be justified but under a communist system aren't these things disregarded?

[Loredoctor]

But none of those things negate individualism. Anyway, please point out actual cases where it did remove individualism, because as far as I can see that never happened.