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Well Ive been doing a lot of reading and research on communism at the moment, and so I thought what the hell lets see what dakka thinks about it.

so come on guys opinion time.

In Soviet Russia....

I do not pretend to fully understand the ins and outs, but in short:
I think the general idea is pretty good actually (all together for the good of the country). Sadly (today at least) humans are more concerned with just themselves.

On the other hand, I do believe in the (capitalist?) idea that someone who works harder, should earn more.

Communism focuses only on the material while ignoring the other deep aspects of man, for example the Spiritual. I don't think it'll ever work while ignoring the other parts of our consciousness.

American Express = "Dont leave home without it"


Soviet Express = "Dont leave home"


Any questions?

...if we must...

reminder about forum rules, especially with regards to the way you speak to other members. If you're not sure or don't think you can be polite then don't post.

It's a party for those in power. It sounds good on paper but it will always be the haves and have nots. When you look at the power structure it is more like the rest of the Republics then they want to say.

I think Animal Farm sums it up in the most eloquent fashion:

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"

I don't know all the details on communism but from my basic knolegde on this matter, I can get a basic opinion of it.

I think that the idea is great and would lead to a great society, however humans are too selfish for it to work in practice. People will not work hard unless they get something out of it. Lack of drive pretty means you either force people to work or it fails. If people were able to be purely altruistic and keep their eyes on the bigger picture it would be one of the best solutions but unfortunately I don't see that happening.

I think it would work well in short bursts or to help countries through bad periods but I don't think it will ever work long term.

See motivation is a powerful factor. When the workers did not see anything benefit from working hard then there was no motivation thus the system fails. That is why Soviet Communism failed. Even with motivation of a gun to the worker's head forced them to work just as hard in order not to get shot.

Pipboy101 wins the thread. It's a great and wonderful concept on paper, which is why I don't think people should criticize Karl Marx - he just came up with it. He had no way of knowing it wouldn't work. It's those who implemented it and did not change even after seeing that it did not work who are to blame.

Communism is technically the best form of government, but it only works that way if left in the hands of selfless leaders and organisers.
Hence the problem.

Best form of government is a constitutional monarchy, basically democracy with limits to keep demagogues at bay.

I'm not sure I'm even convinced that communism is the best form of economic organization even if you presuppose that everyone is looking out for everyone in society equally. It still sounds like it would be a hassle to try and judge to what degree everyone wants whatever particular good. Then again, what exactly communism entails is pretty fuzzy, so I'm not even sure what it is I'm supposed to be judging.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orlanth wrote:Best form of government is a constitutional monarchy, basically democracy with limits to keep demagogues at bay.

What, in your opinion, makes a constitutional monarchy better than a constitutional republic?

Communism, as Marx conceived of it, is a Utopia in the truest sense of the word; that is, no place. Its telling that in all of his work, Marx was never able to fully elucidate just how the intermediary dictatorship of the proletariat would give rise to what he described as communism. Its also telling that all large-scale attempts to close that gap have been extraordinarily violent and repressive (Stalinism, Maoism, and to a lesser extent Leninism) in the course of failing to realize the communist system.

It is possible that, in a post scarcity society, communism could serve as a tenable form of government, but it isn't clear that a post scarcity society is even possible.

Khornholio wrote:Communism focuses only on the material while ignoring the other deep aspects of man, for example the Spiritual. I don't think it'll ever work while ignoring the other parts of our consciousness.

This sums up the primary flaw. Dogma covered other holes in Marx's theory. Marx was a brilliant man for his day but he had a lot a holes in his logic. Marx thought he could boil every conflict down to class struggles, and that if you eliminated class then there wouldn't be any problems anymore. Any historian can tell you that isn't true. Interesting reading but in the end not really a model for effective (EDIT: I should realistic) government.

In theory it should work. But in
practice it hasn't worked.

There have been other fairly recent threads on this topic.

In my opinion, Communism is the single most destructive concept of organization in human history. It's led to more death than any other.

The primary rebuttal to that is that what we've seen in our history isn't really Communism, so much as horrible dictatorships in already horrible places.

Now the problem with a class struggle is that there must always be a class system. There is no way that every person can be equal. It is a great idea that the workers are the managers or owners but the 18 year old cleaning dishes and mopping the floor is most likely not going to know how to invest capital for improvements. So there always has to be a classes if not the system will crash. That is the flaw in communism and socialism. You give the worker all the power and control what happens? Sloth and apathy kicks in after a short term honeymoon. Look at the Russian Revolution of 1917. The workers revolted and the system broke down, food shortages which allowed Lenin to move in.

Communis has never been attempted in a country with a functional and substantial economy with a strong infrustructure. Instead it's always been tried in poor, starving, authoritarian countries with histories of violence. Usually it has taken hold after violent revolutions.

The catch 22 is that if you have the economic and infrustructural ability to enact communism you have no reason to do so since you're already doing alright. It's an idealist fallback for revolutionaries when it can't possibly work following a revolution in a poor country.

Pipboy101 wrote:Now the problem with a class struggle is that there must always be a class system.

There is no class system in the United States, excepting economic class.

The real problem with class struggle is that 'class' is not a unifying identity in the same sense that ethnicity and nationality are.

Pipboy101 wrote:
That is the flaw in communism and socialism. You give the worker all the power and control what happens? Sloth and apathy kicks in after a short term honeymoon.

Giving workers all the power is closer to democracy than socialism or communism (as defined by Soviet or Maoist practice). Neither socialism nor communism makes any comment of where the ultimate political authority should rest, save for the vague 'dictatorship of the proletariat' (which was seemingly meant to resemble direct democracy) mentioned by Marx.

Pipboy101 wrote:
Look at the Russian Revolution of 1917. The workers revolted and the system broke down, food shortages which allowed Lenin to move in.

That's generally what happens in the wake of revolutions.

Also, Lenin was one of the central figures of the revolution throughout its progress. It wasn't just something he derived random profit from.

Enginseer wrote:I do not pretend to fully understand the ins and outs, but in short:
I think the general idea is pretty good actually (all together for the good of the country). Sadly (today at least) humans are more concerned with just themselves.

On the other hand, I do believe in the (capitalist?) idea that someone who works harder, should earn more.

You're mistaken in your understanding of communism. There is no equal pay, a doctor will earn more than a roadworker. The big idea behind communism is that the state owns the means of production, deciding what factories are built and where, and what is to be manufactured in each.

Individual incentive still exists.

Khornholio wrote:Communism focuses only on the material while ignoring the other deep aspects of man, for example the Spiritual. I don't think it'll ever work while ignoring the other parts of our consciousness.

Yeah, this is a big and often missed problem with communism. By constructing the state and its issues in terms of the purely material, the leaders in a communist state come to see every solution in purely material terms. This has led to a fixation on production numbers without any regard for the lives of the citizens - in notable cases in Soviet Russia whole regions were left barren to mine metals that nobody really even needed, but state production targets wanted a 5% increase...

The other big, serious problem is that ultimately state planned economies do not innovate. They can increase production and living standards for a time through simple brute force, Soviet Russia was turned from the weakest power in Europe in 1919 to the world's pre-eminant military by 1945, with industry second only to the USA. But this can only be achieved through brute power, and once every raw resource was in use, future improvements would only come from efficiency increases and technology. The Soviet Union stagnated in the 50s and 60s as a result, while the Western world and their capitalist systems grew tremendously.

Pipboy101 wrote:Now the problem with a class struggle is that there must always be a class system. There is no way that every person can be equal. It is a great idea that the workers are the managers or owners but the 18 year old cleaning dishes and mopping the floor is most likely not going to know how to invest capital for improvements. So there always has to be a classes if not the system will crash. That is the flaw in communism and socialism. You give the worker all the power and control what happens? Sloth and apathy kicks in after a short term honeymoon. Look at the Russian Revolution of 1917. The workers revolted and the system broke down, food shortages which allowed Lenin to move in.

In fact, there wasn't a revolution. There was a coup - a handful of hardened believers captured government. The subsequent civil war was a disorganised affair, with most Red soldiers pressed into service - they were not revolutionaries, there was no real groundswell towards communism in Russia.

This is an ugly truth to communism - it has little traction with the majority of the workers. It's largely the fantasy of a minority of middle class folk, and sometimes countries are screwed up enough that they are able to sieze power.

dogma wrote:There is no class system in the United States, excepting economic class.

The real problem with class struggle is that 'class' is not a unifying identity in the same sense that ethnicity and nationality are.

You think so? Interesting.

It's long been an argument in communist circles that economic class is the only real level of distinction between folk, and I tend to think it's one point where communism is right on the money.

It has alot of sound ideas, that just dont seem to work in the real world. It always gets corrupted and then misused.

Is this the Communism of airy theories or the actual real world one that has brought tyranny, suffering and death to billions?

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Is this the Communism of airy theories or the actual real world one that has brought tyranny, suffering and death to billions?

Actually none of the mass murdering authoritarian regimes have been historically marxist communisms.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Is this the Communism of airy theories or the actual real world one that has brought tyranny, suffering and death to billions?

Actually none of the mass murdering authoritarian regimes have been historically marxist communisms.

And no country calling itself a marxist communist state has been anything but a dictatorship. As I said are we talking theory or practice?

economic class is the only real level of distinction between folk, and I tend to think it's one point where communism is right on the money.

Tell that to Indians of the Asian variety.

There's a caste system over there, but it also roughly correlates to darkness. The darker your skin is, the generally lower in social standing you're going to be.

At the same time, you've got Indians coming over to the US, and the rules are different. They're given jobs based on their skillset, and you can end up with darker skinned people senior to lighter skinned guys, supervising them, directing them, etc. It's not a comfortable situation for them.

In general, I think there are a lot of examples of race/appearance/heritage being used as a basis for class.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Is this the Communism of airy theories or the actual real world one that has brought tyranny, suffering and death to billions?

Actually none of the mass murdering authoritarian regimes have been historically marxist communisms.

And no country calling itself a marxist communist state has been anything but a dictatorship. As I said are we talking theory or practice?

I forget, is the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea democratic?

Nope, constitutionally it's Marxist/Leninist/Kimist with the late Kim Il Song as eternal president.

Just checking. I think I was making a point about how calling yourself something doesn't actually mean that you are that something, but I could be wrong.

What is exactly a Marxist Communism? Marx left a lot of gaps and holes in his theory of government partly because his work was never completed. The creation of the various communist governments of the world was the result of individuals trying to fill in the holes to make it work.

Whether or not they were true communisms as Marx intended is somewhat irrelevant anyway. Most of the Marx's theories were based on assumptions that later turned out to be flawed. Even a true Marxist Communism, whatever that may be, probably still wouldn't work.