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A concept tarnished by those who have claimed to be working towards its ends, or evil in its purest form? What do the people of Dakka Dakka think?

I remember when I was in college I used to want to follow communism... not sure what happened.

Communism in practice is just one of those things that doesn't work out as the ideal would like it to. But come on. It's not like Democracy is flawless or anything

Well if you go by the Marxist definition, true communism never happened the closest there's ever been is socialism.

Communism is inevitability. Eventually technological progress will eliminate scarcity (after all, there's plenty of raw materials and energy in the solar system) and money will cease to exist as a relevant concept. Civilization will inevitably become something Marx would entirely approve of, simply because doing anything else would make no sense.

Of course communism before reaching that point is a broken system, as history nicely demonstrates.

I wonder what the people of North Korea or Cuba have to say? I'm sure its grand!

Communism is evil and everyone who supports it is a commy pinko traitor!


In all seriousness, it's a nice thought but as long as resources are limited it can't work. For a society to work, someone has to get the short end of the stick.

 Byte wrote:
I wonder what the people of North Korea or Cuba have to say? I'm sure its grand!

North Korea isn't Communist. Cuba is influenced, but isn't by definition.

Communism by definition is a society which has no class to speak of and is controlled by the people as a whole. No single person has authority over another. Money wouldn't exist, and everything would be divided equally amongst the people.

 blood reaper wrote:

 Byte wrote:
I wonder what the people of North Korea or Cuba have to say? I'm sure its grand!

North Korea isn't Communist. Cuba is influenced, but isn't by definition.

Communism by definition is a society which has no class to speak of and is controlled by the people as a whole. No single person has authority over another. Money wouldn't exist, and everything would be divided equally amongst the people.

Really, check your history. That's the whole point. Disguised as a benefit for the people, than deceived by a dictator. Read up on the American Korean War and China's involvement. That since your in learning mode, check out the USSR's adoption of Cuba and Castro's rule. Read up some next time.

Name one true Communist country by definition, o wait you can't. That's the rub.

Um... North Korea removed every instance of the word Communism from their constitution. =P

 Byte wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:

 Byte wrote:
I wonder what the people of North Korea or Cuba have to say? I'm sure its grand!

North Korea isn't Communist. Cuba is influenced, but isn't by definition.

Communism by definition is a society which has no class to speak of and is controlled by the people as a whole. No single person has authority over another. Money wouldn't exist, and everything would be divided equally amongst the people.

Really, check your history. That's the whole point. Disguised as a benefit for the people, than deceived by a dictator. Read up on the American Korean War and China's involvement. That since your in learning mode, check out the USSR's adoption of Cuba and Castro's rule. Read up some next time.

Name one true Communist country by definition, o wait you can't. That's the rub.

That's my point.

There has never been a true communist country, and I agree with your benefit of the people statement, thought that applies to more than just Communism, it applies to almost every political party that has ever existed.

(Also, betting this thread won't last too long.)

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Um... North Korea removed every instance of the word Communism from their constitution. =P

So it never existed? So Russia was never Communist? East Germany?

djphranq wrote:
I remember when I was in college I used to want to follow communism... not sure what happened.

Life happened?

 Peregrine wrote:
Communism is inevitability. Eventually technological progress will eliminate scarcity (after all, there's plenty of raw materials and energy in the solar system) and money will cease to exist as a relevant concept. Civilization will inevitably become something Marx would entirely approve of, simply because doing anything else would make no sense.

Of course communism before reaching that point is a broken system, as history nicely demonstrates.

Yep basically this, Communism is impossible under present resource and social conditions. Which is really too bad, true communism is a beautiful thing, the ideal of communism is a beautiful thing, but without mankind being ready for it, like many things it's a concept that is tarnished and let down by the human element.

As long as theres a bigger cave and more women in the other clan we will have the "haves and the have nots" Its human nature..chemical if you will.

Communal government can never happen. Look at all the 70's cults, it was all about the leader having access to the women and children while being revered as a prophet/god.

I'll take capitalism.

 Byte wrote:
Name one true Communist country by definition, o wait you can't. That's the rub.

A country, in the modern sense? Of course we can't; no modern nation has done so.

But many of the pre-Columbian native American tribes managed it quite effortlessly. The trick is making it work at something bigger than the tribal level.

Communism, no matter how many times it's been attempted always results in the same thing and it's never pretty.

 LuciusAR wrote:
Communism, no matter how many times it's been attempted always results in the same thing and it's never pretty.

In more ways then one. Have you seen East German Architecture? *gag* you can make vomit more visually appealing.

 Vulcan wrote:


But many of the pre-Columbian native American tribes managed it quite effortlessly. The trick is making it work at something bigger than the tribal level.

I was just going to mention this. Originally, Native American tribes had what was basically a communist society and it worked very well. Only problem is, once you get to a larger size you get idiots who mess everything up by trying to gain more power or take more than their fair share. I've gotten into a very lengthy talk about the specifics of communism at a small scale versus a nation-sized scale before, but I don't feel like typing it all up unless anyone is interested.

I don't know comrade, I find it a party and fantastic leaders, where every one is the same.

/sarcasm

In all honesty Communism is the perfect form of government, but ever since we are human we screw it up, if we weren't human the system would work, there have been no pure communistic systems. So ever since it cannot be performed correctly it is a bad form of government as our frame of minds would not be able to complete it correctly.

 DarkCorsair wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:


But many of the pre-Columbian native American tribes managed it quite effortlessly. The trick is making it work at something bigger than the tribal level.

I was just going to mention this. Originally, Native American tribes had what was basically a communist society and it worked very well. Only problem is, once you get to a larger size you get idiots who mess everything up by trying to gain more power or take more than their fair share. I've gotten into a very lengthy talk about the specifics of communism at a small scale versus a nation-sized scale before, but I don't feel like typing it all up unless anyone is interested.

I think it's really unfair to characterize Native American society in North American, and points further south as "small scale" the Lakota Sioux maintained healthy community focused living with millions of members spread across hundred of bands. As did many other native tribes with similar cultural ideals. That said I would be interested to hear you expand briefly on small scale communism, I've probably written something similar at some point but it's always nice to hear another point of view.

Native Americans were not and never had been "True Communists." They had a caste system, and they had leaders who held power over other people. By no means were the communist, and anyone who declares otherwise is deluding themselves based upon an academically romanticised version of history.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 DarkCorsair wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:


But many of the pre-Columbian native American tribes managed it quite effortlessly. The trick is making it work at something bigger than the tribal level.

I was just going to mention this. Originally, Native American tribes had what was basically a communist society and it worked very well. Only problem is, once you get to a larger size you get idiots who mess everything up by trying to gain more power or take more than their fair share. I've gotten into a very lengthy talk about the specifics of communism at a small scale versus a nation-sized scale before, but I don't feel like typing it all up unless anyone is interested.

I think it's really unfair to characterize Native American society in North American, and points further south as "small scale" the Lakota Sioux maintained healthy community focused living with millions of members spread across hundred of bands. As did many other native tribes with similar cultural ideals. That said I would be interested to hear you expand briefly on small scale communism, I've probably written something similar at some point but it's always nice to hear another point of view.

First, I'll admit that I haven't studied native american culture, however I would assume that the large Sioux community was broken up into smaller portions that were only loosely connected to each other compared to how most nations operate today.

Anyway, I don't have time to type up everything right now, but one of the main arguments against pure communism is that someone can do less work than someone else and still receive the same benefits, which promotes laziness and reduces productivity. In a small scale community, this would be less of a problem. Because of the low number of people, people who are slacking off significantly would be noted quickly, and either A) Properly disciplined by whoever has the job to do such a thing, or B) shunned by society.

Let's go over option B first. In a smaller community, more than two or three people not doing their work simply would not happen, as any more would have a noticeable effect on the community's production capabilities and everyone would receive less resources. The slackers would likely be noted quickly and be shunned by society. Loneliness gets to people quickly (best example I can think of right now is Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men) and the majority of these people would begin working harder due to a desire to fit back into society. In a larger community, you could have a higher number of lazy workers, nullifying the issue of loneliness and alienation. It's similar to an argument I made in another thread about why you get less trolls and annoyances on smaller forums as opposed to large ones like Dakka; people simply don't have anyone to back them up or "feed" them and the desire to identify with a group of people overrides whatever destructive tendencies they may have.

Option A is a bit more straightforward. Take a small tribe for example. People X and Y are slacking off, so person Z tips off the tribal leader about it and he has a quick little talk with them about it and keeps a close eye on them; problem solved. When you move it up to something like a huge factory complex with hundreds or thousands of workers in it, it's much harder to keep track of everyone, and the workers may not even see their supervisors all that often. A very simple example, and I realized my ideas aren't all that developed in this paragraph just yet, but I'm tired. I'll go over some other subjects tomorrow, I quite like talking about things like this


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 Ratbarf wrote:
Native Americans were not and never had been "True Communists." They had a caste system, and they had leaders who held power over other people. By no means were the communist, and anyone who declares otherwise is deluding themselves based upon an academically romanticised version of history.

Communism still has people who act as supervisors and decision makers, they just don't get any benefits over the standard workers. And no one is saying they were "true communists," just that they were about as close as humanity has ever gotten. Stalin-ruled Russia was nowhere even close.

But it doesn't have slaves, a thing that many Native American cultures did have, though more like indentured servitude instead of America's general view of slavery.

This thread again? It's been, like, three weeks since someone started one. I mean, that was on socialism, but still. If we have to keep having threads where someone challenges us to debate some random economic system, can't we at least do one of the whacky ones? Anarcho-syndicalism or something?


Anyhow, if you really want to talk about communism, you have to unpack all the various parts of it, and first take out the stuff that's pure myth, then pull out the stuff that has been associated with communism but isn't actually a definitional part of communism, leaving you with what communism actually is.

First up - the big myths about communism;
"In communist societies everyone gets the same, and so there's no motivation to work harder." Actually different levels of skill are rewarded - doctors get paid a lot more than store clerks.
"In communist societies there is no private property." This isn't true, it is still possible to own cars and even housing (in fact I think there was a point in the 60s where private home ownership in the USSR was higher than in the UK).

Second up, stuff that happens to be associated with communism but is in fact highly negotiable;
Communism does not have to be totalitarian state. If a population democratically elected . That said, you'd have to be mad not to notice that every communist state has been non-democratic, and many horrifically oppressive. Recognising that communism is not inherently undemocratic, but that its only ever happened through non-democratic means actually tells us something pretty powerful about communism - no society has ever actually chosen it through elections. It is not something that people, as a whole, actually want.

All of that leaves us with what communism actually is;
Communism is a society in which the means of production are owned by the people as a whole. That is, all the factories and retail stores and everything are owned by everyone, there is no owner class that commands income simply by owning productive assets. It isn't anything more than this, and it isn't anything less. This means there is no investment market, no collection of people who earn a living figuring out how to get canned corn to the market for 1c less than it currently costs, no people figuring out how to produce a mobile phone that's slightly better than the one that's already on the market. The result of this is that in communist societies stagnation is inevitable, economic progress is limited to what special government initiatives (and that typically ends up being in big grandstanding projects like space exploration). Communist countries have never given us the technological revolutions of microcomputers or the internet, they've never given us a car that didn't suck. But they did put the first man into space.


The point of that exercise is to strip out all the stuff people make a lot of noise about communism, and get to talking about what communism really is, and the truth of why it really did fail. At no time has the people as a whole chosen that system, and when it has been put in place despite the unpopularity, the people have found economic growth (and therefore their standard of living) stagnant compared to modern market economies.

"Anarcho-syndicalism"... da fug? I had to google-fu that.

OP: Communism in itself? It's a worthy goal... just won't work due to Human's emotion. Tis why it takes threat of force to implement and maintain.

If someone would invent the famed Trekkie "Replicator"... then, we'd be well on our way to uptopia/communism.

 Peregrine wrote:
Communism is inevitability. Eventually technological progress will eliminate scarcity (after all, there's plenty of raw materials and energy in the solar system) and money will cease to exist as a relevant concept. Civilization will inevitably become something Marx would entirely approve of, simply because doing anything else would make no sense.

Marx envisioned communism as the freedom to do as one chose, but naively assumed that such freedom implies the absence of malice. I mean, even post scarcity people are likely to take umbrage to the existence of other people only then, being absent material need, there is no reason to restrain oneself.

Though, as it happens, Marx's understanding of communism isn't terribly far from the way life in the West presently is:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic

 sebster wrote:
This thread again? It's been, like, three weeks since someone started one. I mean, that was on socialism, but still. If we have to keep having threads where someone challenges us to debate some random economic system, can't we at least do one of the whacky ones? Anarcho-syndicalism or something?

We can talk about Mondragon, and how it abuses contractors in order to maintain the image of employee ownership.

 whembly wrote:
OP: Communism in itself? It's a worthy goal... just won't work due to Human's emotion. Tis why it takes threat of force to implement and maintain.

It really isn't just because of human nature. There have been egalitarian human societies in the past (tribal communes). And as you recognise with Trek's replicators, they'd change things so massively we'd end up somewhere that would be very communistic (well, we could, the impact of technology on social structures is very unpredictable).

It's more that right now the reality of our current economic circumstances means that our primary means of progress is from technology, which comes from innovation driven by private companies seeking profit. It's the 'capital' part of capitalism.

People love to boo hiss the investors, the economic rationalists, the Wall St guys... but that's the stuff that really drive the developing economy. That is why capitalism has advanced to put us where we are today.

Communist societies have all stagnated, because they don't have that.

Sebster where we are today scares me. The fact that monetary institutions are so powerful they cannot be prosecuted anymore is worrying to say the least.

I just hope i goblinize soon

Bullockist wrote:
Sebster where we are today scares me. The fact that monetary institutions are so powerful they cannot be prosecuted anymore is worrying to say the least.

Where we are ain't great. I mean, the banking and finance sector fethed up, and fethed up so badly they wiped 5% of world wide GDP... and no-one did anything about it. We got the usual suspects making silly noises (Tea Party or Occupy, take your pick) but in terms of serious, adult people talking about serious, adult solutions... nothing. There is absolutely nothing saying we aren't just going to rebuild and throw ourselves straight into another bubble & GFC, because we didn't change the regs in any meaningful way after the last feth up.

But that's got nothing to do with this thread, because the answer to inadequate controls on essential economic sectors ain't communism.