Can Communism Ever Work?

Peace is worth anything - I share with my whole heart your desire for that - I have seen war it sucks real bad. I do not however see the communism leads to peace equation. Yes, I understand that a functional world order would lead to peace. However, I do not see how communism would lead to a functional worldwide economy. Nor do I see that unleashed capitalism is going to get us there either. To a great extent it is all so simple - it goes back to what mother said - you have to share - don't fight it is not nice - help each other.

My questions and problems come in getting from this point to that.



I was poor because I worked hard for no positive feedback when I worked

I was poor because I did more of my share in communes when I did not work

I was poor because I did not always have enough to eat

I was poor because transportation and lack of a fixed address prevented me from having access to books

I was poor because I had to think about money a lot



The improvements are the correction of the above and the ability to provide for children.

 

For social primates, sexual-health is social.

When we grow up in a sexually-healthier society, we are not so concerned with the adequacy of our sexual identity, because our sexual-development has been socially nurtured.

Growing up in a healthier society, our emotional need for our mother's breast would not be openly repressed with social-disaproval.

There would be NO social-disaproval of openly natural mother-child bonding.

Encouraged at our mother's breast, we don't feel, nor been made to feel, ashamed when we soon become conscious of our excrement.

Not being forced to hold it in, we don't develope a physical-anal behavioral-association that's triggered everytime we hold on to things.

So with sexual-health, our relationship with material things is NOT a product of homo-erotic impulses.

Without persistent homo-erotic impulses, we would feel sexually secure, and we wouldn't need to dominate or repress others.

Not having the need to dominate or repress others to compensate for an inadequate sexual-identity, we don't need to sexually-possess others.

So our sexual-life is more spontaneous, and is let lose from stiff calculating motives.

Our sexual-life is free to be nurturing and healing.

With our healthier nurturing and healing sexuality, we're free to embace each other communally.

Fill in the blanks, with your imagination, you can see the possibilities.

 

We are all parasites in that we're all weak junkies, addicted to the cozy effeminate comforts of materialism.

We must except that that's not going to change over-night, and not burden each other with un-realistic expectations.

We all share many weaknessess, so we all have a lot in common right from the first.

Work or labor are simple by-products of communal life.

The prioity is to enjoy communing together first, and that means stop trying to will others or to shame others into willing themselves.

Only then can we truly work together, and only then will our labor have any real communal meaning.

Overcome death-fear.

Even though patriarchal civilization could never exist in the psycho-sexual environment described in the four steps, neither can those steps exist in a patriarchal environment.

Catch-22.

The problem is complicated by this:

Sex and death are entwined.

Survival triggers reproduction.

Reproduction is our immortality for what ever that's worth.

Death-fear generates a lot of neurotic sexual energy.

Death-fear drives a man to submissively surrender his own spirit path, and to instead, seek like a woman the security and authority of patriarchy.

Men, who behave like women because of an effeminate fear of death, will always question their sexual identity.

Patriarchal men feel too inadequate in their sexual identity to allow women to live natural and healthy sexual lives.

Women must always be controlled, or they will reject patriarchal man because of his latent homo-sexuality.

So the answer is we must overcome death-fear by first:

Stop the reactionary monkey mind.

Stop fight or flight dualistic reactions.

Stop the dualistic object-subject separation.

Stop the separation of the knower from the known.

Stop objectifying women.

Stop objectifying nature.

Stop the objectification of every experience and every relationship we will ever have in life.

Enter a transcendent state of nature beyond the delusion of separation.

Yeh, I'm not holding my breath either.

Class only exists as an indirect means for the Ego to compensate for sexual inadequacy.

We should never "get someone to put in the labor of 12 yrs of training",
because the need for such control is anal-retentive and homo-erotic.

Liberated from the latent homo-sexual need for social status, one's incentive, and one's life would both be more meaningful.

I'd rather live one meaningful hour and die of a neurological disease, than live a thousand years as a crippled slave to perverted psycho-sexual impulses that also perverts all my cognitive skills.

 

Point says that “Capitalism does work. Communism can never work”

The problem here is the idea of either/or. Many people seem to think it is a simple matter of ‘communism’ or capitalism, but in fact there are many combinations.

First up their never has been a ‘communist’ state only ones that have called themselves or been called communist. But there have been states that have had to one degree or another socialistic aspects or policies.

In the same way I don’t believe there has ever been a purely capitalist state, (of course you would need to define what is pure capitalism anyway, but let us say here that it is a total free market). There always seem to be some limit on it.

So rather than either/or it becomes a matter of degrees and combinations.

You can have dictatorships that are to degrees capitalist or socialist. You can have ‘free’ states that are to a degree socialist or capitalist.

Could there be a communist state, don’t know there hasn’t been a purely socialist state yet, would it work I’m not sure I believe it is too ridged without enough flexibility to work in the real world, but to me some socialist policies would have there uses.

 

As of 0630 this morning the computer says that there are 6,483,187,503
of us on this ball of mud. In order to live as I think I understand you saying (and I may well be wrong because I don't understand some of what you said) we would have to go back to a pre industrial society, that means that around 5 and 1/2 Billion of us are going to have to die. How do we get rid of them and who gets to pick. I know that technology has largely gotten us into this mess but I do not see anything else that is going to get us out. Without some kind of a great dying.

If I am wrong in what I say, please correct me. I am not on this forum to show how smart I think I am I am here to learn from other people who I would not meet without this technology that we are both using. I have been trying to change the world since I was 19. I have not seen much in the way of results. So I must not have done things right. It is you peoples turn. What are your plans and what can each of us do to make something work.

 

You are correct I do appreciate what I have. The excess to knowledge and other people that the computer gives is among the greatest wonders that I have seen come about in my life.

However to repeat my question “I do not see how communism would lead to a functional worldwide economy." I think that communism is a wonderful idea I will be among the first to sign up. However, how do we get from here to there and how does communism = peace. I am not trying to score points off you. I really want to hear your answer.

 

Because I think the world would be a better place if the social system would be communism. Instead of division, we would have unity. I would receive the things I need/want, and I would pay back to society. I guess it would feel right.

Obviously not forever, since we only live for so long. I would work as long as the communist society would exist.

I don't think we could have a communist society if "everyone" were slacking. I think that we have to create a moral incentive before communism is constructed.

If I knew it somehow would be useful to society, I would. Perhaps taking a little longer break would compensate. Honestly, I can go longer with an entertaining job, than with a pointless one.I think it is like that for many people.

Yeah, but isn't it worthless?

 

“And what if the work to be done seemed to be as pointless to you as telephone pole tossing?”

Hey man, please don’t knock one of my country’s pass times.

“Tossing the caber is easily the most recognisable trademark of Scottish Highland games and is one of the most spectacular of the heavy events.”

Go to the address to see a picture.
http://www.crieff-highland-games.co.uk/caber.html

 

Two more questions

What is a moral incentive and who hands them out?



You say pole tossing is worthless - someone else decides that cleaning a drain is worthless. Who gets to decide which tasks have worth?



The telephone exercise is an example of the fact that in any group effort some people are going to start slacking. The military uses it as a teaching tool to teach the importance of group effort. In that sense, it has value. I keep bringing it up because so many systems of social change start with "If all of us just ......." My point is that social systems have to deal with the fact that all of us are not going to ...... and you have to have something in your system to deal with that fact. I am sure that you would work tirelessly for the common good. So would I and many others reading these posts but would everyone. I do not think so. Then you have one of two choices.



1. Support x number of freeloaders - note that the load of the telephone pole shows up again (grin)



2. Coerce people in some way to work



I do not know a good answer to these questions I am hoping that you do.



PS my last name starts with a Mc I would never insult caber tossing.

 

The problem isn't capitalism, its people.

 

I want to give my children what i earned during my lifetime after i die?
That's a good reason for inheritence.
Granted it can get out of control and you get some douche-bag family in power for generations, but it usually dissapates.

And exploitation is a loaded word, you could just as easily say 'use' or the newspeak 'utilize'.

ferinstance
Humanity exploits natural resources to it's own advantage.
Humanity uses natural resources to it's own advantage.
humanity utilizes natural resources to it's own advantage.

The owning-class exploits the workers to increase their wealth.
The owning-class uses the workers to increase their wealth.
the owning-class utilizes the workers to increase their wealth.

All are the same, yet all have different meanings. Dontcher just love paradoxes?

And why should an economic system be compassionate?
As long as it provides the best for the most amount of people, isn't that good enough.

 

Communism's failure is that it is based on the material-dialectic of a neurotic patriarchal civilization.

Our 6 billion and growing can not sustain our survivability neurotically fixated by death.

Successfully over-coming our effeminate death-fear does NOT mean no techno-materialism, rather it means that our material-dialectic will no longer
reflect latent homo-sexual impulses of our effeminately inadequate sexual identity.

Our material-dialectic will reflect whole men less needful of techno-material crutches, and will spend less of life in that pursuit.

A dialectic that will NO longer reflect grasping anal-retentive impulses.

Thus the desire for property, hierarchy, hierarchical status seeking, all disapear.

Appearing instead, man re-awakened, possessing a liberated spontaneity un-shackled from the death-drive funeral-march of civilization.

The dynamic of this patriarchal civilization began with the last drastic climate-shift ten-thousand years ago, and in the last 500yrs has grown to cover the whole planet.

Any changes in the worldly dynamic during any single life-time would have to be measured minutely.

Chosing to live communally means excepting not only the current repressed state of our collective un-conscious, but also excepting being a minority devient from the norm of a conformist culture.

I'm still doing it, but my only successes come when I dump the burden of my analy motivated expectations, and embrace our shared weaknesses with compassion.

 

As long as it provides the best for the most amount of people, isn't that good enough.

An interesting question and one that often pops up in political thought.

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What is considered to be the “most amount of people”? Is it 99%, 70%, 51%? If 49% of people live retched miserable lives but 51% have happy and fulfilling lives in the lap of luxury, is that considered to be “good enough”?

What do you categorise as providing the best? By what criteria do you gauge what is best? If you are not starving, have cloths and shelter is that enough? If 1% have 90% of the wealth and the other 99% have to share the remainder is that ok if the remainder is enough for them to get by on?

Some like Jeremy Bentham believed that the criteria was happiness and said “nature has put man under the governance of two sovereign masters: pleasure and pain.". From this came the idea that society should be governed to bring about the greatest happiness to the greatest number of persons. So you get ideas like “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

But then again what is happiness and how can it be best-achieved, does wealth or material objects make for happiness? In a consumerist society one of the major things used to sell things is the supposed link between the item and the happiness it will bring to the purchaser. And as many people discover transitory pleasures can often have adverse long-term effects that are painful.

Capitalise as I’ve said has many disguises and although it is seen by many to bring ‘happiness’ it can also bring a lot of ‘pain’ and so in my opinion it needs to be regulated, controlled and managed so that the damage it can have on a society is limited.

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As to the theory that ‘exploitation’ 'use' or 'utilise' are interchangeable it is just plain wrong, exploitation in the sense being used in this thread so far has being about the method of use. For example I could use a person (as in employee) but that does not mean I am going to exploit that individual. Exploit in this context is usually associated with negative connotations whereas ‘use’ or ‘utilise’ have more neutral meanings.


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According to most Marxists, any form of labor realtions is a dichotomy that involves friction and exploitation.
If i hire a maid i'm exploiting her, nevermind the fact that i pay her a livable wage or give her a nice hide-out from the INS.
And a good way to rate the effectiveness of any economic structure is the 'dead people in the street' quotient. Basically, you try and find how many starving people there are in the street at any time.
There were a lot in victorian england, in early america, and in every single case of communism.
nowadays in america, not so much.

 

So you are abandoning your argument for a communist society to turn to claming a dictatorship for yourself. That sounds a lot like what happened in October of 1917

 

“Our material-dialectic will reflect whole men less needful of techno-material crutches, and will spend less of life in that pursuit.”



Techo-material crutches – do you mean like electricity or what



“Chosing to live communally means excepting not only the current repressed state of our collective un-conscious, but also excepting being a minority devient from the norm of a conformist culture.”



We are a minority deviant from the norms of a culture – that is why we are talking. Living in a commune in the mist of the US or any other industrialized nation is parasitic.



“I'm still doing it, but my only successes come when I dump the burden of my analy motivated expectations, and embrace our shared weaknesses with compassion.”



Given in terms of measurable physical actions – what does that mean?

 

Anything your children get from you is unearned wealth. From what I have read of history that almost always leads to concentration of power in the hands of a few.



Agree with you that exploitation is a loaded term. How about looking at the steadily increasing multiple of the lowest paid person in a company to the highest. That is something that we can measure.



So if 51% of us ride the backs of the other 49% that is OK?

 

Agree with you - now what do we do?

 

Not a bad measure of progress. However looking at the whole world, the number of "dead people in the street" seems to be going up.

 

Actually the number of people living in poverty has dropped in the past fifty years, and the number of people who are dying of starvation is going down too (we reached a food equilibrium in the early sixties).
The whole 'best to the most' thing means that you compare how the other economic systems do compared to that one.
Take soviet russia. They had quotas at their shoe factories, so everyone made baby shoes because they were the least expensive and easiest to do. This means that if you wanted the best, i.e. a shoe that fits, you were screwed (unless you were an infant). And very few people even then would be able to afford it.
Now, in American capitalism (not true capitalism by a long shot), most people can afford a shoe, and there are shoes available.
i don't mean the most as in the most of the population, just the most as in comparision to the alternatives.