Can Communism Ever Work?

It depends as to how you define capitalism. If you're talking about corporate rule, corporate opppression the centralization of wealth and so forth, you're talking about merchantilism, corporatism and corporate welfare. What happens under such a scenario is that the corporation lobbies the government to have laws passed that will be more likely to assure that the industry's position in the marketplace will be protected. Examples of this include DuPont and the oil cartels lobbying for bans on industrial hemp so that they can maintain their dominance on the marketplace.

Capitalism, that's true caitalism (at least as I see it) on the other hand, is defined as an economic system characterized as by a free competitive market with private and corporate ownership of production and distribution means. Entries into a given market are generally few. Development of industry is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits. Companies that fail to do this will fall back and face much financial hardship or go out of business. Part of reinvestment-believe it or not-involves trying to maintain a workforce that will be loyal to the company for a long period of time. This involves compensating them well. In such a system, government is expected to pass laws only that protect against force, deceit or fraud. Government does not (or at least is not supposed to) pass laws that will in the end force consumers to choose only the products that are "approved" for public consumption. Such a scenario is closer to totalitarianism than liberty.

 

Having looked at the late 18 and early 1900's in the US I have strong doubts about true capitalism. Go a little more into laws that you think force consumers to choose only approved products. Surely, you do not mean the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and other public health measures.

 

Not sure you could run the world in 40/week. You would have to have help - leading to advisors, intelligence gathering systems, communication systems etc. You would have a bureaucracy before you knew it. Moreover, what if some nut killed you. Have to prevent that. You are going to be way to busy to cook your own food and buy your own clothing so someone needs to take care of that. We just cannot have the person in charge wasting their time on the little stuff. Before too long your job is going to look very good to that garbage collector. Therefore, you now need people to explain how it is all really necessary and fair. So you now have a PR department. It just grows and grows. Things are too big and complicated. You cold be in charge of city I live near (pop 350) and not change very much. Although he did have to get an unlisted number to keep people from waking him up at night. But if you get much further up than that, the problems start. Soon you are more and more isolated from the common person (through no fault of your own). The system is too big to run the way you suggest.

 

You are going to have to define poverty a little more to get me to agree with that one. I tend to look more at the relative distribution of wealth. You are correct on the number of people dead of starvation. However becoming "dead in the street" can occur in many other ways. I agree with you about the USSR, "storming the norm" was another huge problem that they had. Which I think goes along with societies that try to function without incentives.

 

The shoe thing was just an example, and trust me going shoeless during a siberien winter is one of the worst things i can think of.
And when we are talking about economic systems of course it's going to be materialistic!
But if you mean that the civil rights inherent in the system have to be considered, then American Capitalism still comes up better than most.

 

So for you, communism is a religion, a lifestyle, and not a social system?

 

communism is an economical system, which is about equality... not a mindset.

although i can see that i suppose, the whole helping your fellow man thing... but thats bull.

 

I agree with _chris_.

 

I don't mean electricity, that's a natural phenomena.

I mean if you kicked the props-away, are any of us still strong enough to survive.

Our dependencies are slow poison.

The death-drive to self destruction is a powerful impulse for us rejected at our own mother's breasts.

Marx had no idea that private property is civilization's anal-retentive potty-training.

Keep it in and keep constricting those anal muscles, or you will feel the anger.

Communism doesn't have a prayer against capitalism's homo-eroticism.

A Metamorphosis transcends its old limitations.

 

According to most Marxists, any form of labor realtions is a dichotomy that involves friction and exploitation.

I’ve pointed out on several occasions that I’m not a Marxist, but what I have found is that many people especially in the US seem to associate any left wing ideas with ‘communism’. These people seem to have a simplistic either/or mentality that in this case leads them to think in terms of either capitalism or communism. This coupled with a ‘them or us’ hangover from the ‘cold war’ which seems to see a communist threat in any talk of social and economic reform and it can lead to a intellectual cul de sac.

For example you use as an example of shoe production the ‘communist’ “soviet russia” and “American capitalism”. Yet these days I’m told over 98% of shoes sold in the US come from outside the US with a large percentage of them being made in China and Vietnam, two countries that still claim in some way to be ‘communist’.

Well to me China and Vietnam are no more communist than was Soviet Russia but if you cling to calling the old USSR communist (because it did) then it seems to me that you must call China and Vietnam communist (because they do) and if you accept that, then your shoe example unravels, because those communist states seem better at producing shoes than the US?

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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.

Again this seems to indicate certain rigidity of mentality, either people are staving and an economy is bad or they are not staving and it is good. It seems to me simplistic in the extreme, first it doesn’t seem to take into account factors beyond human control and again because it does not take into account all the other factors that make up a healthy, prosperous and happy society, what makes a good society.

There were a lot in victorian england, in early america, and in every single case of communism.
nowadays in america, not so much.

If you are using the ‘either capitalism or communism’ model as you seem to in this piece of historical analysis then any system before Marxism was not communist and therefore was in some degree capitalist (even feudalism has elements of it). Or are have you a definition of capitalism which dictates that capitalism only came into being around the time of “early america”, say around 1500?

If you are sticking to the ‘either capitalism or communism’ model then there are accounts of the staving from all pre-Marxist societies.

Also it should be pointed out that during the ‘Great Depression’ there were those who were staving in the US and that today many Americans depend on state benefits to stop them from being so, which many Americans see as too ‘communist’ and would cut, even axe.

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To me nobody should be satisfied (as Eugene seems to be) with living in societies were however retched and miserable some people might have it at least they don’t die in the streets of starvation.

 

I would like to see in real steps that people could do (everyone is welcome to chime in) how we get from here to where you want to be. I will agree that communism can be a mindset. I will also agree that if we all had the same mindset your job would wither away and you could help the trash man. However, both of us know that is magical thinking. If the entire world agreed, we would not need any kind of a system. We would just all do the work that there was to be done take turns on the crappy jobs and share with the folks who could not work. But that is of the "If only people would ...... school of social planning. Give me some real plans. Give me some specific ideas. Alternatively, join me on my back porch and we can both sit and say, “Well - I just don't know - I just don’t know". Because I am almost to that point.

 

I think this is broadening the definition of communisum too far. The native americans were anarchists more than they were communists. The correct term is tribalism.

I think both communism and modern democratic capatalism are incredibly cynical in their idea that people need some sort of "ruling party" or "ruling class" to ultimately make decisions for the people. Prehistoric and existing tribal societies like the Australian aboriginals were often much more socially secure, nurturing and free, and most importantly, not as wasteful as modern societies where every person on one island or within the boundaries of a gigantic country are lumped into the same group and governed by one group of elite which ultimately make the decisions and the laws, for everyone in that country.

The ultimate injustice in capatalism in communism is that they are forms of mass government, in which everyone in that nation, no matter what they desire or who they are, have to submit to the same laws and ultimately be owned by the authority. Even in Australia, a democratic country, really the only choice I have is voting for one party out of 2 that i dont even like every four years.

The majority of people living under these mass systems of government are ignorant, numb, greedy and frightened and ultimately faced with a horrible reality, they have little say in the goings about of their own lives.

People should be given increasing opportunity for self government or government in small groups - it is in allowing people to think for themselves human ingenuity and kindness can blossom. Another idea; in forcing everyone in a country to live the same way, and currently almost everyone in the world is forced to live in the same way, its the best way to kill off the human race. In a time of trouble, socially and environmentally, we should all be diversifying and experimenting with new systems and ways of living because the current ones dont work.

If you still want to defend capatalism, consider this: A society in which there are both incredibly wealthy people and incredibly poor people is one that essentially doesn't work.

 

Agree with you 100%. Now how to get there - if we breakdown into small groups billions are going to die off. You cannot keep the power plant running if you are growing your own food. Speculation of labor, economy of scale, and trade or the only things keeping 6.5 billion of us alive.

 

If I am not mistaken, it is the leninist idea that the people need to be "guided" by a "ruling party". Marxists have a quite different and more democratic view, I believe.

Ironically, Leninists claim that in order to prevent a new upper class to come into existence, society needs a vanguard party. But historically,
the vanguard (for instance, [size=-1]The Communist Party of China) [/size]has become the upper class it originally aimed to prevent to arise.

So perhaps all non-leninists can agree that leninism is a flawed idea.

 

Well, many of the 6,5 billion human beings on this planet die precisely because of the global system that exists today.

 

hippypaul


Well revolutions especially bloody revolutions have a habit of biting the revolutionaries in the arse, so I wouldn’t go that route until it was absolutely necessary and I would want it to be a popular revolution (and peaceful).

So what would be the first steps on another route?

First from where are you starting?

It would be a lot easier to bring in socialist type policies in say Europe (they have some) than the US.

Let us take the hard course and say the US.

Education, reform, implementation.

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Education

The rational left (sorry to say there is a loony left) have always had the best arguments, the only way the right wing succeed is by not allowing debate or running away from debate.

The right try’s to promote the individualistic ideal but mainly because it is divide and rule we should be talking about the community and the power of a union of people to overcome the power of the elite’s.

Too much about the self image of the US is based on myths, such as the ‘American Dream’ and ‘Manifest Destiny’ these need to be dispatched.

In the US 40-50% of people don’t bother to vote (many of them young) because they don’t see the political system in the US as working for them or making a difference. They should be the lefts audience.

Reform

The US political system is sick.

Many on the right attack it in the hope of making it weaker so they can control more things through the elite’s wealth.

I would suggest making it stronger so it does what it is meant to do be a government of the people by the people and for the people, which by the way would be the socialist ideal.

Implementation

Think about what improves a people’s quality of life and work to accomplish it.


(PS remember I’m not a ‘communist’ so I think it unlikely this would end up as such but it just might be a step toward a new world)

 

But historically, hasn't every peaceful attempt of a socialist/communist revolution ended in violence, due to the reactionaries resorting to violence in order to stop the peaceful revolution? One example could be the coup in Chile, 1973.

 

I think both communism (the member) and hippy paul are right. Communism, yes, many people die because of the systems put in place today. However, in order for the Earth to hold the phenomenal 6.5 billion people it does now, we have highly organised machine which churns out huge excesses of food (probably enough to feed everyone). If there was an instant international conversion to some sort of anarchism, it would be total chaos, for a while, until people get organised enough to grow their own food successfully. I think before people are able to self govern internationally (i think in developed countries with the available land and wealth there should be no problem) we should be more knowledgeable about alternative ways of living and different political systems. However, this requires people to get of their asses and start trying to discover these new things, and for governments to gives us more freedom to do so.

Looking from a different point of view maybe a revolution which quickly overturns mass authoritarian governments all at once is the best thing. Sure there would be consequences for many years, but people could quickly organise themselves into successful automated communities. I dont know.
I also dont see this happening until the western world is on the brink of death though.

 

Not bad not bad at all - care to come over and help me preach

 

We are getting closer together on the first part of your comment. However, as far as the last part have you ever tried to get close to one of the rich and powerful? Even if you do - I do not think that the pie slowed Bill Gates down much do you. Also, note the history of the American depression of the 30's and its effect on the rich.