i am having a hard time reconciling the difference between the loaded political term "communism" and its harmless cousin, "commune". The former is the nemesis of God-fearing, steak-eating, free-trade loving, christian americans and westerners in general. we went to war over it and lost 50,000 men. Humanity nearly ended when it clashed with democracy. The fire has died, but "communist" is still generally a negative term, usually referring to a backwards, hostile country like Cuba or North Korea. But the latter term - "Commune" - seems to invoke very different emotions. Although derived from the same word as "communism", it is generally used in reference to idealistic youths, hippies, granola-heads, those silly hippies who oppose the establishment but are no real threat. so i must ask, are the governments of china, the former USSR, cuba, vietnam, etc, REALLY communist? Perhaps they are something else entirely. Opressive, authoritarian regimes that function under the guise of communism - a word that originally implied a sharing of labor and resources? Keep in mind that for most of human history people have been communists. They lived in small, wandering bands without any emphasis on personal property. How did abominations like North Korea come from such an innocuous philosophy? A political science teacher once told my class that the only two entities that were truly communist in modern times were the Russian Mir and the Israeli Kibbutz - the so called communist nations were not communist at all. i have to agree with this. it is time that people stop associating communism, which is the ideal state of man, with terrible regimes with which it shares no resemblence. What do you think?
i do agree but think of this The communist were made out to be big baddies, with such things as the McCarthy hearings ect Now you gotta think the idea of communisium, (comunal sharing) would be very scary to captalists, a system that centralizes on greed and enmpowers those with more
You got to remeber that communism can be flicted on like a light switch. Communism is a way of life, not a system of goverment... That to the side. The modern countries that call themselves communist (or teacher who call them communist, lol I always yell at them for there lies ). They are truely soiclist. Or in some forum a soicalist nation. They are on there way to become a communist state. Just give it time and everyone well see that communism well work on a large scale. An idea which is hard to grasp by some of my fallow peers. But most of it is ignorance, and people think of the soviet union, or the bloodshed fromt he chinase revolution. To fully understand and educate the people on communism to tell them about Marxist and Engl.
well Shwa i will have to dissagree and say that most countires that call them selves communist are not socialist but, authoitatian/dictatorship/facist i think of socialism as a shift from capatilisem to communisim, when i think of a soclalist country the firs that comes to mind is Germany, with most things the people need (medicle care college ect) taken care for
I think what Marx had in mind was a kind of communism that involves community, close-knit clansof people sharing their lives and resourses. This was his eventual goal. The idea was that there'd be a revolution that would overthrow the capitalist system. Then the wealth would be equalized and once that happened the State would "wither away" because Marx believed that the only reason you'd need a strong government was to keep the wealth in the hands of a few and away from the majority. Then everyone in the world would live in idealic anarchistic communes. Unfortunately, where there were communist revolutions, that didn't happen. Once the communist states took over, their leaders found that they liked power, the wealth wasn't really equalized or at least privilage wasn't, and the modern form of state-centered communism came into being. With leaders like Stalin and Pol Pot, many of these supposedly communist states were worse than their capitalist counterparts. Perhaps it would be best for we as individuals to skip the revolution and the communist state and move straight to an anarchistic commune, if we want to drop out of capitalism. The problem with that is that capitalism is so pervasive, that it would be difficult not to participate in it in some way.
but if you read the communist manifesto of karl marx and freidrich engels you will see that they advocated sharing the wealth and the work but also forcing people to do their share .in other words you had a share of the wealth but you were dictated as how you earned it ..............communes and real communism don't have much in common as i see it ......in some ways communes are more like the old family clans of yesteryear
Communism must then be like...trying to make people more self-motivated? Kind of a way to mental maturity, where all beneficial (to the community) acts render self-gratification--a shift in consciousness over to the "greater good" rather than one's personal welfare? I diagram that I saw once of communism was like this: a group of people was gathered around a cow. This was a "happy" cow, too--I mean, free-range, grass everywhere, etc--anyway, all of these people were recieving a portion of this cow's milk. But, it was evident that they had all shared in the keeping of the cow, and everyone was happy in the end. A worker's paradise. And why shouldn't this be how it is? Commune, communism, the only difference is the connotation. They are different forms of implementation of the same ideal.
the russian communists were bent on freeing everyone - aka taking over the world. people who live in communes just want to take care of themselves.
With all the information I've been able to find on the web, I find that the groups that call themselves egalitarian are often run by and to the benefit of a small number of people, exactly the example we've been given by every single communist country. I've got my toys and have had much recent experience where even family members have come to the conclusion that they have some right to my personal possessions. Yeah, they SAY all the right things, but you wouldn't believe how fast the tools, electronics, linens and clothes disappear when you're the only person contributing to the common good. I know I've got a really f'd-up family, but how can you tell, going in with a $$$ investment and personal possessions that you stand any chance of walking away with anything left?
I wonder if Karl Marx sat brooding over Communism all those years meant that he couldn't find an ideal balance between the sharing of wealth and the sharing of responsibility. I suspect he foresaw the bloodshed that would plague any country that adopted his idealogy. Rather than fix the problem from his tiny room, he opted never to utter another word about it, so leaving us to walk along the wrong road to true Communal living...
actually neither marx or engels ever saw their manifesto put in practice ...took lenin to start it all .........then again you look at it in hindsight now it was almost like ....EVERYBODY IS EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS .........kinda just like the capitalist system isn't it??
I think we failed Communism.. In fact, we as people fail any ideology thst looks too perfect to be true. Do we blame that on greed and selfishness? I don't know.. But now it's a word that will never gets it's true meaning back.. I'm not sure why I still call myself a Communist anymore.. It just derives shock or total disinterest from thos that know me..
