Can Communism Ever Work?

Cheif Seattle once wrote,

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.
If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.
As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. [SIZE=+1]One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all." [/SIZE]

 

Reading through some of these comments, it's actually kind of amazing that people think they will actually lose wealth if a nation like America (where most of the world's wealthiest reside) became a communist country.

The current divisions between rich and poor in USA are actually much wider than they have been in a long time... most salaries have not been adjusted for inflation, so the whole family has to work much longer hours for a lot less money. Meanwhile, the rich are getting a lot richer.

So please tell me how redistributing all the wealth in America would jeopardize anyone's freedom? If anything, people would finally have more time for each other... and getting money away from the greedy is never a bad thing-- in fact, the reason that greedy people hate communists is because communists want to take their money away from them. Believe it or not, a guy who thinks up ads for cigarette companies isn't more entitled to a life of luxury than someone who works at MacDonald's.

 

Because communism doesn’t redistribute wealth, that is just a political sale pitch. It sounds appealing to the poor repressed people.

In a communist or socialist system people are still poor and the military and rulers are still rich.

Just look at China, Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela

I love the idea of everyone being equal the problem is communism and socialism are failed systems that never work.

Communism sounds nice but when applied in reality it creates a repressive dictatorship and a all powerful ruling class.
And the poor are still poor with less civil rights.

 

Russia had an amazing education system... much better than America. Cubans have long life spans because they never worry about housing or medical.

In most so-called 'communist' countries, Communism was less a socioeconomic system than an alliance with a former world superpower (USSR). Nowadays, the remnants are in the process of being swept up and abandoned.

There's no guarantee that American communism couldn't occur as a natural offshoot of the current establishment. Actually, the upcoming financial crisis provides a great opportunity for some revolutionary measures... a taxation policy focusing on the rich as well as the rerouting of funds or a stimulus package into better social programs could gradually lead to a true communist society, which in all likelihood would no longer be called a communist society.

According to Karl Marx, Communism is inevitable... though how it will happen remains to be seen.

 

With communism, the counter-argument is always that there's no incentive for people to work harder, or to try to get ahead. Therefor, in a functioning communist society, the workers would have to be motivated to work for the benefit of the community, not just themselves.

I personally believe that communism would work among a group of people who believe thoroughly in communist ideals.

 

I recently wondered about communsim's motivating Chinese peasants at the local plane to Work. What exactly was the concession to their ancestors Conscience upon the existing society. We would want to help each other only if the wealth was inconsistent this way.

I think in China (as opposed to Russia) the human condition of knowing one's own empowerment was very rich with consequences, and there existed an optionalism worth believing in. We would share to know each other against the Means of Production, not with Them.

 

first of all china is obviously not a communist country any longer.

communism is very new. the newest and more radical political doctrine of big success in centuries and its potential has not been yet explored to full extent. also, it has been always experimented in countries that were fucked up pretty bad by war , extreme underdevelopment and poorness or that after turning communist were forced to defend themselves from the open hostility of the "free" world, or both things. The capitalistic nations understood soon the potential of the communist system and that it was feasible and could work. Here the reason of such intolerance: destroy the menace from its early manifestations. if communism is such a wrong, nonfunctional doctrine, why all this hostility? let's just wait for those foolish commies to bankrupt and self-combust .

capitalism is very old, it's prehistoric and shows all its years. our world is far from an ideal one. if the world in which we live today is troubled the blame can only be put on capitalism. let's leave apart human exploitation for one time, let's talk of environment instead. pollution is the direct consequence of a system in which production is not binded to needs but to the opportunity of selling goods , no matter if at the exclusive advantage of some owner of production facilities. and why all this? because there is no programmed economy in capitalism. but the invisible hand that controls the economy is bullshit and we are starting to figure out.

so i believe that it is way too soon to express a judgment on communism, because the test conditions were far from ideal and the given time was short. to be perfectly honest i believe that communism is to the present day the more sophisticated political doctrine ever. of course sophisticated, complex devices need time and work to become reliable, but this is not an excuse to stick back to hand tools and animal-powered vehicles. finally i believe that communism is our sole chance to avoid self destruction as a species, but this is more an expression of faith from my side.

 

theres has never been a communist country in the world
in communisim theres is no countrys and no goverment for a true communist people look at spain 36-37 or the paris commune dont look at ussr china etc they claim to be communist but they just follow a socialist theory and pratice it to benefit there own elite class
as marx explains communisim these nations dont practice what marx taught
they merely pretend to be marxist whie being the worst form of captalist goverment in exsistence a facist dictatorship.

 

A couple of things --

-- Its impossible to practice what Marx taught because it goes against human nature.

-- Corrupt value destroyers who killed millions of victims in those socialist countries aren't capitalists at all.

Its important to realize that capitalism is simply having the freedom to pursue happiness thru rational means -- or in other words, having the freedom to act. Fascism and capitalism are polar opposites of each other. In fact fascism actually has more in common with communism. They are both forms of statism.

 

this concept needs to be developed , don't resort to dogmatism: explain things. yes i know that can be hard for one like you who apparently lives on precooked ideas. also consider that women and men can and do overcome their nature each day . what you call human nature looks like pure habit to me, the habit of being induced into thinking the same way over thousands of years without ever introducing substantial political changes , without real progress, in the name of what you call human nature but also can be a disguise for egoisms.

 

it works of course ) like a schizophrenic)))))))))))

 

You're right Jagerhans -- allow me to explain my position on that statement a little more. I realize people can be altruistic on an individual level; and if it brings them happiness to live their lives that way, more power to them. I have no right to judge someone for doing what makes them happy.

However, on a society-level, Marx's teachings can't work. Once again, the reason is because it goes against human nature. Humans by nature are "selfish", but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Its not wrong to pursue your "selfish" need for individual happiness as long as you do not violate the individual rights of other people.

Whether it be a starting a business to make living for yourself, or doing charity work, or doing nothing at all -- it all stems from the "selfish" desire to pursue happiness in a way that works for YOU. This is human nature by the way I understand it.

Most people are not going to willingly give up their own self interests in order to benefit society as a whole. This is why altruism can never work on a social level - especially in the USA.

 

dear friend , first i must point out that at the state of facts our thinking is more of an abstract set of considerations than a debate on viable political new ways. communism has been bent, twisted and interpreted in various flavors giving out mostly awful results. the champions are the chinese, who managed to put together all the worst and most obnoxious defects of both worlds , socialist and capitalist, without any of the benefits. at the present time real-world socialism is nearly defeated because it has substantially failed its goals and does not matter if it was because of external political, economical and military pressure, ineptitude of its builders or flaws in the original idea. it is dead now and without some miracle we are not going to hear talking seriously about it in the western world for a long while. what is worst, it lost its appeal on the masses of workers and you may think that this is a good thing, but before grabbing that bottle of champagne to celebrate the death of the monster, wait. i can tell you what i see in my country and i do tell you this, what remained of one of the strongest communist parties of the western world is mostly broken , divided and about to disappear . their place has been taken by new forces which won the hearts of the working people here. the worker does not vote for the (or "a" ) communist party any longer , instead they now vote Lega , a territorial party which thrives on blatant racism, xenophoby , homophobia , and finally the "selfishness" applied to tax income: one of their goals was to keep the money where it is, to prevent the tax money paid in rich parts of the country from being deployed to help the most depressed places. Sure this may be human but not very nice or smart. Together with this radical change of mind set, political and racial violence have grown from nothing to an alarming new problem to face.
Human selfishness in its most vicious forms must be eradicated because pure selfishness only works in a state of war between the individuals. Incourage it and you'll get intolerance, greed, hatred , and finally war. On the way to a better world we have to change ourselves and the others. I call this communism. In order to build communism the big step is building a new man, intended as a new dominant culture with values and goals largely different from those of the previous world.

Now this can scare you and look monstruous. But please consider christianism: do you have the nerve to say that christianism goes against the nature of man ? yet it preaches the coming of a world in which greed, violence, selfishness are banned. it aks its followers to do a big inner change and 'crucify' their own flesh. even the most unnatural thing of them all, self sacrifice, is emphasized and glorified. imagine a capitalistic world that actively tries to apply true, zero-compromise christianism. i have never seen that and i bet that you didnt either and know why? because there is no way to do such a thing.
Yet in the name of christ countless millions were killed , in a span of time so wide that the short life of communism is laughable if placed shoulder to shoulder with. and this did not apparently taunt the image of christianism becauseas christians love to repeat, it was just due to human faults that don't even remotely come to touching the faith.
please dont come up with the usual answers because in order to use them against me you first have to induce me (back) into believing and this is a task even more daunting than confuting communism.
and besides, i have mutated from being a militant christian to what i am now - an enthusiastically atheist communist.
I'd like to answer to a point you emphasized, which is
«Its not wrong to pursue your "selfish" need for individual happiness as long as you do not violate the individual rights of other people». I partially agree but go further, I add «...and collective rights».
And this, from my communist but not strictly marxian point of view, implies that private property is ok till it applies to goods of private use like the home you live in , the tools you use for your job or profession, but if private property includes that particular kind of goods that can be used to manipulate society itself -the means of production, according to my views it produces way more bad results than good ones. The owner of an industry does not belong any more to the ordinary society made of people with equal rights. He or she is one who exploiting private property climbs to a level of personal power that finally puts him or her OVER THE SOCIETY. The big capitalist can blackmail an entire community by menacing to fire everyone he employs if he won't get what he wants from political powers. With this strategy the Solvay chemical corp. that has a large factory near my home has managed to rob us, the citizens, of scarce, good drinking water that belongs to the people, but the Solvay corp. buys it for a price that is roughly 1/1500 of the price we pay for it. Also they polluted and pollute out country, refuse to invest money to reduce pollution, and obtain what they want from the authorities menacing to close the factory and fire everybody (half of the town).
The capitalist can oppress his workers, go in league with others like him to amplify his power, fund lobbies and corrupt representatives. In a short time, the society turns from free to free just in appearance. So the next time that you complain about corporate greed and the banks robbing common people with the help of politicians (and if you never happen to i believe you are misplaced here at the hip forums) think that those individuals, corporate men, fraudolent bankers, media tycoons like berlusconi to mention our local fester, can do what they did and do because they were unlimitedly allowed to pursue their personal happiness which seems to consist in dominating people and butt-raping our society, our environment, our laws, our costumes, our lives. I can understand that one man wants to do his own thing and own the goods he uses , but from this to admitting that it is perfectly legitimate to use money to gain power over the others it is a long way that i will never go.
I know that a beautifully working and prosperous communist society of fullfilled individuals has still to come, but since our world , which is like it is now because of some 5000 years of almost constant capitalism , is far from being ideal and menaces an imminent environmental, economic and social ruin, what the few communists left say is that it looks time to give communism a serious, unrigged try .

Recently i read something that gave me a short bitter laugh : a poll among german citizens from the east revelaled that about 58 % of them regrets the past system with vopos, walls and stuff, that at least granted them work, shelter and medical aid. A very inconvenient result to celebrate the twent years since the fall of the berlins wall with. And boy, east germany was surely no friggin' socialist paradise. This to remember us that human nature includes the aspiration to being free from fear and straits too. not just getting rich and laughing in face of all those pathetic losers.

 

well in fact Marx said that trespassing directly from the present system to Communism is not possible. Socialism was meant to be the transition economical system in which everyone is rewarded proportionally to the amount and quality of her/his work. At the same time the socialist community carries on the largest mass reprogramming since christianism: building the new man for the new world, the one in which everyone gives according to her/his abilities and gets from society enough for all her/his needs, the Communist new world. Utopy ? Consider how strange is that we put a tremendous amount of faith in the opportunities that the unstoppable technological progress can give us, we got accustomed to every sort of wonders, unthinkable just two centuries ago, but we can't believe in human progress.
Not me. At some point in my life I started to suspect that this ubiquitous pessimism about mankind was not spontaneous but just the result of a slow massive brainwashing applied to avoid deep changes in society. I decided to drop the common, sterile pessimism and believe in mankind and in its unlimited potentials. So I became Communist.

 

In the past couple of centuries mankind has taken a five thousand year leap in progress because of unparalleled freedom in the United States. And it took no reprogramming to achieve this level of progress. I'm quoting Rand here - The Creators of engines, airplanes and buildings were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power - that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover, a capitalist. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.

And only by living for himself was he able to acheive the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes onto this earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons - a process of thought. From the simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are, and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

But the mind is an attribute of the INDIVIDUAL. There is no such thing thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence.

The Primary act - the process of reason - must be performed by each man alone.

We can divide meals among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of the body and spirit are private. I recognize this FACT -- and for that reason I became a Capitalist.

But when you use the term capitalist and when I use it, I really think we're talking apples an oranges. A murderous socialist dictator who confiscates unearned wealth isn't a capitalist - he's a thug and a murderer. A corrupt banker who cheats a middle class citizen out of his life savings isn't a capitalist - he's a white collar criminal. A Wall Street insider who abuses the markets and creates an 80 million share short position when only 15 million shares of that stock exist, and bankrupts an entire company for a profit isn't a capitalist - he's a white collar criminal guilty of selling something which he can't deliver -- thats called stealing and its an objective crime.

White collar criminals are no different from murderous dictators at the core. But even a dictator is a more respectable individual because at least he is open and honest about destroying values. A white collar criminal destroys values while proclaiming to be a benevolent, value producing capitalist.

Don't mistake a thug or a criminal with a capitalist. A capitalist is a free man, who uses the power of his mind to pursue happiness without violating the individual rights of another conscious being. The thugs and criminals you described in your post have principles which are incompatible with capitalism.

 

I will say this, jagerhans. You're certainly the first intelligent communist I've spoken with - I'm sure there are others here. I know I'm new to this forum, and I may very well be misplaced. Its nice to know that there are intelligent people who have the courage to hold their convictions without threatening to hang or shoot you when you say something they disagree with.

If I'm truly out of place, I can find another forum to have these discussions. Regardless - I respect your position, and I don't think we really have a lot to disagree on once you look past the terminology and get to core of what is being said.

I believe there are no conflicts of interest between rational men. We want to be free, and to live long and fulfilling lives. I think the only difference between you and I is you believe it must be achieved collectively (Correct me if I'm wrong), and I believe it must be achieved by each individual man on his own accord. The goal remains the same.

 

first i am not talking about collective minds, singularity or the matrix, but about common sets of values that are widely accepted. the current sets of values are dictated by the dominant religions and political beliefs. My hope is to live long enough to see those old formulas surpassed in popularity by less archaic ones.
currently there is place for a vast majority of non-communists who live in a world suited to their mindset and a minority of communists. i dont want to live neither in a capitalistic world nor in a flat red world where erethic thought is banned, just I'd like to see how things go in a mostly communist world, but without necessarily killing dissensus , just in case it turned out that we commies were awfully wrong all over the line, and for comparison's sake. oh, and in order to prevent this planet from getting too boring.

second, i insist that those brilliant enterpreneurs that you call thugs and murderers are essential to capitalism or at least capitalism allows such human festers to live and thrive, even crushing their more scrupulous competitors. thugs and criminals are for the usual the most successful capitalists and for each occasional Madoff sent to rot in jail there are hordes of capitalists that will never see a jail in their life (probably Madoff did not do some of the most horrible things that a merciless capitalist can do, he just messed with the wrong ones). Their goal is making money, fast , more than their opponents at all costs and with all means. including cutting off pluvial forrests, exploiting children labor, stealing resources with the help of corrupted politicians, selling weapons to third world countries, and so on in a horror show crescendo that could not fit in a whole book. so my very personal point of view is that instead of having to watch this army of enterpreneurs all the time hoping for the best and in their conscience and fear of God, well my communist point of view is cutting their fangs and claws in terms of putting big limits to the very concept of private property and developing new, more humane and sustainable ways of economical organisation.
but as i pointed out earlier this is all theoretical stuff since almost the whole world is going just the opposite direction.

then of course we have the same goal: finding the formula for a happy, serene mankind free from straits and slavery. on this basis we can go on discussing as good friends forever. when i said «misplaced» is because on that particular issue there are legions of us here who see the big corporations as something like the devil, only way less sexy and more stinky. That was not a suggestion to leave the forum, just a warning to expect more criticism on that ground. but never mind, to fit precisely into a stereotype is hard so i often find myself misplaced in many of these forums, not to mention the real world ...

 

Yes, I concur. Capitalism works. Communism doesn't. End of story.:cheers2:

 

your post is worthwhile as much as it's long, almost nothing. please join the discussion with new arguments or move the fuck over, we can cope with lots of rude things here on the hipforums except your dogmatism and arrogance. go bring your crap elsewhere or show me it's not crap, of course if you have the mental capabilities required to stand a conversation, which is unlikely.

 

Communism doesn't work economically because the fact that the government is in complete control of all production and everyone gets the same no matter how hard they work or how lazy they are. Thus the incentive to work decreases dramatically. The country's wealth goes down, shortages occur, no inventions are produced (as the government would steal them away anyway, leaving no incentive) and the economy eventually collapses. Just look at the Soviet Union. Of course the fact that they were a harsh totalitarian dictatorship didn't help things much with them either.

Do you get it now, you fucking Italian wago?