What are your views on Communism?

Excellent in theory. Terrible in practice.

Most people just don’t like to share.

@dverhey I believe the same thing. Marx had good intentions when he wrote The Communist Manifesto. In practice, it’s absolutely horrible. It’s been proven that true communism cannot even work in a population above 100 people.

Indeed: Excellent in theory only; such a harsh reality that is : (

Terrible in theory. Even worse in practice.

And yes, I have read The Communist Manifesto, and yes, I do know what Communism and Socialism are.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Can you explain why you think it is terrible in theory? I’d love to know what your views are.

Just like totally unregulated laissez-faire capitalism and voodoo economics, it’s not a practical economic theory.

It didn’t work. It is part of history and a government model to be studied.
It leads to minimum work effort since there is no incentive.
Like all other systems, and more than some, it is liable to corruption.
USSR went belly up on this system.

Its best line:
Religion is the opiate of the people.

Communism doesn’t work at all. Left to their own devices, people won’t put up with it for long. Socialism, however, works as a device for imporverished societies of peasants to use their nation’s recsources to build a healthy, educated work force that can then transition into capitalism ala Sweden and Norway. This is something the CIA could never understand about Latin America.

I’ve been to China, and everything you have heard about Communism is a lie.

@KatetheGreat, I’m sure a bunch of people will come along soon enough to tell me I’m a huge retard with various scholarly links to “prove” so, but my biggest beef with communism of the Marxist variety, at least is the authoritarian element present and potential in the implementation of the theory. Many conservatives and liberals alike agree with me in that coercion plays a huge role in establishing and maintaining a communist society and that an authoritarian ruling class will almost inevitably arise, even from the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

As @anartist says, “it is liable to corruption” in more ways than one. I also agree with her assertion that it leads to economic stagnation. We are hardly the first people to suggest this as well.

Additionally, out of Marx’s “10 Demands,” I think demands #1–9 all suck.

@filmfann China is now a blend of communism and capitalism.
Not an accurate model.
Also probably the dominant force in the 21st century.
US, India, China, Germany, and Japan . . . the most successful nations now and coming . . . why?

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard but Communism could be paired with a non-authoritarian form of government too. The Israeli Kibbutz is one de-centralized form of communism in action. I don’t disagree that Communism does seem to lend itself to a centralized authoritarian government (which itself tends to be corrupt).

I heard this cool quote about Communism before; Communism is like spandex. It’s a bright idea at first, but it gets ugly when people start using it.

Although I’ve never experienced Communism, I think I learned enough saw enough on the news to agree with that.

It sounds nice, but in practice it blows.

Better dead than Red, I say!

@anartist I was there in 1984. How did it rate then?

The ultimate problem with Marxism is that it makes a fundamental assumption of human nature; the we are a tabula rasa. This is critical to dialectical materialism. However, the situation seems to be somewhat more complicated than that.

Like any account of political economy, Marxism is an incomplete theory. All the while, its adherents assume a religious position towards it. The same may be said for Capitalism. It amazes me how many people actually believe that Rand’s Objectivism is a complete account and all our problems would be solved if we just started practicing it.

Both proposed systems seem to be points on a cline of political and economic dogmatism, offering differing conceptions of The Just Society that reflect the authors’ differing stances to individualism and collectivism.

The problem with State Communism is that it does not even accurately reflect Marxism, hence we have Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism.

It would work if not for that pesky human nature. The philosophy’s penchant for enforced atheism isn’t especially attractive, either.

@gorillapaws the Israeli kibbutz is on a very small scale and the survival of the entity [especially if in disputed territory] depended upon the cohesion of the group. Is the kibbutz model still used today, and if so, as much as was originally used?
I used to think of kibbutzes almost like garrisons.

@anartist I’m certainly not an expert on Kibbutzes, but merely pointing out that they seem to be one of the few examples of “communism” functioning effectively (on a small scale). Part of the reason Communism doesn’t work very well on larger scales is because it necessitates bureaucracy to function at that level. With bureaucracy you run into the issues of management, oversight, power/authority control etc. which leads to corruption, which leads to the killing fields and the great cultural revolution, etc.

On paper it’s fantastic, in practice it’s most certainly not.

@filmfann ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ became official policy under Deng Xiaoping in 1978, and they began deviating from doctrinaire communism step by step from that date on.

The most striking positive legacy of communist regimes in Asia are the improvements they achieved in public health, which came before economic reforms and increased wealth.

@anartist I am reminded of a theory that I heard once that suggested that the average human bean could not really maintain friends-and-family relationships in groups much larger than 150, and that he would end up not caring so much about people outside of the group.

@Nullo yup, that’s Dunbar’s Number. A humorous and informal but generally accurate take on this was put up by Cracked awhile back.

Capitalism has worked pretty well over the last 200 years in economies that have been growing at breakneck speed. It is not going to work so well in a future of stagnating economies. Something like the ideas of Communism will become more appropriate. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. It doesn’t sound too bad to me. What is the equivalent slogan for Capitalism?

For everyone saying that communism inevitably slips into authoritarianism, have a look at West Bengal. It’s been ruled by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for the past thirty years, making it the world’s longest running democratically elected government. It ain’t perfect, and it may well lose the next election, but it’s also very far from authoritarian.

In theory communism is a wonderful form of governing. The problem is mankind has yet to reach a state where we can successfully enact it.

John Maynard Keynes denounced Marx’s theories as “unscientific.” Who am I to argue with Keynes?

Communism as envisioned by Marx has never been put into practice, anyway. The old Soviet oligarchy established under Lenin took some slogans and ideas from Marx, but never implemented Communism as an economic model. It would not have worked in any case.

@tedd just to be perfectly clear, Communism isn’t a form of government, it’s a form of economic theory. So you could have an aristocratic government and a communist economic policy, or a democratic government and a communist economic policy, just as you can have totalitarian government and a capitalist economic policy. Although in practice they do tend to become intertwined.

@gorillapaws They are intertwined because in a perfect communist nation the government controls all the businesses and the distribution of money. Its an economic system, run by the government. So in essence it is also a form of government (or at least part of one).

History clearly taught us that it doesn’t work. Socialism which is a softer version of communism doesn’t work either. East Germany had to endure it for 40 years.

But my views also include this:

Putting solar panels on your roof is not communism. Driving a fuel-efficient car is not socialism. Offering health care to all citizens (like being done in Germany) is not socialism. Limiting the overuse of our atmosphere is not socialism. Taxing citizens is not communism. Disagreeing with some Republican viewpoints is not communism.

Americans should end all the propaganda related to the terms socialism and communism. And really understand what these concepts mean.

@mattbrowne Don’t worry, eventually socialism will be worn out by Conservatives calling everyone who disagrees with them that just like communist did, and fascist, and yankee, and slave-trade hater, and rebel to the crown, and….......