Is workable Communism really impossible?

Post Reply New Topic

I'd like to know what people here think.

Possible to put into place, impossible to avoid corruption. It will happen in any system.

I think the bottom line of why it fails is that self interest always rises above altruistic ideology for a common good.

Im not sure. Sounds like a self substantiating premise.

I'm not strictly a supporter of classical Marxism but the right wing doctrine of "It doesnt work due to human nature" sounds too over simplified for comfort. Anthropoligical case studies have examples of rainforest indians untouched by western capitalism that have no concept of first world abstractions such as currency or leadership. To me, the historical experience is that it in places like Russia and Cuba they started off with the best intentions of forming egalitarian, direct democracies.but due to foreign pressure were forced into militarisation and adopting western heirarichal political leadership that took real decision making away from the working classes.

The theory of Leninism and Trotskyism (the 4th international) is that global communism would remove these influences and create a workable version. Countries like North Korea are insular, and moving away from egalitarianism. We shouldnt forget that North Korea and Cuba are still in a defacto state of war with the United States, hence the heavy handed curtail of freedoms.

I think that Hugo Chavez's Venezuela so far has made the best balance.

Last edited by thomas81 on 30 Jul 2012, 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Bingo! That is why all forms of collectivist altruism must fail.

We can be co-operative when the occasion calls for it, but we are all self-interested when the squeeze is on.

Co-operation, in some circumstances, is enlightened self interest writ large.

Self sacrifice, abnegation and immolation simply will not work in the long run.

ruveyn

Nah.

Self interest paradigms are an effect, not biologically pre-determined.

See my above point about the rainforest tribes.

On a very small scale, yes. Some communes have demonstrated models relatively similar to theoretical communism.
However, in the actual world, and using the actual theory - industrialism being very important at all - that's a clear no for the rest of mankind's existence.

It works in tribes due to the limited number of people all depending on one another to survive.
When you have an advanced civilization that will survive whether or not a group of people act within the interest of everyone and not themselves it can go awry and have a domino effect.

You would need to define communism. The word has been used to refer to many different types of social system.

I think that democratic socialism is workable. The problem is that too many vested corporate interests oppose it.

Pre colonial America before the arrival of white Europeans could be an example of people living in a communal nature, en masse.

Either way the numbers are largely irrelevant. What it shows is that heirarchy, and the orientation of self interest are cultural constructs, not natural inevitabilities.

Neither the end result nor the means to Communism will work out. The means to Communism centralizes power to an extreme extent which would work if we're ants and bees but we all have unique needs and capabilities. We have a need for privacy and space which ants don't hence private property. Our individual uniqueness inherently makes extreme collectivism nothing more than a pipe dream. As for the end result of Communism, that would leave a power vacuum and without a Government to act as a medium of force the philosophy of might making right will be taken to the extreme.

Again, not a Marx worshipper, but i think he nailed it best from this excerpt of the Manifesto-

" But you wish to do away with private property! Cry the bourgeoisie in chorus. There is no need, for you cannot do away with something that has been denied to all but ten percent of the population!"

Post colonial too. The economic powerhouses of early settlement were religious communes (might note that the Amish are still extremely succesful as a financial enterprise, with expansion taking place at a level that would make many franchised businesses green with envy).

Socialism itself kicked off with Robert Owen's failed attempts to duplicate the success of the religious communes in a secular manner (eg buying up the prosperous site of one of the Harmony Society's colonies, which became New Harmony and promptly failed)

For a brief amount of time, as with Cuba, or small scale, as with nomadic tribes in North America.

Unless you can eliminate greed and corruption, communism wouldn't be able to hold up.

Of course not, haven't you seen Star Trek?

Maybe on primitive tribal scale at subsistence level. Anything beyond that, no.