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Communism stresses egalitarianism and the abolition of class society and wage labor. The flaw in egalitarianism: All people are equal in the eyes of God but they are in no way equal in ability. Some are stronger and healthier than others. Some are simply smarter than others. Some people have far higher IQ's than others (Cognitive reasoning ability), some are far more creative than others (World class artists and writers), some have better communication skills, and some have superior athletic ability (professional athletes). Given an equal amount of freedom, some will obviously excel above others. If there is no coercive state to force them to give up the fruits of their labor, we will never have an egalitarian society. Communism cannot exist without a coercive state because many people (the vast majority in most societies) will put their family and themselves first much before they consider strangers, and because some are simply more capable than others. The more capable ones will produce more wealth. If they choose to put the well-being of themselves and their family first (which most will certainly do) a class structure ensues, with some being of higher status than others. Communism is based on the flawed premise that those who are more capable will all willingly give up their wealth to the less capable. In communism those who do nothing are rewarded the same as those who toil in labor. If everyone were equal, there would be no motivation for elevating oneself in society. Motivation to better oneself has been the main source of innovation throughout history. If innovation would be at a minimum, technological and scholastic advancement would not occur. In communism there is no motivation for the people to work. In communism, if you could honestly work your ass off, and you do work your ass off, you will still get paid the same salary as if you didnt work your ass off. So this means that you can work really hard, or work very little, and still get paid the same salary. So people basically have no motivation to work hard. When people work hard, the country produces money. When people do nothing, the country suffers financially. On the contrary, in a capitalist society, the harder you work- the more you get paid. If you work very hard at a sophisticated job, you earn alot of money. Whereas if you work a crappy job that requires very little work, you will not earn so much money. So this is where the motivation comes from. What happens to communism, is that the country does not work, does not produce, and eventually collapses from not having enough money to support itself. The Communist government dictates what people need and attempts to force its citizens to generate the needed supply in the allotted time (this is called 'slavery'). Communism breaks the feedback loop between effort and reward. It fails to reward those who excel, and fails to punish those who lag behind. There is no incentive for greater effort, neither in creativity, entrepreneurship or hard work. Communism fails to take into account that wealth is not static, it is created. By taking away wealth from its creators, entrepreneurs and businesspeople, and giving it to those that did not create it, don't deserve and don't know what to properly do with it, it destroys the engines that creates wealth (why bother creating wealth if you do not get to utilize it?), and everybody is worse off in the end. According to the "The black book of communism", communist governments killed 94 million people. Real equality. Equally poor and equally dead.
Communism cannot work because of one false assumption on the part of Karl Marx. The basic principle of communism is that if everyone has enough to get by reasonably comfortably then everyone will be happy and there will be no crime and no war. The false assumption Marx made was that mankind is basically good and will be satisfied once they have sufficient living implements. But humans, being naturally selfish, will want more, whether they need it or not. Because of this, communism is impossible. Also, because there is no competition in a communist market system, product quality will drop. And people will become lazy and unmotivated because they will have no need to work to provide for themselves.
It is very annoying when people claim that communism does not work becasue people are selfish, with the implication that being selfish is evil. It does not work because communism is an evil system. The above is the fundamental principle of coimmunism. It is a cute sound bite and sounds like a wonder4ful idea if you do not analyze what it means. It promises to steal from the best & the brightest. It simply states that the most competent people will not be paid for their efforts. It also claims that those who do the best job of whining & working the system will be the benefactors. Of course you need a totalitarian repressive government to take from the producers without paying them. Who benefitrs from a repressive system? Those who run it. Communism promises much to the incompetent, but does not really run for their benefit. What is wrong with wanting to live well on the product of your labor, poductivity, or other atrributes? Should I work 40 plus hours per week as a programmer and give the money away? Why is it good to give the results of my efforts away to strangers and bad to use it for myself, my family, and perhaps my friends? Forget about earning money. Consider a famer who works hard to produce crops. Should he feed his neighbors instead of himself & his family. Is keeping his produce for himself & his family evil? Of course not. It is evil to run a system that promises to take his produce for the benefit of others. Note that a good approxumation to Laissez Faire Capitalism existed in America for perhaps 150-200 years, ending some time between about 1900 & 1940. Diuring that period, the average person gained more than he had in the previous 3000 years. No other system can claim a similar record of achievement. Capitalism does not exist anymore. In the poorest countries, we have some terrible injustices. In the developing world, we have totalitarian systems. In the oil rich nations we have systems run by a dominant ruling class. What we have in the more affluent countries is a mixture of capitalism & communism, with a huge bureacracy running the system for the benefit of the bureaucrats, the politicians, and those who finance the elections campaigns of the bas**rds.
Well it works for China a little bit...But the true communism is practiced by the Mormon Polygamists. That may be fun for the males, not much fun for the female kind.....and a whole country....would not work.... Many years ago, I had the opportunity to supervise a few russian immigrants. They all said, there was no incentive - so why produce anything? May be it may work for the Catholics with God as incentive.....but I doubt it....human nature... Buddhism may come close as in: Sangham Saranum Gacchami.... Salvation through Community....
Dragon: I find the following hard to believe. For much of my life I have been aware of the best & the brightest leaving communist countries. I am aware of the USSR being able to produce the biggest H-Bomb ever made. It was one of a kind and could not be delivered by any airplane or ballistic missile made by them or us. It was a propaganda gimmick. It was tested & that was the end of that. I am aware of some early success in their space program. When the US military developed software to translate Russian technical journals into English, most of the publications were discovered to be translations of American, German, & British technical journals. Everything I have read and discussed indicates that when they focused on some special technology, they could be successful. I have been aware of some brilliant individuals from the USSR. However, USA built & sold millions of cars every year since about 1950. Similarly the USA manufactures & sells millions of TV sets, refrigerators, & other household appliances every year. I have never seen any evidence that the USSR had ever produced millions of anything in a single year. How many USSR citizens in any year from 1960 to 1980 owned a car, high quality refrigerator, washing machine, TV set, et cetera? The Russian immigrants I have known always marveled at the huge variety of products available in American supermarkets. They viewed the large department stores as incredible. They marveled at the lifestyle of the average American. The tens of millions of cars & household appliances were not sold to only the wealthy in the USA. There were not that many wealthy people in the USA. If you enjoyed life under communism, you must have been one of the bureaucrats or politicians. Or failing that, perhaps, when you moved from a communist country, you were unhappy, because you were not one of the best & the brightest, resulting in your comparing unfavorably to others in your new country. . I have known people who would rather have less in absolute terms than have more in absolute terms at the cost of being relatively worse off than those they know. For instance, I knew an Israeli programmer who had a car, a nice home, and a pretty comfortable life, but envied his friends & neighbors who had more. He went back to Israel because there he was relatively better off than those in his old neighborhood in Israel, but worse off on an absolute scale. Are you like Him? Most of the Russian immigrants I know are doing well as professionals & entrepreneurs. They claim to being doing far better here in the USA than they ever could have hoped for in the USSR. Now that I am retired, I know only a few Russian immigrants. When I worked as a programmer & systems analyst, I knew many. All I have known are happy to have left the USSR.
Yeah well now you have met the first one who is not happy to have left RUSSIA (not USSR), because I left behind Russia.
Dragon: Where are you living now and why would you rather be in Russia? How old were you when you left Russia? Is there some reason you cannot return to Russia?
The belief that communism, or anything that hints at similar ideas, would never work because human beings are greedy is propaganda. If you honestly believe that, ask yourself: Did you develop this idea yourself, or did you develop it from what you were taught... by schools, from the arguments presented by schooling and mainstream society... eg, institutions controlled by the monied elite (that control our politicians, and therefore our government, and therefore our education). The most flouted anti-communist remark is "it always fails! It brings down the people's quality of life!". Yes, communism does harm quality of life... if you're being assaulted in an economic war. That's right folks. I do not approve of the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, but it did not fail because "communism doesn't work". It failed because it was forced into a massive amount of military spending by a hostile nation and an arms race. I'm not placing blame on anyone, as both sides have their fair share, but put quite simply, America won out because capitalism was able to give it a higher quality of life ALONG with the disgusting military spending. And now, our system is beginning to collapse under this weight. Our continued military spending with no competitors even on the horizon (China isn't even close to rivaling us militarily for a LONG time, you can't fight terrorism with war, etc) is a direct result of predatory business practices applied in public policy, with legalized bribery (lobbying). Guess what else? There are thousands of innovations out there that could vastly cut the waste and automate much of our work. What's the problem with that? Our system relies on wasteful labor to run! If we got rid of jobs like we should be doing, we would simply collapse! You say, "why would people be motivated to work if they don't get money!". Why do people have to receive money for work to allow society to function? Wouldn't a better payment be absolute freedom, eg the removal of a money system and the act of making everything that can possibly be wanted by the brattiest middle class kid, including food, water, shelter, travel, education, entertainment etc. free? If everyone knew that filling job fields is a necessity to sustain this, do you honestly have so little faith in humanity that you think they would not buckle down and get to work? The only way we can begin to dip into the potential of developing and evolving into almost completely automated labor is by eliminating the necessity of jobs to keep the economy turning. The more people start seeing this, the sooner we'll be prepared to throw off the last of the shackles our rulers have imposed upon their own species.
Not necessarily a bad post, but this whole thread more properly belongs in politics, where, in fact there was a more recent thread about the topic... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Here you've gone and raised a thread that went dormant in '08
Which country is using true Communism today? Not Russia, nor China because China is developing a new form of government . It uses both socialistic, capitalistic and communistic ideas woven together so it isn't anything like true Communism as Marx was trying to achieve. The only way a true Communistic society can work is if ALL people are honest, trustworthy and kind, which has never happened throughout all of human history.
Sure. Not only CAN it work but it HAS been working for a very, very long time. It does require some pretty close government regulations which, at times, causes another set of problems. But with the proper attention those can be be corrected. The only people who think it can't work are the the young, inexperienced and not fully-educated individuals. (Of course I'm ignoring the cranks and pure idiots.) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
There are things that look only good on books but when they come out of books they are totally hell . One such example is communism .Better dead then RED .
