That may depend on your definition of “working”. It is true that
communism has failed. No government works, though. Being a form of government, it’s pretty ranged and is altered by many factors. Untill used on a world-wide scale, governments will be oppressive due to their unsatisfied hunger for power.
The main reason communism has countlessly failed is because of warfare. Warfare is any government’s worst enemy. Communism is also rather new and hasn’t been set in the productive and untouched society it would need to develop fairly.
One of the communist communes in upper state New York Lasted for more than 10 years. Several communes in Europe did almost as well. There may be some misunderstanding that I am somehow a proponent of a capitalistic world view. I’m not. I’m simply a pragmatist who looks at what actually functions and what doesn’t. As Mr P suggests, there are no ‘pure’ ideologies, but most social orders are a mixed bag of capitalism and socialism. Some treat folks better than others, depending on resources, political history, and all the other attendant variables. Could we do better with a different world view? I hope to hell, because we aren’t exactly doing ourselves any favors at the moment.
There’s about ten different theories about how to run a communist government. When I say “communist” I refer back to the core principles of the theories and not a specific style. Socialism has many communist elements in it and so it’s a form of communism.
The question about the modern world is whether or not the average government is mostly communist with some capitalist injected in, or vice versa.
Personally, I believe that capitalism is an absolute failure as no western country was able to tolerate have mass numbers of its population living in total poverty. That spreads vice, crime, fear, and a lack of morale. It can only survive snadwiched between layers of communist support.
You know, SS, one major reason for the atrocities commited by the communist leaders, the mass killings (liquidations) in specific, is the fact that they were isolated economically from the rest of the world. I think it wasn’t until Truman that a plan for helping communist countries participate in trade was invented, which is to say, if you were a communist dictator, you were on your own.
Remember that aside from the atheistic indifference of a communist dictator and his iron rule (killing thousand or millions at the snap of your fingers), the reasons for such things are economical and materialistic. The “cold-war” put the odds against Russia, for instance.
The communist doctrine is not a favoritism, it is ultra-egalitarianistic-- it is a strategy which has never had a “fair shot”, if I might say, and as such extremes were taken to unfortunately. If it is going to happen, it must happen globally. All nations must participate in order for it to work.
Is that to say that a utopian society would be everyone in their natural, greedy state, doing whatever feels good until someone does it to them? Taking by force things they want, killing, raping, stealing, all for their own personal advancement?
I would call that hell on earth. And here I thought you condemned anarchy.
anarchy is great. in the absence of governmental restraint, the strongest command everything. especially the weakest.
visions of non governmental utopia anarchy are bullshit. the reality of anarchy is human nature at its finest coming home to roost. the rednecks play dictator of the neighboorhood.
Anarchy won’t work, Imp, for the very reason that it will be exactly as we both have described. It simply does not last, becasue as humans we need order to function as a society, and we don’t know any other way of functioning.
— There’s plenty of examples of groups of people that basically get along with few differences in status and that place a large premium on sharing.
O- Sure. Families are like that. Perhaps the success of these groups depends on the availability of more than one group. As someone once said: “We can love everyone, as long as there are enought people left to hate.”
— The tendency to believe this impossible stems from European culture and its focus on the achievment of personal fame. This tradition stretches back all of the way back to a time before money even existed.
O- Interesting theory. But consider that the incredulity in Marxism, Communism, Socialism and Nationalist-Socialism, by this community has a lot more to do with the lessons from the twentieth century, where these speculations reached their peak, and their failure to address the question of what to do with undesirables. These movements gave us Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler, so I don’t think it particularly necessary, nor influential in my own opinion, to hold that it is something that stems from European culture etc.
Communism has survived, yes, but it has done so as the exception and not the rule. No Utopia has developed and inequality persists, and some might say, has increased, if we study China.
Now, I’m not gonna sit here and defend the PRC. Nor am I gonna defend the USSR.
But . . . look at China at the end of the Qing. The Manchus had fucked that whole deal up right nicely. Are the Chinese better now, under the PRC than they were under the Manchu’s thumb? What about the Russian peasantry? Are the Russian souls (as they were called) better now (or even under Stalin) than they were under the Romanovs?
I’d say that both cases are great examples of Communism working. Perhaps not as well as other economic forms, but working.
Edited because the MAN’s programming got to me and confused me.