Poll:Who believes Communism can work?

It won't work because Castro said so.

I don't think we'd need to go pure communism to get things to work. Technology hardly existed for one thing when Marx was around, and the other times it's been tried. The problem with Communism, and all systems probably, is the motivation to work. If the motivation to work is there, the system should work. I sort of wonder if with the tech we have now, if we couldn't have a system totally different than what we have imagined. Motivation to work can be separate from money.

Even with income "tiers" the motivation to work would be there. It'd be nice to be in a society where even the greediest would be content with being 10-20x richer than the lowest.

I did see a documentary where one company split the profits between all the workers so everyone got paid the same. I think they said the lower workers earned about 6x the average.

The reason we lack motivation in the US is because of the destruction of spirituality and the intentional derailing of maslows heirarchy of needs. The natural state of a healthy and well adjusted human at rest is CREATIVITY, which is the prime architect of motivation. Sadly, the majority of americans, i think, are not healthy or well adjusted, rather they live in a society which cultivates pathology in the forms of addictions to entertainment and substances, and materialism.

There have been whole books written on why Communism doesn't work. An excellent (albeit a bit dry) one is Human Action by Ludwig von Mises.

But actually, it works if you make the sacrifices. And Communism requires extensive human sacrifice. In order to implement a planned economy, your plan must call for X percentage of the population to be farmers, Y percent to be factory workers, etc. But not everybody is going to be on the same page. People aren't all carbon copies of each other. There will be people who don't want to do the job you assigned to them. Maybe they lived on a farm their family owned for centuries, and now you want make them a worker (not to mention taking their property to collectivize it, bound to make such a person super happy).

For these obstinate people, you can try persuasion, but ultimately if that doesn't work you must use brute force. Statistically speaking there will always be a small but significant percentage of the population who just simply will not cooperate with the government's plans, and at the end of the day these people will have to be murdered in cold blood en masse.

Of course, I guess this is no reason it can't work. You just need to get a guy like Stalin at the helm.

Ultimately though, Communism was just Marx's childish fantasy. Despite how much he wrote about it, he never really thought it through. Of course, perhaps I should not blame him for this. Many times it's hard to tell whether an idea will work until you actually try it.

Any form of government can work. Unfortunately, they all depend on the honor of humankind. And that is less than perfect. Corruption is always going to be evident and greed for power and money enter into the equation. Even a democracy or a representative republic fails miserably when corruption is preset (as is OBVIOUS in the US).

People take advantage, cheat, lie, steal...

So, yes, Communism can work. Socialism can work. Anarchy can work. Democracy can work. But given that man is involved, none of them work in the long run.

reply to post by tigpoppa


You are in the poll. The question was could it work and it still look like it could!

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
Any form of government can work. Unfortunately, they all depend on the honor of humankind. And that is less than perfect. Corruption is always going to be evident and greed for power and money enter into the equation. Even a democracy or a representative republic fails miserably when corruption is preset (as is OBVIOUS in the US).

People take advantage, cheat, lie, steal...

So, yes, Communism can work. Socialism can work. Anarchy can work. Democracy can work. But given that man is involved, none of them work in the long run.

Well technically Anarchy worked for over 90% of human history, up until around 10,000 years ago when most Tribal/Band/Anarchist societies were wiped out, crippled, or assimilated. But even so... a handful of them live on today.

As for Communism... this quote basically reflects my views on it:


"Every one of your systems is a utopian system. Democracy would be heaven--if people would just be better than people have ever been. Of course, Soviet Communism was supposed to have been heaven too--if people had just been better than people have ever been. Your justice system would work perfectly if people would just be better than people have ever been. And of course your schools would work perfectly under the same conditions."
-Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael


Essentially... we must create a society which caters to HUMANITY and ECOLOGY rather than bending people and other species to the will of a more/less unyielding system.

I agree with those who call communism an economic system. It can indeed exist alongside democracy.

The major difference between socialism and communism is that in socialism the central government owns the means of production, while under communism (as Marx and Engels proposed it) the means of production would be in the hands of the actual producers -- the workers -- rather than in those who just have the money to own the means of production.

Capitalism works just the way Marx describes in Das Kapital. He is superb in describing the weaknesses, inequities and endless greed that exist under capitalism. Both Marx and Engels are absolutely brilliant in "The Communist Manifesto" -- a book I strongly recommend, even to those who consider themselves pure capitalists.

Unfortunately, as several have already pointed out, the human race is not highly evolved enough to be absolutely equitable and magnanimous toward one's fellow humans. Those that can grab power will. It happened during and after the Russian revolution, which never did succeed in establishing the kind of communism Marx and Engels proposed. It would probably be perverted almost immediately if we tried to implement it here.

So, to my mind, Marx and Engels are superlative in pointing out the evils of capitalism. Although in theory I think communism suits my philosophy better than socialism, nobody has yet come up with a way to implement it successfully.

While we as a species are working out that challenge, however, I do think our country would benefit by implementing some socialist measures along the lines of Europe while at the same time trying to make capitalism more responsible and hopefully a little less cruel than it exists in its purest forms.