Communism

what's so bad about it again?

Agreed it's not something that should be shoved down the throat of the populous, but rather chosen after going through capitalism and then socialism. If a country realises they all must work together for the betterment of the nation rather than the individual, what's wrong with that?

>>1
It's impossible.

>>2

thread over lol

Communism is a nice utopian idea. I mean, we all want a society that everyone is working together and people get according to their ability, we also want world peace and flying magical unicorns to take us to work everyday.
Communism is just used as a tool for tyrants to get into power, like religion and nationalism. Thats why its bad.

>>4
like all other ideologies on which our society(societies) is/are based

Capitalism only requires freedom of information to work, which is much easier to define/enforce than making sure everyone takes only according to their need.

Voluntary communism is fine.  Forcing communism on other people who want to be free is not.  If you want communism, go join a commune, and let everyone else who wants to enjoy capitalism be.

"Capitalism only requires freedom of information to work, which is much easier to define/enforce than making sure everyone takes only according to their need." <-- honka honk honk
if anything is hard to enforce it's freedom of information, it's practically impossible.

also, capitalism requires freedom of mobility of resources, and as you said, complete information for all parts, which would lead to a completely homogenic market, combined with freedom of mobility of resources this will create an equilibrium market, which consists of all markets. This market will be the most efficient, and thus, everybody in the whole world will be happy.

now, let's look at communism, the world is a large happy place in which everybody does what they can and get paid enough to live even if they can't do anything, the whole world is happy.

i daresay both are equally utopian ideologies. one of them is in a complete pareto efficiency, the other is a complete social pareto efficiency(noone can be put in a better social situation without putting someone in a worse social situation).

both very utopian 

>>2
It's not impossible in every respect, and certainly it's methods of institutions in the past were heavily influence by the level of social and technological development of the countries that attempted them: For instance, Russia can't do democracy correctly NOW, so what makes us think they were doing communism correctly THEN.  Besides, every country where Communism was attempted went into it directly from an agrarian semi-feudalist state, full of serfs and and with no prior existing "means of material production" to share common ownership, except for the land.  They had no pre-existing structures for creating wealth, like the developed countries have/had, so they were left with the proposition of trying to build it from nothing.

Back to the point about it not being impossible for everything, take a look at the way piracy and legit free-software operates on the internet.  With no material cost for the REproduction of these goods, we essentially share communal ownership of all freely availible software, music, and movies already, whether the laws agree or not.  As piracy moves towards 100%, it would increasingly resemble normal software distribution under a technologically developed free Communist state.  The loss of the profit motive would certainly detract to some degree or another from the production of new media, such as music, films, and games, but think of the wonder of having free and legal access to every single creative work ever produced by human kind...

A possibility under a sufficiently developed Communist state.

Throw in automated factory production, nanite controlled garbage disposal, a renewable energy source, and a few other currently-sci-fi ideas that would substantially decrease or elliminate certain material scarcities along with the need for human labor, and you have the grounds for a workable Communism that has neither shortages, nor garbage men and sewer workers recieving the same rewards as research scientists and brain surgeons.

"Communism is just used as a tool for tyrants to get into power, like religion and nationalism. Thats why its bad."

simply because the idea of communism is used as a mask for tyrants, doesn't mean the concept is inharently bad.

why are some people still stuck in the 'red scare' era, swearing the slightest hint of communism means no more organized sports or firearms?

When you come right down to it, distrust in our own government is what makes us fear communism, not the idea itself. Die hard Bush fans would cringe at a communist state, even with him at the helm.

>>10
The same argument can be applied to Anarchism too.

Hey, I like the ideas both advance, but in practice they have all been abject failures. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome.

That isn't to say that an idea itself isn't useful. Marx didn't pull it out of his ass just because.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome."

then do the same thing differntly. the only reason communism has been an abject failure so far is because it's never arisen the way it's supposed to, by being chosen by people.

plus, that quote is wrong. just because something happens the same way many times doesn't mean that's the only outcome possible. if this were true, our basic scientific method of finding the exception to the rule would have been abandoned long ago.

the only reason communism has been an abject failure so far is because it's never arisen the way it's supposed to, by being chosen by people.
And I suppose all the so-called worker paradises around the world came into existence by their own volition? No, they got there by popular support, whether by being voted there or by supporting guerilla movements.

There have been dozens of communist regimes around this world. None was a success. None was anything beyond a dictatorship. That's a rather poor record, wouldn't you say? Either we're amazingly unlucky, or something is inherently wrong with the theory.

In theory, theory is the same as practice. In practice...

>>8
>>9

You can look at the ideals of capitalism and communism. You can also look at the reality of capitalism and communism under despotic states, then you can look at the reality of capitalism under democracies of varying liberty and how a democratic state runs it's monopolies.

In the case of both communist-despotisms and capitalist-despotisms the economy is the government, whether the government runs the economy or the economy runs the government they are both 2 cheeks of the same ass. No questions asked, they're both kleptocracies, a tyranny, practically the only type of government until 500 years ago when the Swiss peasants realised they were a military resource.

Now let's take a look at those democracies...

If the economic system cannot be judged by the people and a myriad of professional economists under a free press then whatever the economic system is it will be heavily corrupt from day one. Democracy's success is not due to virtue, rather it is due to it's vast reduction in vice and the contrast this generates with inefficient corrupt despotisms. In a democracy people are convinced that the state should take care of a few services and leave everything else to a regulated free market because it has been time tested to be a reliable and effective economic system. Democracy is populist and thus is evolutionary because the average worker person doesn't want the government to do anything that might risk their comfortable standard of living. This is universal with all populists. Even extremist populists like Hugo Chávez aren't going to touch the majority of the capitalist market with a 90 ft pole, I don't think Chavez has even used the word "communist" since his university days.

While communism is not necessarily worse than capitalism your set piece for understanding economic systems is wrong. Economics is 1% theory, 99% practice. socialists seem to love comparing communism to tribal societies. Tribal societies haven't changed for years and there are only 3 professions, Man, Woman and Child. If I were to assume tribal societies are communist and worthwhile my next question would be how you will create a culture for an immensely complex and diverse economy, one where it is very difficult for someone to master even one of the sciences necessary for the smooth running of the economy and which contains millions of people operating in a market with 1000s of completely different sectors. Point in note, even men and women in tribal hunter gatherer societies are pretty much university level trappers, trackers, hunters, weavers, cooks, carpenters and builders. How anyone can expect to get every adult to that level so that a communist society 10000s times bigger and diverse will work I don't know.

With grasping such scales which are beyond the human mind, things like the free market become much more desirable than state monopolies, even in our theoretical developped stable culturally enlightenned democratic-communism. Government should be small.

>>14 Seconded, Bump and Internets for you. The value of government vs. market is not intrinsic, but it takes a lot to make it better and fairer than the market.

Statism could only work with a perfect maze of checks and balances, and even then one crack could spell disaster, even then it would be unethical, even then it would not be prepared for many contingencies and even then it could destroy itself from within.

There are some things mercantile forces should not act on, there are some things the government should not even take heed to and consumers have to take responsibility for what capitalism does, or face consequences.

As long as people are human, communism won't work the way Marx intended. The same goes with capitalism, or pretty much any other idealogy.

>>16 has had the last word.

This thread is now over.

>>16
>>17
Same person. Didn't read >>14.

Capitalist-democracy has an ideal, but in reality it works better than communist-democracy. Mainly because the government doesn't decide how much of the economy it controls, the people do.

Mixed economy > *

um, hello, don't we know that communism never worked and like, totally fucks up nations who try it?

>>20
No it's the fact they are tyrannies that fucks them up. Democracies simply never choose to be communist because of the reasons stated in >>14.

>>20
We know that it has thus far only ever been tried in nations that were royally fucked up to begin with.  See >>9

>>22
Yes, but non-fucked countries don't try it for a very good reason as argued in >>14.

>>23
If I recall, the reasons stated above in >>14 neither the only nor the primary reasons for governments avoiding communism.

The _actual_reasons_ for modern western capitalist states being anticommunist is the same as the facists of the 1920/30/40's in Europe: Strong business interests that don't want to see their shit get taken away from them.

>>14 is mearly an example of the most common modern justification, which attempts to extrapolate to all nations the results of attempts at socialism in technologicaly backward countries which had cultures never knew anything except absolute totalitarianism. 

Don't ask a serf how to administrate a factory, he won't fucking know, whether the government's ideals are communist or capitalist.  But when you haven't had any freemarket growth yet, where the fuck are you going to get people who aren't serfs to organize shit?

Communism: A distribution model, not a development model

got to bake a pretty cake

>>25
According to popular understanding of communism, it seems, I wouldn't be allowed to.

Less whine, more Marx.

>>26
 yes, we must all bake ugly cakes, so that nobody will end up baking worse cakes than others, and then be unequal!

>>24
The fascists also believed murder should be illegal (to some extent). I guess we should legalise murder to show those evil fascists who's boss, even though they are all dead and wouldn't notice, but that's beside the point. We must do the reverse of what the fascists did because they were evil. You have a very compelling argument there.

If the Government brings back the draft.  Apply for conscientious objectors status.

there are certin requirments that you need to meet.

http://www.objector.org/girights/gettingout/conscientious-objection.html

The government won't force a draft, they'll just increase wages.

good point. 

Bring back the Draft is political suscide with consequences that would hurt party that supported the measure for decades to come.

Problem is communism doesnt work in practice. Great idea, poor execution.

>>33
The problem is that Russia can't pull off a decent government, Capitalist, Communist, Socialist, Monarchy, or agrarian tribalism, and we should never ever EVER in the course of any of our human discussion measure the feasabilty of any ideology based on it's past or present practice in that icy shithole.

>>34
Already disproven. The reason why russia chose communism was because communism is exploitable. Oh and Russia isn't totally fucked, they have made some major achievements which are far superior to countries which are more resource rich, such as Mali and Zambia.

>>35 Already disproven. The reason why russia chose communism was because communism is exploitable.

Bullshit.  Back it up.  Lots of things are exploitable, including democracy, capitalism, and idealism.

>>36
It's written in history, by Lenin himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat

Democracy involves freedom of speech. Dictatorships don't like that.

Russia was already capitalist.

Communism is an idealism.