Ask Lemmy

That we should be striving for it even though it may take a while

Communism is old, and young. The principals of communal living are the oldest form of human organization. It's also the most common form today if you count small groups like family.

But as an organizing principal for government, it's a baby. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. So the whole idea of communism is < 150-200yo. Compare to capitalism at this age and it's all slavery and settler colonialism; the most massive redistribution of wealth through theft in history.

The logic that communism is a bad system because the Soviet Union should also condemn capitalism because the Dutch East India Company.

A power vacuum, which immediately gets filled in by whoever can gain the most power the fastest, while keeping the communist title. Thus the "no true communist" arguing.

My opinion is that it works kind of okay in smaller groups where everyone knows everyone, but on a larger scale it always falls apart

Humans aren't mature enough to handle it.

Our current socioeconomic system is basically built on many intersecting hierarchies of coercion, oppression and control - i.e. some measure of power you can use to make someone do something they otherwise wouldn't want to do. A few examples of those hierarchies include patriarchy, religious authorities, the state, and capitalism.

All of those hierarchies must be abolished. If any of them remain in place, then you will end up with exploiters and the exploited. Eventually, this will stratify over time, as we've seen through history a number of times - the rich get richer, accumulate wealth and power until it becomes unbearable, then the current ruling class are overthrown and replaced by a new ruling class.

We need to NOT create a new ruling class. We need to abolish the ruling class and NOT EVER REPLACE THEM.

That's the mistake made by communism in the USSR - replacing the existing ruling elite with another ruling elite. No matter how cool and revolutionary the leaders of the revolution are, as soon as they have power, they WILL be corrupted by it.

So the solution to our shared problem is anarchism. We need to abolish all forms of coercive control, oppression, hierarchies, ensure that no one has power over anyone else. We need to learn to co-operate, work together, instead of competing and fighting.

Humans are the most co-operative animals in the world. We don't act like it, because the powers that be discourage us from co-operating. Because if we co-operated, we'd immediately realize the problems we have are coming from above.

Everyone I’ve ever met who lived under it says it’s was fucking awful. Not a single endorsement. That’s significant because even capitalism has boosters. Not communism.

I have never seen it functioning outside of theory and doubt that it can. I like social democracy with a lot of regulation.

Impossible economic goal for anything larger than a township and unbelievable susceptible to corruption as a one-party form of government. No nation has ever implemented it without a violent revolution and government that quickly turns into a dictatorship.

In short, a nice dream, but a shit idea.

Most "communist" countries operates under the idea of Vanguardism, and Vanguardism is not gonna work. Giving too much power to a small circle of leadership, or worse, just one leader, is gonna fail, because humans cannot be trusted with that much power.

As for the anarchist variant... no opinion, but can't think of any that worked on the top of my head.

But I think anarchist communisties are gonna struggle. I fear that a neighboring state will literally consume it. I think anarchist communities are too small to protect themselves. (I'm not against anarchism, just skeptical of how it works in practice.)

So I think the best compromise is a decentralized state, direct democracy, ideally, we should have people enforce their own rules, via well-regulated militias. But if there's a foreign invasion, then form into one united command. Something like Social Democracy / Democratic Socialism

Definitely one of the fastest way to start arguments, especially among people left-of-center.

In theory it could work if everyone living under it are selfless and 100% in on it, but that's simply against human nature. Also, a resource distribution system based on "trust me, bro" will at best be inefficient or corrupt, in most cases both.

We're currently living through an era where liberalism+capitalism is really showing its asscracks, but I'd take that over communism. But I can understand why communism may appeal to some who have never managed to get ahead in our current system.

It's never existed. Not in it's pure form anyway. But neither has capitalism, or socialism either for that matter.

A theoretical system is always in some way perverted and coopted by the people implementing it. Humans are the weak part of the equation because humans are greedy and focused only on themselves and their own small group of friends/family. So scaling any political system up from theoretical to an actual national policy always ends up with a perverted form where one group ends up over another group despite the original theoretical intent of the system in question. That goes for Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, as well as religion too.

Humans suck and can't have nice things without fucking them up.

Makes the problems of capitalism even worse. Instead of the owner class you get an even smaller political class controlling all means of production - the party leadership. It becomes even more prone to corruption than capitalism.

Adding to problems is the planned economy - it always results in misaligned incentives, bad allocation of resources, constant shortages...

Third, possibly the worst, is the constant insistence on ideological purity and severe punishment of "thought crimes". Or as they like to call it "counterrevolutionary activity".

Even though it was created out of good intentions, I don't believe a lot positive aspects can be salvaged.

Communism sounds amazing on paper, but immediately falls apart once people try to implement it, because it inevitably just becomes a dictatorship with even more hunger than fascism. Human nature undermines a perfect world where Communism is possible. C'est la vie.

Does not scale well.

Good in theory, problematic in practice. A goal to strive towards but not achieve.

The main problem is that the dictatorship of the proletariat is so easily corrupted into a regular ol dictatorship. It's supposed to be a transitional period, but when that much power is in play, it's hard for people to give it up - and even when they're willing, they can just get ousted by less scrupulous people.

Making it safely through that passage is like a Great Filter of socio-economics

Easier to achieve in small communities, such as the ones the human brain originally developed for (a few hundred people)

Private property =/= Personal property (nobody's coming to take your house or your tv)

Attempts to implement something like it are actively sabotaged by the ruling class to protect their privileges, either through propaganda or through violence

In theory? Pretty good. In the Marx-written demands of the Communist Party, it emphasizes democracy, education, and equality.

I would gladly vote for a communist with similar policies.

Plenty of people here have talked about potential success or failure, and the economic side, but here's my take. Despite Marx equating religion to an opiate, and especially despite the "no religion" stance of the USSR, Christianity (probably the other Abrahamic religions as well and maybe Hinduism and its offshoots, I'm not exactly sure please correct me if I'm wrong) should be massively in favor of communism over capitalism. In Christianity, we are called to be stewards of creation for God, we run it and manage it but it's not ours. This doesn't work with capitalism, which is focused on the concept of ownership. That's not to mention the equality side of things, which is very much a Christian concept.

I've brought this up with some of my Christian friends, and it's unfortunately not a popular idea. Probably because of lingering cold war attitudes of "communism is atheist".

Also to be clear: yes I'm Christian, no I'm not pro theocracy, yes this is based on my knowledge of the Bible and on communist philosophy.

It's great for small groups. It's susceptible to corruption at scale, though.

Worse than capitalism despite being more well intentioned.

Cs Lewis nailed it while talking about religion:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Ask yourself, do you really want the people of .ml holding power over every facet of your life?