Is Communism Fatally Flawed ?

[Butts]

In theory Communism seems to be a fair system where everyone is equal and resources are shared out fairly.

However in practice it never seems to have worked out quite like that.

Is this due to the system or the intrinsic fallacy that People are greedy and want a bigger share of the pie regardless of the cost to others.

 

[talltim]

Communism only works if everyone wants to do it.

 

[Butts]

Communism only works if everyone wants to do it.

Has that ever happened anywhere and if not how do you know ?

 

[Simon11]

Or that people would become lazy? There would be no incentive to improve.

 

[70014IronDuke]

In theory Communism seems to be a fair system where everyone is equal and resources are shared out fairly.

Flawed or not, it was certainly fatal for an awful lot of people.

However in practice it never seems to have worked out quite like that.

Not "quite" like that.
Hmmmm. how many need to die/denounced by fake, government-controlled courts/suffer years in labour camps/torture in your estimation before you would consider dropping the word "quite" ?

Is this due to the system or the intrinsic fallacy that People are greedy and want a bigger share of the pie regardless of the cost to others.

"Intrinsic fallacy" - this has me fooled

a) intrinsic to what? to communism? Or to 'truth' ? Or .... ?

b) what fallacy? Do you mean: "People are greedy and want a bigger share of the pie regardless of the cost to others" is a fallacy?
Or ..... ?

- Sorry, but I think you need to sort your ideas out clearly before expounding them and expecting a coherent discussion.

 

[furnessvale]

Or that people would become lazy? There would be no incentive to improve.

As one of the lads in the drawing office used to tell our commie van driver,

"When the great day of the communist revolution arrives and we are all on the same pay, you can work in the drawing office and I'll drive the ****ing van!

 

[70014IronDuke]

Has that ever happened anywhere and if not how do you know ?

As I understand it, Engels-Marxist theory states that this cannot happen. That is the whole point of a violent revolution - the capitalist class will never voluntarily relinquish its hold on power and wealth.
Therefore the working class must wrest this from them, and is justified in doing so, violently.

The working class needs the communist party cadres in order to lead them successfully to achieve this goal.

The trouble is, nobody involved (with notable exceptions, like George Orwell, Arthur Koestler and Mikhail Bulgakov - most died in the Gulags) ever seemed to foresee that the cadres themselves, ie party leader(s), once they got hold of the wealth and power, would be less than willing to share it all out as per the theory.

And then, dear friends, you have a serious problem on your hands. Unless, of course, you are the party leaders.

 

[AlterEgo]

Communism and socialism are well intentioned, but (sadly) inherently flawed, because they run counter to the nature of humanity. That is, to strive, and improve, on an individual basis.

Fortunately we are humans and not an ant colony.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Engels-Marxist theory states that this cannot happen. That is the whole point of a violent revolution - the capitalist class will never voluntarily relinquish its hold on power and wealth. Therefore the working class must wrest this from them, and is justified in doing so, violently. The working class needs the communist party cadres in order to lead them successfully to achieve this goal.

Now then, are you the mole who has leaked this part of the first Momentum-prepared draft that was to be presented to the next Labour Party Conference?

 

[backontrack]

Communism and socialism are well intentioned, but (sadly) inherently flawed, because they run counter to the nature of humanity. That is, to strive, and improve, on an individual basis.

Fortunately we are humans and not an ant colony.

Communism - yes.

Socialism - no...

 

[70014IronDuke]

Now then, are you the mole who has leaked this part of the first Momentum-prepared draft that was to be presented to the next Labour Party Conference?

hell, it's not THAT obvious, is it? Hang on, better get to a safe house quick ....

 

[Iskra]

Communism is fatally flawed.

It's administered by humans who are innately selfish.

Also, Communism is an imperfect prerequisite transitional society before the coming of a Socialist Utopia according to Marx, so is by definition, flawed.

 

[AlterEgo]

Communism - yes.

Socialism - no...

So why has socialism rarely been a long term success then?

 

[DarloRich]

Communism is fatally flawed.

It's administered by humans who are innately selfish.

Also, Communism is an imperfect prerequisite transitional society before the coming of a Socialist Utopia according to Marx, so is by definition, flawed.

beat me to it.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

So why has socialism rarely been a long term success then?

democratic socialism has been rather successful.

 

[Bevan Price]

So why has socialism rarely been a long term success then?

Because - rather like fascism, conservatism & capitalism, it is operated in a manner that benefits a favoured minority.

"Social idealists" are ousted by the "bully-boys", who force people to do what they are told (and those who object often get murdered, or "disappeared".)

 

[Deerfold]

As one of the lads in the drawing office used to tell our commie van driver,

"When the great day of the communist revolution arrives and we are all on the same pay, you can work in the drawing office and I'll drive the ****ing van!

There's a company I applied to join once where all the staff are paid the same per hour. Whether they're designing or driving fork lifts or stacking pallets. It means they can pay those stacking more than most companies. It also means people are a lot happier doing jobs other than their own when required as they're not being paid any differently than whoever normally does it. It does rather well and has no trouble recruiting when it needs to.

 

[Butts]

There's a company I applied to join once where all the staff are paid the same per hour. Whether they're designing or driving fork lifts or stacking pallets. It means they can pay those stacking more than most companies. It also means people are a lot happier doing jobs other than their own when required as they're not being paid any differently than whoever normally does it. It does rather well and has no trouble recruiting when it needs to.

Did you not get the job then ?

 

[Busaholic]

There is an argument, which I am in no way proposing, that it is too early to say whether Communism has failed. You don't have to be religious, though, to say all people are flawed, in fact fatally so, which is why there are no people alive who were also alive in the nineteenth century. We all succumb to something. As for being a collection of individuals with no connection to each other, I remember Jimmy Savile making such a claim to Professor Anthony Clare in the radio programme 'In the Psychiatrist's Chair' and I remember thinking that he may have fooled the Prof (as he seemed to do) but he hadn't fooled me. 'No man is an island' - John Donne.

 

[Tim R-T-C]

I have been reading a lot about the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, where the Russians launched brutal ethnic cleansing of Tartars in the Crimea and ethnic Germans in the Volga region, to replace them with more "trustworthy" native Russians - a move you would expect from far right wing governments.

The deliberate starvations in the Ukraine were on a scale incomprehensible, literally millions of people starved to death, again apparently because Stalin wanted the areas to be exclusively for Russians.

 

[Robinson]

I have been reading a lot about the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, where the Russians launched brutal ethnic cleansing of Tartars in the Crimea and ethnic Germans in the Volga region, to replace them with more "trustworthy" native Russians - a move you would expect from far right wing governments.

I think people get confused in applying the terms "left wing" and "right wing". These terms apply to economic ideologies, and both left and right wing agendas may be accompanied by either socially liberal or socially authoritarian ideals.

 

[bb21]

Put simply, communism is flawed because people are selfish.

Everyone is, more or less, only to differing degrees.

Edit: Oops, saw that I was beaten.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Put simply, communism is flawed because people are selfish.

Everyone is, more or less, only to differing degrees.

Edit: Oops, saw that I was beaten.

That's quite a statement without any evidence! I would contend that not all people are selfish, but I would suggest that there is more selfishness now than there was a generation ago.

 

[EM2]

That's quite a statement without any evidence! I would contend that not all people are selfish, but I would suggest that there is more selfishness now than there was a generation ago.

Maybe it would be better phrased as 'because there are people that are selfish'.

 

[bb21]

That's quite a statement without any evidence! I would contend that not all people are selfish, but I would suggest that there is more selfishness now than there was a generation ago.

It is indeed a very big statement.

Don't forget that we all have differing thresholds for "selfishness", and differing tolerance levels for it. That is quite a subject for discussion in itself.

I don't actually think it is all bad, but others may prefer to use different terms for what I might call selfish sometimes.

 

[Robinson]

I don't actually think it is all bad, but others may prefer to use different terms for what I might call selfish sometimes.

I believe the favoured term among Tories/Thatcherites is "rational self-interest"...

 

[DynamicSpirit]

In theory Communism seems to be a fair system where everyone is equal and resources are shared out fairly.

However in practice it never seems to have worked out quite like that.

Is this due to the system or the intrinsic fallacy that People are greedy and want a bigger share of the pie regardless of the cost to others.

Assuming you're referring to the general principle of the economic system, I would suggest there are a couple of issues.

• Firstly, centralised planning of the entire economy sounds nice, but in practice planning out all the details exactly what should ideally be produced where and in what quantities etc. is simply too complex a problem for almost any human mind to solve. Because of that, it's almost guaranteed that attempts by the central bureaucracy to plan everything will produce very imperfect results. On the other hand, in market economies, those decisions get made by individuals and companies based on what they see happening in their own localities/industries etc. In effect that reduces one horrendously complex problem to millions of simpler problems that individually can be solved very well in the light of local knowledge - hence more efficient production etc. in market-based economies.
• The centralised planning would also makes it much harder for people to use their initiative and invent new solutions/processes - and linked with that, it's hard to do central planning in a way that leaves individuals free to start new businesses and - in effect - to be creative.

I think those two things roughly explain why Communism tends not to work economically.

Several people have commented on it being against human nature - the desire to earn money etc. I'm not convinced by that argument. You only need to look at - say - the Health Service, the social care industry, or at any of numerous charities to see a great examples of people working very hard for the greater good of society or for other people without much expectation of financial gain themselves - which appears to contradict any suggestion that Communism can't in principle succeed because of human nature.

I suspect one other issue is that, on the whole, the only countries that have had Communist Governments are countries that have never previously had any tradition of human rights, of free speech, or of an independent police and judiciary and all the checks and balances characteristic of Western Governments that prevent any one part of Government from becoming too powerful. Added to that is that most Communist Governments came to power as a result of violent revolution against previous despotic regimes - and those are not circumstances that are typically helpful for generating democratic Governments and a tolerant civil society. I suspect it is that, rather than any inherent political flaw in the principle of a Communist system that has lead to so many supposedly Communist leaders enriching themselves and their supporters while suppressing much of the population. (But the economic complexity and lack of economic freedom do remain as inherent problems with the idea of Communism).

 

[Bevan Price]

I suspect one other issue is that, on the whole, the only countries that have had Communist Governments are countries that have never previously had any tradition of human rights, of free speech, or of an independent police and judiciary and all the checks and balances characteristic of Western Governments that prevent any one part of Government from becoming too powerful. Added to that is that most Communist Governments came to power as a result of violent revolution against previous despotic regimes - and those are not circumstances that are typically helpful for generating democratic Governments and a tolerant civil society. I suspect it is that, rather than any inherent political flaw in the principle of a Communist system that has lead to so many supposedly Communist leaders enriching themselves and their supporters while suppressing much of the population. (But the economic complexity and lack of economic freedom do remain as inherent problems with the idea of Communism).

Not quite. Many European Communist countries were, for most practical purposes, colonies of Russia, with regimes imposed by Russian occupation armies after WW2. As happened in Hungary (1956), or Czechoslovakia (1968), attempts to introduce their own interpretations of communism were stamped out by the Russian military.

And now, some people might regard Tibet as effectively a colony of Communist China.

 

[bb21]

Not quite. Many European Communist countries were, for most practical purposes, colonies of Russia, with regimes imposed by Russian occupation armies after WW2. As happened in Hungary (1956), or Czechoslovakia (1968), attempts to introduce their own interpretations of communism were stamped out by the Russian military.

And now, some people might regard Tibet as effectively a colony of Communist China.

Only communist China is anything but.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Assuming you're referring to the general principle of the economic system, I would suggest there are a couple of issues.

• .......
  Several people have commented on it being against human nature - the desire to earn money etc. I'm not convinced by that argument. You only need to look at - say - the Health Service, the social care industry, or at any of numerous charities to see a great examples of people working very hard for the greater good of society or for other people without much expectation of financial gain themselves - which appears to contradict any suggestion that Communism can't in principle succeed because of human nature.
  ..... .

• 
  
  I forget the title, it's possibly "Arrivals and Departures", I think the second part of the auto-biography of Arthur Koestler, who had become a covert communist in around 1931-32, as Hitler was seeking to gain power in Germany.
  
  Towards the end of that period, Koestler was 'invited' into the USSR, ostensibly as a reliable 'western' journalist to report on the brave new world being created there. I forget the details, but he stayed maybe 18 months, and only left because he had some illness that needed treatment in the west. In that time he had witnessed the mass murders - death by starvation of - thousands of Ukrainians. Anyway, despite still being an official communist (and party member). He describes his feelings on leaving, when, in effect, he realised it was a disaster - but still found this difficult to admit to himself.
  
  I think he formulated it later by saying something like: "The people of the Soviet Union were great, not because of, but despite communism. Despite the cruel system, many worked hard to make it tolerable."
  
  (these are most definitely not the real words, just as I remember the gist, from 25 years ago reading this book).
  
  so you are right, to a point. Many people will indeed work hard, sacrificing comfort and an easy life, to help others, even in a brutally cruel system - yet in aid of that system.
  
  This is the horse character in Animal Farm.

 

[Phil.]

I have been reading a lot about the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, where the Russians launched brutal ethnic cleansing of Tartars in the Crimea and ethnic Germans in the Volga region, to replace them with more "trustworthy" native Russians - a move you would expect from far right wing governments.

The deliberate starvations in the Ukraine were on a scale incomprehensible, literally millions of people starved to death, again apparently because Stalin wanted the areas to be exclusively for Russians.

Everyone on the left (rightly) decries Hitler and his ethnic cleansing and murdering of opponents. Few people of the same persuasion mention the5,000,000+ deaths that Stalin caused.

This should be required viewing for all.

https://youtu.be/6LcPZeWAvL8?t=1681