This has a lot to do with mentality though. Everyone has been out for themselves for the last milleniums so you can't expect people to adapt immideatly. If you were to try it for some 200-300 years or so perhaps people would be different. For example, communities far from the cities with a harsh climate usually has very helpful and trusting inhabitants because that's what they needed to survive. I think that most native tribes were like that before they were discovered and "civilized".This shows that human beings are not inheritently selfish. That depends on the environment where they are raised. They can adapt to being helpful if it's on their own and the communities interest. We are flock animals after all and we wouldn't be that if everyone was inherently selfish.coldalarm said:Basically it. Communism is one of these ideas that sounds perfect. Everyone gets along, we all have a good time, no one is better than anyone else and so forth.Foolishman1776 said:Communism won't work because it's based on an ideal. It's based on the assumption that people will work together, totally selflessly, for the good of the whole group. This is impossible, it is impossible to be utterly selfless, all the time, and still have a working brain. Communism will never work, and I, for one say good. World peace and happiness may sound like a good idea, but to me it sounds boring.
Real world situations aren't like that. I might be able to do more work in a day than Joe Bloggs, and further the community more, but I'd get the same as he does. In Communism, this is fair as everyone is "equal". In our western society, it's not fair. Ironically, our society is backwards. A footballer gets paid (in England, and we're talking professional) a huge sum for basically kicking a ball about, whereas a fire fighter who risks his life to save others gets paid a much lower wage. How on Earth is this correct?
Also, I don't think there's anything in the books about Communism that states that everyone has to have the exact same wage all the time. If you have a graph that shows the wealth of the population you will se that it very much resembles a set of stairs were the difference between each step becomes larger the higher and further you come. The idea is that you cut a bit from the ones above the middle and give that to the lower ones the lower ones would contribute more to society.
They also define the highest steps as the ones that works the hardest and most. There are very few jobs that are actually worth less than any other job. A doctor for example has to rely on nurses and cleaners to do his job. It might look more important but he couldn't do it on his own therefore the other ones are just as important.
I might be thinking about Socialism though.
Mankind was sort of communist from the beginning. The founder of the first stone tools probably didn't charge the other tribe members for making their own. Most people that study this suggests that they had one appointed stone-tool maker that spent some of the days making stone tools and he/she got fed until their needs were satisfied.
The way things work now is that corporations runs a lot of the show and as much as one might think politicians are very inefficient CEOs aren't that much more efficient. The only real difference is that a government is a lot easier to keep track of and you can demand politicians to retire. Also, a politicians job is to make it as much of the population as happy as possible while a CEO's job is to make money for the corporation. I'd rather trust the politician. What you choose in the end, i guess, is if you prefer as many people as possible happy or if you want some people to be happier than the rest.
I think the problem with most of the communist countries to this day is that they were achieved trough armed revolutions rather than elections. The revolutionaries were the lower-class under-educated people and therefore they had no clue how to actually make this kind of government work. A lot of the well-educated people left those countries because the revolutionaries saw them as their old enemies that they wanted revenge on and they could provide for their families much better were they got paid better. You need disciplined intellectuals to make a government like this to work.
The way i see it. Communism could work if the change came slowly so people could adapt and it was worldwide so the selfish couldn't escape their duty. If mankind worked together towards creating a better world for everyone rather than just their own we could probably advance in technology faster and thus everyone could have it just as good as the CEOs have it today. It would just be a matter of time.
I would very much like comments on this so i can improve on my reasonings and find solutions to the problems you see.