What's Wrong With Communism?

[red the fister]

It'a not really the actual process of communism that is bad, but the people that try and implement it. For it to really work people have to truly believe we are all truly equal and we all should contribute for one another. Now that would be nice, but it will never happen.

Then what we need to do is to find out what's wrong with the process and correct the problem, and our airship can take to the sky.

ok, i did some thinking along these lines earlier today and here's what i came up with.

the problem is that for the last hundred centuries or so the ones that strove to be the absolute best kinds won the Mating Game and passed on the genes that made them that way.

so i think a Eugenics Program (Not like what the Nazis were after, or the fictional one that produced KAAAHHHNNNN!!!!!!) to um, un-breed our drive to excel and breed-in altruism, complete with a Slavish Loyalty to everyone but ourselves.

and taking the Nature vs. Nurture argument into account some manner of "Cyber-Brain-Implant" to ruthlessly quell any desire gain more from our labors than the next man gain from our labors.

i think that should do the trick. anyone agree?

 

[gorfias]

1) Communists and Leftists in general tend to round up large segments of their populations and either fail them (France's recent heat wave holocaust), or outright murder them (Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot).
2) It is deadening to the soul: see the film, "The Lives of Others" for a quick intro to this topic.
3) Ultimately, it fails. The motto, "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" becomes an operating guide line. The U.S.S.R. collapsed because even the elite stopped getting goods and services.

I'd rather continue to live in an exceptional nation, thanks.

 

[red the fister]

Firstly, my friend, t'was a mistake to create this thread. Entirely because everyone expects me to get into it, then I do get into it, then we argue for thirty freaking pages and everyone just gets sick of it. So a bit inconvenient on my end, but whatever.

Still, you've got a question, and it shall be answered.

"What's wrong with comminism?" Is a subjective question, and peoples' answers to it will be different depending on how much money is in their wallet.

I'm not going to get into specifics because I don't want to start a flame war and it's 5:33AM and I'm tired. But in general the wealthier people in the world (America) are afraid of all their "hard work" being taken from them and given to feed starving children in Africa.

Basic information on communism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

More in-depth information from the Young Communist League of Canada:
http://ycl-ljc.ca/en/who_we_are/faq.php

The biggest argument against communism is that it doesn't work because people are selfish. Why don't we change that, then? People can change.

My philosophy on this entire topic is "When there's a will, there's a way."

you bring a smile to my face Akai. you know... some people you just can't trust them to be consistent and loyal. You my friend are like clockwork, a well oiled, predictable and repetitive clockwork. you give fanatically passionate a good rep. I could argue some of your points but like you just said, fuck it. nobody is going to change their beliefs ,its early and not worth talking over.

whats really funny is that you've talked this over with us caps so much that you can cut the shit and go strait to the point of contention. no mucking about in the principles and things. lol, just shows how much we talk about it here.

What can I say? I want a better world, and you can't have one in capitalism.

People don;t change even generation to generation it is rare to see real change in humanitys 50,000 year history there have been but a few major changes and human nature is to be greedy and do as little work as possible because if you can conserve energy and get what you need nature tells us that we have succeeded but in communism you can not have the basic instinct but all humans have it and forever will have it.

Firstly, I do not believe it is human nature or instinct to be selfish, because I know several people who are not selfish at all, either by nature or by actions.

And it is not opinion that people can change, it is a fact. And there have been mass changes in the past.

/sigh

i heartily disagree.

while i do indeed know several people that are not selfish; a) they never beggar themselves through their charitable donations, and b) i know so many more people that are selfish - not to a fault mind you - most "selfish" people i know work hard for their money (and the goods and services that it buys them) and the only people they may have directly "harmed" are the people that didn't get their jobs.

and about those "mass changes" please give some citations. but before you do, think about it... were those changes of which you speak followed shortly thereafter be an upswing in living conditions? i put the odds at about 50,000:1 in favor of improved living condition.

(now i bet he's gonna say something about all the pollution from the Industrial Revolution)

 

[Whispering Death]

There are only two ways to motivate humans

1) reward
2) fear and punnishment

Communism by its definition removes reward since its founding principle is that everyone should have the exact same stuff equally.

So that means the only way to get anyone to do anything is to make them afraid and to use terror and punnishment to motivate them. See: Stalinist USSR. Then, if you decide to be nice and not use terror, nothing at all gets done. See: 1980s USSR.

 

[Warwolt]

1) Communists and Leftists in general tend to round up large segments of their populations and either fail them (France's recent heat wave holocaust), or outright murder them (Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot).
2) It is deadening to the soul: see the film, "The Lives of Others" for a quick intro to this topic.
3) Ultimately, it fails. The motto, "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" becomes an operating guide line. The U.S.S.R. collapsed because even the elite stopped getting goods and services.

I'd rather continue to live in an exceptional nation, thanks.

Oh WAY to put everyone in the same prejudice. And anyway, Hitler was slightly right. NOT leftist. Mostly he was just well, nazi-facism.

 

[Palin2012]

How about...

We all vote Sarah Palin, 2012

She will set us right

God Bless America

 

[Brett Alex]

My mistake. By controlled, I meant territory he was able to defend against invasion, not territory he ruled with an iron fist.

Still, as far as I'm aware, in Anarchy, you aren't supposed to have any protectors, any government, etc.
Though I can understand the need, seeing as how it was only one area that was that way.

Well you could put it down to either Anarcho-Communism being different from Anarchy, or the fact the people who were trying to invade weren't Anarchists, and therefore had no qualms about killing those who were.

The Anarchist Black Army was a volunteer style grouping of Anarchists, under Mahkno because he was the most capable commander. Although they operated in somewhat regular organization, their strength lay in guerilla style tactics.

It was less of a "You, the people need to form an army to protect our lands from invasion!" and more of a "Us, the people should really do something to stop people stepping all over our ideologies and killing our brothers."

 

[lostclause]

snip

A side note, but does anyone see the irony in the anarchists being one of the most organised armies? Both here and in the spainish civil war.

 

[Agema]

snip

A side note, but does anyone see the irony in the anarchists being one of the most organised armies? Both here and in the spainish civil war.

No. Anarchy is anti-hierarchy, it's not anti-organisation.

 

[happysock]

Well, I like being an individual. I like being able to go to the grocery store and decide what I'm having for dinner. I like being able to create artwork and play music with the things that I own. I like being on the internet.

In short, I like being able to decide my quality of life.

If I really thought that humanity could just drop everything and coexist, than I would be for it. The fact that I know it can't makes me quite sad.

What you have described is exactly my point, in theory nothing is "wrong" with communism however it just doesn't work due to human nature and always wanting more, personally i would prefer communism as we need it at the moment to increase the countries money however it would just end horribly wrong

 

[WrongSprite]

Because it doesn't work in practise. It's not complicated.

 

[Seanchaidh]

The Red, white and blue? But I suppose they are one of the evil countries.

Yes, France is quite evil.

 

[Brett Alex]

No it's not. A country can't live and prosper if all of the industry's are state run. And i take it your not very old for making a thread like this.

I think I missed that, when did you carry out the experiment to check it? Which large scale industrialized populous developed country did you use for test purposes?

Did you have a 'control' company country without communism to check it against? I just point that out because otherwise the results might not be valid and all your hard work would be wasted, which would be a shame.

 

[Agema]

A country can't live and prosper if all of the industry's are state run. And i take it your not very old for making a thread like this.

It can prosper: a state can run industries for profit and export goods abroad. There are plenty of companies in the world where governments own (or owned) over 50% of those companies' shares, and those companies were successful.

 

[Notion]

Communism hasen't worked very well. The Soviet Union ended up collapsing from internal pressure. China, isen't even communist anymore, they have had so many economic reforms that there bascialy a market economy now. North Korea is just a dictatorship trying to pretend there communist. I guess one of the reasons it hasen't worked is because the countries in which a communist government is installed always has a very large percent of the population being quite poor.So communism to them is a way to get back at the rich and the rest who arn't suffering like them.

 

[Pillypill]

I like parts of communism free health care, like in Canada and Great Britan, plus it would remove a lot of poverty and does help promote the whole "we are all equal thing". But then theres that whole "we are all equal just some more equal than others" thing where communism can be exploited to allow powerful people to increase their wealth and control others. That and if you spend 11 training to become a doctor you want to earn a lot more than some dude in KFC, right?