Communism - can it work?

[Solmyr]

Methinks Tharzon needs to read Orwell's Animal Farm, and think just how long his utopian commune is going to last without any member trying to take advantage of it.

[Tharzon]

I've read Animal Farm several times, and seen more than one movie rendition. I see your point.

However. In Animal Farm, the pigs were blatantly more intelligent than the rest of the animals, being the only ones who were literate. I also think they largely intended to take control right from the moment they started.

My whole point was that everyone who comes to live in the commune has agreed beforehand to abide by the rules of that commune. If everyone genuinely believes in the precepts of the system, there will be no attempts to take control, because taking control compromises the system, and they've already agreed that the system works best how it is.

It's a bit of an "a because a" arguement once you get it going. if we agree that it works best how it is, and want it to work the best way possible, we will never do anything to jeopordize the running of the system in the best way possible.

[Solmyr]

Sounds to me like you want to find some mindless robots or Mother Theresa clones to make up your perfect commune.

Human beings don't work that way. They want the best for themselves, they want to live well, have all sorts of comforts, have hobbies (possibly expensive ones), enjoy good vacations every once in a while. They aren't going to have all that in a commune where only the basic needs are satisfied. It's basic human psychology. Even if you do find people who truly believe in communist equality, eventually someone is going to think, "Why couldn't I have more than this?"
So, suppose you have someone (your father, who won't cheat) managing the commune's resources and allocating them to everyone based on their needs. One day, he notices that after giving everyone their needed share, there's a little left. Why not take it for himself? It's not going to hurt anyone, right? The next day, he might start thinking about changing the resource allocation. Joe doesn't really need that new shirt, his old one is still just fine. So maybe he won't be getting the resources for it. "To everyone according to his need." Who decides what each human being's needs are?

It's simply impossible in practice to have resource distribution according to everyone's "needs". Human beings are different, which is one thing that communism doesn't recognize. They have different needs, and they are inherently competitive. So if Joe has more needs, does he get more? If he does, it won't be long before Jack also wants to get as much as Joe. Again, who decides how to distribute resources? If it's one person or a group of people, then they have all the power. If it's decided by a vote, then pretty soon there will be huge arguments about why Joe gets more but Jack doesn't, Jack might start feeling that the others are turning against him, and the whole commune will disintegrate into personal squabbling. Since resources are limited (another fact that communism doesn't take into account very well), you can't just decide to give everyone what they want. If there was an endless supply of everything, then communism might work a little better, but there isn't.

To summarize, in capitalism, you get what you work for. In communism, you get what other people decide that you need, and have little to no say about it yourself. Which one is more motivational?

[Lokrian]

I wish I had some of the people I have debated with in the past about communism here. I am not a supporter of communism, so I did not internalize the arguments well enough to be able to spit them back out. But what I am seeing here is a fairly oversimplified version of Marxist communism.

Communism doesn't eschew the idea that there will be excesses beyond needs, nor does it abandon any thought of having to have compliance enforced at times. What it does do is flatly deny the idea that just hording capital and shooting people who dissent is the best way to run a government and economy. It observes that the working classes make up most of the working FORCE of the world, and that taken together could easily overthrow their masters and get more fair treatment.

Unfortunately for the movement, about the closest thing to a proloteriat revolution that has ever happened anywhere is the labor movement. This is presently being undermined by unregulated internationalism. But, there are forces at work on that front as well. sooner or later, it appears that the wealthy will run out of places to hide their slaves. Sooner or later, the conscience of the world will cease to stomach excuses for child slavery in India just as the US conscience eventually did here at home. There are no excuses for exploitation, and claiming it is "human nature" for people to be "competitive" is no excuse.

Yes yes, and yes I know, that none of you are arguing for child labor and those sorts of things, but those are the sorts of things that HAPPEN in a capitalist system, indeed in any free system devoid of regulation -whatever- you may want to call it, and the question of who should formulate regulations and enforce them is at the foundation of communism, and THAT is the part that seems to be getting left out of this discussion.