Communism: Good or Bad?

I have stated this many times, but I will go at it again. In any form of collectivism, who re-distributes the wealth? The government. In the USA the gov't has no authority to intervene in the economy, as no country's gov't should for that matter. The economy should be determined by the market and what the consumers want.
If gov't is given this power to re-distribute the wealth (which is pretty much total power) does anybody honestly believe they will use it for the good of the people? If you do, then give me one example in history of such a generous gov't, who uses their unlimited power for the good, as opposed to mass murder!!!!

Communism gets a big thumbs in my book, I haven't been for most of the thread but I shall see what I can do....

I shall answer the first few-


Unfortunately there has been no "practice' that you propose, communism has yet to exist on this planet in little more than theory.


bzzzt...The USSR was not communist, now, then, ever, hell they were never even able to reach a stage of international socialism which Lenin had strived for. Stalin betrayed the revolution and used his perverted guise of "communism" to gain the peoples support and destroy any and all true communistic aspects of the early USSR. Stalin is just about as anti-communist as you can get.


Communism frees the individual from a system of wage slavery and alienation. Then has the worker collectively organize with others who create a classless society wherein work is fully abundant and people gain the complete product of their labor.


So they were socialist capitalists? Something of a glaring oxymoron there don’t ya think?


Wait a second communism has been put into practice? Holy crap! You mean that the workers have finally achieved class consciousness, performed a global revolution, achieved a state of transitory world socialism, then finally eliminated all of the elements of the superstructure and entered a state wherein the workers control their own lives and production. Christ how these things seem to slip by ya without even noticing.


Again communism does not, and has not existed, EVER!! Furthermore communism is not a form of government, a communist government is an oxymoron. Communism is a socio-economic system, just like capitalism.


Sounds like your 1st grade learning needs to be revised.


That is probably why communistic systems are to be directly run by the workers.


Which is why communism is to be from the bottom up!!

Whew…

People confuse Communism *and* Capitalism, with Government.

It shows we have lacked Constitutional philosophers, for far too long.

Fundamentally (as agreed by philosophers throughout history), there are only three possible forms of Government, no matter how some may be disguised. These are Democracy, Aristocracy, and Dictatorship/Monarchy.

Each of these three, has very significant strengths, as well as having very significant weaknesses. Usually they rotate in an endless cycle, accompanied with much strife and bloodshed (Civil War, Revolution, attempted Revolution).

It was agreed, the ideal Republic, would embody all three forms, so advantage could be made of the strengths, and avoidance made of the weaknesses (ref. Cicero, etc.).

Against this backdrop of Government, we have the Constitutional Law system of a Society. These are the inalienable things, a human being is entitled to. Inalienable means, they cannot be legitimately taken away.

These inalienable things, are then the foundations of the system of Law, in every Society.

The Right to Life. Anybody tries to damage you, life or limb, you have the inalienable Right to defend yourself, and also Society has the Right to seek redress in Court.

The Right to Liberty. Anybody tries to restrict your Liberty, you have the inalienable Right to defend your Liberty, and also Society has the Right to seek redress in Court.

The Right to Property. Anybody tries to take your property, you have the inalienable Right to defend it. Society has the Right to seek redress in Court. Sometimes, this is known as the Right to Pursue Happiness. But it is a Right to Property.

All of these things, come under Natural Law, and involve what a Human Being can reasonably expect to be able to do "in the Wild". All of these fundamental things, naturally expand out into the do's and do not's of a Society and its system of Law (without contradicting or conflicting with any other Right). Worth thinking about, is the fact we do not gather into Societies, to sacrifice our Natural Rights. Rather, we gather into Societies, to more easily protect and defend those Rights.

Because of that, it should be clearly apparent, that no Government can legitimately interfere with any of those things, as they are essential to every Society, and essential to the sound foundations of Law and Order.

The principles are simple, the principles are logical, the principles are common sense.

If a Government destroys those legitimate foundations, then as has been clearly agreed down the ages, a Society is free to rise up, throw off that tyrannical Government, and remake that Society anew.

Now when you see that essential framework for Government, politics doesn't actually enter into it, as long as whatever Political Party or interest, abides by its Constitutional obligations.

Both Communism, *and* Capitalism, miss the point. They are only about non-legitimate arguments over who owns the means of production, and using the means of production to achieve non-legitimate power.

Because neither abides by the essential basic rules of Government or Constitutions, both are doomed to failure.

Both *also* ignore the reality of, and try and manipulate (own) the market (which is never *ownable* in real terms), and both are doomed to failure because of that too.

So don't waste your breath on Communism, Socialism, or Capitalism.

Start talking about the real issues. The issues that are really important, and really in danger, because we keep looking at the wrong things. Look at the basics of Society, the basics of Rights and Liberties, and the basics of essential foundations for Constitutions, Law, and balanced Government.

The rest is just smoke and mirrors.

Edits for clarification and needed expansion in some points.


[edit on 29-11-2004 by 7mm08]

What happens with communism is that there is always an authoritarian type individual, they get absolute power, which leaves the door wide open for corruption and mismanagement.

Stalin was a rotten piece of #, and I think that question you posed should be asked to one of the citizen's of stalin's era, there are still survivalists as seen on the history channel, the memories are still very vivid, and i'm sure IF he presented the ideology logically, they wouldn't have fled to the USA....
or would they??

Communism does not make one individual a hero type leader figure. That is when it gets abused. It ideally wants the end result to be no state at all, as in NO LEADER. See? As said before, it works best on small scales.

It existed for a short time in America in small Communes and worked beutifully until the government declared they were evil and working against the America, blah blah, and had them destroyed. Many of the people living there commited suicide due to the fact they didn't want to go back to the greedy way of life considerd normal.

What biases most folks against it is the American cold-war era propaganda. "The Commies are EEEEvil! They work against God! They want to take over the world!" Hmm, and having TV channels with adverts for "Ł50 donated to me will get you a place in Heaven" is Godly, huh? Read the Bible please!

I love the "Communism is great on paper" argument. Capitalism is bad on paper, and worse in real life. Democracy is great on paper, and, well, nothing ever happens in real life except everything stagnates, as anyone if to worried about public opinion to do anything about it until the whole thing collapses. Facism, is a paranoid reaction by the wealthy elite. "OMG! the working classa verage joe is getting rights and support! Stop them!"

Communism is the lesser of a big bunch of Evils. It does also work fairly well. What people don't get is why alot of working class Sov Bloc people want the USSR back. Under the USSR they may not have had alot. But what matters is they had food on the table and a home. Alot of them no longer get paid at all and don't have homes. Communism gives you what you need to survive, and 99.9% will do so. Under all other systems it tends to be less.

Cuba is still working to a certain degree, which is suprising, as America has done its damned best to destroy it. N.Korea is no longer Communist at all; to call it such is wrong. China iss semi-communist, semi-trying to get the rest of the world to stop calling it evil. I support China as we need another superpower to stand up to the USA, If it ever gets to the stage where the USA can conceivably control the world, I shall sit down and cry.

"Communist countries" do not exist, because in a communist society, there would be no state.

A communist society is not a socialist society.

In a socialist society you would still have a currency, a state apparatus, but the means of production would be nationalized and the working class would hold power, not the capitalist class.

A communist society would be a classless, stateless society without money or markets. People would work according to ability, and receive according to need.

However, marxists believe that, in order to reach a communist society, you would need a transitional stage called "the dictatorship of the proletariat" (in reality a socialist society). The Soviet Union and other similar nations were simply meant to be transitional, not a goal in itself. There's where the confusion come from, and that's the difference between socialism and communsim.

Guess it depends on where or how it is used. Didn't work in Russia. Seems to work, sort of in Cuba.

Why do you think it didn't "work" in Russia, but "sort of" works in Cuba?

What do you mean by "didn't work"? When does it "work", and when does it not?

In form of industrial production and scientific advancement and so on, the Soviet Union can be described as succesful. They defeated the nazis, who had the most powerful and most advanced army in the world. The USSR was the first nation ever to send man into space. Illiteracy was eradicated, the child mortality rate was lowered, men and women received the same rights, church and state were seperated, and people had more or less the same wages.

It didn't work in the Later stages I meant, it was abused greatly.

Stalin did alot for the USSR. Women fought in WW2 with the men and worked in the factories too. THAT is equality. More so that western women got at the time, too.

Even if Stalin did slaughter millions afterwards when he got extremly paranoid. Poor Leningrad war hero's were the worst, IMO. Although Stalin does get blamed for alot of stuff that was never his fault. He is portrayed as overly-evil by the Western Media.

Cuba still functions well considering what has been done to it by the US. You can see why they hate the US there, trying to force the Cuban government to collapse with various embago's. I bet they make more money exporting Cigars illegally than they ever did Legally now, too. Haha.

Ok, I’ am still learning about society and governments etc… but for this argument I will use real life experience from my parents, the understanding of what they were thought of USSR- (communism) and I’ll try to answer a few question…

Killed 20 million----

A few ppl have stated this fact without realising the actual stupidity of this…communism never kills something that is not physical cannot kill…Stalin killed not communist….

Same Wage-


No, I may be wrong but I will try my best…in the times of communism it would not work like a lawyer gets the same as a shopkeeper (I believe that what you ppl all believed) its works like so. all shopkeepers get generally the same wage…like a minimum wage (the same as our society) and a lawyer will get a minimum wage of a lawyer so there will be a difference of ppl having more money then others but they both contribute equally lets say some thing like 60% of their wage goes into the gov

Points for communism:

1.FREE EDUCATION this lacks in allot of societies
2.FREE MEDICALS
3.SUPERIOR MILITARY we had spies everywhere and ppl still didn’t know about them

other point are things such as in around 7 decades SOVIET union achieved world super power status which is something that the majority of countries strife for double the amount of years…


the main fault with communism is that its in my opinion a stabilizer…what that you well…if a poor country starts of with communism it will most likely stay poor since it will stabilize its economy BUT if a rich country does it, it will stay rich for a long time still and still gaining its advancement in education medicine etc…..

Communism does have the ability to work, there is one simple thing that has prevented it from taking a proper root in the ground we call society… That is; the way people are educated, people are brought up in a give-n-take society, where people wont do anything unless there is some kind of physical reward… While ever people have got this kind of mentality it will never work, however I feel that if people were educated – and were contempt with working for the good of all it would be Utopia.



Humans are created equal, it is the society we are brought up in today, that such notions as “I am better then him/her…” We all have the ability to contribute to society equally, a street-sweeper is just as important as an Astronaut that makes contact with Aliens… It’s the concept of “difference in value” … That has led to the down-fall of human society… Because people always want what they don’t have, why not be contempt?



What ever happened to doing something because you actually care? The theory of “this is mine, that is yours...” is primitive… It makes us no better then the animals of the jungle… Property, Time, Value – all these things – all these things are figments of the human imagination, they are all meaningless, it is simply the human perception of the world.



Perception is reality, and the sooner people are being educated correctly, then all the figments of the human imagination will disappear, and realise that none of these things have value – and that everything simply IS … Its from that point that a correct and fundamentally pure society can be built.

[edit on 20-3-2005 by ghostsoldier]

i think that communisim is a great idea in the long run but in the end the reason every good idea goes wrong is because the government gets greedy and corrupt and the people get nothing and the government gets all of the shared property

Lets all take a deep breath and le me explain a few things…

As many others stated communism has never reached its peak or actually being implemented…

· Stalin change the system from what Lenin foresaw and made it into a hellhole.


· Communism was never the cause of 20 million deaths, Stalin was, we are talking about whether or not the system of communism works not whether the leader is smart


· I don’t know the figures but after WW2 I believe Soviet union had more damaged done to it (apart from Germany ) America had hardly any, imagine trying to create a government with no resources, little manpower, loss of morale (sons and daughters dead) disease etc…… I don’t even think democracy would work if it was in the same situation as SU


· Communism has never seen everyone equal it knows that that’s why it has leaders etc… it only stated that it will treat everyone equally….. There is a difference


· A postman will not get paid the same as a doctor, many of you assumed this because of your teachers saying so, its not true there was a salary lets ay from 10 – 1000 (rubles I believe) and you would have to work lets say 40 hours a week. A lawyer will get 400 for 40 hours a week of work, if he wanted more money he would work over time, a post man would get a 100 etc…


· To the above point it may seem like small money but understand this, everything was cheap a bottle of quas (a drink in Slavic countries) would cost more then fuel, bread would cost 16 pence, out of a 100 rubles a postman would seem rich


· My parents (born in 1940s) from what they told me always had a plate to eat always had clothes always went out never had an empty pocket (this was not for all places I know but that’s because of money problems (wasting to rebuild the losses of the wars ))


· Free education, free medicals, army well paid and well fed, no TV licence () etc etc


· It does not create competition, of course it didn’t Stalin feared that people might want to go capitalist and so he created the iron curtain, Lenin had trade routes to all places around the world


· If I wrote a book I could make pigs fly and water to go red , animal farm gave a greedy leader, imagine if they gave a good Jesus type leader do you think it would fail

To make communism work there has to be
1. A good leader, someone who understands the people and knows what’s best
2. The people want it, they are willing to try
3. Resources

Soviet union had the people, the leader had failed them, and they had no resources


Yes like all governments communism has flaws but you must understand that it can work it just needs a set of good heads, a willing society and no races into space

Lets not hate each other Russian or American we are all human, when you die this will not matter your children will, when you pass on the hate the kids will pass it on to theirs…lets stop the name calling and be all true friends and drink vodka and whisky or both

Just curious, what do you mean by "socialist programs are riff" - If you mean 'rife' (meaning: prevailing, common or widespread) I would have to disagree with you to the highest degree possible...

The US is one of the countries that has taken almost any/every effort to squash a Socialist ideal becoming a concept that is one the American (and the world for that matter) Workers mind... (ie they can be in control for themselves)...

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But I agree 100% with you on all the other statements you made... May I ask how you are " preparing for it " - I would make the recommendation that EVERYONE start preparing and participating in the worldwide revolution that will inevitably take place sooner or later... And with the way the US is at the moment, I might recommend that sooner, may be a more beneficial situation to consider...

You can start by answering yourself these questions...

Why are the taxes so high, and where do all your tax dollars go? - Is this where you personally would want place your money? - And want is the alternative...

Why is the Western-World so wasteful, and why do people not register with it... And why is the food, resources etc, wasted - when it could be given to the needy (Whose interest does that serve)

Why are people lazy, what makes them lazy?

What is the media used for? ... Do you agree with the 'garbage' it puts out? ... And whose interests does it serve?

Priorities, what are yours? What are theirs? And whose priorities are being served currently?

The family structure has changed, why?, who is responsible, who is affected, and what made it happen? - And whose interests THAT serves... (The Same for Communities)

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On the contrary, the 21st Century America is completely the opposite - Almost ALL socialist programs are gone (no adequate public health care, no adequate public schooling, no adequate work programs, etc etc) - and about the only thing that actually remains in Capitalism (private health care, private schooling, and corporate super-giants)

And I dunno, if anyone clicked onto what I was trying to say earlier but - The answer to all the questions I asked (in referral to why the world is so messed up), the predominate answer to these questions is $money$, $greed$, and $power$ ...

Capitalism is the problem, not the government (though it is partly responsible), not the ignorant public (though they are partly responsible), not the so called 'terrorists' (though they are a bi-product of Capitalistic oppression) etc etc...

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Capitalism

The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.

Wage labour is the labour process in capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) buy the labour power of those who do not own the means of production (the proletariat), and use it to increase the value of their property (capital). In pre-capitalist societies, the labour of the producers was rendered to the ruling class by traditional obligations or sheer force, rather than as a “free” act of purchase and sale as in capitalist society.

Value is increased through the appropriation of surplus value from wage labour. In societies that produce beyond the necessary level of subsistence, there is a social surplus, i.e. people produce more than they need for immediate reproduction. In capitalism, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist class by extending the working day beyond necessary labour time. That extra labour is used by the capitalist for profit; used in whatever ways they choose.

The main classes under capitalism are the proletariat (the sellers of labour power) and the bourgeoisie (the buyers of labour power). The value of every product is divided between wages and profit, and there is an irreconcilable class struggle over the division of this product.

Capitalism is one of a series of socio-economics systems, each of which are characterised by quite different class relations: tribal society, also referred to as “primitive communism”, ancient or “slave” society, and feudalism. It is the breakdown of all traditional relationships, and the subordination of relations to the “cash nexus” which characterises capitalism. The transcendence of the class antagonisms of capitalism, replacing the domination of the market by planned, cooperative labour, leads to socialism and communism.

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Socialism

"The organisation of society in such a manner that any individual, man or woman, finds at birth equal means for the development of their respective faculties and the utilisation of their labour. The organisation of society in such a manner that the exploitation by one person of the labour of his neighbour would be impossible, and where everyone will be allowed to enjoy the social wealth only to the extent of their contribution to the production of that wealth."
-- August Bebel
Die Frau und der Sozialismus



"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes.

[...]

"The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.

[...]

"And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

("These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be generally applicable.")

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
-- Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels
The Communist Manifesto
Chapter 1 and Chapter 2



"The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?

"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
--Karl Marx
Critique of the Gotah Programme
Part IV: On Democracy



"The dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class society in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from "classless society", from communism. Bourgeois states are most varied in form, but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.
--Vladimir Lenin
The State and Revolution
Chpt 2.



"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.

"Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society — after the deductions have been made — exactly what he gives to it..."

"But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement...

"Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only — for instance... one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal."
--Karl Marx
Critique of the Gotah Programme
Part I



"The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality; differences, and unjust differences in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production — the factories, machines, land, etc. — and make them private property.... Marx shows the course of development of communist society....which [firstly] consists in the distribution of consumer goods "according to the amount of labor performed" (and not [yet] according to needs)."

"But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by marx the "first", or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word "communism" is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism."
--Vladimir Lenin
The State and Revolution
Chpt. 5: The first phase of Communist Society

See also: Communism

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Communism

“To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.”
--Karl Marx
Critique of the Gotha Program



"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
-- Marx & Engels
The German Ideology
Private Property and Communism



"From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism — from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the "state" which consists of the armed workers, and which is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more rapidly every form of state begins to wither away.

"Then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society [Socialism] to its higher phase [Communism], and with it the complete withering away of the state.
-- Vladimir Lenin
The State and Revolution
Chpt 5. The higher phase of Communist Society



Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement [alienation], and hence the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man. It is the complete restoration of man to himself as a social — i.e., human — being, a restoration which has become conscious and which takes place within the entire wealth of previous periods of development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between man and man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and being, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution.
-- Karl Marx
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts



This "alienation" [caused by private property] can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an "intolerable" power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity "propertyless", and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the "propertyless" mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones.

Without this:

(1) communism could only exist as a local event;

(2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and

(3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism.

Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers — the utterly precarious position of labour — power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life — presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a "world-historical" existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.

"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
--Marx & Engels
The German Ideology



"Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

"In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
-- Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels
The Communist Manifesto
Proletarians and Communists

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To put it simply

Capitalism: An economic system that benefits the minority…
Socialism: An economic system that benefits the majority…

Now which one sounds better to you? …



[edit on 24-5-2005 by ghostsoldier]

ghostsoldier, next month you'll have my Way Above vote. It's good to see another person talk about Socialism and communism who actually has a clue about it instead of what I tend to see here.

Just one point of note I think people need to realise:
Communism/Socialism/Marxism would never have "everyone" paid the same. It worked on the ideology of "Paid to Perform" so certain people would get more money for doing more important jobs (such as a doctor), but no where has ever tried to do this correctly. The best examples of Modern Socialism are Finland, Sweden(which has an amazing system), Switzerland and Norway.

Communism and Socialism are both THEORETICALLY utopian ideals. The idea that everyone works together collectively, without a hint of greed, personal empowerment, and selfishness sounds like a paradise to me. The idea that everyone is equal, shares everything without any notion of wanting to keep anythign to themselves, and working together with thier brothers and sisters in unity and solidarity is good.

But it only works in THEORY ALONE.

In answering your question, yes, the theroy of Communism and pure Socialism is a force for GOOD (whatever good is (I am presuming we are going on the popularal ethical presumption that good is what is for the benefit of the people, of which I agree with)), but it does not take HUMAN NATURE into acoount. It does not take our human genetic code, our life blood, our natural selfish, greedy, power hugnry, lustful self into consideration. In short, IT DOES NOT, CANNOT, AND NEVER HAS WORKED.

If you want to see what DOES work, follow this link to the thread I have just posted on Social-Democracy HERE.

One last little rant. The excuse that we cannot disporve whether or not socialism and comunism work or not becasue "We have never had/have a Communsit or Socialist system", demonstartes exactly my point. They have never worked becasue they DO NOT WORK. They have never been installed because THEY CANNOT BE INSTALLED. They are rejected, and power falls into the hands of individual "Communist Elites" becasue the ideology behind the Communist and Socialist theory simply does not allow for natural human behavior.

The only possible way of installing Communism or pure Socialism is throguht the use of eugenics and genetic engineering, eliminating selfish, greedy etc genes and enhancing more cooperative ones. but thats another thread...

John Pearce.

[edit on 14-6-2005 by John Pearce]