Communism... opinions?

Right, so, uh, I've been reading about communism recently, and talking to my mum & dad about it and other such things...

It occurs to me that people have a very negative viewpoint. I mean, fair enough, it's pretty much the opposite of Capitalism and we live in a Capitilist society, but, uh...

PLEASE NOTE: I'm wondering about people's opinions on COMMUNISM, not communist states, like China, which have wound up becoming fascism in disguise...

Communism as a political system is MEANT to be where the everyone shares everything, at least according to my knowledge.

Impractical and impossible given the nature of humans. Especially when applied to scale.

My main beef with communism as viable form of Government is that not all jobs require the same amount of education for a person to become a professional at that job. I don’t understand the incentive of say, becoming a doctor when fry cook gets the same wage.

I’m also confused as to if people get money regardless if they work or not or if their performance is far below that of their peers.

Has anyone here researched these issues and understand how communism works around them?

edited 2nd Aug '10 12:52:33 PM by Justice4243

Every political system is meant to lead to some kind of utopia. Judging political systems by their goals is at best naive; it makes more sense to judge them by the incentives they provide.

Which, in the case of communism as generally implemented, are uniformly dysfunctional.

PLEASE NOTE: I'm wondering about people's opinions on COMMUNISM, not communist states, like China, which have wound up becoming fascism in disguise...

I'm wondering about your opinion on an ideal monarchy, not any real one with its particular shortcomings...

Capitalism is the latest in a long line of social systems - systems both of control and oppression but also that seek to solve the problem of resource allocation - and is essentially a product of history. Communism is an attempt at designing (Or, from a more Marxist perspective, forecasting) an alternative. Capitalism won't be around forever, but the historical forces that'll end can't be anticipated, in either sense of the word.

As an economic system, communism has... problems. Ones that others have elaborated upon. Ones that should be easy to spot and remedy, except for cases where it's bundled up in ideology and a desire to save face. Then the problems get really bad.

In fact, after all the holes have been patched, communism starts looking less like communism, and more like capitalism with a very strong welfare state.

Which, for some strange reason, is what capitalism looks like when you remedy its problems, as well.

edited 2nd Aug '10 3:50:06 PM by EnglishIvy

@Ivy: You're a fine Hegelian, but you leave out that the capitalist welfare state contains contradictions that are the seeds of its destruction...

I'm sorry?

Quick Hegel: every philosophy contains contradictions. A rival philosophy will emerge that attempts to solve the contradictions. They clash, producing a synthesis that becomes the next consensus philosophy that will be overthrown by its internal contradictions.

...And the second part of that sentence?

The welfare state is justified by a political philosophy, and all philosophies contain contradictions?

The welfare state is also justified by having a better track record than what has replaced it.

<Ivy> So it will last forever! Take that, Hegel!

Are you Francis Fukuyama?

edited 2nd Aug '10 4:16:55 PM by Rottweiler

I think we're drifting off topic here.

As an endless source of tropes, pretty cool. As an actual system of government, unworkable...for long.

edited 2nd Aug '10 4:31:16 PM by Raidouthe21st

^ The same could be said for capitalism, I suppose. We have yet to see any pure examples of either system, and if we did I doubt they would last that way for long. They are both extremes that are too extreme to work without some loop holes. The Soviet Union was not purely communist, while the United States is not purely capitalist.

edited 2nd Aug '10 5:20:18 PM by Glugg

As Bon indicated, capitalism is not an ideology or a system of government; it's an economic mode that evolved more or less naturally. Talking about "pure capitalism" is not very meaningful.

Extremism in "not a very good idea, compromise being a better one" shocker.

Argument to moderation is a fallacy. The middle ground between two options is not inherently better than the extremes.

On the other hand, extremism in the political domain does lend itself to its own set of biases. The lesson I'd draw from this is to avoid arguing for or against ideologies and instead argue points of policy on their own merits.

edited 2nd Aug '10 5:26:24 PM by Nornagest

^Especially not since the argument is rarely made from actual extremes; it's much more frequently made between an already-moderate position and the most ridiculous extreme in order to justify a fairly extreme position. As in "Person A thinks we should kill everyone. Person B thinks we shouldn't kill anyone. I think we should kill half the population."

We've got a page on the Golden Mean Fallacy.

edited 2nd Aug '10 8:36:15 PM by Deboss

I come from an anarchist background, so I've been exposed to Communism so much that it doesn't mean much to me. It works just as well as Capitalism does—not perfect but not awful...obviously it worked for the vast majority of human history. It depends on what your goals are, I suppose, and you adjust the levels of hierarchy accordingly.

What do you mean the vast majority of human history? Communism wasn't actually codified until comparitively recently, so in its modern form it didn't exist for most of human history!

Correct. Communism in its modern conceptualization only existed since Marx and Lenin, and was never actually practiced (in its ideal form) in any of the countries calling themselves Communist. The Soviet Union and China are/were both oligarchies.

I don't think we've ever had a large, truly communist society in history to measure against. Certainly many small groups function as communes and share everything, but to my knowledge there's never been a successful attempt to apply that ideology on a macro scale.