h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Communism is Stalin's bad interpretation of Marx's work. Soviet (and Chinese and North Korean) Communism is a bad implementation of Stalin's dream. So, you have a bad implementation of a bad interpretation of a basically good idea. You have crap.

The problem of correctly implementing communism stems from the fact that people with power do not tend to relinquish it of their own accord.

Those with money(read "power") must be forced militarily to disperse their wealth. Now those who have the military power to force this occurance will not willingly give up their newfound status. There must be an even stronger military force to remove them. Eventually, you have a well intrenched military dictatorship, which controls all the wealth and all the power.

From my poor understanding, this is a far cry from what either Stalin or Marx had in mind. A sad state of affairs, actually. Communisim works so well on paper....now if there weren't this little problem called "human nature"!

Exactly! Which point? All of them.

The reason "government for the people, by the people" looks so good on paper is that it is, at least in principle, a much fairer way to organise society because heirarchical control structures always suck influence and wealth towards the top. The "human nature" reference sounds a little facetious at first, doesn't it? But that is the very root of the problem.

We, humanity, are social, political animals that live in communities headed by alpha-males. As our communities got larger, our tendancy to find an alpha-male forced the generation of larger and larger dominance heirarchies - the 'state'. It's important to note that there is no conscious state intelligence pushing us into DHs, it's self organisation. Even in small groups, we look for/look to be leaders and this type of local interaction "emerges" as the "state" as communities reach suffiecient complexity.

Just my thoughts. No research to back it up.

It's my opinion that this "search for" and "aspiring to" leadership has actually lead to the fact that most political/economical systems are very much alike.

We in the U.S. love to claim we have a government "by the people, for the people". While this may have been true in the beginning, I don't believe anyone who's paying attention would believe it remains that way today. Today's U.S. government is almost totally socialist. Yes, we retain many of our individual freedoms, but much has been relinquished in the name of "aiding sociatal growth".

What "near true" communist nations there are, have also drifted toward the socialist idea. As have most successful "true" dictatorships.

Problem is, socialism is a fraud. It's the old "chicken in every pot" rouse. It's promise cannot be fulfilled, due to the lack of wealth in the world.....but it makes great blinders on the people. It is used well by those who wish to be in power, as well as those who wish to remain there.

I hope someday, some great thinker/phylosopher will devise a way around the problems. I don't see that happening...we're all too busy analyzing what we have, and not spending enough time trying to find the answers. And I am as guilty of that as anyone.

NM

And let us not forget that philosophers and writers have proposed very similar ideas generations before Marx and Stalin. Who? you say? Have you read Plato's "Republic", for one? Or "Utopia" by Sir Thomas More based upon Plato's work? Guliver's Travels? The idea of sharing everything (work, money, power) is not new, not even this century or last. Catholicism tried to bring the sharing idea into things in a controlled maner (called monistaries & nuneries. Every culture has had a few proposals of this kind. None of them has been successful. Humans are too greedy for this to work. See the above responses for additional excellent points.

wsfn

Absolutely, and isn't Catholicism a classic example of a control structure on the 'state' model? Infact it must be the longest surviving, certainly longer than "state socialism" (communism). I wonder, what is their recipe for success?

What is really scary(at least to me) is it's entirely voluntary!
People actually choose to allow other people to make decisions for them.

Phylosophically, that's a completely different subject, though,....so I digress.

NM

Ah! Sociobiology!
trouble is we're no longer entirely ruled by our instincts

Ahh! Another deep subject. What is instinct, what is cognitive decision, and how do you know which is truly which?......before you answer, how can you prove it?

NM

True, that's exactly why areas like this are so tricky. It's the conflict between the biological (genetic) basis for a decision and the cultural (memetic) basis.

As far as "decisions" go, what makes you think that there *is* a difference? It's the knowledge upon which decisions are based that is either innate or learned, decisions are just decisions at whatever level.

As to whether various bits of knowledge are innate or learned, Steven Pinker describes some excellent experiments that have been / are being done with very young children to help out with this.

Here's an interesting one - *the capacity for* spoken language is innate; written/read language is learned - cool, eh? You don't have to teach a child how to speak, just _what_ to speak. Surround a child with speaking people and it will pick it up - the mechanisms have been hard wired by evolution. The same is not true of reading and writing, though. Surround a child with books and it will be in vain - you have to teach them _how_ aswell as _what_ to read and write.

What I'm suggesting is that, for the socialist (or anarcho-syndicalist for that matter) meme to work, it must overcome our natural propensity for building dominance heirarchies.

It has happened in microcosm. There have been small community experiments with anarchism (the real thing - government for and by the people) in America - but only on a small scale and only by people who are passionate about anarchy - people on whom the meme already has an intimate grip.

Food for thought.....decisions are based on knowledge one believes to be true. How can one be sure this knowledge is real or imagined?

As far as small anarchist groups, yes, they work fine....it's when the size of the group expands that the concept collapses. The more individuals involved, the higher the chance that one person will become "power hungry"...thus, contaminating the groups'ideals.

NM

It's not true that there isn't enough wealth in the world for a "chicken in every pot." The problem is that about 10% of the people already have 90% of the chickens.

heh, so much of it works on paper. capitalism, communism, anarchism, socialism, democracy, lol. but we apply it to real life and look what happens.

This is very true.

The "Mental Giants" come up with the political theories we live by. Day to day life, human nature and reality interfere, and we end up with some sort of "patchwork" system.

I suppose this is best. Instead of government by design, we get "Government by Default"! It's sloppy and imperfect, but at least we, ultimately, we get the final say-so!

NM

Show me exactly what in the, so called, human nature that prevents a communist society. There is no such thing! We are all shaped by the society we live in. In a capitalist society we become more competative, and therefor greedy. In a communist society, on the other hand, we learn to share and work for what´s best for the society. Human nature, meaning we are "shapeable", is in fact a must for communism to work!

Wheather one wishes to admit it or not, we are apes. If you read the research, you'll find that all existing ape species are highly competitive.....this is instinctive, not learned.

This can be shown, as well, by studying the evolution of dictatorships, or indigenious jungle tribes......or modern people in life or death situations, for that matter.

Human nature is not "shapable". We are all born with a competitive drive(read Capitalism). Communism is a learned behavior. It takes much self control to share the proceeds of your work with others....and it's even more difficult when your own well being is affected.

Until ALL of mankind can control that part of their instinctive behavior, Communism cannot succeed.

NM

It´s very easy to say that there are proof for something. Mankind isn´t competative by birth, and thats a fact! There, see?

The proof is in your post!

NM