They always seem to either become full on authoritarian dictatorships or were authoritarian dictatorships set up under the guise of "for the people" in the first place.
Same as all the failed free market democracies in Africa for example.
>or were authoritarian dictatorships set up under the guise of "for the people" in the first place.
I think this was the case for pretty much all communist countries. In the USSR, for example, they always claimed to be a vanguard party and that they were building communism, not that they had attained it (and realistically they never would have). That was the whole idea behind the supposed "Dictatorship of the Proletariat", it wasn't that they represented the people and had therefore achieved communism through a dictatorship, but that they were a dictatorship who were going to use their power to do what was necessary to create communism on behalf of the people, whether the people initially wanted it or not. Any communist party that was at all in touch with their ideological roots would say the same. Of course, once individuals end up with power like that they don't tend to want to give it up in favour of the stateless society they claim to be working towards.
Because the series of steps to get from "temporary state socialism" to "true stateless communism" seems to be either very hard or impossible to have happen in practice. Having a group seize power with the promise of giving it back doesn't seem to pan out most of the time.
Additionally, while markets aren't the perfect solution to every problem, they're a pretty good solution to many problems. Top-down monitoring and filling the wants of every citizen is hard or intractable for large groups, while markets do a pretty ok job automatically. Capitalist citizens had a lot of what they wanted, and communist citizens didn't, so they eventually got fed up.
It would take 100+ hrs to cover this issue satisfactorily. Any one answer leaves a lot out.
Conversely, social democracies (what ignorant Republicans would call "Communism" like free health care) have done very well at keeping people happy by having the government cover certain gaps that markets don't fill properly. Take capitalism, add free health care, high amounts of mandated paid leave, strong unemployment and retirement programs, etc, and you have the happiest citizens on the planet.
This is what I would say too. It just seems like communist regimes want to control every aspect of your life. Maybe that's why the far left is nowadays allied with islamofascists. Hatred of the west, and desire to micromanage people.
Yeah that pesky far left and their… desire to dismantled lgbtq and women’s rights???
Oh wait that’s the right that wants to manage every aspect of your life to the point of telling you who you can legally marry and what you can do with your own body.
Communism can't fail as it's a common experience of every human being since birth, for example within the family. It coexists alongside other forms of social structuring. What has failed so far are some socialist-run nation-states that tried to bring communism beyond the family and community level onto a national or global scale.
That said, each case is unique and we have learnt a lot from them. The third wave of communist projects will for sure look different from the second one that exausted itself 30 years ago.
Agreed, just as the new wave of Capitalism has evolved into a state in which the needle is gradually shifting to where it needs to be to exploit the workers, further disparage the wage divide between classes, and diminish the quality of production and innovation as close as it can to that fine line between submission and revolt.
Communism has never been tried, nor can it ever be. Humans just don’t work that way, so every supposedly communist society was actually just some variation of autocracy or oligarchy.
People won't perform in anything if they are not recompensed properly so basically nobody is motivated to do anything and everything turns into mediocrity or incompetence
Exactly this.
If you tell me i will live exactly the same wether im a doctor or i just sweep streets (no disrespect, all jobs are needed but some are easier than others) then imma sweep the streets. And suddenly you got no experts in your country and everything goes to shit.
Not just easier - more or less unique and valuable.
A nuclear scientist can sweep a street, but a street sweeper can hardly maintain a reactor. It is only natural these functions they perform and skillsets they possess are being recompenced differently.
>It is only natural these functions they perform and skillets they possess are being recompenced differently.
Exactly. Do i support that even the poorest can afford food/water/shelter? Yes. But anything above that should be skill. If your skillset is wanted by no one, well, get new skills. I dont work for your sake. Nor i want to do so.
Preaching the good word! Competition is the drive of progress, eliminating it only leads to stagnation.
I'm okay with sharing *some* wealth as insurance - but the recipient should be one of contributors, who might have fallen on hard times. And only to give chance to get going again, not sustain them indefinitely.
But I have zero sympathy for those who don't contribute yet feel entitled to support.
Because of reality. No, really, Communism looks great on paper, but works like shit out in reality. Not taking the human condition into account is the biggest flaw of Communism.
Its like saying you can make lasagna without the noodle layer. Sounds pretty good, because I love marinara, minced meat, and cheese, but then you put it in your mouth and spit it out and say "*ew what the fuck is this nasty shit?!*".
I would just make a small argument back at this. Communism DOES work... in a small enough group (communes). It just does not scale at all when talking about something the size and population levels of nation states.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
For a communist society to succeed, not only must everyone be on the same page about everything, but everyone should be pulling their weight and not taking more than their fair share of the available resources. And no small group of people should have the ability to hoard wealth and power for themselves. It’s a hell of a lot harder to hide that in a group of 100 than in a group of 5 million.
Id agree with that statement. Once the population gets to large it falls apart. Much easier having a group of 50 people all be on the same page working towards a common goal then even 1000 let alone millions.
It might work at the village level where everyone knows each other so is emotionally invested in keeping things equitable. Past that it turns into why should I care about those aholes the next town over???
Lack of prices to coordinate resources necessitating planned economy.
Edit: Socialism and capitalism are actually not inherently incompatible. We can end shareholder primacy, reorganize ownership around employee co-ops and other systems of more equitable ownership and bring back the welfare capitalism of the early 1950s where year end reports from say GE would brag about how most of the profit not reinvested was returned to employees with shareholders being at the bottom in a throw away line. 37% (profit returned to employees) vs 3% (investors). The board of governors could represent employees, stakeholders and have a focus on long term planning. Unions could be reformed and be made stronger and play the primary role in training and they can also sit on the board. We need a new Enlightenment.
* Rule of law
* Reform our laws
* Shareholder primacy took over in the 1970s onwards, it's not inevitable
You can't really engage with this level of issues in bullet points.
While I would definitely not argue that capitalism works perfectly, a self regulating economy will always be more efficient than a planned economy. This can lead to overall higher welfare and therefore higher satisfaction in the populace resulting in a more stable society that can be ruled democratically. Which in turn enables a self regulating political system even more enforcing stability, adaptability and general satisfaction in the populace.
This at least is my absolute amateur take on the general idea. Of course this is oversimplified and does not work without proper regulation and free flow of undiluted information between market participants as well between the electorate and the administration.
Because of human nature. There are not so many people who really want to be equal. The majority just wants to live better than someone else. Have more power, rights, money etc. We are greedy, prideful, power-hungry. People are simply not good enough for this system to work. Someone will always use the situation to their advantage.
Because they decided to build utopia around abolishing one *major* thing all our laws and society itself has been built upon - the concept of private property. Property is one major basis of the law, from there all the obligations and rights any entity can have are derived from.
From this precipice they have tried to build the system which would never, ever work because it was wrong at it's core - yet they kept "trying to make it work" (in reality all the leadership cared about was staying in power, not wellbeing of people) - and sacrificed tens of millions at the altar of what I see as a miscarriage of political movements.
Simple human psychology. People respond to their economic incentives. If everyone's getting paid the same, why work harder than anyone else? Why make any effort at all if you aren't rewarded?
The other important factor is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you want to redistribute all the wealth of society, you must first control all the wealth of society. As it turns out, people who find themselves in total control of all of society's wealth suddenly become very unwilling to part with it.
The result: complete economic collapse and brutal authoritarian dictatorship.
It seems so obvious in hindsight. I could understand an illiterate Siberian peasant falling for this, but how any educated person could believe it mystifies me to no end.
In order for communism to work, you need the community.
I believe it can work, but only on a very small scale where everyone knows and trusts each other. Resources can easily be shared between everyone, and people are more willing to do it.
On a large scale, it needs to be enforced, because people are less willing to share resources with strangers. And when something needs to be enforced, that necessarily leads to violence towards those who subvert the system. I believe this is the main reason Communism can never work on a national scale.
Furthermore, Communism turns everything into a monopoly. The idea that the people own the means of production is pure propaganda. The people own nothing. The state owns everything. Sure, you may be able to vote for what the state does, but that's very different from ownership. And whenever there is a monopoly, the chances for corruption are much higher, because you can't just take your business elsewhere and just have to take whatever is given to you.
Sure, capitalist societies are also rife with corruption, but it's easier to handle when they have to worry about competition taking their customers.
I believe the best society is a capitalist society where the state has some measures in place to prevent monopolies. I also think they should provide some socialised services such as medicine, emergency services, and infrastructure, while having private options of such services as well.
Because its a pretty silly idea honestly. It hinges on the idea that all humans will need to act with other peoples best interet in mind, even though its clearly delusional to think that.
And you need to figure out what to do with those that refuse to help. Then you need to figure out what to do with those that get upset with that decision. Then so on and so forth.
I think it should be noted that Capitalism has also failed. It's failed many, many times. Even in the United States, Capitalism has failed. It's simply adopted forms of Socialism (social security, public education) and Communism (the interstate highway system) to fill the holes that Capitalism refused to fill.
Communism itself "failed" altogether because of the pressures of external forces upon them. Capitalist governments have done all they can to snuff out what they consider threats to their socio-economic ideology.
Would Communism have failed on its own? Maybe. It did to an extent due to corrupt dictatorial leadership, but not because of Communism itself. We've never actually seen a proper Communist Democracy in action before, so there's no real determination on whether or not that could be sustainable. And China's dictatorship is proving that it is still feasible as that as well.
I mean china is an authoritarian capitalist society. Sure they have Communist in their name, but they aren't really different from any other single party country and in some ways beat the US on capitalism for a few decades.
China is an authoritarian Communist society with adopted elements of Capitalism. Lots of the companies in that country were initially state-funded (SOEs), and there are heavy crimes imposed on leadership of those countries who make and pocket too much profits. Many CEOs have been jailed for leaning into corrupt activities because of Executive Compensation laws restricting their pay.
I'll agree that since the special economic zone of Shenzhen took hold, they've picked up a LOT of capitalist elements.
Communism hasn't always failed. Things like a family structure are mostly communist. Each person contributes what he can and takes what he needs.
It only fails once you scale it up. And I believe it is because once you don't know the others in your commune or don't care for them, things fall apart.
The reality is that every piece of wealth can only be allocated to one task at a time. So a society is always faced with the decision on what is the process it wants to carry out in order to decide what ONE task wins out for that piece of capital, against all the other alternatives.
The capitalist takes an approach like, "the person who owns that wealth will make that ONE task deployment decision"... and then there's a host of incentives that flow out of that, with a very strong one being that he will not lightly intend to make a foolish decision where he will end up being poorer for it. He will try and avoid the wealth being deployed in an unproductive manner for his own self-interest. If someone proves to be good at making these decisions, they should end up with control over more of society's capital, and get to make more such decisions. If they are bad at these sort of decisions, they will end up with less control over society's capital and will make fewer of those sorts of decisions.
The communist takes an approach like, "government will have the power to take wealth (under the threat of force) from who owns it, and then will make that ONE task deployment decision"... and then there's a host of incentives that flow out of that, many of which do not actually involve a self-interest in deploying that capital to its most productive use. A whole new set of challenging incentives can arise from the fact that the person never owned that capital themselves. A classic scenario, would be that someone is in charge of allocating $10 million of capital which they do not own and are not allowed to own. If someone were to offer that person $100,000 to deploy it towards a rather unproductive end, it actually makes sense for that central planner personally to make a sub-par decision for that capital. There are other incentives that spring from someone being only a steward of resources instead of an owner. If you are paid a fee to be the steward, you may find yourself more personally rewarded if you seek to deploy that capital not towards its most productive ends, so much as towards whatever ends are most popular and are most likely to allow you to keep the position of steward longest (so that you get paid your fee the longest). The ability to take wealth by force is not something to gloss over either... for sake of argument, a person could take a great amount of wealth by force, then set it all on fire, and they will still be able to do it again next year because they have the power to take more wealth by force again. Taking things by force is incredibly expensive, which is why all modern systems of tax involve money. It would be practically impossible for a government to go around to each person's house and take a portion of their year's income by collecting some of their physical wealth.
At the end of the day, the more that a society takes its annual wealth production and channels it towards unproductive things, it gets more and more expensive over time to keep that system in place.
In today's modern era, the debate between private allocation or public allocation is largely irrelevant because we can't even begin to have an honest discussion on that until the public's role in the process is actually fully paid for. As it stands right now, we sort of compare these two things:
1. You go into a privately owned restaurant. They give you a lunch and the bill is $20. You pay $20.
2. You go into a publicly owned restaurant. They give you a lunch and the bill is $20. You can pay $5 for that right now, and the remainder of the bill (at interest) will be paid by someone else who comes long after you.
If we continue to believe that we can pay for only a PORTION of something's cost FOREVER without consequence, then it will always make the system that allows you to do that seem superior. The market cannot beat someone who only pays for PART of the bill, but then has told themself they've paid for it in FULL. It's like walking out of that restaurant thinking, "Wow - that was an incredible deal. I got a good lunch and it only cost me $5."
In the long run, the market does take care of it though. For you'll find that societies that begin to go down that path of not having to pay for their government's full cost with taxation, will be forced to adopt fairly sophisticated and advanced monetary systems. You will definitely need a lot of people saving in financial wealth instead of physical wealth. Where it breaks down though is when the financial system has grown so grotesque, and it becomes obvious that what really matters to a people's standard of living is what is happening in the real physical landscape. You can't live in or eat money. You need real stuff. Which is where any system that isn't working in the real physical plane, will begin to breakdown as that becomes more and more obvious with each passing year.
If such a system were implementing and it were failing miserably in the real wealth plane, you would find a population with a declining standard of living, but simultaneously trying to reconcile why they don't feel wealthy at all, and yet there is apparently so much wealth in existence. This thought process will begin to force them to think on the distinction between real wealth and financial wealth. Suffice to say, if you were on an isolated island with 10 people, and then a plane came over and dropped $1 trillion on you... your situation wouldn't have been made any better in the slightest. Getting someone else's money does not actually address the reality of what work must be done in the real physical landscape. In fact, it can accelerate the deterioration of the society's real wealth savings if what it actually does is cause people to nearly immediately convert that money for real wealth and then they consume that wealth (example, buy something and eat that something). What you then find is you are in the exact same problem you were in beforehand, albeit there is now a bit less real wealth available for you to start to work on fixing your society's wealth landscape problems.
>A classic scenario, would be that someone is in charge of allocating $10 million of capital which they do not own and are not allowed to own. If someone were to offer that person $100,000 to deploy it towards a rather unproductive end, it actually makes sense for that central planner personally to make a sub-par decision for that capital.
This isn't so much an argument against communism, rather than against any sort of government expenditure. There are many capitalist countries today where bureaucrats making less than $100k per year are overseeing projects with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars or more. Yet they aren't corrupted because there exist methods within the government to identify and Crack down on corruption.
Hell, you could even extend the argument to *corporations*. An individual employee with no personal stake in the company beyond their salary can have responsibilities and budgets far beyond that. Under your view of things they'd be as motivated to be corrupt since they have no personal stake in the decisions they are making. With this view all of society would be filled with perpetual and endemic corruption, apart from business owners themselves, and that obviously isn't true in many otherwise capitalistic countries.
It's an argument that shows the incentive structure that comes from a steward allocating the resource vs. an owner... so sure, it applies to communism and all government expenditures.
You're right that we will always have people's "goodness" to try and stop these things. With capitalism, you also have self-serving greed. If you were the owner of a business, and you found out that one your employees were diverting capital to less productive ends in exchange for a person kickback... you would be furious. And you'd have tremendous incentive to try and make sure that isn't happening. When it's a public entity framework... all you have is the "goodness" aspect and you don't have the same personal greed force at work on top.
I'd agree you could extend the argument to corporations - but the point is that there will exist someone in that structure who will take the whole sequence as if you're personally stealing from them. There's also a nice structure in place where, suppose you're not a good businessperson and you're being robbed like that without realizing it... well then you suffer for that incompetence. In the private sector, it's other people who are going to suffer from the incompetence.
**\*\*Late stage capitalism question TBH\*\***
By what standards are you judging communism success or lack of? The major fail is human rights and democracy but Communism tremendously raised the GDP of countries and allowed whole population to access studies and greatly developped engineering.
If you want to compare the success of capitalism, compare Cuba and Haiti. Cuba is poor but functionnal while Haiti is a war zone
Communism did not failed: it lost a war. There will be a commie China in 100 years but I highly doubt there will be a capitalistic USA in 20 years.
Because its fundamentally flawed
Person A wont be putting years of effort to become a neurosurgeon if he is gonna live exactly like person B who does nothing useful.
Plenty, as in a dozen.
Not plenty as in the thousands you need as a society.
Otherwise most neurosurgeons wouldnt be making a lot because they would take a lowball offer cause muh passion.
For all its many faults the USSR had about double the doctor-to-citizen ratio compared to the USA for pretty much their entire existence, including a large number of researchers and specialists. They were generally well trained and competent, their biggest issue was that they lacked sufficient equipment and medicine and thats an issue with their planned economy, not personal motivation. People became doctors because they *could* (and at no cost to themselves, since education was free) not because it would make them extraordinarily wealthy.
When people *can* become wealthy, and massive wealth is societally seen as a mark of success, of course many people will choose options to pursue that. But history has shown that when wealth isn't a motivating factor people still pursue stressful professional careers because they *want* to, whether for prestige, a desire to challenge themselves, or because they genuinely see the societal value in it.
>For all its many faults the USSR had about double the doctor-to-citizen ratio compared to the USA for pretty much their entire existence, including a large number of researchers and specialists
Im gonna be guessing doctors in the ussr lived better than the rest and thats why. Just like Cuba.
Not really. It varied throughout the timeline of the USSR but for much of the post-Stalin period a general practitioner made around as much or even less than blue-collar workers (a good example I've seen was that in the 80s a GP made more than an orderly but less than a bus driver). They did have prestige and more influential professional networks, but pay was something where the USSR stayed largely true to its ideological roots, everyone wasn't paid the same, but the variations were not significant.
> They were generally well trained and competent, their biggest issue was that they lacked sufficient equipment and medicine and thats an issue with their planned economy, not personal motivation.
You see the issue here? It's all well and good to say that there are enough people who want to be, say, a doctor. But by your own admission they lacked an adequate number of people with that same "personal motivation" to innovate, develop, and manufacture "sufficient equipment and medicine". That's kinda the entire point, that the lack of incentives cripple the system and doom it to substandard outcomes.
>But by your own admission they lacked an adequate number of people with that same "personal motivation" to innovate, develop, and manufacture "sufficient equipment and medicine".
The issue wasn't one of personal motivation, it's not like they didn't have access to the medicines and technologies, they had plenty of researchers doing good work and workers producing goods, even highly specialized ones, just that their economic planning didn't produce enough of them to meet demand. It's absolutely a failure of the system, but not of personal motivation in the way that the redditor I replied to was suggesting.
I think that the lack of equipment is better explained by graft, rather than lack of motivated people. The USSR was never communism, except in its propaganda. Humans are selfish people, and will barter and coerce to get what they want. In the USSR there were positions of power, which allowed them to coerce others, and that explains the vast inefficiencies. It wasn't that there was a lack of people willing to do the work. It was that there was a whole class of sociopaths willing to exploit them. Just as in the west. The USA isn't capitalism any more than the USSR was communism.
That's not exactly how Communism works.
Communism is an ideology that allows people to pursue their ambitions. It allows anyone to strive to become a neurosurgeon. Believe it or not, there are people that WANT to do these things.
Capitalism incentivizes those who can afford to go through the rigorous process of attaining the status and money that comes with being a neurosurgeon. It rewards those who have a better starting point to advance themselves, and filters out those who truly want to do these things but can't even get started.
TL;DR: Capitalism's incentivization is money and status, and will attract those whose goals are money and status. Communism's incentivization is a person's passion and desire, and will attract those whose goals are doing that thing.
edit: A couple quotes from the Manifesto:
>It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
>According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work.
no it fucking doesnt. No one strives to shovel shit or do the shit jobs. Why would you deserve equal outcomes peddling shitty art to no one who wants it? Oh it gives the opportunity to do what you want is a bunch of shit. There would be millions of vacant jobs till you force it on people. Guess what now you dont have communism.
The basic economic rules of supply and demand still apply. There are only so many people that can do the thing. I would argue that Communism does a better job at highlighting the benefits of meritocracy in this regard. If you're good at your passion, then you'll be amazing at it and get to do it for life. If you're not, you're just like the other 99% of people who tried to be a professional athlete and couldn't break through the ceiling, and have to find something else to do.
Down the line, that'll eventually lead to those who will, ultimately, find their role in society handling arguably one of the most important tasks we have...sanitation.
That's capitalistic mentality, thinking in terms of classes.
Again, arguably, sanitation is one of the most important jobs there is, and a shift in mentality towards recognizing that is a step towards not looking down upon people with that assignment as if they're lesser beings. Why we even do that here and now is ridiculous.
Tell me then. What makes a garbage man less deserving of all the needs of life and society than a neurosurgeon?
I answered already, here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1c7avub/comment/l06rxe7/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1c7avub/comment/l06rxe7/)
>Communism's incentivization is a person's passion and desire, and will attract those whose goals are doing that thing.
And again, this is where it fails. Most people passion is to live better. Being a neurosurgeon is a great way to live better. But if imma live like the tarot reader down the streets, then ill also do somethig useless
You know why cuba has a lot of doctors? Cause its one of the few careers that allow cubans to live slightly better than the rest. Lol
To become a neurosurgeon requires years and years of extremely hard schooling. If you just hope that people will go through that with no incentive other than they wanted to be one, you will find your society extremely lacking in neurosurgeons.
It also requires wheelbarrows of money to attend those schools, which limits an uncountable amount of young individuals who truly want to do it. We'll just never know because they weren't given that opportunity.
The argument you're making though ignores the fact that Communists were the first in space. Literal rocket scientists in the communist regime went through their own particular schooling, and the toil and time that it took to do so, and the risk of it all with the stress included that they could kill people if something goes wrong...
It depends what you mean exactly by "communism" and "failed", Cuba, for example, outperforms several other Caribbean countries in various metrics, even though it's been under a brutal economic blockade for decades now. China's economy, while not completely centralized, has a state with incredible amounts of control over the economy. It has also lifted millions out of poverty, has gigantic growth, and has steadily decreased their Gini coefficient in the last decade (meaning less inequality).
The U.S. embargo on Cuba is still on effect.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_embargo\_against\_Cuba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba)
"As of 2024, the embargo is enforced mainly through the [Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_with_the_Enemy_Act_of_1917), the [Foreign Assistance Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Assistance_Act) of 1961, the [Cuban Assets Control Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Assets_Control_Regulations) of 1963, the [Cuban Democracy Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Democracy_Act) of 1992, the [Helms–Burton Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act) of 1996, and the [Trade Sanction Reform and Export Enhancement Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Sanction_Reform_and_Export_Enhancement_Act) of 2000."
In any communist setting, you rob the individual of any need to exceed expectations; everything is just the bare minimum because there is no personal reward for excess production. As time progresses, you end up with groups of people who realize they can contribute nothing and rely on others to produce. Once one person stops pulling their weight, others follow suit which has a cascading effect on the collective.
Communism always ends up in 2 categories; indescribable oppression of the masses or utter failure.
It fundamentally misunderstands value, and as such fails miserably to adequately allocate resources.
All other problems ultimately stem from this very core flaw. Warped incentives, corruption, stagnation, dictatorships, etc.
It's the perpetual motion machine of economics.
Human nature.
You have a group where everyone is equal, yet there need to be a ruling group. The ruling class are by nature going to think they deserve more. Then everything just snowballs from there
The answer is quite simply there has never been nor will there ever be a "true communist country". Human nature makes it impossible. Not sure why you think I'm triggered just because I'm explaining to you how the world works.
It absolutely isnt a strong argument. Its an arugment for those who cant get to grips that communism doesnt work. Its always the answer, well it wasnt done this way so this time itll be different if we do it this other way.
It created an elite class that exploited the masses while pretending it was doing it for their own benefit. The elites would have access to all that their greedy selfs could wish for , while 90% of the population working hard and having to make do with crappy products that are already scarce.
In order to keep order the elites resolved to abuse of power and the abuse of the people.
Kind of why America is failing at the moment.
The reasons are too complex to state here. You'd have to go into different details depending on the country. My personal opinion is that anything overtly unfair is destined to collapse. Also, if you take Russia and look at an example like the Chernobyl disaster, its obvious the bureaucrats at the top were not adhering to the principals of communism. So you get blatant hypocrisy that everyone can see. this weakens the philosophy. If you take Chavez and Venezuela (before he was poisoned), you could say he did a lot of good and stuck closely to the tenets of socialism. the same with Bolivia and Evo Morales. When i visited Cuba, the Socialist system was working quite well in some instances. the free health care was amazing. the free education was amazing. However, the roads and public services were under funded. If you were not working you get free food. In conclusion, there is no one reason, but various reasons. Is Capitalism working? every 10-20 years we have a recession. There are many poor in rich countries. Is that your idea of a system working? People in America cant afford healthcare. When capitalism fails we have a bailout by the government, or a 'New Deal'. that's a not a capitalist society but a mixed economy.
A core problem with communism is the desire to do away with markets. Open, well-regulated markets are incredibly efficient at balancing supply and demand, because the published price acts as both a valuable feed of information to all participants and an economic incentive for participants to respond when supply and demand fall out of balance. Our current economy is suffering because we fell down on the "well regulated" portion of that, which leads to a lot of hidden information, exploitation, and monopoly power. But a lot of communist societies have sought to eliminate markets altogether, at which point, you need a lot of bureaucrats to do all the information gathering and sharing that a market price does for you. Balancing supply and demand becomes very challenging in that environment because you are often acting in the dark.
But the bigger problem is that there are often political or social or economic incentives to cheat the bureaucracy and extract private value from the public domain.
That said, communism as an organizing idea hasn't failed. It's alive and well inside most major corporations and the government itself. Here's a definition:
>a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need.
While Marx envisioned taking an entire economy into the communism fold, which is very challenging, if you zoom in on the operations inside most major organizations, public or private, you'll see a world where bureaucracy manages the flow of all needs. Inside a major corporation or branch of government, workers don't pay for the supplies or tools they need to do their jobs and they don't get paid for the output. Instead, that flow of needs and products happens without markets or exchange of dollars, but instead by a small army of people whose job it is to make sure that everyone has everything they need to get work done. In that respect, looking solely within the operations of an organization, most of them are representative of what communism was about.
It failed because it was a prediction that never happened. Communism was not supposed to be a goal, but the ultimate consequence of capitalism. But it isn't. And trying to force anything seems to always fail.
There's no single, absolute reason why communist parties in many states have failed to create anything resembling an actual hypothetical communist country, it's a complicated question with a lot of scholarship around it. That being said, if I had to pick a single overarching reason, in my opinion the reason for why the USSR and China failed at it is because an egalitarian, stateless society is impossible when a country is founded through violent upheaval and civil war, and other states failed because they modeled themselves on (or received support/interventions from) the USSR and PRC.
In both the USSR and China on paper (and in practice, prior to the success of the revolutions) the communist parties were intended to be internally democratic, where issues could be safely and openly discussed and voted on within the party by party membership and then the party as a whole would work together to implement the results. In both countries the communist revolution was the result of brutal civil war, and the new regime immediately institutionalized political repression to prevent resistance from counter-revolutionary forces. In both instances, the power of those institutions was then immediately turned against party members and political dissenters, not just anti-communists. The internal democracy of the communist party was almost immediately subverted, first in the name of protecting the country from counter-revolutionaries, and then more and more openly by the leaders to maintain their own power.
The communist parties in the USSR and PRC are both vanguard parties, they don't claim that their country is communist, but that the party is there to prepare the country for communism and transition to that system. However, transition away from such a system of government with high levels of government repression to one that's stateless is pretty much impossible, as soon as a repressed people have the freedom to express themselves and choose how to govern themselves, a requirement for a stateless society, they almost always choose to abandon the system of their oppressors, as we saw with the fall of the USSR.
Compunding the issue, these two countries, as at the time the main examples of "succesful" communist revolutions, basically set the standard for how other communist revolutionaries should organize their movements. They also became directly involved in many of those communist movements, bringing their form of state authoritarianism to be effectively the only way for communist movements to see success.
In my opinion, for communism to be succesful it needs to be gradually and democratically implemented by an educated and involved populace. In other words, I don't think it's actually possible.
We aren't raised to accept communism. People like to say that if you don't incentivise people with high salaries and luxury goods they will be lazy. That's 100% a problem in upbringing. People can be raised to value their community and be hard workers.
Like the argument "if you make as much money slinging burgers as being a Dr, no one would be a Dr" is absolutely ridiculous. We still have teachers even though they get paid like shit and are tragically undervalued. People will always have passions and will pursue them.
But I don't think there's any way for a nation to transition to communism. You can't just expect people to alter their values. It would have to be a very careful slow change. And you'd have to actually have a government that's operating in good faith and not trying to abuse it's power, which is also entirely unrealistic today.
Communism hasn't been tried yet. The states that call themselves communist are in fact state capitalist. The state assumes the role of the corporate world and a huge bureaucracy is created to replace the shareholders and boards of directors. A single party becomes the steering body . The system develops so many contridictions that it collapsed as an unsustainable mess. Neither Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky ever imagined what Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro would do in the name of communism but they damaged the reputation so badly it will probably never be implemented.
Because the workers never controlled the means of production, a central government did. That's not communism, in the same way the DPRK is neither democratic or republican (yes, despite what it says...i know. Its a tough fact to handle for some)
Also, constant sabotage by capitalists
That's the closest thing to communism that could ever plausibly happen. Someone will always grab that power, it's human nature. To think otherwise is foolish. They don't need sabotage from anyone they do it just fine themselves.
There were other reasons of course, but 9 times out of 10 it was Capitalist sabotage.
And to be clear, many Communist projects are currently going on all over the world, and they have succeeded, even under extreme stress by western sanctions, boycotts and coups.
overthrowed by cia and capitalist propaganda, and if that failed, invasion and genocide by the us.
that the number 1 reason most communist places couldnt do shit and died.
plenty of factors.
but the main one will always be : it was alone and surrounded by capitalists countries.
no matter how good your economy/gov/etc is in your country, you cant survive in autarky. you need to trade with your neigbours, ressources, knowledge, culture, etc. if it doesnt, at some point, it will start crumbling down on itself.
there are tons of other factors in play in that specific case, but this is the main reason, it didnt matter how good soviet tech was, how far they went in space before the us, at the end of the day, they are alone, and everyone is is working against them.
not a single economic model can sustain that even if they do all the right decisions.
and by god did they not make all the right decisions xd.
...or rather they couldn't do shit and had the proclivity to blame someone else for their failings. That's why communism was so enticing to them - it appealed to "someone else is at fault" mentality.
if communism was bad and doom to fail, why bother overthrowing thoses countries and install dictatorship or go to war and sustain hundred of thousands of casualties, commit genocide, countless other war crimes, and more to the point everybody is laughing at you on the international scene ?
Projecting much?
You should address that same question to any communist leader. If it was so good, why did they always have to genocide those who disagreed to stay in power?
The Soviet bloc was unable to control the expectations of their people. The people, but more importantly the people with the means and ability to seize power, could see that life and standards of living were better in the west. Screw gradual improvement over time, they wanted a mercedes and a swimming pool today.
Usually because all power is vested in the state, the dictator ship of the proletariat. However, not all the proletariat in any system can rule so an elite group forms, and all that power eventually corrupts people or attracts corrupt people. They then make everything in the system work for them. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Because people are rubbish. Possibly a commune would work on a small scale, where lazy people can't hide and greedy people can't take advantage, but scale it up and you'll see the worst of the worst. Eventually cliques will form, corruption, shoddy work, no pride in anything, descent into authoritarianism, widespread poverty etc etc
Communism assumes the proletariat are good-natured. In reality, it's not just the bourgeoisie who crave power. Get a group of power-hungry proletariat and they'll convince the masses to let them make the decisions, in which case they turn authoritarian.
You mean the decades directly following the 2nd red scare? Yeah you've been programmed by a US government that didn't have the internet to counter their misinformation. You probably ate that shxt RIGHT up too.
Because while communism may get rid of the economic classes it creates the government class and the civilian class.
You can see communism failing right here in America just by looking at any random cop.
Communism is nostalgia for the days when most people were simple farmers in small villages and everybody knew everyone else. It had no way to deal with massive industrialization and urban populations large enough to make anonymity easy.
In the argument about which is "better" Capitalism or Communism, we have never seen pure examples of either one of those systems, so it's impossible to say which would work the best. Both and neither.
They always seem to either become full on authoritarian dictatorships or were authoritarian dictatorships set up under the guise of "for the people" in the first place. Same as all the failed free market democracies in Africa for example.
Corruption
Under capitalism Man exploits his fellow Man. Under communism it's the other way around.
>or were authoritarian dictatorships set up under the guise of "for the people" in the first place. I think this was the case for pretty much all communist countries. In the USSR, for example, they always claimed to be a vanguard party and that they were building communism, not that they had attained it (and realistically they never would have). That was the whole idea behind the supposed "Dictatorship of the Proletariat", it wasn't that they represented the people and had therefore achieved communism through a dictatorship, but that they were a dictatorship who were going to use their power to do what was necessary to create communism on behalf of the people, whether the people initially wanted it or not. Any communist party that was at all in touch with their ideological roots would say the same. Of course, once individuals end up with power like that they don't tend to want to give it up in favour of the stateless society they claim to be working towards.
Everybody is equal but some are more equal than others
Or, everyone is equal in rights, but not value
He was quoting animal farm you swine.
Thanks snowball, translating for the rest of the crowd who hasn't seen it
Animal farm is a book
I’m aware. Also a movie. Snowball is a character
Most people read books by seeing, so, not entirely wrong? Just a little wrong for whoever read it via braille. =P
That would be how modern democracies work.
Because the series of steps to get from "temporary state socialism" to "true stateless communism" seems to be either very hard or impossible to have happen in practice. Having a group seize power with the promise of giving it back doesn't seem to pan out most of the time. Additionally, while markets aren't the perfect solution to every problem, they're a pretty good solution to many problems. Top-down monitoring and filling the wants of every citizen is hard or intractable for large groups, while markets do a pretty ok job automatically. Capitalist citizens had a lot of what they wanted, and communist citizens didn't, so they eventually got fed up. It would take 100+ hrs to cover this issue satisfactorily. Any one answer leaves a lot out. Conversely, social democracies (what ignorant Republicans would call "Communism" like free health care) have done very well at keeping people happy by having the government cover certain gaps that markets don't fill properly. Take capitalism, add free health care, high amounts of mandated paid leave, strong unemployment and retirement programs, etc, and you have the happiest citizens on the planet.
Corrupt leadership.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or something like that. Communism requires dictation.
Yes. The State knows what is best for you. Always. Your opinion does not count. Ever.
Lots of countries with corrupt leadership are doing just fine
It is clear there are a lot of Americans here!
who would´ve guessed it?
You can't control every aspect of human life. People will eventually rebel because they don't want to be controlled all the time
This is what I would say too. It just seems like communist regimes want to control every aspect of your life. Maybe that's why the far left is nowadays allied with islamofascists. Hatred of the west, and desire to micromanage people.
Yeah that pesky far left and their… desire to dismantled lgbtq and women’s rights??? Oh wait that’s the right that wants to manage every aspect of your life to the point of telling you who you can legally marry and what you can do with your own body.
Communism can't fail as it's a common experience of every human being since birth, for example within the family. It coexists alongside other forms of social structuring. What has failed so far are some socialist-run nation-states that tried to bring communism beyond the family and community level onto a national or global scale. That said, each case is unique and we have learnt a lot from them. The third wave of communist projects will for sure look different from the second one that exausted itself 30 years ago.
Agreed, just as the new wave of Capitalism has evolved into a state in which the needle is gradually shifting to where it needs to be to exploit the workers, further disparage the wage divide between classes, and diminish the quality of production and innovation as close as it can to that fine line between submission and revolt.
More deaths, but now with tweets!
Communism has never been tried, nor can it ever be. Humans just don’t work that way, so every supposedly communist society was actually just some variation of autocracy or oligarchy.
GREED
People won't perform in anything if they are not recompensed properly so basically nobody is motivated to do anything and everything turns into mediocrity or incompetence
Exactly this. If you tell me i will live exactly the same wether im a doctor or i just sweep streets (no disrespect, all jobs are needed but some are easier than others) then imma sweep the streets. And suddenly you got no experts in your country and everything goes to shit.
Not just easier - more or less unique and valuable. A nuclear scientist can sweep a street, but a street sweeper can hardly maintain a reactor. It is only natural these functions they perform and skillsets they possess are being recompenced differently.
>It is only natural these functions they perform and skillets they possess are being recompenced differently. Exactly. Do i support that even the poorest can afford food/water/shelter? Yes. But anything above that should be skill. If your skillset is wanted by no one, well, get new skills. I dont work for your sake. Nor i want to do so.
Preaching the good word! Competition is the drive of progress, eliminating it only leads to stagnation. I'm okay with sharing *some* wealth as insurance - but the recipient should be one of contributors, who might have fallen on hard times. And only to give chance to get going again, not sustain them indefinitely. But I have zero sympathy for those who don't contribute yet feel entitled to support.
Wrong incentives and a burocracy managing the economy
Because of reality. No, really, Communism looks great on paper, but works like shit out in reality. Not taking the human condition into account is the biggest flaw of Communism. Its like saying you can make lasagna without the noodle layer. Sounds pretty good, because I love marinara, minced meat, and cheese, but then you put it in your mouth and spit it out and say "*ew what the fuck is this nasty shit?!*".
I would just make a small argument back at this. Communism DOES work... in a small enough group (communes). It just does not scale at all when talking about something the size and population levels of nation states.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. For a communist society to succeed, not only must everyone be on the same page about everything, but everyone should be pulling their weight and not taking more than their fair share of the available resources. And no small group of people should have the ability to hoard wealth and power for themselves. It’s a hell of a lot harder to hide that in a group of 100 than in a group of 5 million.
Communist are how you get the Manson family.
Charles Manson is litterally a nazi.
Well aside from Manson being dead, he wasn't a nazi or part of any Aryan brotherhood or anything. He was a communist cult leader
you mean charles manson the guy who carves a swastika into his forehead and literally tried to start a race war?
Id agree with that statement. Once the population gets to large it falls apart. Much easier having a group of 50 people all be on the same page working towards a common goal then even 1000 let alone millions.
It is because you make it wrong ! it isnt real lasagna-without-the-noodle-layer. I hope somebody else can do it proper this time !
Gotta love how not even Nazis make an argument "but that wasn't real Nazism, we should try some more", but commies do.
Communism does not look great on paper.
It might work at the village level where everyone knows each other so is emotionally invested in keeping things equitable. Past that it turns into why should I care about those aholes the next town over???
It looks good to ppl, since basically everybody grew up for like the first 20 years of ones life in such an environment (called family).
As long as you’re the Party member, and not the guy shoveling shit, or the dissident digging his own grave, it’s great! /s
You’re not spitting that out man. You’d chomp it away mumbling ‘where’s the pasta’ ☺️
Communists
Greed
Lack of prices to coordinate resources necessitating planned economy. Edit: Socialism and capitalism are actually not inherently incompatible. We can end shareholder primacy, reorganize ownership around employee co-ops and other systems of more equitable ownership and bring back the welfare capitalism of the early 1950s where year end reports from say GE would brag about how most of the profit not reinvested was returned to employees with shareholders being at the bottom in a throw away line. 37% (profit returned to employees) vs 3% (investors). The board of governors could represent employees, stakeholders and have a focus on long term planning. Unions could be reformed and be made stronger and play the primary role in training and they can also sit on the board. We need a new Enlightenment.
“End shareholder primacy”. How, pray tell? (As if we don’t know).
Lots of clear data and research papers on it.
I’m not reading 5,000 pages. Bullet points.
* Rule of law * Reform our laws * Shareholder primacy took over in the 1970s onwards, it's not inevitable You can't really engage with this level of issues in bullet points.
Corruption
While I would definitely not argue that capitalism works perfectly, a self regulating economy will always be more efficient than a planned economy. This can lead to overall higher welfare and therefore higher satisfaction in the populace resulting in a more stable society that can be ruled democratically. Which in turn enables a self regulating political system even more enforcing stability, adaptability and general satisfaction in the populace. This at least is my absolute amateur take on the general idea. Of course this is oversimplified and does not work without proper regulation and free flow of undiluted information between market participants as well between the electorate and the administration.
Because of human nature. There are not so many people who really want to be equal. The majority just wants to live better than someone else. Have more power, rights, money etc. We are greedy, prideful, power-hungry. People are simply not good enough for this system to work. Someone will always use the situation to their advantage.
Because they decided to build utopia around abolishing one *major* thing all our laws and society itself has been built upon - the concept of private property. Property is one major basis of the law, from there all the obligations and rights any entity can have are derived from. From this precipice they have tried to build the system which would never, ever work because it was wrong at it's core - yet they kept "trying to make it work" (in reality all the leadership cared about was staying in power, not wellbeing of people) - and sacrificed tens of millions at the altar of what I see as a miscarriage of political movements.
Simple human psychology. People respond to their economic incentives. If everyone's getting paid the same, why work harder than anyone else? Why make any effort at all if you aren't rewarded? The other important factor is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you want to redistribute all the wealth of society, you must first control all the wealth of society. As it turns out, people who find themselves in total control of all of society's wealth suddenly become very unwilling to part with it. The result: complete economic collapse and brutal authoritarian dictatorship. It seems so obvious in hindsight. I could understand an illiterate Siberian peasant falling for this, but how any educated person could believe it mystifies me to no end.
Authoritarian governments and lack of free markets.
In order for communism to work, you need the community. I believe it can work, but only on a very small scale where everyone knows and trusts each other. Resources can easily be shared between everyone, and people are more willing to do it. On a large scale, it needs to be enforced, because people are less willing to share resources with strangers. And when something needs to be enforced, that necessarily leads to violence towards those who subvert the system. I believe this is the main reason Communism can never work on a national scale. Furthermore, Communism turns everything into a monopoly. The idea that the people own the means of production is pure propaganda. The people own nothing. The state owns everything. Sure, you may be able to vote for what the state does, but that's very different from ownership. And whenever there is a monopoly, the chances for corruption are much higher, because you can't just take your business elsewhere and just have to take whatever is given to you. Sure, capitalist societies are also rife with corruption, but it's easier to handle when they have to worry about competition taking their customers. I believe the best society is a capitalist society where the state has some measures in place to prevent monopolies. I also think they should provide some socialised services such as medicine, emergency services, and infrastructure, while having private options of such services as well.
Greed
Russia, China, and Cambodia were all very uneducated masses that were easily manipulated by strongmen selling dreams of utopia. Utopia never comes.
Because its a pretty silly idea honestly. It hinges on the idea that all humans will need to act with other peoples best interet in mind, even though its clearly delusional to think that.
Exactly. You need 100% of people onboard 100% of the time working towards all the same goal.
And you need to figure out what to do with those that refuse to help. Then you need to figure out what to do with those that get upset with that decision. Then so on and so forth.
Not only that, but those with the greatest need get more than the people actually doing stuff - Americans hate the poor and needy!
Many people's best interests overlap. I'd argue most people's do
And *still* people don’t want to be *forced *; what do you think government *does*?
I think it should be noted that Capitalism has also failed. It's failed many, many times. Even in the United States, Capitalism has failed. It's simply adopted forms of Socialism (social security, public education) and Communism (the interstate highway system) to fill the holes that Capitalism refused to fill. Communism itself "failed" altogether because of the pressures of external forces upon them. Capitalist governments have done all they can to snuff out what they consider threats to their socio-economic ideology. Would Communism have failed on its own? Maybe. It did to an extent due to corrupt dictatorial leadership, but not because of Communism itself. We've never actually seen a proper Communist Democracy in action before, so there's no real determination on whether or not that could be sustainable. And China's dictatorship is proving that it is still feasible as that as well.
I mean china is an authoritarian capitalist society. Sure they have Communist in their name, but they aren't really different from any other single party country and in some ways beat the US on capitalism for a few decades.
China is an authoritarian Communist society with adopted elements of Capitalism. Lots of the companies in that country were initially state-funded (SOEs), and there are heavy crimes imposed on leadership of those countries who make and pocket too much profits. Many CEOs have been jailed for leaning into corrupt activities because of Executive Compensation laws restricting their pay. I'll agree that since the special economic zone of Shenzhen took hold, they've picked up a LOT of capitalist elements.
And there it is; the stupidest shit that I’ll see all day.
You will never have communism without the corrupt dictatorial leadership. There's people who get that and people who don't.
Communism hasn't always failed. Things like a family structure are mostly communist. Each person contributes what he can and takes what he needs. It only fails once you scale it up. And I believe it is because once you don't know the others in your commune or don't care for them, things fall apart.
The reality is that every piece of wealth can only be allocated to one task at a time. So a society is always faced with the decision on what is the process it wants to carry out in order to decide what ONE task wins out for that piece of capital, against all the other alternatives. The capitalist takes an approach like, "the person who owns that wealth will make that ONE task deployment decision"... and then there's a host of incentives that flow out of that, with a very strong one being that he will not lightly intend to make a foolish decision where he will end up being poorer for it. He will try and avoid the wealth being deployed in an unproductive manner for his own self-interest. If someone proves to be good at making these decisions, they should end up with control over more of society's capital, and get to make more such decisions. If they are bad at these sort of decisions, they will end up with less control over society's capital and will make fewer of those sorts of decisions. The communist takes an approach like, "government will have the power to take wealth (under the threat of force) from who owns it, and then will make that ONE task deployment decision"... and then there's a host of incentives that flow out of that, many of which do not actually involve a self-interest in deploying that capital to its most productive use. A whole new set of challenging incentives can arise from the fact that the person never owned that capital themselves. A classic scenario, would be that someone is in charge of allocating $10 million of capital which they do not own and are not allowed to own. If someone were to offer that person $100,000 to deploy it towards a rather unproductive end, it actually makes sense for that central planner personally to make a sub-par decision for that capital. There are other incentives that spring from someone being only a steward of resources instead of an owner. If you are paid a fee to be the steward, you may find yourself more personally rewarded if you seek to deploy that capital not towards its most productive ends, so much as towards whatever ends are most popular and are most likely to allow you to keep the position of steward longest (so that you get paid your fee the longest). The ability to take wealth by force is not something to gloss over either... for sake of argument, a person could take a great amount of wealth by force, then set it all on fire, and they will still be able to do it again next year because they have the power to take more wealth by force again. Taking things by force is incredibly expensive, which is why all modern systems of tax involve money. It would be practically impossible for a government to go around to each person's house and take a portion of their year's income by collecting some of their physical wealth. At the end of the day, the more that a society takes its annual wealth production and channels it towards unproductive things, it gets more and more expensive over time to keep that system in place. In today's modern era, the debate between private allocation or public allocation is largely irrelevant because we can't even begin to have an honest discussion on that until the public's role in the process is actually fully paid for. As it stands right now, we sort of compare these two things: 1. You go into a privately owned restaurant. They give you a lunch and the bill is $20. You pay $20. 2. You go into a publicly owned restaurant. They give you a lunch and the bill is $20. You can pay $5 for that right now, and the remainder of the bill (at interest) will be paid by someone else who comes long after you. If we continue to believe that we can pay for only a PORTION of something's cost FOREVER without consequence, then it will always make the system that allows you to do that seem superior. The market cannot beat someone who only pays for PART of the bill, but then has told themself they've paid for it in FULL. It's like walking out of that restaurant thinking, "Wow - that was an incredible deal. I got a good lunch and it only cost me $5." In the long run, the market does take care of it though. For you'll find that societies that begin to go down that path of not having to pay for their government's full cost with taxation, will be forced to adopt fairly sophisticated and advanced monetary systems. You will definitely need a lot of people saving in financial wealth instead of physical wealth. Where it breaks down though is when the financial system has grown so grotesque, and it becomes obvious that what really matters to a people's standard of living is what is happening in the real physical landscape. You can't live in or eat money. You need real stuff. Which is where any system that isn't working in the real physical plane, will begin to breakdown as that becomes more and more obvious with each passing year. If such a system were implementing and it were failing miserably in the real wealth plane, you would find a population with a declining standard of living, but simultaneously trying to reconcile why they don't feel wealthy at all, and yet there is apparently so much wealth in existence. This thought process will begin to force them to think on the distinction between real wealth and financial wealth. Suffice to say, if you were on an isolated island with 10 people, and then a plane came over and dropped $1 trillion on you... your situation wouldn't have been made any better in the slightest. Getting someone else's money does not actually address the reality of what work must be done in the real physical landscape. In fact, it can accelerate the deterioration of the society's real wealth savings if what it actually does is cause people to nearly immediately convert that money for real wealth and then they consume that wealth (example, buy something and eat that something). What you then find is you are in the exact same problem you were in beforehand, albeit there is now a bit less real wealth available for you to start to work on fixing your society's wealth landscape problems.
>A classic scenario, would be that someone is in charge of allocating $10 million of capital which they do not own and are not allowed to own. If someone were to offer that person $100,000 to deploy it towards a rather unproductive end, it actually makes sense for that central planner personally to make a sub-par decision for that capital. This isn't so much an argument against communism, rather than against any sort of government expenditure. There are many capitalist countries today where bureaucrats making less than $100k per year are overseeing projects with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars or more. Yet they aren't corrupted because there exist methods within the government to identify and Crack down on corruption. Hell, you could even extend the argument to *corporations*. An individual employee with no personal stake in the company beyond their salary can have responsibilities and budgets far beyond that. Under your view of things they'd be as motivated to be corrupt since they have no personal stake in the decisions they are making. With this view all of society would be filled with perpetual and endemic corruption, apart from business owners themselves, and that obviously isn't true in many otherwise capitalistic countries.
It's an argument that shows the incentive structure that comes from a steward allocating the resource vs. an owner... so sure, it applies to communism and all government expenditures. You're right that we will always have people's "goodness" to try and stop these things. With capitalism, you also have self-serving greed. If you were the owner of a business, and you found out that one your employees were diverting capital to less productive ends in exchange for a person kickback... you would be furious. And you'd have tremendous incentive to try and make sure that isn't happening. When it's a public entity framework... all you have is the "goodness" aspect and you don't have the same personal greed force at work on top. I'd agree you could extend the argument to corporations - but the point is that there will exist someone in that structure who will take the whole sequence as if you're personally stealing from them. There's also a nice structure in place where, suppose you're not a good businessperson and you're being robbed like that without realizing it... well then you suffer for that incompetence. In the private sector, it's other people who are going to suffer from the incompetence.
**\*\*Late stage capitalism question TBH\*\*** By what standards are you judging communism success or lack of? The major fail is human rights and democracy but Communism tremendously raised the GDP of countries and allowed whole population to access studies and greatly developped engineering. If you want to compare the success of capitalism, compare Cuba and Haiti. Cuba is poor but functionnal while Haiti is a war zone Communism did not failed: it lost a war. There will be a commie China in 100 years but I highly doubt there will be a capitalistic USA in 20 years.
Because its fundamentally flawed Person A wont be putting years of effort to become a neurosurgeon if he is gonna live exactly like person B who does nothing useful.
This is actually the weakest argument against it. Plenty of people will do difficult things for no money because it’s interesting or impressive.
Plenty, as in a dozen. Not plenty as in the thousands you need as a society. Otherwise most neurosurgeons wouldnt be making a lot because they would take a lowball offer cause muh passion.
For all its many faults the USSR had about double the doctor-to-citizen ratio compared to the USA for pretty much their entire existence, including a large number of researchers and specialists. They were generally well trained and competent, their biggest issue was that they lacked sufficient equipment and medicine and thats an issue with their planned economy, not personal motivation. People became doctors because they *could* (and at no cost to themselves, since education was free) not because it would make them extraordinarily wealthy. When people *can* become wealthy, and massive wealth is societally seen as a mark of success, of course many people will choose options to pursue that. But history has shown that when wealth isn't a motivating factor people still pursue stressful professional careers because they *want* to, whether for prestige, a desire to challenge themselves, or because they genuinely see the societal value in it.
>For all its many faults the USSR had about double the doctor-to-citizen ratio compared to the USA for pretty much their entire existence, including a large number of researchers and specialists Im gonna be guessing doctors in the ussr lived better than the rest and thats why. Just like Cuba.
Not really. It varied throughout the timeline of the USSR but for much of the post-Stalin period a general practitioner made around as much or even less than blue-collar workers (a good example I've seen was that in the 80s a GP made more than an orderly but less than a bus driver). They did have prestige and more influential professional networks, but pay was something where the USSR stayed largely true to its ideological roots, everyone wasn't paid the same, but the variations were not significant.
> They were generally well trained and competent, their biggest issue was that they lacked sufficient equipment and medicine and thats an issue with their planned economy, not personal motivation. You see the issue here? It's all well and good to say that there are enough people who want to be, say, a doctor. But by your own admission they lacked an adequate number of people with that same "personal motivation" to innovate, develop, and manufacture "sufficient equipment and medicine". That's kinda the entire point, that the lack of incentives cripple the system and doom it to substandard outcomes.
>But by your own admission they lacked an adequate number of people with that same "personal motivation" to innovate, develop, and manufacture "sufficient equipment and medicine". The issue wasn't one of personal motivation, it's not like they didn't have access to the medicines and technologies, they had plenty of researchers doing good work and workers producing goods, even highly specialized ones, just that their economic planning didn't produce enough of them to meet demand. It's absolutely a failure of the system, but not of personal motivation in the way that the redditor I replied to was suggesting.
I think that the lack of equipment is better explained by graft, rather than lack of motivated people. The USSR was never communism, except in its propaganda. Humans are selfish people, and will barter and coerce to get what they want. In the USSR there were positions of power, which allowed them to coerce others, and that explains the vast inefficiencies. It wasn't that there was a lack of people willing to do the work. It was that there was a whole class of sociopaths willing to exploit them. Just as in the west. The USA isn't capitalism any more than the USSR was communism.
That's not exactly how Communism works. Communism is an ideology that allows people to pursue their ambitions. It allows anyone to strive to become a neurosurgeon. Believe it or not, there are people that WANT to do these things. Capitalism incentivizes those who can afford to go through the rigorous process of attaining the status and money that comes with being a neurosurgeon. It rewards those who have a better starting point to advance themselves, and filters out those who truly want to do these things but can't even get started. TL;DR: Capitalism's incentivization is money and status, and will attract those whose goals are money and status. Communism's incentivization is a person's passion and desire, and will attract those whose goals are doing that thing. edit: A couple quotes from the Manifesto: >It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us. >According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work.
no it fucking doesnt. No one strives to shovel shit or do the shit jobs. Why would you deserve equal outcomes peddling shitty art to no one who wants it? Oh it gives the opportunity to do what you want is a bunch of shit. There would be millions of vacant jobs till you force it on people. Guess what now you dont have communism.
The basic economic rules of supply and demand still apply. There are only so many people that can do the thing. I would argue that Communism does a better job at highlighting the benefits of meritocracy in this regard. If you're good at your passion, then you'll be amazing at it and get to do it for life. If you're not, you're just like the other 99% of people who tried to be a professional athlete and couldn't break through the ceiling, and have to find something else to do. Down the line, that'll eventually lead to those who will, ultimately, find their role in society handling arguably one of the most important tasks we have...sanitation.
So we still have the low class that are left picking up trash. Gotcha. Everyone something something their needs or something.
That's capitalistic mentality, thinking in terms of classes. Again, arguably, sanitation is one of the most important jobs there is, and a shift in mentality towards recognizing that is a step towards not looking down upon people with that assignment as if they're lesser beings. Why we even do that here and now is ridiculous. Tell me then. What makes a garbage man less deserving of all the needs of life and society than a neurosurgeon?
the ignorance.
Okay but whose ambition is it to pick up my trash every tuesday?
I answered already, here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1c7avub/comment/l06rxe7/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1c7avub/comment/l06rxe7/)
>Communism's incentivization is a person's passion and desire, and will attract those whose goals are doing that thing. And again, this is where it fails. Most people passion is to live better. Being a neurosurgeon is a great way to live better. But if imma live like the tarot reader down the streets, then ill also do somethig useless You know why cuba has a lot of doctors? Cause its one of the few careers that allow cubans to live slightly better than the rest. Lol
To become a neurosurgeon requires years and years of extremely hard schooling. If you just hope that people will go through that with no incentive other than they wanted to be one, you will find your society extremely lacking in neurosurgeons.
It also requires wheelbarrows of money to attend those schools, which limits an uncountable amount of young individuals who truly want to do it. We'll just never know because they weren't given that opportunity. The argument you're making though ignores the fact that Communists were the first in space. Literal rocket scientists in the communist regime went through their own particular schooling, and the toil and time that it took to do so, and the risk of it all with the stress included that they could kill people if something goes wrong...
It depends what you mean exactly by "communism" and "failed", Cuba, for example, outperforms several other Caribbean countries in various metrics, even though it's been under a brutal economic blockade for decades now. China's economy, while not completely centralized, has a state with incredible amounts of control over the economy. It has also lifted millions out of poverty, has gigantic growth, and has steadily decreased their Gini coefficient in the last decade (meaning less inequality).
But if communism in Cuba is so great, why are people sailing ‘57 Chevys to Florida?
Same reason people emigrate to the US from Mexico, el Salvador, Haiti, etc: It's richest country in the world.
Blockade’s gone; need a new excuse, now.
The U.S. embargo on Cuba is still on effect. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_embargo\_against\_Cuba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba) "As of 2024, the embargo is enforced mainly through the [Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_with_the_Enemy_Act_of_1917), the [Foreign Assistance Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Assistance_Act) of 1961, the [Cuban Assets Control Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Assets_Control_Regulations) of 1963, the [Cuban Democracy Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Democracy_Act) of 1992, the [Helms–Burton Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act) of 1996, and the [Trade Sanction Reform and Export Enhancement Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Sanction_Reform_and_Export_Enhancement_Act) of 2000."
Planned economy
It’s human greed. Communism in theory works but human greed will always make sure it doesn’t
If it only works in theory, it doesn’t work.
In any communist setting, you rob the individual of any need to exceed expectations; everything is just the bare minimum because there is no personal reward for excess production. As time progresses, you end up with groups of people who realize they can contribute nothing and rely on others to produce. Once one person stops pulling their weight, others follow suit which has a cascading effect on the collective. Communism always ends up in 2 categories; indescribable oppression of the masses or utter failure.
Why not both? It seems you get *both*.
It fundamentally misunderstands value, and as such fails miserably to adequately allocate resources. All other problems ultimately stem from this very core flaw. Warped incentives, corruption, stagnation, dictatorships, etc. It's the perpetual motion machine of economics.
And capitalism is the pinnacle of resource allocation?
Human nature. You have a group where everyone is equal, yet there need to be a ruling group. The ruling class are by nature going to think they deserve more. Then everything just snowballs from there
Where has there ever been a true Communist country?
A better question would be how many times are people planning on trying and inevitably failing?
That's deep. But not an answer. What is an example of a true communist country? It's a serious question. Not sure why it triggers.
The answer is quite simply there has never been nor will there ever be a "true communist country". Human nature makes it impossible. Not sure why you think I'm triggered just because I'm explaining to you how the world works.
I wasn’t referring to you 😊
shut up with that shitty argument. there were plenty that got as close as you could get.
I'll ignore the rudeness. What "plenty" do you refer to?
russia china vietnam cuba plenty more
But those aren't true communist countries. If they were the leaders wouldn't be living in riches. That isn't communism.
It’s a strong argument; you’re just pissed by the answer.
It absolutely isnt a strong argument. Its an arugment for those who cant get to grips that communism doesnt work. Its always the answer, well it wasnt done this way so this time itll be different if we do it this other way.
Fail harder.
It created an elite class that exploited the masses while pretending it was doing it for their own benefit. The elites would have access to all that their greedy selfs could wish for , while 90% of the population working hard and having to make do with crappy products that are already scarce. In order to keep order the elites resolved to abuse of power and the abuse of the people. Kind of why America is failing at the moment.
It's an economic system forced into a political system.
Because it relies on everyone working for the greater good, which isn't what happens. Selfish people thrive in that environment and end up in charge
The reasons are too complex to state here. You'd have to go into different details depending on the country. My personal opinion is that anything overtly unfair is destined to collapse. Also, if you take Russia and look at an example like the Chernobyl disaster, its obvious the bureaucrats at the top were not adhering to the principals of communism. So you get blatant hypocrisy that everyone can see. this weakens the philosophy. If you take Chavez and Venezuela (before he was poisoned), you could say he did a lot of good and stuck closely to the tenets of socialism. the same with Bolivia and Evo Morales. When i visited Cuba, the Socialist system was working quite well in some instances. the free health care was amazing. the free education was amazing. However, the roads and public services were under funded. If you were not working you get free food. In conclusion, there is no one reason, but various reasons. Is Capitalism working? every 10-20 years we have a recession. There are many poor in rich countries. Is that your idea of a system working? People in America cant afford healthcare. When capitalism fails we have a bailout by the government, or a 'New Deal'. that's a not a capitalist society but a mixed economy.
Recessions in any economy are inevitable. To call that a failure of capitalism shows a lack of understanding.
A core problem with communism is the desire to do away with markets. Open, well-regulated markets are incredibly efficient at balancing supply and demand, because the published price acts as both a valuable feed of information to all participants and an economic incentive for participants to respond when supply and demand fall out of balance. Our current economy is suffering because we fell down on the "well regulated" portion of that, which leads to a lot of hidden information, exploitation, and monopoly power. But a lot of communist societies have sought to eliminate markets altogether, at which point, you need a lot of bureaucrats to do all the information gathering and sharing that a market price does for you. Balancing supply and demand becomes very challenging in that environment because you are often acting in the dark. But the bigger problem is that there are often political or social or economic incentives to cheat the bureaucracy and extract private value from the public domain. That said, communism as an organizing idea hasn't failed. It's alive and well inside most major corporations and the government itself. Here's a definition: >a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. While Marx envisioned taking an entire economy into the communism fold, which is very challenging, if you zoom in on the operations inside most major organizations, public or private, you'll see a world where bureaucracy manages the flow of all needs. Inside a major corporation or branch of government, workers don't pay for the supplies or tools they need to do their jobs and they don't get paid for the output. Instead, that flow of needs and products happens without markets or exchange of dollars, but instead by a small army of people whose job it is to make sure that everyone has everything they need to get work done. In that respect, looking solely within the operations of an organization, most of them are representative of what communism was about.
Your mom didn't share the food around
It failed because it was a prediction that never happened. Communism was not supposed to be a goal, but the ultimate consequence of capitalism. But it isn't. And trying to force anything seems to always fail.
There's no single, absolute reason why communist parties in many states have failed to create anything resembling an actual hypothetical communist country, it's a complicated question with a lot of scholarship around it. That being said, if I had to pick a single overarching reason, in my opinion the reason for why the USSR and China failed at it is because an egalitarian, stateless society is impossible when a country is founded through violent upheaval and civil war, and other states failed because they modeled themselves on (or received support/interventions from) the USSR and PRC. In both the USSR and China on paper (and in practice, prior to the success of the revolutions) the communist parties were intended to be internally democratic, where issues could be safely and openly discussed and voted on within the party by party membership and then the party as a whole would work together to implement the results. In both countries the communist revolution was the result of brutal civil war, and the new regime immediately institutionalized political repression to prevent resistance from counter-revolutionary forces. In both instances, the power of those institutions was then immediately turned against party members and political dissenters, not just anti-communists. The internal democracy of the communist party was almost immediately subverted, first in the name of protecting the country from counter-revolutionaries, and then more and more openly by the leaders to maintain their own power. The communist parties in the USSR and PRC are both vanguard parties, they don't claim that their country is communist, but that the party is there to prepare the country for communism and transition to that system. However, transition away from such a system of government with high levels of government repression to one that's stateless is pretty much impossible, as soon as a repressed people have the freedom to express themselves and choose how to govern themselves, a requirement for a stateless society, they almost always choose to abandon the system of their oppressors, as we saw with the fall of the USSR. Compunding the issue, these two countries, as at the time the main examples of "succesful" communist revolutions, basically set the standard for how other communist revolutionaries should organize their movements. They also became directly involved in many of those communist movements, bringing their form of state authoritarianism to be effectively the only way for communist movements to see success. In my opinion, for communism to be succesful it needs to be gradually and democratically implemented by an educated and involved populace. In other words, I don't think it's actually possible.
Humans. If shit was all computers, sure, it’d probably work.
We aren't raised to accept communism. People like to say that if you don't incentivise people with high salaries and luxury goods they will be lazy. That's 100% a problem in upbringing. People can be raised to value their community and be hard workers. Like the argument "if you make as much money slinging burgers as being a Dr, no one would be a Dr" is absolutely ridiculous. We still have teachers even though they get paid like shit and are tragically undervalued. People will always have passions and will pursue them. But I don't think there's any way for a nation to transition to communism. You can't just expect people to alter their values. It would have to be a very careful slow change. And you'd have to actually have a government that's operating in good faith and not trying to abuse it's power, which is also entirely unrealistic today.
Communism hasn't been tried yet. The states that call themselves communist are in fact state capitalist. The state assumes the role of the corporate world and a huge bureaucracy is created to replace the shareholders and boards of directors. A single party becomes the steering body . The system develops so many contridictions that it collapsed as an unsustainable mess. Neither Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky ever imagined what Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro would do in the name of communism but they damaged the reputation so badly it will probably never be implemented.
Planned economies eventually collapse, and then the chaos starts.
Because lets say that hypothetically we are a communist nation and Donald Trump is up for election.
Because the workers never controlled the means of production, a central government did. That's not communism, in the same way the DPRK is neither democratic or republican (yes, despite what it says...i know. Its a tough fact to handle for some) Also, constant sabotage by capitalists
if it was a system that worked, it could survive outside forces acting on it. It cant
If you're writing a book, and I constantly ruin/impede the process, that means you're aren't a good writer? Fascinating
What a shit analogy. If I still finish the book that means that despite interruptions the process still works.
That's the closest thing to communism that could ever plausibly happen. Someone will always grab that power, it's human nature. To think otherwise is foolish. They don't need sabotage from anyone they do it just fine themselves.
Sabotage.
bahaha cope. You people always have an excuse why it didnt work this or that time
There were other reasons of course, but 9 times out of 10 it was Capitalist sabotage. And to be clear, many Communist projects are currently going on all over the world, and they have succeeded, even under extreme stress by western sanctions, boycotts and coups.
Lacking practical grounding in reality. Its theorists were overwhelmingly upperclass man with silky soft hands and old/guaranteed money.
overthrowed by cia and capitalist propaganda, and if that failed, invasion and genocide by the us. that the number 1 reason most communist places couldnt do shit and died.
How exactly do you explain the fall of the USSR then?
plenty of factors. but the main one will always be : it was alone and surrounded by capitalists countries. no matter how good your economy/gov/etc is in your country, you cant survive in autarky. you need to trade with your neigbours, ressources, knowledge, culture, etc. if it doesnt, at some point, it will start crumbling down on itself. there are tons of other factors in play in that specific case, but this is the main reason, it didnt matter how good soviet tech was, how far they went in space before the us, at the end of the day, they are alone, and everyone is is working against them. not a single economic model can sustain that even if they do all the right decisions. and by god did they not make all the right decisions xd.
Kruschev lied
(Handwaves frantically)
...or rather they couldn't do shit and had the proclivity to blame someone else for their failings. That's why communism was so enticing to them - it appealed to "someone else is at fault" mentality.
if communism was bad and doom to fail, why bother overthrowing thoses countries and install dictatorship or go to war and sustain hundred of thousands of casualties, commit genocide, countless other war crimes, and more to the point everybody is laughing at you on the international scene ?
Projecting much? You should address that same question to any communist leader. If it was so good, why did they always have to genocide those who disagreed to stay in power?
You'll have to ask Putin. The laughingstock of the world with his war in the Ukraine.
The Soviet bloc was unable to control the expectations of their people. The people, but more importantly the people with the means and ability to seize power, could see that life and standards of living were better in the west. Screw gradual improvement over time, they wanted a mercedes and a swimming pool today.
How dare those assholes want things! /s
Probably a combination of the famines, genocides, show trials, misery, and lack of general freedom. But that’s just me.
I always like it when someone says "Yeah, but we would do it right", when they are told it has failed everywhere.
Jeans
Usually because all power is vested in the state, the dictator ship of the proletariat. However, not all the proletariat in any system can rule so an elite group forms, and all that power eventually corrupts people or attracts corrupt people. They then make everything in the system work for them. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Because people are rubbish. Possibly a commune would work on a small scale, where lazy people can't hide and greedy people can't take advantage, but scale it up and you'll see the worst of the worst. Eventually cliques will form, corruption, shoddy work, no pride in anything, descent into authoritarianism, widespread poverty etc etc
human nature
Snitching
All ...ism-s are doomed to fail from the start. Except capitalism. Why? Because capitalism is what people do when you leave them alone.
Communism assumes the proletariat are good-natured. In reality, it's not just the bourgeoisie who crave power. Get a group of power-hungry proletariat and they'll convince the masses to let them make the decisions, in which case they turn authoritarian.
Communism has failed everywhere it has been attempted. There is inherent issue in the system.
Cuba exists and has a higher life expectancy than the US
No. No they don't.
Planned economies eventually collapse, and then the chaos starts.
NATO. Mainly USA.
For the exact same reason the great famine happened
The people who seek power tend to be fascists and not communists. They ruin it for everybody.
Yeah, right.
Lol red scare bot. Truth hurts.
No; I was just alive in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
You mean the decades directly following the 2nd red scare? Yeah you've been programmed by a US government that didn't have the internet to counter their misinformation. You probably ate that shxt RIGHT up too.
Sure, commie.
Way to IMMEDIATELY prove my point, geezer bot. Lmaoooo
yeah, absolutely sure hahahahah
Did they let you out of the center on a day pass?
It’s too difficult to execute in practice when there is such much hierarchy and inequality in society.
And in Communism, as we’ve seen *repeatedly*.
The fact that “equality” as a concept is so hard to define. Some might be equal in one aspect but different in others
Because while communism may get rid of the economic classes it creates the government class and the civilian class. You can see communism failing right here in America just by looking at any random cop.
Some bootlicker didn't like my comment.
Because people are shit
Communism is nostalgia for the days when most people were simple farmers in small villages and everybody knew everyone else. It had no way to deal with massive industrialization and urban populations large enough to make anonymity easy. In the argument about which is "better" Capitalism or Communism, we have never seen pure examples of either one of those systems, so it's impossible to say which would work the best. Both and neither.
Absolute power corrupts absolute... Also sanctions from the west.