Why are people against communism?

[The Marquis]

I'm trying to say this: we won't reach communism through democracy, because the capitalist class will never willingly give up their exploitation; they will want to compromise at best (hence democratic socialism) but they will never accept full communism.

The basic hypocracy of all who espouse communism is that they assume that human nature is somehow different for one economic system than it is for another.
This character says on the one hand that human nature changes, and yet on the other, for the system he despises, he assumes it will not.
His arguments are applied selectively rather than universally.

It would seem redudant to even go into "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need". Staring at a black canvas and calling it art. Warhol.

perhaps it can. lets gradually work towards removing the human element from the equation...

That process has already begun.
If there is only one thing I can take from eventual death as being positive, it is that I will not be around any longer to see the result of it.

All the colours in the rainbow... and you choose grey.

 

[The Marquis]

My contention is that Read-Only is making the same error as Marx (an error which was quite commonplace in his day--see Rousseau, et al; though in the passage cited, Marx evinces some awareness of this tendency) in positing some intrinsic, essential "human nature." We can speculate, we can make observations, and we can remark upon certain tendencies--which are by no means universal--but beyond eating, sleeping, defecating, etc., there are not many "qualities" of humans for which one can assert uinversality.

And yet the "not many" might be far more important than you give creedence.

Without clarification of those "not many", you've said nothing.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

My contention is that Read-Only is making the same error as Marx (an error which was quite commonplace in his day--see Rousseau, et al; though in the passage cited, Marx evinces some awareness of this tendency) in positing some intrinsic, essential "human nature." We can speculate, we can make observations, and we can remark upon certain tendencies--which are by no means universal--but beyond eating, sleeping, defecating, etc., there are not many "qualities" of humans for which one can assert uinversality.

All humans anthropomorphize.
All humans have a finite set of emotions.
All humans have emotional needs.
All humans assign value to objects and events.
All humans can ascertain threat.
All humans judge each other.
All humans can distinguish between self and other.
All humans can distinguish between "mine" and "yours".
...
...
...
etc.

There are many universal aspects to humans. Communism requires behaviors in humans to be present at all times that simply aren't.

 

[Gustav]

All the colours in the rainbow... and you choose grey.

ahh yes
all sweden could give us, by way of its vaunted socialist paradise was.....abba.
contentment breeds mediocrity

All humans anthropomorphize.
All humans have a finite set of emotions.
All humans have emotional needs.
All humans assign value to objects and events.
All humans can ascertain threat.
All humans judge each other.
All humans can distinguish between self and other.
All humans can distinguish between "mine" and "yours".
...
...
...
etc.

yes but the circumstances in which the activities occur are not held to be static

All humans can distinguish between "mine" and "yours".

are we scrabbling over a kill?

All humans can distinguish between self and other.

how much weight do we accord to this distinction?

All humans can ascertain threat.

the person in front of the line?


----------------------------------------------------------

The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 1
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2

 

[United for Communism]

Lived better? Anyone who dared say they weren't happy or wanted to have a say were either killed or forced into labour camps. Take off the rose coloured glasses and see reality.

The peasant class under Lenin were exploited and repressed, feared into complying and sharing the labour while he lived very comfortably and forced the invasion of neighbouring lands.. Any who did not comply were either killed or forced into labour. And you think this was better?

Then you should get your facts straight. The peasant class lived better under Lenin than under the aristocrats. This is a fact. Of course there are those who oppose progress, and they are dealt with; what's your point?

Because you are offering worse exploitation and repression and trying to name it true communism. That is not true communism.

How is equality and sharing "exploitation"? The only people who were "repressed" were the capitalist vermin trying to poison society.

Then you truly do not understand Marx. Communism should come about naturally, not be the end goal..

Communism is the end goal. Socialism is the intermediary; by the way, Marx did believe in proletariat revolution, not evolution (it was evolution from socialism to communism, revolution from capitalism to socialism).

I want to know why you wish to add repression to the mix?

I don't; if a handful of capitalists want to try hurting the people, however, then it is only justice that they are dealt with.

So you wish to reach communism by forcing people into it?

The people have always been enthusiastically behind communist revolution.

You mean akin to what we have now?

We've abolished capitalism? I must have been living under a rock.

So the USSR was not a Communist state, in your opinion? What went wrong? If communism is such a great thing, why would anybody want to move away from such a system, having had it in place in the "early days"?

The USSR was the first attempted communist state...they had no previous historical data to go off of, so they did not have the necessary safeguards in place (e.g. checks and balances).

Rome was the first republic, but decayed into a dictatorship...what went wrong? Is republicanism bad, all of a sudden, because of Rome?

 

[The Marquis]

ahh yes
all sweden could give us, by way of its vaunted socialist paradise was.....abba.
contentment breeds mediocrity

This effort from you serving more to prove the point rather than refute it, Gusty.

 

[Gustav]

you are just intent on feeding the machine. you must be just another enemy of the working man.

Rome was the first republic, but decayed into a dictatorship...what went wrong? Is republicanism bad, all of a sudden, because of Rome?

brilliant

 

[The Marquis]

Then you should get your facts straight. The peasant class lived better under Lenin than under the aristocrats. This is a fact. Of course there are those who oppose progress, and they are dealt with; what's your point?

And the lowest classes lived better under the industrialists in England than they did as serfs. Whats your point?
Try comparing living conditions for the lowest classes in England and America with those in Russia in 1918. Go further. Compare them now. Get back to me on this one. And don't come back with something as puerile as "communism practised in Russia today is not pure communism" because capitalism as practised in the west isn't pure capitlaism either.
Try actually thinking about it.

How is equality and sharing "exploitation"?

This generalisation is given voice only by those who don't have any ability to be exploited. Moreover, they expect to exploit ability they don't have from those who do. Those who have ability don't embrace communism; those who do not, do.

Expoitation without representation is tyranny.

The only people who were "repressed" were the capitalist vermin trying to poison society.

He's spitting already....

Communism is the end goal. Socialism is the intermediary; by the way, Marx did believe in proletariat revolution, not evolution (it was evolution from socialism to communism, revolution from capitalism to socialism).

So communism just "hasn't got it right yet", but capitalist theory has been taken as far as it can. Have I got that right?

I don't; if a handful of capitalists want to try hurting the people, however, then it is only justice that they are dealt with.

Why don't you define what you see as the difference between "so called" communists and "so called" capitalists?

The people have always been enthusiastically behind communist revolution.

"The people" in most western nations seem rather content these days and not really given to revolution at all.
Care to expalin that?

We've abolished capitalism? I must have been living under a rock.

I'd hardly call self-indulgence and intellectual blindness "a rock".

*edit... on further thought... actually... it is a rock.

The USSR was the first attempted communist state...they had no previous historical data to go off of, so they did not have the necessary safeguards in place (e.g. checks and balances).

Basically, therefore, you're saying communism is a work in progress... and yet you're quite eager to dismiss the current forms of 'capitalism" as finished works of art.

 

[The Marquis]

you are just intent on feeding the machine. you must be just another enemy of the working man.

You're a machine now?

 

[The Marquis]

brilliant

Hardly. He's said communism is seen as being bad because of Russia; and yet continues with his assumption that capitalism is bad because of (presumably) America.

He's a hypocrite and an idiot. You want to be one too?

 

[Crunchy Cat]

ahh yes
yes but the circumstances in which the activities occur are not held to be static

Correct.

are we scrabbling over a kill?

Could be, and I am reasonably sure that you would not wash my car.

how much weight do we accord to this distinction?

Without it, competition, balance, and reciprocation might be tragic.

the person in front of the line?

And the barking dog not on a leash, or the guy in the van with no windows luring kids with candy, ...

Those Stockholm Syndrom movies didn't play, but I am already familiar and rather entertained by the concept.

 

[Gustav]

Could be, and I am reasonably sure that you would not wash my car.

another antiquated notion

Without it, competition, balance, and reciprocation might be tragic.

yes
treating habib as my brother can result in tragic consequences

And the barking dog not on a leash, or the guy in the van with no windows luring kids with candy, ...

exceptions to the rule can expose weaknesses in an argument but does not necessarily negate it. we can compensate

the vids are from the daily show

This effort from you serving more to prove the point rather than refute it, Gusty.

no
it just sets you up to prove the inverse

He's a hypocrite and an idiot. You want to be one too?

no

 

[kx000]

Communism is not the answer as it was corrupted from its birth. But the answer lies with in Communism.

 

[Tiassa]

Writing the question

The basic hypocracy of all who espouse communism is that they assume that human nature is somehow different for one economic system than it is for another.

I like the combination of blanket argument and accusation. It certainly makes it easier to answer if you're also writing the questions.

However, the whole failure to account for human nature argument is old. Hell, I've even discussed it here a few times. Indeed, it is part of the failure of top-down revolutions as I've discussed them.

However, the same people who taught me this basic flaw about communism also advocated trickle-down, pretending that rich people would behave altruistically.

So your thesis there is doubly hilarious to me.

 

[Read-Only]

It's discussions like this that I find to be both somewhat amusing and downright disgusting. And both of those feelings are the result of the total ignorance and stupidity I see expressed in this thread.

I'll attempt to be as blunt as possible in an effort to get the point across to the deluded non-thinkers here - which certainly includes the OP who evidently knows absolutely nothing about human psychology.

The idea that a self-sustainable communistic society/economic system can be created is totally absurd. Anyone can read all the books they want and still know nothing about how REAL people operate and respond to each other in the REAL world.

Every attempt to create such a society has utterly failed - yet people like the OP (and others who support such absurdity) also fail because they never attempt to discover WHY those exercises were all disasters.

Leaving aside entire nations for the moment (for which such an experiment would be magnitudes of order more difficult to make work anyway), let's look as some other very simple examples. During the 1960s, there were several "Hippie communes" of various sizes set up in the U.S. - most notably in California due to it's mild, favorable climate. Yet every single one of them failed.

Why? That's the question the OP and others refuse to ask or even attempt to identify. But the answer is quite simple, really. Most of the members were more interested in sitting around strumming string instruments, drinking herbal teas, chanting, dancing, etc. than they were in working. That resulted in the few who WERE actually working to provide food and clothing for the rest becoming so disgusted and disenchanted that they simply quit and left the group. And, of course, since the group couldn't survive without workers, it quickly dissolved and "utopia" ceased to exist.

Unless people are motivated to work and produce by a reward system they consider worth their efforts, the majority of them will not. Simply being provided with the bare necessities of live is NOT enough of a reward.

Communism treats every individual as nothing more than a cog in a machine. People will always resist being only a cog. The vast majority of us aspire to be more than that - the rest are just too lazy to care either way.

And to show how deeply the OP's delusion is, he would also (given the chance) do away with Free Speech, ownership of land and other freedoms we also enjoy and hold dear.

The sad truth is that every couple of months, some other undereducated, non-thinking dummy will still come in here and start singing the glories of communism or anarchy. <heavy sigh>

 

[parmalee]

All humans anthropomorphize.
All humans have a finite set of emotions.
All humans have emotional needs.
All humans assign value to objects and events.
All humans can ascertain threat.
All humans judge each other.
All humans can distinguish between self and other.
All humans can distinguish between "mine" and "yours".
...
...
...
etc.

There are many universal aspects to humans. Communism requires behaviors in humans to be present at all times that simply aren't.

Uhhhh... you do realize that qualities are not the same as capabilities, right?

 

[Me-Ki-Gal]

nice post Read-only . You are a true blue American brother . Your "Patriot " name is spilling out you mouth . Yeah ! Made Me feel great when I read it

 

[Me-Ki-Gal]

Sheesh, must I always repeat myself?


(from here)

interesting , indeed

 

[Crunchy Cat]

Uhhhh... you do realize that qualities are not the same as capabilities, right?

If you feel that something was expressed as a capability and are unable to understand it is a quality, please point it out and I will be happy to rephrase it in a manner that is more aligned to your understanding of quality (even though you are intentionally restricting the discussion to quality at this point and its perfectly clear why... especially considering that in our context of discussion I didn't use that word... not even in the paragraph you responded to).

 

[The Marquis]

However, the whole failure to account for human nature argument is old. Hell, I've even discussed it here a few times. Indeed, it is part of the failure of top-down revolutions as I've discussed them.

Old, perhaps, but also rather definitive, Tiassa. You can't dismiss that one and one equals two rather than three simply because you've heard it before.

The reason it keeps presenting itself is that none of these so called theorists have ever really considered that their utopia, in which humans somehow transform into an more altruistic form to what they are, applies equally to the world we currently live in and would transform it just as much, if not more so. It's as simple as that, but they carry on banging the drum nonetheless.

However, the same people who taught me this basic flaw about communism also advocated trickle-down, pretending that rich people would behave altruistically.

I'm not the one here arguing otherwise. What exactly do you presume my "thesis" to be?