Communism

[Watchman]

'Course, thus far the practical applications of revolutionary Communism have been pretty bad at providing any of the three. Some have done a decent job at feeding and educating their populace though.

[cegorach]

Some have done a decent job at feeding and educating their populace though.

Which ones ? Especially this feeding thing is interesting considering food shortages ( and other shortages ) in all communist states. Education was achieved in many countries without the need of killing people anyway, so I don't think so it was something worth mentioning at all.

[Franconicus]

Which ones ? Especially this feeding thing is interesting considering food shortages ( and other shortages ) in all communist states.

I do not think that there have been many COMMUNIST states before. The first Christian communities? Maybe!

Education was achieved in many countries without the need of killing people anyway, so I don't think so it was something worth mentioning at all.

I do! Education is very important for communism. Because Marx was a philosopher and he thought his theory was the trueth. He also thought that people only had to be educated to understand and follow communism. Therefor in some socalled communist states people who were against C were send into 'education' camps (and I do not talk about torture!). And if they were not able to understand, they had to be insane.
But it is a fact (or at least what I read somewhere) that the US has a higher percentage of people who cannot read or write than Cuba.

[Kraxis]

Communism really hasn't got much place left in the world anymore.

It was a thought brought by by the special social, economical and industrial situation of the middle to late 1800s. For a worker of those days it would not only be possible it would be perfect, if of course the leaders would be true to their ideals. But now even China sees that stingent communism can't live, but it has yet to leave the authoritarian regime behind.

I do however know a single place where communism is working to this day, and is working very well. Tristan da Cunha.
Until quite recently their money were potatoes. Until equally recent each man was allowed to have a set number of cattle and sheep (maybe it was goats), and while that has since been opened up it hasn't changed the situation, it is still as before. Whenever somebody grows up they are given a range of jobs to chose from and do it. Whenever somebody suffers something bad the entire island helps him/her/them.
While financially stable and selfsuficient there is no obvious differences in fortunes.

While I would never go there due to the remoteness I think it is interesting that they are able to keep it running.

[Franconicus]

Communism really hasn't got much place left in the world anymore.

I do not know. Things are changing.
20 years ago the so called communist block influenced the western society. There was a social market with strong rights for the workers. After the fall of the social market changed more and more into a free market. Globalization was the next step. Social security is fading away, million of jobs are gone, salary is decreasing ... . The richer are getting richer while the normal workers are getting poorer. Middle class is eroding.
On the other side you have China with extreme differences in wealth and access to goods. Isn't the suituation similar to the one that brought Mao to power?
Economic is changing so far, some countries will lose and some will win, some companies win, some bosses and owners win. There is a increase in nationalism and religious fundamentalism. And there is still a increase in population.
I tell you, there will be some fundamental changes in society to bring the structure of society and the economy together. I think it is likely that we will see new forms of communism. Because cap is not able to solve the problems.

[Watchman]

I tend to leave out the likes of Mao and Stalin - and, God forbid, Pol Pot - because they're not really useful as illustrations of what's wrong with Communist regimes; they're brilliant cases-in-point of what can (and tends to) go wrong with totalitarian autocracies where absolute and unquestioned power is vested in the hands of a single wonk, which sort of setup is by no means a Communist monopoly.

Ditto for North Korea really.

Besides, Communist states have done a brilliant enough track record at not meeting even a fraction of their lofty promises (well, can't vouch for Cuba - partly as I've not a clue what Fidel et Co. originally promised, beyond replacing the universally hated assholes who ruled before them) even if you leave the genuinely bad god-emperors out of the equation to make the point somewhat moot.

In the case of the famine in China, it's been argued that Mao did not even know of the famine, because local officials were afraid to reveal the bad news. That's hard to believe - part of me suspects that the problem with famines is that the rulers just don't care.

It actually sounds quite likely they didn't dare to tell him. It's also entirely possible they did, and Mao simply refused to believe it - some of the stuff you hear about him, and similar virtual god-emperors, strongly suggests their grasp of reality tends to be a bit shaky. I understand he was a big believer in the excessively positivist idea at the heart of Communism which basically claims enough human faith and effort really will move mountains (or completely change societies; about the same thing really). Assuming that certainly makes such strokes of genius as the Great Leap Forward more comprehensible.

Mind you, the Great Leader has also been quoted telling a visiting Italian Communist party chief that a worldwide nuclear war was desirable, because about three million or so Chinese ought to survive and they'd then repopulate the globe into a Communist utopia...
I understand the Italian did not find the idea quite as appealing. Wonder why ?

[econ21]

I tend to leave out the likes of Mao and Stalin - and, God forbid, Pol Pot - because they're not really useful as illustrations of what's wrong with Communist regimes...

But the thing is that Mao's China and Stalin's Russia WERE the Communist regimes, not just examples of what could go wrong with them.

Mao created Communist China (in part in the image of Soviet Russia) and ruled it, more or less, for a quarter of a century.

Stalin was preceded by Lenin who ruled for a few years, but again it was Stalin who led the USSR for most of its formative years and had the biggest hand in making it what it was. And to be honest it is rather hard to put a piece of paper between Stalin and Lenin in many regards - yes, Stalin was a more murderous person (the revolution devouring its children) - but he was largely working the system Lenin created and arguably rather faithful to Lenin's ruthless approach to constructing a Communist state.

When we look at Communist regimes in reality - as opposed to the ideals in the textbooks - then those fashioned by Stalin and Mao are the dominant paradigms. Every other one was either created in their image or a revision of their constructs.

[Watchman]

Most Communist states AFAIK did, and do, a pretty decent job feeding their citizens when they weren't being total idiots for some reason (think Stalin and Mao...). North Korea, as I think is readily obvious, is Stuck On Stupid but for comparision the two nearby nominally communist countries - China and Vietnam - seem to be getting along reasonably well.

This probably has something to do with the way acute long-term starvation isn't terribly conductive for regime longevity in normal conditions, and the detail all but the worst-run Communist systems seem to be capable of managing at least base resource production passably.

It's not like the capitalist economy was exactly immune to food shortages either, after all. The better part of the Third World is these days running that one, and kids still starve in fairly appalling numbers.

Communist systems tend to kinda fall short on everything more demanding though, and it is rather debatable if they don't more often than not climb up the tree butt first and trample a fair few peopole underfoot in the process.

This probably has somehting to do with the way the very nature of their command economy requires truly extensive micromanagement, which they just plain categorically don't have the competence or resources to do properly. The sort of technocratical skill that stuff would require is way beyond the ability of even systems rather better equipped to develop it to begin with.

[Kralizec]

In another forum I have been in some discussions about communism/socialism, and the proponent had argued that the chiefest faillure of all attempts at the system was the lack of democracy.
He argued that a socialist state (a necessary prequel for a communist society) must be democratic so that all means of production (wich are under control of the state) are under scrutiny of the public. There was no real acountability in the Soviet Union because officials were generally in no real danger of losing their jobs if they didn't do their job correctly (efficiently allocating recources)

That's the condensed version, and I thought it was an excellent argument. I still don't think a truly socialist or communist society is feasonable (or even desirable) for a host of other reasons though. I'll write down a summary of my con arguments when I have a little more time.

[Vladimir]

Communism is much like making everyone equal in height thru amputation. Communism and capitalism are two different ways to deal with the problem of scarcity. Ironically an advanced, capitalistic society would very much represent a communist society. Once the issues of scarcity and rarity are eliminated through technology there would not be a shortage of everything. It would then be up to the individual to decide how much of whatever they desire. Communism was developed by an elitist and is the religion of elitists. It makes mediocrity the norm and discourages individual initiative and progress. It would work fine if humans were collectivists by nature but we're not. Perhaps the greatest irony about modern communism is that it has Christian roots while it seeks to abolish religion.

[econ21]

Most Communist states AFAIK did, and do, a pretty decent job feeding their citizens when they weren't being total idiots for some reason (think Stalin and Mao...). North Korea, as I think is readily obvious, is Stuck On Stupid but for comparision the two nearby nominally communist countries - China and Vietnam - seem to be getting along reasonably well.

I don't think this is right - assessing the record of Communist countries while taking out Stalin and Mao is rather like assessing the safety of the space shuttle programme while taking out the disasters.

Communism will tend to feed its people less well than the alternative system because of the classical problem of incentives. Collective farming under-performs household-based production, as the Chinese reforms in 1978 dramatically showed. Yes, you may meet some grain quotas, but people will have less incentive to produce what is not forced out of them if they know they will only get a small proportion of the fruits of their efforts.

The problem of famines under Communism is more serious and I think political rather than economic. The economics Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has claimed that no democracy with a free press has had a famine because the people won't stand for it (this goes along with his theory that there is always enough food even in a famine - the problem is (re)distribution). Totalitarian Communist states (which let's face it is all of them in the Soviet mold) can more easily suppress discontent and even information so that people can starve in their millions but the rulers still stay in power. In the case of the famine in China, it's been argued that Mao did not even know of the famine, because local officials were afraid to reveal the bad news. That's hard to believe - part of me suspects that the problem with famines is that the rulers just don't care.

BTW: It is very hard to claim China and Vietnam as contemporary Communist success stories. They sputter along under a Soviet style command economy and only take off when they liberalise and allow private incentives to work.

[Kraxis]

China might call itself communist, but it is not anymore.

The equality of the communist state has longe since been removed and there is huge difference between poor and rich in China. A farmer in Tibet compared to a stocktrader in Shanghai is significantly more different than a lowincome Western European compared to an educated and quite wellemployed midlevel boss.
China has it's own system now, and it is hard to give it any real name. But I would go so far to call it authoritarian oligarchic planned commercialism.