[secondmertg]

Pearson is getting to you.

[HarryMet]

I think it mischaracterizes people to think they are incapable of working without individual monetary incentive. I mean, there certainly are people out there like that, but I'm not sold on the conclusion that it's human nature to be like that. You see a lot of selfless people out there as well. The *******s just get more attention.

That's not to say I support Communism, but I do think that the main argument against it, ie that it can't work because of the way people are, doesn't necessarily hold water.

[iioijjjkkojhbb]

Marx's idea was that once the means of production were in the hands of the people, they would own them, and have the incentive of the owner of the means of production. Marx ultimately felt that capitalism's incentives were mis-aligned because sooner or later the majority of working class would figure out that they had no real stake in that system.

So from his POV, it is capitalism that has the weaker incentives, and communism is closer to working for your own real gain.

[Acalsenunse]

So who's DL are you ?

"whose", the phrase "so who is DL are you" makes no sense.

[SeLvesTr]

That's true, but recognizing that when structuring your society is a crucial part of instituting Communism. Expecting lazy folks to contribute to something like farming is pointless. But that doesn't mean you can't expect them to contribute to something. I don't know much about exactly how Communist societies have historically been structured, but you can work around it. You could also institute a communist society that still provides some rewards for hard work and education. With, for example, a bigger house or a nicer car, or license to possess more things.

[XinordiX]

I'm not a Communist, but Marx would say that union labor is a poor example because the union workers are still not owners. They really are not properly incentivized to work any harder.

The refutation of the USSR and Communist China and old Communist bloc nations as failed "Communist" systems is that they were agricultural societies that went Communist without developing an industrial system. Marx' "revolution" is more accurately seen as an "evolution" from agriculture to industrial to communist. Without that interim step, the people aren't empowered enough to have a stake in the system, and it becomes just as dis-incentivized as any other. Those were essentially regime changes within the structure of the old Monarchist system.

Actually the developed Western World is closer to the what Marx had in mind, but we've managed to stave off the disproportion of weath that results in the revolution that leads to true Communism. Disproportionate distribution of wealth is key here.

[Hoglaunccoolf]

It's not so much that productivity is the ultimate social goal, as it is that you need economic productivity to maintain social order and good standing in the global community.

[abubycera]

The really question is would communism result in censorship like we have here at poly?

[Wckcvhsg]

leaving bloody dictatorial history aside ( since capitalism has its share of that as well,) my problem with communism has always been about incentives to produce. State communal or centrally planned farms have always been less productive than when the state allowed people their individual plots, for example. generall productivity in most things are lower in communist states. Zeroing in on this, Marx lived in the time of early to middle industrialization, so his perspective included first-hand knowledge of the excesses of that system. Child labor, pittance wages, a huge class divide between whose who held the means of production and those who did the labor. Essentially this relationship is the exact same thing as a pimp has with his prostitute. The prostitute's labor is the real value, but the pimp extracts most of the benefit.

That system doesn't have much incentive for the laborer, really, except for intangibles -- mostly a fear of retaliation or fear of shaking up the comfortable social order. Once the laborer realizes that he or she has control of all the value in the relationship, the owner faces rebellion and loss of power.

Marx figured that revolution would inevitably happen, starting in the most developed nations like the UK, USA and the nations of Western Europe. It makes sense from an economist's standpoint because the incentives are aligned AGAINST the pimp-dominant of Capitalism and IN FAVOR of the whore-dominant system that follows the revolution.

Marx called the whore-dominant system "Communism."

Marx would probably say that the reason why the USSR failed is that it simply displaced one pimp-dominant system with another. It wasn't true Communism according to Marx's definition. The incentives were exactly the same or worse than in the previous system, except probably worse because that nation went from Monarchy to what is more correctly called an Oligarchy (same thing really,) not a true people-controlled Communist society.

A dead giveaway is that at the time Russia was one of the more backward, unindustrialized of European powers. It couldn't develop a true Communist state as Marx envisioned until it had been industrialized.

The west, so far, has avoided the rebellion that leads to Communism, and it did so by easing the natural tension between owner and laborer. Our industrial/corporate masters give us enough of a "gilded cage" that we have less incentive to rebel than we do to play along with the system the way it is rigged.

They were able to do that because oil (which was only beginning to become the basis of the economy in Marx' time) gave our society a great (possibly one-time...) windfall -- mechanized labor and exponential increases in productivity. And because leadership was smart enough to rein in the worst excesses of capitalism at crisis points (particularly the Roosevelts, Teddy and FDR.)

We may still eventually see conditions worsen and the incentives on the side of rebellion and Communist state become irresistable. It really depends on our ability to keep prosperity high and well-distributed. It just may take longer than our lifetimes.

[creewespock]

I'm giving a very simplistic explanation here.

Keep in mind that the Communist states were very concerned about defense, seeing as they'd been invaded multiple times, were overtly threatened with nuclear destruction, simply for existing, and were suffering constant attacks of terrorism from the West. Rather then spending most of their money on rebuilding after WWII, they had to spend an enormous portion of their productive capacity to fend off another invasion.

Also, as these societies weren't "true" socialist societies, but rather, places where the working class had taken control of the property, but lacked political control. The workers were alienated from their own state, their own property. As they had no control over their situation, they came to see it as something oppressive. So they had little incentive to work hard.

During the 1920s and 30s, however, the USSR had tremendous growth and people worked very hard to rebuild the country, especially during the first few five year plans. Although it was a dictatorship (and a ferocious one at that), many people felt like they were taking charge, that they were creating a better future. They worked very hard and sacrificed.

Then the Nazis came and killed twenty five million people, burned their cities. All of their hard work was gone overnight. And their wartime allies surrounded them with armies and threatened to burn their whole country with nuclear fire. And then Khrushchev told them what had really happened under Stalin.

So maybe they began to not work as hard. Even then, they still put the first man made object in orbit, and the first man, and the first women twenty years before any other country put a woman in orbit. They made important medical advances. The contact lens, for example, was invented in Czechoslovakia.