Communism is old, and young. The principals of communal living are the oldest form of human organization. It's also the most common form today if you count small groups like family.

But as an organizing principal for government, it's a baby. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. So the whole idea of communism is < 150-200yo. Compare to capitalism at this age and it's all slavery and settler colonialism; the most massive redistribution of wealth through theft in history.

The logic that communism is a bad system because the Soviet Union should also condemn capitalism because the Dutch East India Company.

Anything beats capitalism

Impossible economic goal for anything larger than a township and unbelievable susceptible to corruption as a one-party form of government. No nation has ever implemented it without a violent revolution and government that quickly turns into a dictatorship.

In short, a nice dream, but a shit idea.

I imagine it's kind of like Libertarianism in that every time it's attempted in the real world, it fails horribly.

Except in Libertarianism, it fails embarrassingly. In Communism, it fails tragically.

It's great for small groups. It's susceptible to corruption at scale, though.

Everyone I’ve ever met who lived under it says it’s was fucking awful. Not a single endorsement. That’s significant because even capitalism has boosters. Not communism.

Our current socioeconomic system is basically built on many intersecting hierarchies of coercion, oppression and control - i.e. some measure of power you can use to make someone do something they otherwise wouldn't want to do. A few examples of those hierarchies include patriarchy, religious authorities, the state, and capitalism.

All of those hierarchies must be abolished. If any of them remain in place, then you will end up with exploiters and the exploited. Eventually, this will stratify over time, as we've seen through history a number of times - the rich get richer, accumulate wealth and power until it becomes unbearable, then the current ruling class are overthrown and replaced by a new ruling class.

We need to NOT create a new ruling class. We need to abolish the ruling class and NOT EVER REPLACE THEM.

That's the mistake made by communism in the USSR - replacing the existing ruling elite with another ruling elite. No matter how cool and revolutionary the leaders of the revolution are, as soon as they have power, they WILL be corrupted by it.

So the solution to our shared problem is anarchism. We need to abolish all forms of coercive control, oppression, hierarchies, ensure that no one has power over anyone else. We need to learn to co-operate, work together, instead of competing and fighting.

Humans are the most co-operative animals in the world. We don't act like it, because the powers that be discourage us from co-operating. Because if we co-operated, we'd immediately realize the problems we have are coming from above.

I think it’s susceptible to the same problems we have now. Elites gonna form and do their thing. Whether they’re in the party or on the board of directors, the effect is the same.

I think we’re just way too naive about systems. We expect them to work for us without putting in any effort. We should stop focusing so much on systems and start focusing on communities and cultures.

The best societies have tight-knit communities and a culture of cooperation. You can’t achieve that by passing laws or writing a new constitution or whatever. You have to get buy-in from everyone.

Gimme

Plenty of people here have talked about potential success or failure, and the economic side, but here's my take. Despite Marx equating religion to an opiate, and especially despite the "no religion" stance of the USSR, Christianity (probably the other Abrahamic religions as well and maybe Hinduism and its offshoots, I'm not exactly sure please correct me if I'm wrong) should be massively in favor of communism over capitalism. In Christianity, we are called to be stewards of creation for God, we run it and manage it but it's not ours. This doesn't work with capitalism, which is focused on the concept of ownership. That's not to mention the equality side of things, which is very much a Christian concept.

I've brought this up with some of my Christian friends, and it's unfortunately not a popular idea. Probably because of lingering cold war attitudes of "communism is atheist".

Also to be clear: yes I'm Christian, no I'm not pro theocracy, yes this is based on my knowledge of the Bible and on communist philosophy.

Most "communist" countries operates under the idea of Vanguardism, and Vanguardism is not gonna work. Giving too much power to a small circle of leadership, or worse, just one leader, is gonna fail, because humans cannot be trusted with that much power.

As for the anarchist variant... no opinion, but can't think of any that worked on the top of my head.

But I think anarchist communisties are gonna struggle. I fear that a neighboring state will literally consume it. I think anarchist communities are too small to protect themselves. (I'm not against anarchism, just skeptical of how it works in practice.)

So I think the best compromise is a decentralized state, direct democracy, ideally, we should have people enforce their own rules, via well-regulated militias. But if there's a foreign invasion, then form into one united command. Something like Social Democracy / Democratic Socialism

Can work in a small scale, as in a village or a small town. Won't work on a country scale, as when you introduce more people the more greed enters the system and it will inevitably corrupt the governors.

Humans are inherently evil. Communism is a beautiful thought experiment that works really well in small select groups, but fails to tolerate the inherent evils that befall it when it begins to scale.

I love it as an idea. I'd love for it to work. Unfortunately, it's just yet another experiment that falls victim to the "imagine a spherical cow" kind of thinking.

It's inspired many good ideas, though, that do work. Marx had many good points.

Let's make a state to dismantle it later! bourgeoisie rubs hands together

Does not scale well.

A power vacuum, which immediately gets filled in by whoever can gain the most power the fastest, while keeping the communist title. Thus the "no true communist" arguing.

My opinion is that it works kind of okay in smaller groups where everyone knows everyone, but on a larger scale it always falls apart

I'm willing to try it, capitalism sucks!!!

Which part?

The main idea as I understand it, is that the workers produce value and that value will never be fairly distributed back to them unless the workers themselves are in charge. This is an analysis of human nature, the owners are fundamentally selfish and will try to maximize their profits, workers to them are merely a means to that end. Therefore workers will be underpaid for the value they create and in the worst case, horribly exploited. I agree 100% with this analysis, as it can be seen a thousand different cases of in history.

The answer to this according to communism is that the workers, who are the majority, take over, become themselves the owners, and distribute the value they create fairly. As a person who believes in democracy, not just in the political sphere, but also in the economic sphere, this seems a good idea.

Communism then branches into multiple factions on how to achieve that goal, coercion and violence, or use elections and the power of the state. In the former cases, such as the Soviet Union, such situations open up for power grabs and authoritarian leaders, which I dislike.

The latter tactic created the European, and especially the Nordic welfare states, through democratic means. These states are not communist, as they abandoned the goal of workers in charge, and went for regulated capitalism instead. While better than most, these states now struggle, as even regulated capitalism distributes wealth from worker to owner.

In these states the workers are again exploited for the benefit of the owners. This is not explicitly understood, because this understanding and its terminology is considered a failed system, reference the Soviet system. Instead the exploitation is warped into other grievances, such as anti-globalism or anti-immigration, leading to a takeover of power by the political fringes. The fringe supported by the owners will have more funds and therefore better chances. And while that fringe may portray itself as pro worker, it will in fact represent a true capture of the state by the owners, leading to the opposite, based on the analysis of human nature as mentioned above.

Tldr: don't ask questions if you can't be bothered to read the answer 😅

Everyone loses the plot when they think communism should make rich people richer as quickly as possible.

I'm on Lemmy so

Worse than capitalism despite being more well intentioned.

Cs Lewis nailed it while talking about religion:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Ask yourself, do you really want the people of .ml holding power over every facet of your life?