Discussion about communism

by Kenzu Sat Feb 14, 2009 7:38 pm

Sandwalker wrote:
Admin wrote:
Sandwalker wrote:Even though you may genuinely and sincerely believe and commit to what you say, people won't believe you as long as they think you stand to gain something thus have an interest in WR having a good public image.
tbh that's only what people one step ahead of the average person will think.
There are also those who think two and some who think even three steps ahead of that statement.

Actually no. That's how people that have discovered suspicion and the roads of personal interest see. I would bet that the vast majority of eastern europeans think that way. I know it's common over here. And yeah, there are levels ahead, there are always levels ahead. I just worded a basic principle: You want to sell a crappy car with beautiful leather interior. You'll only talk about the leather and downsize the importance of a good engine.

@Kenzu: Unless you've seen what communism is and what it means, don't talk about it. Yes, communism is on the negative side in my book. The biggest roadblock to communism is ambition. A person's ambition for better things, a person's desires for more and a tyrant's thirst for power. That's why it's a flawed system. It goes against human nature. We all crave to be special, be it tattoos, clothing, vocabulary, country clubs. And we don't just want to be special. We want to be better, richer, stronger than the person next to us and the next one and the next after that. Incidentally this is a natural order. Who doesn't want to be the alpha dog ? C'mon. Anyway, if you would like to discuss this further, I invite you to a chat on msn or on a different thread, because this is an offtopic subject.

I have not seen what communism is, because it has never been attempted on a countrywide scale. In family scale it seems to work very good.

Communism is a classless socioeconomic system, where all people have equal rights, economic and political freedom, there is no exploitation of workers, because all people who work are considered members of the working class and all means of production are owned by people and their communities, which they use to contribute to the society.

The main idea behind communism is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

The perfect example of a communist society is the family. The parents, who have the highest skill work the most and share their income with their family members. They might have a baby, who has needs, but no skills. Therefore the baby doesnt work at all, but gets all it needs from its family. They might have a teenager who goes to school, but is still too young to work. Since he/she is older, this person might wash the dishes or clean its room from time to time. If there would be also a student in the family, he/she would have more skills and help more, look after the baby, maybe drive to a shopping mall to buy food or do more complex tasks and contribute with his labor to the family. The family works even though some of its members put more effort than they receive during a certain period. They continue to contribute to the society, because they want to be respected by the other family members, they want to be loved and they know that once they will be old, someone will take care after them as well!

by october 17 Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:44 pm

let freedom ring!!!!

with socilizim (now theres a chineas riddle for you)

by Sandwalker Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:18 am

Kenzu, communism is good as an idea. It is something that sounds good, that sounds promising. However, when you take that idea down and implement it in reality, it loses all value.

Now, you can't give a family as an example. Why, you ask ? Because in a family the parents almost always work FOR their children, their children are the purpose of their lives. That love and devotion is what makes it work, not the fact that the kids wash the dishes. I would rather do my own bloody dishes than feed another person with my work. Replace those kids with people that have no blood ties with the parents and that can't really hold a job for whatever reason. Let's see then if the parents still agree to work for their new house guests.

A family can't be used as an example also because communism is an ideology for governing masses, and large ones at that. You can't govern 3 people and call it communism. And you certainly can't take it as scientific proof of communism working.

And my final point why a family can't be used as an example is because of good old Darwin. There's a gene theory that says that the more genes you have in common with someone, the more you want to help that person and protect them. This is obviously because you're in fact protecting a healthy chunk of your own genes. So it's clear that you would rather help your brother than help a stranger, it's in your best interest (no such thing as philanthropy or charity, but that's a different thing).

As you see, starting on a very low scale, communism is contradicted by our own raw natural instincts (all animals have this).

Communism is an utopian form of community organization. It sounds nice but ambition and personal agendas will ALWAYS triumph over the greater good as it were. It has always happened and will always happen. Any person wants more. Every person wants to be special. It's in our nature. We seek freedom merely because it is the only way to try and reach our potential, to grow unbound by needless rules.

In conclusion, communism is strong in the metaphysical but is severely crippled in the physical.

by Kenzu Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:36 pm

Sandwalker wrote:Kenzu, communism is good as an idea. It is something that sounds good, that sounds promising. However, when you take that idea down and implement it in reality, it loses all value.

Now, you can't give a family as an example. Why, you ask ? Because in a family the parents almost always work FOR their children, their children are the purpose of their lives. That love and devotion is what makes it work, not the fact that the kids wash the dishes. I would rather do my own bloody dishes than feed another person with my work. Replace those kids with people that have no blood ties with the parents and that can't really hold a job for whatever reason. Let's see then if the parents still agree to work for their new house guests.

Maybe I will not want to take care of them if they are not mine, however if I will be asked to pay taxes knowing that they will be used to take care of them, I will gladly pay them, especially if I know that everyone is paying them.

Sandwalker wrote:A family can't be used as an example also because communism is an ideology for governing masses, and large ones at that.

The sole purpose of communism is to increase the well being of all people, not only of lucky ones born to rich families. Without this ideology, worker's rights and trade unions would be nonexistent until this day.

Sandwalker wrote:You can't govern 3 people and call it communism. And you certainly can't take it as scientific proof of communism working.

Of course I can! Even a two person society can be called a communist society. two people is all it takes to have a community.

Sandwalker wrote:And my final point why a family can't be used as an example is because of good old Darwin. There's a gene theory that says that the more genes you have in common with someone, the more you want to help that person and protect them. This is obviously because you're in fact protecting a healthy chunk of your own genes. So it's clear that you would rather help your brother than help a stranger, it's in your best interest (no such thing as philanthropy or charity, but that's a different thing).

Ins't it simply that people help those, who are similiar to them? Of course you help your family, but you might also be more friendly and help people who have the same interests like you, or they share the same religion with you, or maybe nationality. Maybe both of you are vegetarian, or you both have dogs. You will feel a closer connection to such a person.

Sandwalker wrote:As you see, starting on a very low scale, communism is contradicted by our own raw natural instincts (all animals have this).

Where does it contradict? It is human nature that people want to live better than they live now. They want their living standard to increase, but this cannot be achieved if they always rob each other, fight each other and don't cooperate. I think it is clear that there won't be happiness if people will see that they work hard and stay poor while others work less and live in luxury. People can be only happy if they know that they are all treated with respect and arent being disadvantaged to others. Furthermore it is human nature to bond together, to live together in communities. People are social beings and they cannot live alone.

Sandwalker wrote:Communism is an utopian form of community organization. It sounds nice but ambition and personal agendas will ALWAYS triumph over the greater good as it were. It has always happened and will always happen. Any person wants more. Every person wants to be special. It's in our nature. We seek freedom merely because it is the only way to try and reach our potential, to grow unbound by needless rules.

In conclusion, communism is strong in the metaphysical but is severely crippled in the physical.

I think most people are good, however there are some evil ones. History has shown that the croocked evil people often defeat the good people, even though the good people outnumber the bad ones. The problem is that the evil ones use cold hearted hideous means to achieve victory.

by Sandwalker Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:23 am

Kenzu wrote:
Sandwalker wrote:You can't govern 3 people and call it communism. And you certainly can't take it as scientific proof of communism working.

Of course I can! Even a two person society can be called a communist society. two people is all it takes to have a community.

Granted, however it's scientifically inaccurate to use controlled low-scale micro samples to prove a point. That's what I was saying.

Kenzu wrote:
Sandwalker wrote:And my final point why a family can't be used as an example is because of good old Darwin. There's a gene theory that says that the more genes you have in common with someone, the more you want to help that person and protect them. This is obviously because you're in fact protecting a healthy chunk of your own genes. So it's clear that you would rather help your brother than help a stranger, it's in your best interest (no such thing as philanthropy or charity, but that's a different thing).

Ins't it simply that people help those, who are similiar to them? Of course you help your family, but you might also be more friendly and help people who have the same interests like you, or they share the same religion with you, or maybe nationality. Maybe both of you are vegetarian, or you both have dogs. You will feel a closer connection to such a person.

Actually they don't. I was referring to how you react subconsciously according to how close you are in the blood line. I'm not talking about common interests. You will help your brother over someone else 90% of the time, even though you have more in common to the other person. At least that's what tests have shown.

Kenzu wrote:
Sandwalker wrote:As you see, starting on a very low scale, communism is contradicted by our own raw natural instincts (all animals have this).

Where does it contradict? It is human nature that people want to live better than they live now. They want their living standard to increase, but this cannot be achieved if they always rob each other, fight each other and don't cooperate. I think it is clear that there won't be happiness if people will see that they work hard and stay poor while others work less and live in luxury. People can be only happy if they know that they are all treated with respect and arent being disadvantaged to others. Furthermore it is human nature to bond together, to live together in communities. People are social beings and they cannot live alone.

People are social beings, yes. But they tend to form groups within groups. It is contradicted in the fact that you, as a person, cannot treat everyone equally, it's not in your nature. We're deeply subjective beings, as far as I've seen.

Kenzu wrote:
Sandwalker wrote:Communism is an utopian form of community organization. It sounds nice but ambition and personal agendas will ALWAYS triumph over the greater good as it were. It has always happened and will always happen. Any person wants more. Every person wants to be special. It's in our nature. We seek freedom merely because it is the only way to try and reach our potential, to grow unbound by needless rules.

In conclusion, communism is strong in the metaphysical but is severely crippled in the physical.

I think most people are good, however there are some evil ones. History has shown that the croocked evil people often defeat the good people, even though the good people outnumber the bad ones. The problem is that the evil ones use cold hearted hideous means to achieve victory.

People tend to be neutral if they don't have a moral compass hammered into them at early age. By neutral I mean they do what is best for them first. If helping the community is best for them, they'll do it. But when does it end ? When does a person say "I want more." and does it ? That is all it takes and, at least from my personal experience, it doesn't take long for someone to want more.

Also, it would be interesting to have a chat of good vs evil, since there is no such thing. It's all about points of view. After all, I already mentioned we're deeply subjective beings.

by kingkongfan1 Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:03 pm

I know that this is an old thread, But I feel the need to say this...

Kenzu, when did they change communism? What you are describing in not what was taught to me when I was in school. I want to live in your fantasy world; yours is better than mine...
king

by Kenzu Wed Mar 17, 2010 10:23 am

kingkongfan1 wrote:I know that this is an old thread, But I feel the need to say this...

Kenzu, when did they change communism? What you are describing in not what was taught to me when I was in school. I want to live in your fantasy world; yours is better than mine...

May I know what you have been taught in school?
And may I know what your teachers political view was at that time? (Was he leaning left or right)?

I had history teachers and economics teachers and depending on whether they were tending towards the leftwing or towards rightwing, they were saying sometimes completely opposite things.

Most important thing is to have a certain degree of skepticism towards everything being said to you and question why does a person say these things. What are his inner motives and his view of the world.

An example:

It's much more likely that the opinion of a Russian immigrant to USA about socialism and USSR will be negative than not.
Afterall, someone who supports socialism is very unlikely to even getting close to USA, not to mention moving there.
(Especially after being told all his life how capitalist and exploitive USA is.)

And then what are the odds that a Russian will think socialism is bad, if he stayed in Russia even after USSR collapsed and lived through the poverty that capitalism in Russia has caused (high unemployment, high inflation, decreasing productivity due to shock privatisation, people becomming homeless, children ending up on streets, girls being sold into prostitution to west europe, domestic prostitution due to poverty, surge in crime, terorism, rise of neonazi movements, deteriorating health care, increasing death rates, decreasing birth rates and population decline,).

Not sure if you don't know this, but after Russia switched from socialist to capitalism, the GDP was falling sharply and production output fell gradually to 60% of what it has been during last year of existance of USSR. After 1998 it started growing and only in 2006 Russia reached the GDP of 1991 Russian SFSR (that's while Russia was part of USSR).

by Sandwalker Wed Mar 17, 2010 12:52 pm

Just to point out: communism as defined by Marx has never existed in real life on a national scale. Communism is the third stage of a 3 stage process and it has never been reached by any socialist regime.

Therefore any examples of historical data supporting communism or not is nothing more than an exercise in futility.

by kingkongfan1 Wed Mar 17, 2010 6:33 pm

To answer your question, I must first say this, left leaning/right leaning at the time too young to know or care. the following are the facts that I was taught in school about communism. right or wrong it was what was taught...
In a communist society: you have to work where they tell you to work (no choice) for what they tell you they will pay you (most likely very low wages)
In a communist society: you as a person cannot own anything, the state owns your house, car,etc. & you are only allowed to use these Items as long as you are a productive member of society.
In a communist society: you cannot speak your mind about the government without worrying that a member of your family will be killed in retaliation; or the possibility of a prison sentence.

These are the top three facts that were taught to me as a child in school, I could go on but I won't, no point really, besides It doesn't matter what system of government a country has, they are all imperfect, & I've never met an honest politican. nuff said...
king

by Kenzu Thu Mar 18, 2010 1:14 pm

Sandwalker wrote:Just to point out: communism as defined by Marx has never existed in real life on a national scale. Communism is the third stage of a 3 stage process and it has never been reached by any socialist regime.

Therefore any examples of historical data supporting communism or not is nothing more than an exercise in futility.

That´s true.
Your statement that communism never existed is a statement of obvious facts, however since there are so many people, who don´t know such simple facts, it makes you stand out from the crowd.

by Kenzu Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:00 pm

kingkongfan1 wrote:To answer your question, I must first say this, left leaning/right leaning at the time too young to know or care. the following are the facts that I was taught in school about communism. right or wrong it was what was taught...
In a communist society: you have to work where they tell you to work (no choice) for what they tell you they will pay you (most likely very low wages)
In a communist society: you as a person cannot own anything, the state owns your house, car,etc. & you are only allowed to use these Items as long as you are a productive member of society.
In a communist society: you cannot speak your mind about the government without worrying that a member of your family will be killed in retaliation; or the possibility of a prison sentence.

These are the top three facts that were taught to me as a child in school, I could go on but I won't, no point really, besides It doesn't matter what system of government a country has, they are all imperfect, & I've never met an honest politican. nuff said...

I had 2 history teachers, both opposed capitalism, however one viewed socialism positively, the other one viewed it negatively. Long story short, it all culminated in constant quarrels when our history class went to Cuba together with both teachers. They were arguing about small things, such as food in Cuba all the time.

This is just the kind of description of communism I would expect from an hardcore right-winger (or a person who considers a right-wingers opinion about communism a reliable source of information).
At least you know what kind of view your teacher had.

You describe a system that isn´t communism. It could be stalinism what you describe. But I think it should be clear that stalinism is no communism. Many call stalinism state capitalism, because the system exploits workers in order to achieve greater economic growth. The system changed after Stalin died. Many political prissoners have been released, and conditions have improved.

Soviet Socialism provided free health care, free education including university education, jobs and homes for everyone. Saying that you couldnt choose what job you want to have is bullshit. If you wanted to become a doctor, you could study that and would get a job as a doctor once finished. The advantage was that everyone had equal opportunities, those who have been disadvantaged in life, received even more benefits (orphans for example could study in any university without having to pass entry examinations). The disadvantage was that the economy was less efficient, since more people were employed in areas that didnt require that many employees.

Communism is a socio-economic system where money becomes unnecessary. People don´t work because they have to, but they do it out of their own persuasion that they want to contribute to the society. Does it sound crazy? Maybe a little bit. Afterall people are lazy beings. Is it impossible to achieve? I don´t think so.

Afterall there are already a lot of people committing selfless deeds and helping the society already. You probably heard about volunteers helping the poor, signing up for voluntary firefighters, medics, and pepople. I personally dont think communism is a society form that can be achieved in the next 100 years, but I am pretty certain that it is inevitable. As our productivity increases, people will have more goods and services and will have to work much less. 100 years ago, people worked 12-14 hours a week, even in the richest countries, and had barely much to survive. Now, people work 8 hours a week and have a decent living standard. In 200, 300 years time productivity of each person will be so high due to increased technology and shift of workload on machines and computers, that we will live our lives in even more wealth and have to work maybe 3 or 4 hours a day. Once there is enough wealth for everyone, and its not necessary to work so hard anymore, there will be less tensions in the society and communism is more likely. You might say, well, there will always be people who will not want to work. That´s true, but since the productivity will be so high, everyone can be taken care of, even if only 25% of population work. Wealth alone is not everything. Obviously those who contribute to the society a lot will be loved and earn much more respect from people that some lazy bums. To prevent being excluded from the community and loosing friends, people will work in the end.

Is communist idea humans nature, or are people all greedy opportunistic bastards?

``From each according to his ability, to each according to his need´´
To answer this question we can have a look at family. A proper family is a copy of a communist society, on a much smaller scale. All members of the family will receive food, housing, and other goods according to their need, even though it will be probably only parents who earn all the money, and the parents will probably do most of the work in the household, will leave only the simplest task for their older children to do and will most likely not give any work at all to their youngest children.

We also heard of families where one of the family members is an alcoholic, drug addict, or voluntarily unemployed. This member drains resources from the family and his opportunistic behaviour is destructive. How does a family deal with such a parasite? Usually by excluding from the family. Be it by divorce, or kicking out of the house permanently.

Imagine a family, where all members are opportunistic and think only about themselves. And now think of a family, where people consider each others needs and help each other selflessly. The first family is doomed to fail and the second family will be very prosperous.

If humanity would not be communist in families, our race would have disappeared long time ago.
It is the nature of man to help other people and people are good beings in general. Those who abuse their power and accept to grow in wealth and power at the cost of others wellbeing are a small minority. However since the evil ones have poor ethics and are often without honor, they succeed very often against upright, honest and good people.

As we look how the humanity has evolved, we can clearly see that the society is changing, with frequent setbacks, gradually towards more socialism - more equality and equal opportunities for everyone that is.

by Sandwalker Thu Mar 18, 2010 6:34 pm

We've talked about your analogy before Kenzu. You cannot expand from family to nation. You just can't, and you know very well why.

Communism... real communism, not some bolsevic dogma, could never truly exist on a large scale. And that's as much human nature as anything.

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