DISCUSS

[lauralh]

Communism is stupid.

Comments

[trixiefirecat.livejournal.com]

ideal on paper, not so great in application.

[harryh.livejournal.com]

How exactly is it ideal on paper?

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

hahah that's what people always say

ps, I'm kind of a commie

[purgatorius.livejournal.com]

Marx is one of my favorite fantasy writers.

You should check out "Towards a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing," something amazing he wrote before he invented sharing.

[bedpimp.livejournal.com]

Most any form of government works splendidly with a population under 50. Once it grows beyond that, corruption will begin to spoil it.

[i-and-i.livejournal.com]

i think its a good idea

[jjsaysblah.livejournal.com]

"communism is stupid"

pretty close to a self evident semantic statement.

communism assumes everyone is an angel, when that flies in the face of all available evidence.

[fritz-da-kat.livejournal.com]

I agree with your first statement. However, from my experience I can assure you that exactly the contrary is true with regard to your second one. Communism assumes everybody is a class enemy, until he proves himself a worthy, obedient and brainwashed member of the new order.

[lisa.livejournal.com]

i believe all humans have a right to education, food, shelter and a job, some of the premise of communism. a community where all of these are provided *by the community* in my opinion would be a hell of a lot better off than our sad country.

what's unfortunate is where you have the case of a government telling you you're living under one or more guiding principles/ideologies when in fact its not at all the case. i.e. various communist countries and the u.s.

[geah.livejournal.com]

What job should the community provide for each person?

As it is now, if you don't have food, shelter and an education, you have only yourself to blame.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

foreals

[xkissikx.livejournal.com]

i am sad i am unfriended... =(

[tyrven.livejournal.com]

I like that icon.

[tyrven.livejournal.com]

I'd say communism is naive. It doesn't take into account human nature, which is inherently selfish and requires a system of accountability. Free market capitalism is one system for establishing accountability around relatively non-abstracted means, although there are certainly other approaches. I do appreciate the social welfare ideals of communism; it's important to implement these without creating a cycle of learned helplessness, however.

As a note, I initially started my business with social democratic ideals. It failed miserably. I am not willing to say this was fully a flaw in the structure as much as a conflict between the structure and American culture. It could be argued, however, that this culture is bread directly out of biological programming and thus human nature not social conditioning. Regardless, I've implemented a free market capitalist approach and it has been incredibly successful, even despite violating my original ideals.

[fritz-da-kat.livejournal.com]

Communism is not naive at all. It did very well take into consideration the human nature and in this process it tried to suppress it using terror. It is a common misconception that communism ideas are generally good, but they were badly implemented in the various communist regimes: communism ideas themselves entail murder.
What you see in North Korea nowadays is successful, by-the-book communism. What you have in China now, is failed communism.

[audiguy.livejournal.com]

generally ideals are stupid because they never work in practice.

capitalism is just as stupid when taken to the extreme.

[sarahbliss.livejournal.com]

Indeed. What is b.s. is what Lisa said- when people call their system something it isn't. America is not a democracy or practicing true capitalism.

[thisgirliknow.livejournal.com]

I think that while the idea of communism is simply wonderful, dictatorship simply doesn't work, atleast in this country. In practice, communism tends to be not so good. The only example where it HAS worked is on the Kibbutzes in Israel.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

most of those are failing

[sanguine37.livejournal.com]

Jesus was a communist!

[tyrven.livejournal.com]

Hardly: he was arguably anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian, the latter of which is fundamental to communist implementation. Jesus beleived in managing the society through cultural change; he arguably had faith in the inherent potential of human kind to transcend its selfish roots through the meme of religious dogma as a method of creating order through adherence to set ideological principles as opposed to a strict legal authority.

[hober.livejournal.com]

Most of the comments so far make me sad.

[moderndayknight.livejournal.com]

Communism is a political/economic ideology -- it has no intelligence.

Communists, however, are fucking idiots.

Irrelevant Negativland Reference

[patrick.livejournal.com]

And the loud speaker spoke up and said,
"Christianity is stupid!
Communism is good!"

[sarahbliss.livejournal.com]

I'll take a pinko over a marshamllow peep any day.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

pinkos have little caloric value

[sisyphus.livejournal.com]

Communism is good, with a few qualifications.

First off, there is no human nature that cannot be overcome with enough socialization. People mate for life and become celibate monks. When there are plenty of resources, people share. It's scarcity that creates assholes. Why do all these selfish people swap millions of mo3's daily? Because it costs them something. Communism isn't 'contrary to human nature' it's the only hope for improving human nature.

Second, Leninism/Bolshevism != communism.

Rich and poor often come down to luck. Bill Gates, had he been born in Uganda, would not be in his position. A system that punishes and rewards luck is probably not just.

Rawls has a really interesting idea -- what kind of society would you pick to live in if you didn't know what your position in it would be? Rational people would probably pick a system that would make them the best off no matter where they ended up.

[perich.livejournal.com]

Rawls added some heavy qualifiers ("Yes, but ...") to his "veil of ignorance" theory (which wasn't even a system so much as a thought experiment) about twenty-five years later, when he realized that it was silly.

[perich.livejournal.com]

Human nature doesn't have one iota to do with the stupidity of communism.

Communism is stupid because removing the price system from the market structure as a means of resource allocation results in an inability to efficiently allocate resources. In other words, in your(*) heady desire to give everyone a "right" to health care, education, shelter, food and a job, you guarantee that almost everyone will have less of all-of-the-above then if you'd let the market do its work.

Communism doesn't work on paper. Communism doesn't work in practice. Communism doesn't work in hypothetical communes filled with immortal robots that are bulletproof with laser eyes. It's just stupid.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

ding ding ding