I want to point out, that… for communism, even on paper, to be a lovely idea and/or successful, the person in charge needs to have two things:
Absolute loyalty from the population by some method that doesn’t require oppression, coercion, intimidation, or the use of force. They basically need to believe that they are the right person for the job and stand behind them.
Basically be absolute and exclusively altruistic. The selfish nature of humans, being the flawed creatures we are, basically makes this an impossibility.
I would add to point 2, that anyone who is that altruistic, would not desire to have, or hold, any power over others.
The combination of these two things will keep any rosy ideas about communism, as just ideas. In practice, it will be, or become corrupt, and the people will suffer. Pushing it into a downward spiral of violence against the people, until an inevitable revolution occurs and the communist dictator is removed by any means necessary (often involving them no longer living).
Don’t get me wrong, there are different issues with capitalism, socialism, any monarch based society… Pretty much every system is flawed. The key differentiator is whether we have the ability to deal with the challenges of a system as it arises. So far, communism has the least methods by which to do this.
Real communism doesn’t need a single leader to maintain control or tonact altruistically. Real communism doesn’t have a single leader at all. Resources and control are shared by the citizenry, decentralized to the community, thus the name. I’m by no means an expert on the ideal workings of a national scale communist control structure, but the point would be to form a stateless nation without any bourgeoisie in control anymore, but rather everyone would be of the proletariat and the proletariat would share control.
But you have hit the nail on the head of the problem with the transition to communism that I was alluding to. Normally it requires a populist party to overthrow or fundamentally reform a national system of governance. They take total control of the government and then total control of the nation’s resources, factories, properties… the “means of production”… from the bourgeoisie. That part has happened several times in history. It is the rest of the transition that has failed to occur every time. What is meant to happen next is that they then relinquish those means of production back to the proletariat, set up the means of self-governance, and then dissolve themselves and the central government. That has never happened.
The problem is that, once the nation falls under the control of one party, it does require the leader(s) of that party to act, as you said, with pure altruism and willingly give up absolute power. And typically people that become party leaders are the kind of people that seek power and that do not like others having control. The problem is that the process as described requires people that are driven and insentivized to lead a major national reform. And then it needs those same people to act against their own nature and self-interest for ideology and the greater good. This is why that power had never been decentralized in any real world example of a transition to communism. That is what is meant when we say that there has never been a real communist country. There has never been one without a single party/dictator is control. There has never been a decentralized control of resources and power on a national scale. Those things have only ever been achieved on a community level to this date, and those communities struggle as they still must function under and within a capitalist system.
Another issue is that the moment the “seize the means” step starts, the bourgeois pull up tent stakes and leave with everything that isn’t nailed down. They flee to the most convenient neighbor where they can continue. This means what’s left in the original country is “less”. Then the country is at a competitive disadvantage with it’s neighbors wrt investment capital and such.
Next, for anyone who isn’t passionate about the mission, the new standard of living is a concern. Namely, for anyone (proletariat) who was “more successful” , the new standard of living is technically a personal reduction in lifestyle. Obviously for many it’s an upgrade. Point is the “new way” might not necessarily be exciting them, and if there are places they can immigrate to, that’s tough for their home country as they may do so, chasing personal lifestyle improvement. This can cause brain drain as a “successful proletariat” is probably a veteran in their industry that they labor in
I think communism surrounded but other capitalist nations is a very tough thing to make succeed. Seems like it would need to be global to every truly get out of the “benevolent authoritarian” stage
Disclaimer: I don’t know shit about fuck, but I say all the above in good faith
Those are all fair points too. You can pretty much boil the problems with communism down to that it basically requires idealism and passion/buy-in from almost everyone, especially those who stand to lose the most advantage over others.
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I want to point out, that… for communism, even on paper, to be a lovely idea and/or successful, the person in charge needs to have two things:
I would add to point 2, that anyone who is that altruistic, would not desire to have, or hold, any power over others.
The combination of these two things will keep any rosy ideas about communism, as just ideas. In practice, it will be, or become corrupt, and the people will suffer. Pushing it into a downward spiral of violence against the people, until an inevitable revolution occurs and the communist dictator is removed by any means necessary (often involving them no longer living).
Don’t get me wrong, there are different issues with capitalism, socialism, any monarch based society… Pretty much every system is flawed. The key differentiator is whether we have the ability to deal with the challenges of a system as it arises. So far, communism has the least methods by which to do this.
Real communism doesn’t need a single leader to maintain control or tonact altruistically. Real communism doesn’t have a single leader at all. Resources and control are shared by the citizenry, decentralized to the community, thus the name. I’m by no means an expert on the ideal workings of a national scale communist control structure, but the point would be to form a stateless nation without any bourgeoisie in control anymore, but rather everyone would be of the proletariat and the proletariat would share control.
But you have hit the nail on the head of the problem with the transition to communism that I was alluding to. Normally it requires a populist party to overthrow or fundamentally reform a national system of governance. They take total control of the government and then total control of the nation’s resources, factories, properties… the “means of production”… from the bourgeoisie. That part has happened several times in history. It is the rest of the transition that has failed to occur every time. What is meant to happen next is that they then relinquish those means of production back to the proletariat, set up the means of self-governance, and then dissolve themselves and the central government. That has never happened.
The problem is that, once the nation falls under the control of one party, it does require the leader(s) of that party to act, as you said, with pure altruism and willingly give up absolute power. And typically people that become party leaders are the kind of people that seek power and that do not like others having control. The problem is that the process as described requires people that are driven and insentivized to lead a major national reform. And then it needs those same people to act against their own nature and self-interest for ideology and the greater good. This is why that power had never been decentralized in any real world example of a transition to communism. That is what is meant when we say that there has never been a real communist country. There has never been one without a single party/dictator is control. There has never been a decentralized control of resources and power on a national scale. Those things have only ever been achieved on a community level to this date, and those communities struggle as they still must function under and within a capitalist system.
Another issue is that the moment the “seize the means” step starts, the bourgeois pull up tent stakes and leave with everything that isn’t nailed down. They flee to the most convenient neighbor where they can continue. This means what’s left in the original country is “less”. Then the country is at a competitive disadvantage with it’s neighbors wrt investment capital and such.
Next, for anyone who isn’t passionate about the mission, the new standard of living is a concern. Namely, for anyone (proletariat) who was “more successful” , the new standard of living is technically a personal reduction in lifestyle. Obviously for many it’s an upgrade. Point is the “new way” might not necessarily be exciting them, and if there are places they can immigrate to, that’s tough for their home country as they may do so, chasing personal lifestyle improvement. This can cause brain drain as a “successful proletariat” is probably a veteran in their industry that they labor in
I think communism surrounded but other capitalist nations is a very tough thing to make succeed. Seems like it would need to be global to every truly get out of the “benevolent authoritarian” stage
Disclaimer: I don’t know shit about fuck, but I say all the above in good faith
Those are all fair points too. You can pretty much boil the problems with communism down to that it basically requires idealism and passion/buy-in from almost everyone, especially those who stand to lose the most advantage over others.