Is communism really bad?

I think that communism has been given a lot of bad press by stalin, et cetera.

Is this accurate or am I just dribbling nonsense?

------------------
What's in a name?

A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet -- William Shakespeare

Anyway, just felt I'd enlighten you since you asked

-miNus

silver

(credit to my dad who gave me that book to read)

------------------
"You would be a good lawyer"
-Fortune Cookie

quote:

---

Originally posted by miNus:
You're just dribbling nonsense (hey, you said it, not me.)

Anyway, just felt I'd enlighten you since you asked

-miNus

---

no hard feelings, miNus

------------------
What's in a name?

A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet -- William Shakespeare

quote:

---

Originally posted by SiLVeR54:
have u read the novel: Animal Farm?
read that, and it should answer your question! it think its by George Orwell.. its about communism, except the animals are symbols for us..

silver

---

------------------
What's in a name?

A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet -- William Shakespeare

quote:

---

It does involve communism, but the underlying theme in Animal Farm that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, shown when the pig in charge starts dealing with humans and sends the horse off to the glue factory.

---

yes, but the whole point of it is to show that the animals couldn't survive without the farmers! aka communism..

silver

------------------
"You would be a good lawyer"
-Fortune Cookie

Personally I think that the best form of government is one where you vote for a party and an eligible candidate of the party is selected randomly. This combined with short terms of office will cut back on the buying of candidates. Add a cyber-Athenian voting style and its all good.

------------------
"You've soiled my dickey!"

--Kintara

Animal Farm was a *GREAT* book. A lot of my friends that read it (it's one of the required books for 9th grade english) said it sucked, but I figure they're all just to stupid to understand what it was about.

Animal Farm takes on the role of the USSR in it's early years. If you know any of the history of the Russian Revolution and whatnot, you'll recognize many of the key figures in the book. The movie that they made out of it was great too, surprisingly. It was funny when the big fat pig fell out of the barn and landed on its head...

Also, keep in mind that communism is simply a economy, not a government. Of course, a communist ecomony ties itself into the government ruling greatly.

------------------
Spydir Web - < http://netsyndrome.net/spydirweb/ >
Net Syndrome - < http://www.netsyndrome.net/ >

Sometimes you're the dog, sometimes you're the hydrant...

Capitalism uses the 'invisible hand' of Adam Smith to govern these issues, using accountibility and vested interests on everybody's parts to make an efficient, and innovative economy.

In their pure forms, you have problems in both cases. Communism has issues of scale. Capitalism has issues of monopolism and greed. That's why I like what America has. It has a free market, with influence on the part of the government (Administrative law) to keep a level playing field.

Capitalism will always win out in the end, as long as technology advances with it. Technology and innovation are the only weapons the little guys have against the big guys who have economics of scale and ROI certainty on their sides.

quote:

---

Original quote by Spydir Web
Animal Farm takes on the role of the USSR in it's e--yadda yadda yadda--

---

DID I NOT SAY THAT???? just not....as detailed.. if u wanted a summary, i would've written a 4 page essay on it! i thought i'd just MENTION it! grrrr.... no one listens to me! *cry*

quote:

---

Originally posted by ***ME***!!!!!
have u read the novel: Animal Farm?
read that, and it should answer your question! it think its by George Orwell.. its about communism, except the animals are symbols for us..

---

silver

------------------
"You would be a good lawyer"
-Fortune Cookie

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dysorderia:
I think that communism has been given a lot of bad press by stalin, et cetera.

---

------------------
...when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rhydant:

Stalin? as in Joseph Stalin? why would he talk bad about communism? isnt he the one who turned Russia (Soviet Union, back then) into a communist state?
jesus, you just cant get anything right, can you?

---

I was talking about the fact that Stalin slaughtered countless people and therefore turned Communism into a horrific stereotype.

THAT is what I meant by the term "BAD PRESS", you retard.

------------------
What's in a name?

A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet -- William Shakespeare

This message has been edited by Dysorderia on April 11, 2001 at 11:11 PM

either he misunderstood your twisted grammer

or, he was making light of it.

In any case, Stalin gave bad press for that reason, yes. However, it may be that a tyranical rule is necessary to keep a communist state. Not everybody wants it, and not everybody wants to bow to the rule of a tyrant. It becomes a vicious circle, with a dot in the right half of the S-plane (engineers?). It spirals out of control, until it takes tyranny to keep the communism, but it still slips through the cracks, as is happening in China. It started out ok, but it took increasing amounts of disregard for the civil rights of the people to keep them on the communist course, which breeds more discontent for the government.

Communism won't work because it doesn't have scalability, and it doesn't recover from instabilities. Capitalism is like an aircraft with dihedral. It's designed to come back to a normal state when an instability happens. Communism requires greater effort on the government's part to correct for such changes.

In short, communism requires each individual to appreciate the true social costs & benefits of their actions, and to be satisfied with a societal gain, rather than with their own personal gain. In a society with these characteristics, communism could flourish, because each person would be prepared to work hard to improve the lot of all people.

Capatilism is the only system that actually works at the moment, because people are inherently selfish. People are prepared to slack off, regardless of social cost, because the personal cost is small under a communist system; the personal benefit of working hard is equally small.

The dictator is necessary in this selfish environment to force people to work well, and
generally fails at this task too.

I *knew* final year economics would come in handy at some point .Time to get back to work now...

T

<edit> oh dear, I've even started grammar nazi'ing myself :/</edit>

This message has been edited by Trog on April 12, 2001 at 01:50 AM

This message has been edited by oVerdose on April 15, 2001 at 02:11 PM

sure, the idea of a classless society where nobody is poor or starving is great -- to those who are poor and starving.

the major problem with communism and socialism is that if everyone is put on a system where they only have what they need, and nothing more, there is no incentive for hard work.

yes, your andrew carnegies and your j.d. rockefellers and your bill gateses are all asshole rich people, driven by the overwhelming desire to make more money. so you say, hey great. take their billions and feed the poor. build homes for the poor. help everyone. it's a nice idea. but it'll never work.

why? because the people who are driven to work hard at building fortunes won't build them. they're driven because they're rewarded, hugely, for the countless hours they work. when they find themselves working so hard as they do, only to have everything they've built handed over to those who haven't worked, their incentive is gone.

move on down the line to the people who are being given the handouts. they no longer have incentive to work at all, because they know that all their needs in life will be handed to them. 'from each according to his means to each according to his needs.'

so then you have nobody manning the factory floor, nobody producing anything, nobody building any new factories because the poor are getting fed without earning it, and the formerly rich are now poor, regardless of how hard they worked. eventually, it wears down the country's reserves, and leads to collapse. lines of people standing out in the rain to get their one loaf of stale, moldy bread.

ask the hundreds and thousands of cubans who'll swim 90 miles of shark infested waters and risk death if communism works.
directed economy doesn't work. the only thing that promotes the growth of economy is the freedom to reap the benefits of labor. laissez faire economics. if j.d. rockefeller knows he's going to increase his wealth, he builds another oil refinery. he hires bob smith to work there, and pays him. bob takes his income to the mall and buys stuff. the mall workers make money. the mall owner makes money. they build another mall. meanwhile j.d. is gettin rich as this guy drives around in his car burning gasoline, so he builds another refinery. more people have jobs, and shop at even more malls, and so on... and so on..

------------------
kuru
'dancing is the vertical expression of horizontal desire.'
-robert frost

The theory is, give rich people incentive to spend instead of save, and the money will go to products and distribute to its workers. Those workers make money, and they spend it on products and more workers get money. This continues to happen. You may think, "Hey, all this is is circulating money around, causing a big whirlwind of worthless paper traffic." Well, my friends, you forget the one fundamental rule of economics:

Every time a transaction is made, each side comes away with added value.

If that video card wasn't worth 踰 of enjoyment, then you wouldn't have paid 跾 for it. It cost the supplier 趚, he made a profit, and you made a profit.

This happens in EVERY case. It's the reason supply and demand work. If a product isn't selling, and it's become worthless to have in stock, you'll sell it for less than you paid, because it's better than throwing it in the dumpster. You lower the price until somebody finds it worth that much.

So, the more economic activity there is, the more wealth is created. It's all 'invisible hand' stuff again. When you muck with it, and try wholesale manual manipulation of the market, you will fail. It just doesn't work. It's like trying to mess with the theories of Energy, and incorporating a massive human element into it.

We have our own sort of socialism, it's just not a directed one. The money is distributed from the rich to the poor, via purchasing and spending. It's the most fair way to distribute the wealth, and the whole country wins out in the end on it.

------------------
"Me fail English? That's unpossible!"
- Ralph Whigham