Has there ever been a communist society that worked?

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Monkie, monkie...where did you pull this from? Come on, admit you made it up. I've read a lot of history books by very prominent historians, and certainly none of them would support such a claim. Pre-Soviet Russia was a major European power, and in fact a major world power. Find me ONE credible historian who would assert this, and I'd be impressed.

Herr Borie G, my professor made a comment along these lines in a "History of the USSR" class I took this past semester when she was comparing the levels of infastructure and industry built in the major powers of World War I. Plus I thought it should be pretty self-evident, what with Russia just recently doing away with serfdom and all. It was a major power of course, this I never challenge, but it was woefully underdeveloped.
In fact, the schlieffen plan counted on this underdevelopment in a way, since Russia's lack of infastructure made it's organizing troops take much longer than the western powers, the Germans counted on being able to take out France before the Russians were adequately organized.

[chequita guevara]

Part 1.

Just because a country is a "global" power doesn't mean it isn't in the 3rd world. China could drop thermonuclear ICBMs anywhere in the world (grant, not many), but it's still a country where the majority lives in poverty, with some folks still living in caves.

Indonesia today is a colonial empire. You could very accurately refer to Indonesia as the Javan Empire, and it is not only surpressing nationalist movements all around the archipelago, but is settling most of the country with Javans (especially Irian Jaya, aka West Papua and Kalimantan, aka Borneo).

Russia was a great power for only one reason, masses of people. It could throw millions and millions of people at any agressor. But Russia hasn't won an offensive war since before the Napoleonic period (and that was against the decrepit and corrupt Ottomans), though when someone is foolish enough to invade it, they tend to get their ass kicked).

In someways, Russia was a colonial power, however, mostly Russia was a colony of France. Around three quarters of all the capital in Russia was French, and most of the rest was English. Yes, Russia was industrializing rapidly, but that's common when you start from zero.

Furthermore, by the time the First World War and Civil War were over, Russia was almost back in the stone age. The Communists, for all their faults and horrors, took a country with no steel production and made it the worlds largest producer of steel. They took a backwards country which still used wooden triangles for surveying the most advanced scienftific country in the world! They took a country which was incapable of projecting its power beyond its borders and made it the second most powerful country in the world.

And that was with a twisted, corrupted, and deformed version of socialism. One can only imagine what wonders they would have accomplished had they not degenerated.

So, has communism ever been successful? Define successful.

Communism was the mode of life for the first three million years of human existence. It took us from austrilopithicus afarenses to homo hablis to homo erectus to homo sapiens sapiens. It enabled humanity to colonize the globe and the islands of the far seas. But that was primative communism, based on humanity's low productivity and the necessity of every member of the group to contribute if the group was to survive.

Since the rise of capitalism, there have been communist movements, reactions agains the new, harsh, cold way of doing things. Communism was at first a reaction to the abolishion of the "natural" ties between people, which was replaced by cold, unfeeling cash. Duty and obligation was replaced by the market. Various religious sects sprang up, trying to "recapture" the sense of community that was being lost: Quakers, Shakers, Anibaptists, Levellers, Diggers, Mormons, and many more. In the US, many communities were established, such as the Oneida community. In England, Robert Owen tried to establish a patriarchal communist society, but eventually when the economy crashed, he was faced with a choice of exploiting his employees or closing the company (so as not to compromise his principles). He chose tha later and tried again at New Harmony in Indiana, USA. The Mormons tried to establish a communist society at Navoo, IL, USA, eventually being chased to Utah.

Part 2, will have to wait 'till later since I wanna watch Cops: The Top 15 Moments of All Time, er, and Frontline.

[Bereta_Eder]

The big ass mothership has arrived and all you rats better squander off in haste cause your brick is sinking

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Graag

A nice thought, but don't hold your breath
It's pretty pointless being a communist if you belive it isn't going to work until humanity has evolved beyond greed.

Not beyond greed, mind you, but merely to a point where the majority of humanity is willing to live for their fellow man. I believe that such a point is not far away.

Seems to be the most obvious observation considering USSR, China etc. The question is how to actually do this.

There was system of worker's councils in the early USSR, they were called Soviets. So this sort of thing isn't completely unknown in human history by any means.

What I really want to know, and this is something I haven't seen any communist system come close to achieving, is how to to communise wealth without removing the incentive to work.

This is virtually a non-issue actually. Nowhere in the classics of Marxist literature will you find an advocation of absolute equality of condition. What we do advocate however, is virtual equality of oppurtunity.
In other words, there won't be the massive disparity of wealth that we see in capitalist societies.

[monkspider]

Che, at least! I have tried to hold down the fort in your absence comrade.

[Graag]

Monkspider -

Not beyond greed, mind you, but merely to a point where the majority of humanity is willing to live for their fellow man. I believe that such a point is not far away.

Funnily enough I almost agree with you. Too heavy to go into now, but I tend to think this may well happen, and when it does it will be utterly spontaneous, and without any planning. Marx had the right idea, wrong timeframe.

There was system of worker's councils in the early USSR, they were called Soviets. So this sort of thing isn't completely unknown in human history by any means.

Yes I remember reading about them, though I also remember they were largely ineffective and a bit crap. But then so is my memory.

This is virtually a non-issue actually. Nowhere in the classics of Marxist literature will you find an advocation of absolute equality of condition. What we do advocate however, is virtual equality of oppurtunity.
In other words, there won't be the massive disparity of wealth that we see in capitalist societies.

That is fair enough, but I find it hard to see how this can be achieved. People are just not willing to work if a huge poriton of their income is taxed. At least until everyone evolves and all that good sh*t.

Nicely rebutted btw, Che.

I have a lot of sympathy with communists (I was one once, though for about a week). My problem is simply that the communist struggle is utterly worthless. Marx was right, it will happen one day, but no amount of cajoling, good will and propaganda will bring it about. It has to come from the hearts and souls of the people, not from a bunch of hopeful idealists.

[Ramo]

Communism can only work with a minimal state. A strong state invariably crushes any form of revolution. It always has and it always will.

[JCG]

Once communism succeeds, it apparently always takes the necessary measures that it believes will ensure its continued existence.

Ironically, these same measures also ensure that its triumph will be fleeting.

(unless they are relaxed/reversed, but such changes would merely be temporary and opportunistic)

So sure, it can "work" alright in theory, and but not forever* in practice.

*Specific durations may vary due to external/internal conditions (witness the Cuban embargo), but these can and will eventually change.

[The Vagabond]

In what concerns pre-Soviet Russia being a third world country, this doesn't make sense. Sure, Russia was considerably more backward than the most developed European countries. Yet it was far more advanced than the real third world. Hell, after all, what third world country would have been capable of building the longest railway in the world -- TransSib. Make no mistake here: if Russia were truly a third world, it would have been colonized in the same way as India, or at least in the same way as China. Unfortunately for Russia, it is now that she is closer to being a third world country than at any other point of her history.

[The Vagabond]

Re: Part 1.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Russia was a great power for only one reason, masses of people. It could throw millions and millions of people at any agressor. But Russia hasn't won an offensive war since before the Napoleonic period (and that was against the decrepit and corrupt Ottomans), though when someone is foolish
enough to invade it, they tend to get their ass kicked).

Masses of people was not sufficient, as the examples of India and China show.

As for not winning offensive wars, this only underscores the benevolence of our national character.

Furthermore, by the time the First World War and Civil War were over, Russia was almost back in the stone age. The Communists, for all their faults and horrors, took a country with no steel production and made it the worlds largest producer of steel. They took a backwards country which still used wooden triangles for surveying the most advanced scienftific country in the world! They took a country which was incapable of projecting its power beyond its borders and made it the second most powerful country in the world.

With this I agree. The success of the early Soviet Union was truly amazing. *sigh* If this could only have happened without Stalin's tyranny...

[Graag]

My problem is simply that the communist struggle is utterly worthless. Marx was right, it will happen one day, but no amount of cajoling, good will and propaganda will bring it about. It has to come from the hearts and souls of the people, not from a bunch of hopeful idealists.

I dislike quoting myself, but I would very much like to hear a communists comment on this.

[ranskaldan]

Re: Part 1.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Just because a country is a "global" power doesn't mean it isn't in the 3rd world. China could drop thermonuclear ICBMs anywhere in the world (grant, not many), but it's still a country where the majority lives in poverty, with some folks still living in caves.

But take into account the fact that during the Maoist era, most of China was in caves (or slightly better). In a decade or so, we will have finished moving 25% of the population to a standard of living that is reasonably first-and-a-half world.

And to paiktis: no there are no bubbles. Those "bubbles", or I think you mean special economic zones, were set up 20~ years ago to test capitalism out and see how well it works. And it worked really well, so now capitalistic reform applies to the entire country. The word "communist" is retained to protect the government's legitimacy (or "mandate of heaven" as Western observers like to call it, although I find it quaint.)

And that was with a twisted, corrupted, and deformed version of socialism. One can only imagine what wonders they would have accomplished had they not degenerated.

But the degeneration was inevitable. I'll go into that later.

So, has communism ever been successful? Define successful.

Communism was the mode of life for the first three million years of human existence. It took us from austrilopithicus afarenses to homo hablis to homo erectus to homo sapiens sapiens. It enabled humanity to colonize the globe and the islands of the far seas. But that was primative communism, based on humanity's low productivity and the necessity of every member of the group to contribute if the group was to survive.

Yes, but THAT mode of communism works for small family groups or social groups where everyone knew each other. It does not work for large, populous nations, as history has cruelly demonstrated.

Since the modern world is consisted of mainly populous industrial/post-industrial nations, and the success of communism in pre-agricultural societies is irrelevent to us, I would consider communism to be unsuccessful.

Since the rise of capitalism, there have been communist movements, reactions agains the new, harsh, cold way of doing things. Communism was at first a reaction to the abolishion of the "natural" ties between people, which was replaced by cold, unfeeling cash. Duty and obligation was replaced by the market. Various religious sects sprang up, trying to "recapture" the sense of community that was being lost...

Yes, capitalism is cold, is harsh, is cruel. But it works: it keeps society alive and moving forward. There may be a better, utopian system out there one day that will grant humanity happiness and prosperity -- but until that utopia arrives, it is capitalism that will keep humanity eating and breathing. Communism, unfortunately, does not, even though it is supposed do.

And no, communism is not the utopian system. It provides little incentive for productivity and no cushion for bad decision-making, and hence results in the eventual decay and implosion of society.

[Kontiki]

Don't forget that a significant reason most "communist" states have failed is because they haven't been able to go about with their thing. Ever since the end of WWII, when the vast majority of communist states have come into being, the west and particularly the US has done everything it could to freeze out and/or directly interfer with any country that has flirted with communism, which often led to the cuddling up to the USSR and its Stalism. It's hard to say how much more successful some of the experiments may have been if left alone.

Note, this isn't to say that I think the communist states of past and present haven't had many other problems, just that there were always external pressures on them as well.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Don't forget that a significant reason most "communist" states have failed is because they haven't been able to go about with their thing. Ever since the end of WWII, when the vast majority of communist states have come into being, the west and particularly the US has done everything it could to freeze out and/or directly interfer with any country that has flirted with communism, which often led to the cuddling up to the USSR and its Stalism. It's hard to say how much more successful some of the experiments may have been if left alone.

Note, this isn't to say that I think the communist states of past and present haven't had many other problems, just that there were always external pressures on them as well.

Some of these experiments might have been quite successful. I don't rule out the possibility that a command economy under a strong and able leadership can achieve miracles in relative short times. If nothing else, a command economy provides a warm, safe environment for a country to develop without worrying about Latin Americanesque collapses.

But the problem arrives when this economy reaches a reasonable second-world level -- it will be unable to move forward without the brilliance and spark of capitalism. Instead, it will be utterly dependent on state machinery, and vulnerable to anything from bad/insane leadership to low productivity. Eventually the system folds in upon itself due to the utter lack of anything being done, and that's the end of story. If the country is lucky it can make a painful transition to capitalism; but if it isn't, the state collapses and everyone starts over from third-world again.

Of course, some countries skip the initial boom-period and go straight to the stagnating, crumbling period. China had a boom after communist takeover (49-59, 63-65) which had its achievements quickly wiped out by the ensuing madness (60-62, 66-77). That proves a problem for far too many nations and has cost far too many lives.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I.S, So you are saying that family is still monarchial? Damn, I better get a job real soon cause he aint gonna fund my tuition. I gotta worry about starving!

I think you have fallen prey to propaganda that monarchs are all evil hording people. Kings of Britain during the 1700s and 1800s were fairly enlightened and would not be adverse to funding education for the people.

Just because a country is a "global" power doesn't mean it isn't in the 3rd world. China could drop thermonuclear ICBMs anywhere in the world (grant, not many), but it's still a country where the majority lives in poverty, with some folks still living in caves.

But Russia was never considered a 3rd rate country. It was always a power and a dangerous one. Just ask the Poles.

The Communists, for all their faults and horrors, took a country with no steel production and made it the worlds largest producer of steel.

That is not that impressive, seeing as before the Great War, Russia was the world's leading producer of steel. Seeing as all the necessary factories were already in place, it isn't hard to get them back online.

They took a backwards country which still used wooden triangles for surveying the most advanced scienftific country in the world!

In certain areas, like space. They failed miserably in other fields, like agricultural tech.

They took a country which was incapable of projecting its power beyond its borders and made it the second most powerful country in the world.

Ask any diplomat in Europe in 1910 and they'd say in 10 years Germany could not take Russia. Russia was going in leaps and bounds before the revolution and it was only a matter of time before they were powerful.

Unfortunetly the communists decided to make them powerful through a military despostism rather than a capitalist republic, in which route if could have gone.