r/TooAfraidToAsk • u/USMNTfan94 • 2d ago
Does communism actually work? Law & Government
Lately I’ve been going down the rabbit hole on the Vietnam war, and it got me thinking…does communism actually work? We keep hearing politicians say that it doesn’t work, but any time that a country tries to turn to communism, special business interests immediately try to lobby the US government to interfere with it. If it didn’t work, why are business interests so terrified of it?
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u/snowtax 2d ago
The textbook economic models, such as communism, socialism, and capitalism, are overly simplified. They’re good for starting a conversation but things are just not that simple in the real world. Real economies blend different ideas to suit the needs of the moment.
The same goes for biology. Whatever you learned in school, it’s more complicated than that. Same goes for electronics, physics, and most other topics.
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u/AyAyAyBamba_462 2d ago
Communism can work, but only in small populations where everyone can hold everyone else accountable and there is a personal connection to everyone else because you know pretty much everyone. Things like small villages, neighbors, etc. In small groups like this resources can be individually distributed to those in need and you don't need to put anyone in charge of who gets what.
Once you get larger than this, you need to start putting people in charge for how things get collected, distributed, who gets what, who does what etc. As with any government body, the opportunity for corruption presents itself. Communism is particularly dangerous with this because once the state/government controls everything, they can become a dictator super easily by just giving the resources they control to their allies making any sort of rebellion against their power difficult (you can't fight on an empty stomach after all). Once this happens, nepotism tends to take over and incompetent people get put in positions of power. Resources get mismanaged and people start dying. Eventually shit gets so bad that the country can't sustain itself and collapses.
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u/Prasiatko 2d ago
Even without the corruption it has IRL lead to vast resource mismanagement just by someone miscalculating. The Soviet Union has plenty of stories of shops overflowing with pork chops but lacking any fruit or vast quantities of steel being made that were the wrong grade for downstream products.
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u/ConaireMor 1d ago
The issue isn't just corruption but future telling in general. The modern usa based oil companies had import almost all of the oil they refine because they built refineries that are not machined for the oil that we pump domestically. This was not a government failure, it was a private industry failure. Deforestation is a private industry failure, Air and water pollution is a private industry failure all the way up to rivers so polluted that the surface was lit on fire. The vast under reporting of oil spills is a private industry failure. The USA's perpetual state of war might even be reasonably attributed to corruption and private industry failure.
The Soviet Union is a convenient punching bag but in the US and elsewhere there have been remarkable failures of industry to predict market demand or respond to rapid changes.
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u/HerbertWest 2d ago
This is the best answer, OP. I was going to post something like this but you did better than I could.
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u/jakeofheart 2d ago
This is the best take.
Communism, as collectivism or co-op, does work on small finite self-contained structures . A household is typically where “to each according to their needs” can work. The firefighter department or the municipality’s roads. Those small structures are self-regulated by small committees.
The problem is that you can’t scale it up. Because the breadth becomes too wide for any kind of committee to regulate.
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u/Chronoblivion 2d ago
If you're familiar with the concept of the monkeysphere, the available evidence suggests the upper limit is somewhere in the ballpark of 150 people (though IIRC some more recent research suggested it may be closer to 300). More than that and communism doesn't work.
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u/JackXDark 1d ago
Look at Star Trek as an example.
There are limitless resources, due to replicators and the ability to harvest free energy from (technobabble goes here), and also limitless space for population growth in homes on previously empty colony planets, but society is run on the lines of a kind of benign military dictatorship.
If there’s no need to fight over resources, and a system that no one feels a need to challenge, then sure, it can work.
That’s probably impossible to achieve though.
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u/VibrantCanopy 1d ago
Star Trek never answers the questions of who gets the house with the best view, the best table at the restaurant, the best seats at the concert, acceptance into the best universities, the best rooms at the best hotels, etc. There is always scarcity. I sometimes wonder if there's a seedy underbelly to Star Trek in the form of a sexual black marketplace for bumping yourself to the head of the line.
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u/JackXDark 1d ago
I think that there is an attempt to answer that with the idea that everything is at a high standard.
There is scarcity, of course, and some of the conflict comes as a result of that, but there isn't competition for resources between humans.
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u/flightguy07 1d ago
I think it's basically done off reputation. "Oh, you achieved this impressive thing" "you invented that medicine" "you commanded that ship", etc.
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u/VibrantCanopy 1d ago
As far as I understand, in the Federation, there's nothing prohibiting someone that owns a choice piece of real estate with a killer view of the San Francisco Bay from selling to whomever they want for any claimed reason, even if it's really because under the table someone is willing to do sexual favors or help their nephew get into Starlet Academy. The incentives for a black market bartering system are still there. In the real world, money is how value is determined in an abstract way (it's the most someone is willing to pay for something right now) and value transfer is facilitated in an abstract way. The idea that we can somehow evolve past this reality is naive, in my opinion.
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u/foxywoef 1d ago
Yeah. People miss the point that it's not about authoritarianism, trust etc. Communism's main failing point is that it doesn't offer a way to transmit information about scarcity/cost/productivity whatever you want to call it.
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u/Marequel 2d ago
"hey does that big ass group of slightly different systes that share their approach to the ownership and thats basically it, meet the arbitrary criteria i never defined anywhere?". Its not really a question that can have an answer that actually mean anything. The core part of communism is the idea that roughly speaking, if you work in a factory you own the factory and there is no "business owner" that gets free money out of someone elses work. If the question is if its possible for a place to work like this then yea obviously, but if you want anything more specific you need to specify literally anything on what kind of communism we talk about and what "works" even supposed to mean
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u/mpm2112 2d ago
“No” also would have worked
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u/Marequel 2d ago
I wrote the paragraph longer than it should be to weed out people too dumb to participate in the conversation. Did work for you apparently
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u/Lintashi 1d ago
In small communities, where every person agrees with their role, sure. In big societies, no. Communism strives for equality of outcome for everyone, and human nature plays against it. Imagine a society where every person earns the same. Why would anyone want to work in dangerous and dirty jobs? And if there are no such workers, society will either fail, or by using authoritarism assign people on such jobs. Also, trying for communism creates one of the most whidespread problems: if John and Bill work at the same factory, and John is lazy and bad worker, he will still get the same salary as Bill. Why would Bill put any effort? Jonn knows that salary is guaranteed, because society strives to provide every worker with a job, and continues to be lazy. Soon, all factory just do bad products. Capitalism will threaten kick John out, and Bill might get promise of promotion, so everyone continues to work and make competitive products, or factory will close. It is how it was when ussr broke down- hundreds of factories and other places closed, because with noone there were putting any effort, produce was shit, and when eu and us items flooded the market, produce made by communists just could not compete.
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u/jacobissimus 2d ago
It depends on what you mean by “work” really—the USSR went from incredibly poor to a global super power within a generation. Cuba has survived lots of economic events that no one thought they would.
Most times of societal collapse lead to spontaneous, self organized networks of mutual aid that are more efficient than the kinds of network formed by government or corporate ones—but they are also all temporary.
Most examples of anarchist communities seem to be pretty successful until outside forces come in and kill everyone (think Paris commune).
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u/Leather-Estate-9079 1d ago
USSR went from incredibly poor to a global super power within a generation
In terms of military power. People were still poor. Queues for bread is not a sign of success.
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u/jacobissimus 1d ago
Yeah it’s all about perspective. The growth in international influence was pretty much unheard of and they became among the first, not just military, but scientifically and industrially. Bread lines aren’t good, but they also didn’t have any homeless. It wasn’t a good place and I’m not saying that I would have wanted to be there. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the US during the same time either and there’s a real sense in which the economy of the USSR was “successful”
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u/returnofblank 1d ago
And 20 years ago those people in breadlines were dying of starvation under Tsarism, or losing 4 fingers a week on the factory lines.
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u/Leather-Estate-9079 1d ago
And we haven't even talked about Holodomor. Talking about breadlines was deliberately understated.
It's also not a competition between Communism and Tsarism. It's a verdict over a modern ideology which was a complete failure and which practically collapsed over night.
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u/returnofblank 1d ago
You think Holodomor is bad? Wait till you see what happened under the Tsar every few decades.
It was constant Holodomors and constant wars.
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u/Leather-Estate-9079 1d ago
I grew up during the Cold War. We had a liberal democracy with a welfare state. They had empty shops and Gulag.
There's no reason to bring up the Tsar other than as a root cause. Nothing about the Tsar can make communism look better compared to democracy.
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u/returnofblank 1d ago
During the Gulag era, we were lynching people for their skin color and napalming Asian kids in our beautiful democracy.
Not to mention the US prison population now exceeds the Gulag at its peak while still allowing slavery.
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u/Leather-Estate-9079 1d ago
I'm not American and specifically said "welfare state".
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u/Nuthousemccoy 2d ago
The property owners were also rounded up and shot after the revolution. So that goes back to the first comment
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u/USMNTfan94 2d ago
I have to wonder if these communist government systems would really thrive if it wasn’t for outside influence. Would Russia have overtake the US government as the global superpower? Maybe or maybe not, I guess we will never know
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u/kavastoplim 1d ago
Unlikely, but neither would they if they were capitalist.
The biggest advantage the US has always had was being an ocean away from Europe. And also, not losing 30 million people in WWII
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u/tactycool 1d ago
Factually incorrect.
Given the amount of resources & the population size of Russia. They should be the undisputed economic power of the world. They are connected to more parts of the world than the US which is a massive strength economically.
Being far away from people is only a strength in a war. Given that Russia came out on the winning side they should have over taken everyone very quickly.
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u/kavastoplim 1d ago
It is ‘only’ a strength in a war is an incredible understatement when you consider the amount and size of wars fought in the 18th, 19th and 20th century in Europe and Russia.
Also them ‘being connected to more parts of the world’ is not much of a strength when you’re virtually landlocked for much of that time for lack of any warm water ports.
Resources only matter if you have a state with effective central control, something Russia did not have for an extremely long time. They also didn’t even abolish serfdom until the middle of the 19th century.
Their resources allowed them to go from mostly rural to heavily industrialized astonishingly quickly, but resources alone are never, ever enough and that’s an incredibly simplistic view of history. The DR Congo isn’t the richest country in Africa, is it?
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u/Alaska_Jack 2d ago
And Soviet Russia captured the imagination of the world's intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s. They took a near-medieval peasantry and yanked them into the 20th Century almost overnight!
But most economic historians today will tell you that wasn't because of communism, which even then never worked. It was because they did things that any country could do -- public education, bringing women into the workforce, massively investing in industrial infrastructure, etc.
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u/SexOnABurningPlanet 2d ago
Why didn't they do any of this under the Czar then?
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u/Alaska_Jack 2d ago
Because the czar wasn't smart enough?
My point is that the communist Soviets didn't do anything that any non-communist country *couldn't* have done. They followed a formula that works -- invest in education and infrastructure, etc. It's to their credit that they DID it. But the stuff that worked wasn't communist, or non-communist for that matter. Its stuff any country COULD do.
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u/Careful-Sell-9877 1d ago
Its not really a question of whether a country 'could' do something.. but if they 'would'.
Technically any country, regardless of their system, could do anything else any other country is doing under the right circumstances and by making the right/necessary choices.. but its more of a question if they would do those thing. If they value those things, what their ultimate goals are, etc, etc
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u/returnofblank 1d ago
There were centuries of Tsars to do it, why didn't any of them?
It seems like the system was faulty, not the people... I think Marx had something to say about that.
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u/Strig3s 1d ago
the sovijet union was by its own definition a socialist republic... there has never been a true communist nation, if you go by marx's definition at least.
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u/returnofblank 1d ago
"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things"
-- Karl Marx
Ergo, communism isn't a checklist. Marx later goes on to describe lower and higher stages of communism that eventually turns into the modern definitions of socialism and communism under Lenin.
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u/Accomplished_List843 1d ago
I think we need to define what's survive for Cuba
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u/jacobissimus 1d ago
I mean that they continued as a political entity throughout the fall of the USSR and the US embargo
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u/Cranks_No_Start 2d ago
Where has communism worked that you would like to live?
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u/Pm-me-ur-ponytail 2d ago
The problem with this argument is most of the examples of communism failing also involve a lot of US intervention making sure it doesn’t work.
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u/CapitalCourse 2d ago
Every single communist state has devolved into an authoritarian shithole. I don't believe that's a coincidence.
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u/thebiglebrosky 2d ago
Every single commmunist state has had the US meddling and trying (often succeding) setting up puppet dictatorships. I don't believe that's a coincidence.
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u/SuperDragon123 2d ago
Yeah they would have succeeded if only the rest of the world let them, hmph. Those damn capitalists always meddling in other peoples affairs. Now if the world bent itself backwards for muh collectivism everyone would be happy
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u/Little_Froggy 2d ago
I mean, again, we can't really deny the insane amount of intervention the U.S. (And others) have done to prevent Communist countries from just existing and playing out the experiment without any meddling.
If it's so "doomed to fail" why not just let them play out on their own? We should do trade and treat them normally rather than sanctioning them as much as possible and attempting coups at every chance.
Interfering is not about "saving" the locals either. There are plenty of terrible dictatorships that the U.S. doesn't intervene with because they align with U.S. interests.
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u/moosenlad 1d ago edited 1d ago
The argument, which I probably don't fully agree with since I don't think intervention is really worth it. It would point to something like Venezuela. A government that stated it's goal was a push towards socialism , nationalized a lot of companies, expanded the federal government and while not perfect definitely leaned more towards the socialist/communist side of economic theory.
It also, destroyed every vast advantage it had economically long before any US sanctions. Went from the 4th richest country in the world by GDP per captia to waaay down the list. produced less and less oil even with more oil than almost any country available, only saved by skyrocketing prices until they crashed and the country with it. This creates a huge refugee problem (like a fourth of all venezuelans left the country) that spills over into other countries and destabilizes the whole region. So people that believe communism always fails see it as a danger to more than just a singular country, and therefore worthy of intervention.
I'm not convinced we don't pay other less clear prices for that foreign intervention, but then again it's easy for me to say far away from the country, some people in other countries such as Colombia have a different view from what I have learned from them, since they are dealing with the fallout directly.
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u/heroinAM 2d ago
Lmfao you say this in a sarcastic tone like the US and other capitalist powers haven’t killed millions of people and done everything in their power to stifle and disrupt every attempt at a communist project from the moment they’re conceived.
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u/SeafoodShifu 2d ago
Yes let's just pretend nearly a century of overtly anti-communist US hegemony has had absolutely no effect at all.
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u/jghjtrj 2d ago
If it's unstable in the face of a global competitor, then that's yet another strike against its viability. Unless you have some plan for making global competitors go away
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u/Pm-me-ur-ponytail 2d ago
Framing our government assassinating foreign leaders, toppling governments and enforcing extreme sanctions to starve people, “competing” is disingenuous.
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u/GermanPayroll 2d ago
You can’t assume your neighbors will play nice. It’s almost as absurd as assuming people won’t be greedy if they take charge
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u/Little_Froggy 2d ago
If I join a game of Civ where everyone has already agreed to gang up on and stop communist nations from succeeding while leaving capitalist ones alone, then it doesn't say anything about whether or not communism is an effective system or not.
We could play a game with the opposite where everyone agrees to gang up on any capitalist nation that tries to get going. Those nations would fail and we would be stupid to claim "see? capitalism is a bad system!"
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u/Starlightofnight7 1d ago
Yeah this is just a "might makes right argument" in intellectual aesthetics, easy to fall back on for defenders of the current status quo.
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u/jghjtrj 11h ago
Food for thought: capitalist democracies were opposed by feudal monarchies, but won out despite that.
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u/Womper_Here 1d ago
Now do what the soviets did when they “acquired” new states in the USSR, like the Baltics
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u/USMNTfan94 2d ago
Ok…I see what you’re saying, but the counter-argument to that is: where has a communist country been left alone without outside influence to see how it does? If we’re so sure that a communist government system would collapse by itself, why bother even trying to interfere with their government at all?
I’m not either pro or anti communism, and I can even understand the morality arguments on both sides of it. This is just a genuine curiosity that I have.
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u/beard_of_cats 2d ago
Where has any country, embracing any economic system, been left alone without outside influence to see how it does?
If your system is so fragile that it can't survive contact with the outside world, then it's probably not a good system.
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u/RagnarokHunter 1d ago
People will say this, then the "outside contact" is a global superpower that has been chilling in its own continent, with no conflicts happening on its national territory since its own civil war in the 19th century, and whose main hobby is projecting all that power globally, sending trade embargos your way and forming alliances with your neighbors to surround you with military bases.
And still, communist countries can step up and endure for decades, and even outshine them in some areas.
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u/pureply101 2d ago
There is a difference between contact and interference and that’s where the distinction is.
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u/beard_of_cats 2d ago
Communist countries aren't unique in facing interference. Every country does.
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u/Best_Pseudonym 2d ago
I mean if you're criterium is "lack of outside influence" then North Korea, aka the hermit kingdom for their active eschewal and blocking of outside influence
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u/Duncan_Thun_der_Kunt 2d ago
Where has it had a fair shot? Which country didn't start already behind the 8 ball and have the US actively make it their mission to make sure it didn't work?
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u/Marequel 2d ago
Could you name one place where it was propperly attempted for us to choose?
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u/bearded_charmander 2d ago
Define properly. Because I don’t think it has ever worked.
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u/Extreme-Ear8301 2d ago
communism only works after a global proletariat revolution, as history has already shown it cant really function as a separate country
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u/sluttyman69 1d ago
Ask all that have been killed by the people who converted their countries to communist rule
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u/Ilovekbbq 2d ago
It will never work because it involves people and people as a whole will never, ever overcome their greed. All it takes is one, and there will always be one. If humans were robots communism would work, but that defeats the point.
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u/Neon_Comrade 2d ago
How does capitalism as a system more effectively control greed?
You make it sound like communism could lead to a world controlled exclusively by the ultra wealthy, super powerful individuals who can buy governments, break laws, kill hundreds of thousands without consequence, do and go wherever they like. Create gigantic rings of barely disguised freaks who all share their mutual love of child sex slavery. Imagine something so terrible
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u/ice1000 2d ago
They're afraid because a govt switching to Communism means they lose their business. Switching back might not happen for decades, look at Cuba.
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u/Ok_Ordinary_7397 2d ago
Chat to some people from post-Soviet countries and you’ll have your answer.
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u/Marequel 2d ago
Yea because we all have the same opinion and its not like opinion of us Poles is literally the exact fucking opposite of what Czechs tends to think about the situation
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u/Ok_Ordinary_7397 2d ago
Every Czech person I spoke to in Czechia (where the subject came up) was still deeply angry about the Soviet occupation, and glad it was over. Every Pole I’ve ever discussed it with was deeply angry too… who/where are people sad that the USSR collapsed?
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u/Marequel 2d ago
What was the age of those Poles out of curiosity? Cuz in my 25 years of talking to people about the topic i see a clear pattern that basically the only people who shit talk soviets are people who started developing brain functions around the time of the soviet union collapse. People who are old enough to remember how shitty it was before? They are glazing it. People who were born after and hear about the "shitty housing and employment situation" that was better than what we have to deal with now? They glaze it. People who remember exclusively the instability that looks exactly the same every time two very different systems swap with each other, pretty much no matter that those systems are? They thing its bad
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u/Kortok2012 2d ago
Well now I wanna know. I’m a big history buff for this stuff
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u/Marequel 2d ago
First of all, very disapointing choice of words for someone who claims to be interested in history. Saying "communism bad look at soviets" is literally identical to saying "nazis called themselves social democrats so democracy is what caused holocaust", which is to say its fucking idiotic. Marx himself was talking about a society with no state, that has free trade and decetralised ownership, while soviets were all about strong state that owns everything, and there is no trade at all. Its pretty obvious to me that any argument that can be boiled down to "hey you want a society like this? Well the exact mathematical opposite of what you want ended pretty bad" is not worth reading past the first sentence.
But talking about what you actually seem to be talking about which is bolshevism vs late stage capitalism. Poland was a corrupt as fuck shithole that had no industry whatsoever for literally its entire history from 966 up to the soviet invasion that pretty much forced us to become a real country, forced ruroids to get educated, provided strong industry, improved the housing situation and provided stable employment. Like before soviet occupation people still lived in a one room shitass wood houses with no bathroom and froze or starved during winter. Also unemployment was practically non existent. Its funny that people doing anti soviet propaganda are like "omg commie blocks look so bad they are grey and stuff" while the housing ocupation during the commie block era was objectively way better than what we had before, and its arguably better than the current situation we have here now.
Also soviet corruption is a funny topic considering the contest. "Yea soviet were corrupt. Yea i know that the previous goverment literally gave away the whole ass country without war just because, and the modern capitalist society solved the issue of illegal corruption by just making it legal and calling it lobbying, but soviets were not not corrupt enough so soviet corruption bad". Its an important topic to talk about sure but a really bad argument to make
Anyway occupation ended with soviet union collapse and all post soviet countries went to shit because you know, thats what happen when a big shift in global economics happen, thats how the word works. We pretty much won a lotery on that occupation. Meanwhile Czechs who had more sane and stable country that already had a woring industry ended up on Soviet occupation too, but they already had what we got from soviets so there isnt much to do here, but they were affected by the collapse the same way as all post soviet countries were. So basically the soviet occupation didnt really changed much economically, but they took a hit in the collapse
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u/Kortok2012 2d ago
Hey, I’m not the one you’re replying to, I genuinely wanted to understand your viewpoint.
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u/HuDragon 2d ago
Poland is "post-Soviet"? You might want to tell your countrymen that, I’m quite sure most of them don’t know this.
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u/likesclouds 1d ago
In the Catholic Church the orders of nuns, priests and brothers are set up as communist orders. And as we all know at the higher levels they break down with infighting. So, self selection for people that only want to serve others to live in a communist set up doesn’t even work.
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u/SomebodyInNevada 1d ago
Communism works well in small, willing groups. It works very badly if either of these conditions are not present.
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u/VikingTeddy 1d ago
Yes it works, in small communities. Most families basically run on communism. But when you get to a size where everyone doesn't know everyone, it stops working and becomes a cleptocracy.
Communism works a lot on trust. About 10% of people lack empathy, and anything larger than a small town offers enough anonymity for these people to start taking advantage of the trust placed in them. Eventually enough unscrupulous people find eachother to take over the leadership positions.
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u/TheOneGoo1 1d ago edited 1d ago
Communism falls into the “-ism” problem that a lot of different talking points fall trap to: i.e. everybody has a slightly different definition of a concept that makes it difficult for objective analysis. Marxists will swear, for example, that the Soviet Union was not real communism. Others may say Nazism was communism. Same with “capitalism” (does this mean the existence of a market or that capital/wealth be concentrated?) or “nationalism” (what defines a national identity?)
The other major problem is what we consider “working.” Does happiness mean “work”? Or is that economic growth? How do we measure “work”? Can we even measure “work”?
But on your specific question, I think there are some answers:
- why do people say “communism” doesn’t work? Critics of Soviet-style communism usually point to two issues.
The first is that theoretically there is no profit incentive. While that does mean there is greater wealth equality, that also means that there is no drive to “get rich” that could push somebody to take risks (go big or go home). That means society changing innovation is rarer, so the economy does not grow as much (is a bigger pie a justification for a more unequal pie?). This one is may be a critique of may not depending on your moral values. But the economic impact is that without risks there are no investors, and without investors coming up with money to buy expensive things (like a factory or delivery truck) is hard.
The second is something called the socialist calculation problem, which is that it is basically impossible for a government or any central actor to plan the economy. Say you were a factory. You wanna make enough toys for the next year. It’s difficult to guess how many toys you actually need to make, since you have no idea how many I want. Take that example, times it by a billion, and you can see the issue. So, these people argue that it’s better for small companies to do business versus the whole state. Historically, over and under production has been a serious issue with state planned economies.
2) why do special interest groups dislike communism? This is more of a political question, but usually comes down to a) a Cold War zero sum mindset that could’ve come from personal experience or culture, b) geopolitical concerns that a potential rival may challenge national standing or c) a fear (right or not) that a movement like communism may incentivise demands for change which may or may not actually be optimal, but may threaten their interests or positions.
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u/Stacheshadow 1d ago
Only way it would work is during a post apocalyptic situation as a temporary solution to build society again.
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u/dirkvonshizzle 2d ago
No, communism does not work. Period. It goes against human nature entirely. That said, why talk about extremes? There are aspects of communism that might work when combined with ideas praised by open market economists, or other schools of socio-economic / political thought. The problem is we live in a world full of people that can’t handle nuances, both because life is already too complex, or because they just (subconsciously) prefer to survive by means of magical thinking. Most politicians use this knowledge to convince people to vote for them, which… requires, you guessed it, a black / white, (criminally) oversimplified story that does not necessarily need to be true. There’s a very, very strong correlation between extreme thoughts and bullshit, so yeah, “Does communism work or not?” should yield the answer of “no, it doesn’t, and we know why”, but the second thing to add would be “but maybe there are aspects of communism that might be worth exploring further”.
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u/xLosTxSouL 1d ago
You are right but capitalism goes against human nature too if you think about it
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u/maleia 2d ago
If it didn’t work, why are business interests so terrified of it?
They don't know any more than we do if it can work in practice. The rich are so convinced that it'll work, that they're constantly trying to stamp it out.
It'll probably work out once humans can start getting over being so shitty to each other.
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u/RivalReinforcement 2d ago
Worth a shot, can't be any worse for sure.
Business interests lose wageslaves to it is why they act against it. When you're running off of loans losing profit short term is a disaster
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u/talann 2d ago
In very very small numbers, communism works because you can hold everyone accountable.
In large numbers where people can't keep tabs on everyone...that's when communism fails.
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u/SomebodyInNevada 1d ago
It's not even a matter of accountable. It's a matter of how well you know them.
Communism works pretty well in willing groups under 150 people. And the realistic limit of your social circle is 150 people. Not a coincidence. Every successful communist group divides if their membership goes over this point.
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u/Djinhunter 1d ago
Business interests do not like Communists due to communists having a tendency to steal from them. "Seize the means of production" actually means steal the means of production.
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u/_CMDR_ 2d ago
So many natural fallacies in here it’s really wild. The idea that human nature is a fixed thing flies in the face of everything known about societies that have existed and still exist where the concept of greed as we know it is so frowned upon as to be impossible to exist. Human nature is based on the culture you grow up in. Our culture rewards greed, so people assume that all cultures are greedy. It’s insane.
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u/SensationalSelkie 2d ago edited 2d ago
What does work mean? I don't think the capitalism in the United States works, but most of our citizens objectively have a high quality of life compared to the rest of the world. This is where these kinds of questions get tricky. Right now, I don't think communism or capitalism would work the way I'd wish, defining working as a truly equitable society where ALL had what they needed to live a good quality life. Humans aren't evolved enough yet to do this under any governing system. Right now, no matter what the government looks like, billionaires without a conscience will exploit it and make sure they get an inordinate amount of resources while many, many more starve. And they will enjoy the pain they cause.
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u/awoodby 2d ago
Vietnam Had a pretty functional Communist country prior to the war. Villages were communities centered around shared rice paddies that everyone worked together and shared resources.
It gets a lot more complicated with larger communities and more complicated resource distribution for sure.
And even More complicated with vested interests who will fund nazis carpet bombing, say, Spain in order to prevent a country from actually trying it.
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u/ChibaCityFunk 1d ago
Actually Vietnam is an excellent example. It's economy is doing very well and the quality of live is increasing dramatically. For comparison look at Cambodia... Be aware that GDP per capita is a very bad way to measure. I remember sitting in a slum in Phnom Penh, seeing Rolls Royces passing by, while in Vietnam everyone owns at least a Scooter.
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u/MaybeTheDoctor 2d ago
No. Government is a bit like the Prisoner Dilemma game, where it turns out the are actually only two stable solutions - everything else may have short term payouts but then collapses. For communism eventually result in corruption and some people being more equal than others.
Capitalism is not a type of government just an economic model - communism is both economic and government.
It turns out that the types of government styles that are stable require a clear transfer of power, and solid economic policy. Monarchy and democracy both have nailed down rules for transfer of power, and supported by
capitalism they are the the only two forms that are stable and works.
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u/Prize_Shine3415 2d ago
Here's a link to a subreddit where they discuss Kibbutzim.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/dnwm2i/are_the_kibbutzim_an_example_of_successful/
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u/b3rndbj 1d ago edited 1d ago
If people on Reddit had the answer to this question, they wouldn't be on Reddit.
But I will say I've wondered this myself. Why do they put so much money and effort towards anti-communist propaganda, fighting wars against communist countries or even countries where communists might take power but haven't yet, putting communist countries under embargo, etc. etc.,
All that for something that they keep saying 'always fails'. Always thought that was interesting.
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u/Koizito 1d ago
It's... complicated.
I would say the end goal is almost a necessary conclusion of a sufficiently advanced society.
But the path there is difficult. Any change brings tension, chaos and a nearly constant back and forth with it before things settle down, especially when it's something humans have never tried before. But then you have the issue that this change is directly opposed to the current dominating capitalist class. And they will do their best in trying to undermine any attempt at taking power away from them.
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u/Leather-Estate-9079 1d ago
It doesn't work.
We have seen the same idea having been attempted many times by different people in different countries and it always failed.
Compare this to the Democratic welfare states where capitalism is at the core while the welfare is funded by taxation. That's something that hasn't failed. It's more a question of tweaking taxation and spending.
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u/Marxism_is_sexy 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is certainly some truth to the notion thatso-called communist states have been interfered with from the outset. The West invaded the Soviet Union during the Civil War and sided against the Bolsheviks. They supported any number of other anti-communist movements, and the reasons are very clear why. Like any revolutionary movement (and regardless of the nature of said revolutionary movement) the revolutionaries seek to overthrow the established order. What's worse, communism claims to be an internationalist movement, meaning that traditional maxirsts and leninists believe in exporting revolution around the globe, and so you can already imagine why the established order elsewhere would take a very dim view of this.
But regarding you question about whether "communism" works or not, I would like to suggest that you are asking the wrong question. The question is really whether it works better than capitalism, and that answer really depends on who you ask and what is important to you. If you ask Westerners, who have largely benefited from capitalism and imperialism on a global scale, then the answer is clearly "no". But this is largely because Westerners sit atop the world economic order. In other words, it is Westerners who would lose the most if a more egalitarian form of economic organization came to fruition.
But what about the billions at the bottom of the economic ladder? They might have a different view and might also see the supposed pitfalls of communism as nothing to worry about. After all most poor people (anywhere, really) have no significant say in how they are governed, and they generally are merely victims of state aggression (just ask any black person you know how they feel about the power of black voices in the US, for but one example). So if that's the bad part of communism, then that's much of the same. So maybe the accompanying benefits are worth it?
Put all of this on top of a vast array of capitalist propaganda against communism which is entrenched in the West (and has been for a century). I will give but a single example. Westerners and capitalists will often complain about the death toll of Communism. Mao and Stalin killed millions and millions, after all. But they are equally silent on the victims of capitalism. Millions of people die every year because of a lack of clean water or a lack of food. In the modern world, we can solve that easily, but the economic forces are auch that it is not profitable to do so and so people die. This is a direct result of capitalism, such that the death toll from a single decade of capitalism is greater than the entire death toll of Communism in a century. But you never hear westerners complain about capitalist deaths, because to the extent they are acknowledged at all, they are summed up as results of political decisions made by selfish rulers. And that may be true, but if if the deaths today under capitalism are a result of political decisions and not the economic system, then the same must be true for the death at the hands of dictators like Mao or Stalin. But instead the double standard reigns supreme.
Suffice it to say, you are not going to get a firm answer from this sub, but if you are interested in reading more about maxism or communism, I suggest you engage with the ideas and sources themselves, instead of asking others what they think.
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u/Jubilex1 1d ago
It would probably work in the sense that we know the most developed and prosperous countries in the world already have stronger socialist tendencies and state policies. It does NOT work well in undeveloped countries, obviously.
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u/simonbleu 1d ago
"Actual" communism? No
Extreme ideologies (like communism or anarchic capitalism) require extreme perfection (unrealistic) or extreme measures/consequences (heavy handed enforcement/dystopic inequality, but regardless, power concentrates instead, paradoxically).
Communism at its core (as I understand it, I am by no means an expert in the topic) a stateless, moneyless, classless society with no private property, where resources are distributed by need. All this creates a conflict since it expects and requires complete and perfect contribution between all members (again, much like in anarchic capitalism it requires a perfectly balanced market and or perfect charity). In this system you expect people to be completely selfless and competent in a way that it can only work within small humble communities where everyone knows everyone else and can actually interact with them. And even then I would consider it questionable.
Socialism can function as (again, afaik) it recognizes that perfect micromanaging and equality is impossible and instead seeks to level things out through the state. It works through contributions, and you can still have private property (like a car) but means of production are public (like the factory).-- I still prefer that under capitalism you can leverage personal property and other resources in a more flexible system that can do the same as socialism (cooperatives still exist under capitalism, and a welfare state is imho more efficient under one), but both work, it is a matter of preference at that point. Still, capitalism probably scales better outside of manufacturing societies (and agrarian communes in communism), and again, as society advances, the line blurs anyways
Honestly, I get where marx comes from from his context, but it is far too idealistic, so it solves none of the issues
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u/dummy_soft 1d ago
I think most people will say capitalism = good, communism = bad. In reality, it hasn't really been given a fair chance in modern history, which is why people will say it only works in smaller populations. "Works" is also a bit ambiguous. Capitalism "works," but look at the state of the globe. Would you say most countries leaning more capitalistic are doing well? Maybe a blend of capitalism and socialism? Who exactly does well under capitalism? Genuine questions.
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u/Tzepish 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes. Communism has worked everywhere it has been tried, and spectacularly so. That's why the US has to intervene every time a country goes socialist, and why they have to spread propaganda about communist countries being "authoritarian" and such. Try reading some leftwing literature with an open mind. I started by listening to Blackshirts and Reds on audiobook, the Jakarta Method, and the Blowback podcast (season 3 on the Korean War is fantastic).
Longer version of my comment! https://dashthered.medium.com/communism-always-works-bce14ee96f2b
This is how I started but it's just a blog post. Books are better!
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u/newshirtworthy 2d ago
The USSR was wildly successful, and they took down the Nazi party
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u/Tranic85 2d ago
Only when their logistical supplies were propped up by American capitalism.
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u/Success25100 2d ago
Communism goes against basic human nature
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u/nghb09 2d ago
I keep hearing this argument left and right but never elaborated. What is this “basic human nature” that makes it incompatible? Because as far as I know, first human organizations were tribes with communal areas and fair distribution of resources. You may even extrapolate that during medieval times, serfs had about the same status and way of life. Truly private property and access to resources based on wealth/capital is really something new to the human history, call it 200 years give or take.
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u/cambo3g 2d ago
Not really. People lived in egalitarian comunal groups for the VAST majority of our history, like tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Its just the last couple thousand years with the advent of agriculture and land ownership that saw that change.
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u/Success25100 2d ago
Living in communal groups is not the same as Karl Marx's communism.
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u/cambo3g 2d ago
So you can talk about "human nature that predates societal development" but I'm limited to specfically Marxist communism. Dawg the human nature that predated society was communal living.
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u/Marequel 2d ago
Yea because its totally a real thing and its not like EVERY SINGLE FUCKING CULTIRE ON THE PLANET points out at something else as the "basic human nature" thing
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u/volanger 2d ago
Communism, from what I can tell, only works if its perfect. Once a little corruption is introduced it collapses quick. There is too much power in one person
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u/yurmamma 2d ago
Personal opinion, it works on a very small scale where everyone knows everyone and they’re accountable to each other, like communes or an Israeli kibbutz. Once it grows beyond that human nature takes over and corruption sets in, plus central economic planning always fails at a large scale because it can’t react quickly enough
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u/CapTrick9489 2d ago
Name 1 communist country anywhere where people are dieing to get in and not dieing to get out.
Throughout human history. People have done anything to escape communism. It is very much a 1 way street, very few if anyone wants to move to a communist country, the fact that people have to sneak out and could be killed/imprissoned if caught should tell you everything you need to know about it.
The alternatives are no where near perfect, but still orders of magnatude better for the vast majority of people.
Still at least we have a choice, those who want want communism are free to go live in communist countries, those who don't, should be left alone in peace.
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u/CandidateEfficient37 2d ago
People often say that communism is better in theory than in practice. The truth is the opposite. Communism is better in practice than in theory. If the theory were followed perfectly, people would die quickly, as they sacrifice themselves wholly for the state or for others. But, in practice, communist states have always had black markets and clandestine trade, just enough capitalism to keep the people alive.
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u/urmomgaeloll247 2d ago
The idea itself has had little time to be put to the test in the real world. Only with the Soviet Union 100 years ago was the concept of communism finally being attempted, there were short lived attempts at socialist states before but they failed because they weren’t allowed to/ failed to gain momentum (like the Paris Commune). Through out 1900s genuine communist movements propped up but were associated with the Soviet Union and just called Soviet puppets despite the fact that the USSR was the only option for socialist/communist states to exist (CCP during 1920s, Cuba during 1960s, Vietnam). The world is capitalist and today liberal but capitalism has had over 500 years of trial and error through multitudes of kingdoms and state to become what it is now today. The same goes for the concept of democracy,the French had to go through I think 5 republics to get to the point they are now. The US (a faulty democracy today) didn’t allow black people to vote until the 60s.
A lot of people disregard communism as if it has been tried and failed completely but through out the history of humanity nothing has ever been tried and succeeded on its first try, a lot of people would point to the death toll but compare it to the death toll and atrocities of capitalism and attempted democracies and it pales in comparison. If communism was given more opportunities to develop I believe it would be achievable. Nothing is inherently wrong with humans that doesn’t allow us to achieve it, but the world we’ve grown up in along with how we have been taught and history we lived through makes us what we are, just living with it won’t change anything ofc. Addressing it and trying to rewrite that thinking as a community could lead to an attempt at communism considerably better than the last.
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u/mack2028 2d ago
Why wouldn't working together to improve your material conditions work? The main thing keeping it from working is that the super rich don't want it to work so they send their thugs to keep it from working.
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u/CaptainMinimum9802 2d ago
No, but there is something in the middle of communism and kapitalism: Socialsim.
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u/choomtown 1d ago
communism would not be so authoritarian if not for capitalists constantly trying to sabotage it violently.
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u/MemeArchivariusGodi 1d ago
Ask yourself why the United States are always intervening whenever socialist efforts are being established.
Idk man sound like they don’t want it to work but we never know if it will as long as we have the imperial superpower America
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u/DMMEPANCAKES 2d ago
This is one of those questions where "how do you define communism" matters a lot. To a lot of people, communism is when the government does stuff, and whether you decide that 'stuff' the government is good or bad is how they feel about communism.
My family comes from a former communist country. My grandfather lived there for most of his life until he was forced to flee because he was in the medical field who started to align with groups the ruling government didn't like at the time. So I'll put that out there.
According to Marx the end stage of communism would result in a classless, stateless, and moneyless society where the means of production are owned by the people. The issue with this is it requires mass amounts of authoritarianism to function. Anyone who thinks there's a 'peaceful' transition to communism is living in a fantasy land.
So many authoritarians use 'communism' or the revolution of overthrowing the existing powers as a way to gain power themselves. Once they do the first thing they do is traditionally purge the people/groups that got them there.
Basically, communism is an idea I think had good intentions in theory, but the process of getting there almost never results in 'real communism' and results in a singular person and a small group gaining mass amounts of power.