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| quote: | | Which then beckons the question of the social system as put forth by Marx, is the theory of the system of Communism itself faulty or is it the governments who attempt to practice Communism, while attempting to restrain others in pursuit of an "egalitarian society", who restrains the government itself ala China. |
I think its a bit of both. To be perfectly honest, I think human nature would most likely get in the way of communism or anarchism (the latter stages of communism) as I believe humans need something like the state to give them security which communism eventually sets out to destroy. What we saw in Russia was the 'vanguard' period or the counter revolutionary period, after that communism was supposed to turn into anarchism according to Marx when the state would 'whither away'. Unfortunately, the vanguard period never concluded cos Stalin had no intention of letting go of power (I guess it went to his head like it does a lot of leaders...and women!)
If the USSR had somebody in charge that was committed towards fulfilling Marx's ideas out (maybe Trotsky?) and had not basically gone power mad and killed 20 million of their people, we may have a different view towards communism?
It is quite possible that the West had a lot to do with the vanguard period never concluding as the West has to be against communism (the ideology) as, well, obviously, the ruling elite lose all their power and their wealth is distributed equally (hence our governments trying to turn us against communism) To counter the threat of the West, the USSR would need to be a state with a powerful military to protect itself from the US and NATO
This is another reason I dont think communism would work because you have no defence against the West who will fight any kind of collective economy as they are the ones that lose out (due to globalised economy) as the US did in Chile when they voted in Allande (and replaced him with Pinochet who went onto kill 1000s!) If you do build up your defences and have strict laws intending to combat counter revolutionaries etc, you cannot have the free society that Marxism advocates...
Another major factor that helps understand why communism failed in Russia and China (and virtually every other place it was attempted) is because communism was never designed for a peasant agricultural society. It was meant for Britain and Germany, the two industrial giants of the time. Communism is based around the means of (mass) production, and if you dont have that, then you dont have the key ingregient to make communism work! (Mass production means high levels of wealth so more to share around, peasent societies have little wealth to share around)
Still, we say communism has failed, but at the same time, capitalism has failed. The worlds richest country has the highest levels of poverty in the Western world with no free health care (to the same standard as private health care) and has the highest crime. Under communism, altho it was totalitarian politically, economically, they had social security and high levels of employment.
I think communism will unltimately fail as humans desire power/personal security so even without the factors I meantioned above I think it would be doomed from the start, but there is no reason why we cannot take the good points of communism/socialism and blend them with capitalism (as various European countries have shown including the UK)
I think the 'perfect' society (or as near to perfect as possible due to the fact that humans are a bunch of absolute cu nts most of the time!!) is a blend of the two...the economic theory of Keynes (as practiced by the UK before Thatcher took over) when Labour actually WERE socialist!
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oh what do they have in common? ahh i see, welfare 
