For awhile..

A better question is 'what is communism' and does is it possible for it to exist?

In my opinion, communism is impossible as a political system for large groups. Make sure that you separate the political ideology, which is communism, from the economic ideology, socialism. Communism is defined as an egalitarian society where there is no state, and every citizen does what they must do by following what Robespierre called the "Natural Law." Socialism, which is what this thread seems to be about, is the philosophy that everyone works for the good of the community and is given back resources based on what they need. But who decides who needs what?

In any case, being from Poland I can safely say that in large scale real life applications, neither philosophy is viable.

What I think is that communism is particularly useful in the current situation. A well managed communist regime would have a higher general quality of life than current capitalist societies, and money would be circulated much better - as long as the communism does not get too extreme, it would work well. Corruption can stay low when the government is well structured and managed.
(in short, communism is awesome)

Communism is required in the path to a truly utilitarian ind egalitarian society.

Isn't 'Animal Farm' required reading anymore? The schools these days!

The short answer is: no, communism is based on a faulty premise (that people will work just as hard for the Greater Good in nonemergency conditions as they would for themselves); while it is a wonderful basis for a high-coercion society, as an economic system it sucks.

I haven't read Animal Farm, but I have seen the film :)

yes...at least in texas it is required

One should not confuse communism (a society in which property is held in common) with Communism (the doctrine of a Communist Paty). Even the Communists admitted that their societies were not communist; their claim was merely that their societies were socialist and that they (the Communists) were working towards communism. (I say ‘was’, since I understand best what the Soviet-sphere Communists claimed.)

Of course, they also claimed that their societies were democratic, so what does that tell you?

tehsplode... a true communist society would have no need for money

No, communism can never work. it is inherently flawed and will usually lead to totolitarianism

Well, communism can and does work, just not in the realm of humanity. In a hypothetical state of machines, communism would work beautifully. Ants, bees, and the like obey communism fairly well, as well. It's a question of that "hive mentality"

Communism (holding property in common) can and does work in many families, cooperatives, and intensional communities (‘communes’).

There's an example I never thought of...
With proper training from a young enough age, we could logically create a feasible communist society.

ok let me clarify, it can never work on the scale thats its been implemented before. but then again capitalism cannot work either, as it has to constantly grow or collapse.

Wasn't Marx's idea that capitalism was doomed to collapse into a communist state?
Problem with Communism is that its too stagnant. Nothing ever changes under a communist state, and with no innovation, people get bored, frustrated, and eventually want to change things.

For a true measure of why humans and other organisms are selfish, I thoroughly recommend 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. It both explains the competition and co-operation we see all around us.

Ants and bees may obey communism because of a hive mentality but then you have to ask yourself, why do they have a hive mentality? They are all sisters who share on average 50% genetic material. Therefore any single ant is liable to sacrifice itself for the betterment for at least two other sister ants because the gene that carries the "sacrifice yourself if you can save at least two sister ants" will most likely live on in another sister ant and the gene will flourish. But more importantly is sacrificing for the queen who will produce thousands and thousands of sisters, such that genes for selflessness toward the queen are very much preserved in the future children of the queen and importantly, future queens.

Humans have made quite a few leaps and bounds in denying their evolutionary heritage. Culture is becoming a stronger and stronger driving force behind our behaviour and may supersede whatever selfish instincts we harbour. That said, I'm highly skeptical that there will be a culture shift of the magnitude that people will be highly altruistic to non-kin.

If communism were to arise I would say it's because of overwhelming technological advances and population control. At this point, manual labour would be a relic of the past as technology takes over all these facets and the limited humans remaining would be very much equal in well being... but at this point, humans might be considered obsolete or superfluous.

However, I have no doubt that if you took the tangent of the political spectrum today you'd find that there is very much a shift in developed Western countries toward socialism, especially with Obama at the helm of the United States, one of the last hold outs on socialism. Will this shift carry us all the way over to communism?

I'll reiterate my short answer: No.

>Humans have made quite a few leaps and bounds in denying their evolutionary heritage. Culture is becoming a stronger and stronger driving force behind our behaviour and may supersede whatever selfish instincts we harbour. That said, I'm highly skeptical that there will be a culture shift of the magnitude that people will be highly altruistic to non-kin.

But people are already highly altruistic to non-kin, although very few people are highly altruistic to *everybody*.

The reason is that, far from denying our evolutionary heritage, culture simply takes advantage of it and co-opts it. (Biological evolution often works that way itself, but I digress.) After all, we don't directly perceive others' genes, and even our intellectual understanding of kinship doesn't interact directly without our instinctive predisposition to help kin.

What we have is an instinctive predisposition to divide the world into ‘them’ and ‘us’ (often at several overlapping levels) and to help ‘us’. Evolution makes our genes support this because we will tend to classify our kin (whom we grow up with) as ‘us’. But there are many other ways to see people as ‘us’, and then we tend to be altruistic towards them as well.

First of all... no real altruism exists.

Second, the altruism you may be thinking of between friends is not all that poignant really... we just do it because it suits us. Same goes for altruism in a family.

Also, I don't think culture can ever completely transcend our instinct. Our instincts still affect us tremendously and will forever.

As far as "us" and "them" and altruism between "us"... I agree...
One of the reasons for loyalty to those who are "us" who are not genetically related is if we identify with them for other reasons... such as religion, values, philosophy, etc. As many have pointed out, now that humans have a society and culture... which lower animals do not for the most part have, we also will carry on not only genetic information from generation to generation, but also societal/social information through inculturation and communication... The hive mind need not be limited only to genetically related individuals, when the mass mind has more than genetics as it's information... Ideas have a life unto their own - they are information too.

Communism can NEVER work. End of argument.

Toby, I would argue that true altruism is incredibly rare. Apparent altruism is very common, but there is often an ulterior motive. It doesn't matter that we're not always conscious of kin relationships because much of these decisions are made unconsciously. You don't have to be consciously aware that your uncle has a 1/4 chance of having any particular gene in your body for you to be programmed to act "altruistically" toward your uncle if he would derive at least four times the benefit of your cost. It's simply that there's an evolutionary driving force that penalizes either side of 1/4.

Perhaps altruism exists fleetingly by some freak mutation, but it is quickly weeded from the gene pool because it is simply not sustainable, and too open to exploitation. If we truly do have non-kin altruism than this is clearly an evolutionary side effect that will ultimately be exploited by those who exploit non kin and help just kin until their selfish genes are more numerous in the gene pool.

Perhaps our hardwiring dates back to times in which we could be fairly sure most people in our groups were related and so developed a relatively unconditional sense of altruism that has carried over to all groups now, but this is a minimal case if it does exist. You can definitely notice that people favour family over anyone else.

If you viewed our society from a memetics point of view, though the field is burgeoning and perhaps only very metaphorical at least, then you can show that culture may override biological imperative as memes compete with genes. It is an epic battle between replicators with us caught in the middle, or so the story goes.

Currently, I would definitely say altruism is the exception to the rule and that you can depend far more upon people's selfishness than upon their altruistic generosity. Most acts of kindness expect, if only implicitly, some reciprocation, however indirect it may be. Many acts of kindness are done to satisfy some thirst for validation. And a great deal more are done in exchange for social acceptance, status, and desirability as a mate.

>You don't have to be consciously aware that your uncle has a 1/4 chance of having any particular gene in your body

It's not a question of whether we're consciously or subconsciously aware. Without modern technology, we cannot be aware of genes at all; or said another way, we cannot be aware of whether somebody is REALLY our uncle. We can only go (generally subconsciously) on cues that will tend to be correlated with relationships, like similar features and habits, growing up with somebody (in the case of siblings or cousins), growing up to see someone as an authority figure (in the case of parents, uncles, etc), or raising someone (in the case of children —although for mothers, there is also bearing and nursing, which can create quite powerful ties).

In other words, our evolution-derived tendency to sacrifice for our kin MUST rely on a mechanism that can also lead us to sacrifice for our non-kin, because we have no way of detecting whether or not people are really kin or have merely filled an analogous role in our lives. Even a mother's tie to the children that she bears (which may well be so strong because it couldn't be faked) can now be invoked by merely surrogate motherhood (which can cause a lot of problems when a surrogate mother comes to love a baby that she agreed 9 months earlier to give up).

Most of the time, this falls short of altruism. Many people are quite willing to make small sacrifices for strangers, but most people would not sacrifice so much that you would call them altruistic. (And anyway, it's not really ‘altruism’ if it doesn't extend to everybody, which it usually won't.) But when communism (since this is a thread about communism) does work, and (as far as I'm aware) this is always on a small scale, I think that it does co-opt our innate tendency to help those like us, taking advantage of an ‘us against the world’ attitude.

>Most acts of kindness expect, if only implicitly, some reciprocation, however indirect it may be.

There are exceptions, but I'll agree with that for most acts. Of course, communist societies can take advantage of this too!

I watched a docco from the BBC on East Germany, it makes you wonder if communism might work with today's much better tech. If you could track production and see who is contributing what it could overcome a lot of the problems they faced back then

But I don't think it'd be worth trying

Communism with modern technology is a chilling thought.

COMMUNISM CAN NEVER WORK!

It could under special conditions, where it is not a true communism, just like we are not a true democracy. We are close, but there are many other countries who are even closer

@Diplomat: We heard you the first time. And the second. And the third and fourth. Care to tell us why you think communism can never work?