Why Isn't Communism Viewed As Negatively as Nazism?

[Brian Peacock]

That's the thing with communism though, why it will never work - people like to own stuff.

That is just a primitive emotion: the have.

Perhaps so, but i don't see the wholedale personal philosophical overhaul that Marxism requires happening any time soon - and simply changing the economic structure of a society is useless without that necessary first step. This is why communism fails, and why capitalism fails too: where the former fails to recognise the individual the latter fails to recognise society. Both are ideologies with asserted normative benefits that are forwarded on the basis of a necessary adherence to fixed dogmas -- rather than the application of reason and evidence -- in the pursuance of justifiable goods. That is: neither attempt to rationally balance the interests of the individual against the interests of society - they just assert the imposition of different brands of economic structuralism and assume that everyone will come round to them when all other choices about the best way to live a good life have been irradicated.

[PsychoSerenity]

That's the thing with communism though, why it will never work - people like to own stuff.

But there's no reason under certainly some forms of communism why the vast majority of people couldn't still own as much as they do under capitalism. There's no reason to end ownership of personal property. About the largest thing that could be considered personal property is a home. What would need to be stopped is private and for profit ownership of non-personal property e.g means of production or someone else's home.

[Brian Peacock]

Sure. But that's not really communism is it?

[Scot Dutchy]

Communism will never appear because it needs another human property; Honesty which these days is in very short supply.

[PsychoSerenity]

Sure. But that's not really communism is it?

Isn't it?

[Forty Two]

Communism will never appear because it needs another human property; Honesty which these days is in very short supply.

Lol, yes, I recall Marx and Engels writing about the foundational concept of communism being “honesty.”

But if you are correct that communism will never appear, then that’s a huge relief, as communism’s ideology is an affront to human dignity and wherever it is tried, it is a destructive force, which overwhelmingly harms the people.

[Forty Two]

Sure. But that's not really communism is it?

No, it isn’t communism. And also, if one says the means of production cannot be privately owned, then the local baker or hardware store owner or grocer cannot own their business, and he or she cannot expand the enterprise to more than one location, etc. the grocer would be a slave to the state/community, selling only that which he is directed to sell, Etc.

One of the big failures of communism comes from the fact that the community, or certain persons designated by said community, simply cannot accurate plan an economy so that bakers and grocers sell what is needed. No person or committee knows how to do that. It invariably fails and shelves are empty, and lines are long.

[Scot Dutchy]

Just give up will you. You just dont have the foggiest what communism is.

[DRSB]

When I lived in Bulgaria and sat for exams like Political Economy, with the basic reading The Capital, and Diamat, Dialectic Materialism, we were joking that these things should be forbidden and what we were witnessing was so far from what Marks had been envisioning. None of these people that carried out the revolutions had actually read much of the works they were talking about, in the best case the Manifesto. And in what language would they have read them, being half literate many of them. As for Marks himself, a professional writer, never been employed, having himself sponsored by Jenny and Engels, what do you expect to result from other professional revolutionaries that never held a job reading Marks, nobody knows what Lenin lived on for many years abroad... point being, what do you call communism because the former Eastern block was not it, it was also officially Socialism meaning a stage before communism.

[PsychoSerenity]

Sure. But that's not really communism is it?

No, it isn’t communism.

I hate to quote from the Communist Manifesto but:

We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others.

And also, if one says the means of production cannot be privately owned, then the local baker or hardware store owner or grocer cannot own their business, and he or she cannot expand the enterprise to more than one location, etc. the grocer would be a slave to the state/community, selling only that which he is directed to sell, Etc.

One of the big failures of communism comes from the fact that the community, or certain persons designated by said community, simply cannot accurate plan an economy so that bakers and grocers sell what is needed. No person or committee knows how to do that. It invariably fails and shelves are empty, and lines are long.

Oh no! Only selling what the community wants to buy?! How terrible is that?!!!ONE!!

And you might want to look at how modern supermarkets or Amazon operates. For much of it there is no market (not that socialism has any problem with markets, just the private profit). Often the majority of a supply chain from source materials, production, sale and delivery to your front door is under the control of a single company. Nowadays things are centrally planned using big data analysis or production to order technology because it's more efficient than leaving it all to potential market chaos. There's no reason why having such organisations being publicly owned would change anything other than the removal of private shareholders creaming off the top.

[Brian Peacock]

Sure. But that's not really communism is it?

Isn't it?

At least not in it's classical sense, as I see it anyway.

[Brian Peacock]

Just to add that Marxism was a product of it's time and social-historical context which, of course, doesn't mean that the basic principles can't be reinterpreted for the contemporary context. Indeed, i think those basic principles (starting from a more equal distribution of resources) underpin what's come to be known as Social Democracy.

[Scot Dutchy]

Just to add that Marxism was a product of it's time and social-historical context which, of course, doesn't mean that the basic principles can't be reinterpreted for the contemporary context. Indeed, i think those basic principles (starting from a more equal distribution of resources) underpin what's come to be known as Social Democracy.

Of course it was Brian. Things were very bleak for the working man. After WW2 Social democracy did evolve and thank goodness in most democracies it still survives.

[pErvinalia]

Communism will never appear because it needs another human property; Honesty which these days is in very short supply.

It would need the greed and selfishness that has been inbred into us to be diminished and lost. I can't see that happening.

[Hermit]

That's the thing with communism though, why it will never work - people like to own stuff.

But there's no reason under certainly some forms of communism why the vast majority of people couldn't still own as much as they do under capitalism. There's no reason to end ownership of personal property. About the largest thing that could be considered personal property is a home. What would need to be stopped is private and for profit ownership of non-personal property e.g means of production or someone else's home.

Sure. But that's not really communism is it?

Actually, it is. Marx and Engels never wrote about the expropriation of private property in the context of your underpants, toothbrush or roof over your head. They only ever used the term "private property" in the context of privately owned means of production. Only through the judicious application of quote mining can one attempt to argue otherwise.