Communism works...yeah, NOT!

[pErvinalia]

Stalin let the team down on the beard front.

[Hermit]

Mao even more so. Mao didn't even have a mou.

[Svartalf]

Mao was no real commie, he was just an authoritarian.

[pErvinalia]

Santa Claus?

[pErvinalia]

Stalin let the team down on the beard front.

Doh! That should be Lenin...

[Svartalf]

Santa Claus?

Actually Engels, as I just learned.

[pErvinalia]

That was my real guess. And I'd want to get that right going by my signature...

[Hermit]

Mao was no real commie, he was just an authoritarian.

Oh. Not a true Scotsman then? Now tell me the difference between him and Stalin, Trotsky or any other communists who wielded political power for an extended period. I mean, apart from their facial hairstyles.

[Svartalf]

Who says Stalin was a commie? He just knew which way his bread wa buttered and took over the Soviet machine.

[Hermit]

Exactly.

[Strontium Dog]

Mao was no real commie, he was just an authoritarian.

But how else would you extinguish individual identity without a big dollop of authority.

[klr]

I should stop using all this communist software then ...

[Seth]

Small co-operatives can work, if run on a practical basis of hard work and volunteer labour, but not if they attempt to model an outdated, romantic view of a flawed political system...

Yup. The key word being "volunteer."

[Seth]

Yup, communism sucks. Interesting though that the US is working to prove you can fuck up capitalism too. Harder to do, sure, but this country is trying oh so hard to give the rest of the globe someone to point at and say "well there goes the neighborhood"

It's the Marxists who are fucking it up. If we could just get rid of them, capitalism would recover the economy and people would be much more free.

[Seth]

co-operatives aren't communism, nor are they representative of communism.

True, but the one in the OP seemed to be trying to cling on to a romantic communist image from the past...

But as I said, attempts at real communistic enterprises will struggle in a capitalist framework. Particularly one so uber-capitalist as the US.

Well, yeah. Duh. That's because a capitalistic framework is diametrically opposed to the theory and practice upon which communism is based, which is that everybody owes everybody else a duty of free labor.

I don't work for anybody unless they pay me or I choose to do so for my own reasons, and if you starve because you don't want to work and insist other people owe you something, it's not my problem and the world is a better place without you.