to think most people would like us to live in a communist country?

[wannaBe]

"landlords shouldn't be allowed to rent for more than x amount of money."

"People shouldn't be allowed to sell their houses for more than a certain amount of money."

"People shouldn't be allowed to earn more than a certain amount of money (I'm talking salary here not benefits)."

This isn't a thread about who is better off and who can afford to do what - that's been done to death elsewhere.

But do people really think we would be in a better place if we didn't live in a free economy and where we were dictated to by the state how much we could and couldn't earn/whether we could or couldn't sell our house etc? really?

paranoid android you are being deliberately obtuse. We are saying that attempts to set up communism result in massive suffering? Do you deny that? And there is no way you could set up one without suffering, unless everyone in the society agreed - unlikely.

If you think that kibbutzim aren't properly communist because they are surrounded by capitalism, then I suppose you agree with Trotsky that 'socialism in one country' wont work and we need world revolution. Except then you need everyone in the whole world to agree with you - or you will end up with truly awful massacres, no where to escape to and we would essentially be living in 1984.

I am also saying that there is no proper blueprint for what a communist society should look like. Marx certainly didn't write one (the communist manifesto was a bit of a rush job and it is rhetoric rather than details). So no one really knows what a proper communist society should look at or how it could work. That's partly why there is so much infighting between communists (the other reason is that there is so much power at stake) and they have to start out by wiping each other out before they turn on the general population.

For the pp, who asked what happened when you got old.

My dh is from the USSR. From listening to my mil, it seems that in her area, things worked like this. People had small apartments. My mil's family were relatively well off so they had a three bedroom apartment. My pil's family (naval officers and engineers) were more normal and had a one bedroom apartment, which didn't have its own bathroom. So when they got married, they moved into my mil's parents apartment (because there was no way you could get your own apartment). When your child was born (and people usually only had one child, because there was no space, and because I think people were generally so miserable about life) you went back to work and your mother/mil looked after the baby. For a while my mil also had her infant cousin living with them, as the mother was working in Moscow (they were a long way from moscow) Once your dps were too fragile, you looked after them. When they died you got the apartment and the cycle began again.

I suspect that even those posters who start threads about feeling isolated wouldn't want to move to Comrade Hully's world, where three generations of family can live in a one bedroom flat.

I think life would suck in this sort of regime unless you were somewhere in the party and then you could fall out of favour.

Recently I watched a documentary about Chenobyl and part of the reason why this happened was because the manager was trying to increase output at the power station to be a good citizen etc and took risks.

I think this thread started out with people talking hypothetically and ideologically about what would make an 'model' society. One that isn't based on wealth, where the rich and poor are so divided.

Now you all seem to be stealth boasting about how much you know about A level political history.

It isn't actually going to happen. There has been no decree that we are about to become a communist state.

It is hypothetical. It's not a competition. There are no prizes.

I'm not being obtuse, deliberately or otherwise, I'm making a valid point that is almost entirely ignored.

And yes I do agree with Trotsky on a theoretical level. Thats not so odd in a Marxist framework, and since its all theoretical anyway.....

Paranoid Android, you're a nutter. It's funny how the left can never admit they were wrong, when it all goes tits up, it's because it was never "truly" left-wing/socialist/communist in the first place.

Capitalism might not be perfect but it's the best system. Human beings are flawed, so any system we create will always be flawed. The most dangerous people are those hell-bent on creating "perfect" societies and forcing people to go along with them.

Actually, the thread started with the op saying that she thought people on mn didn't understand the oppressive implications of a system where the state controlled the economy. It was never meant to be a theoretical discussion of a model society.

Then a lot of posters came on the thread talking about how wonderful communism would be and showing that, yes, the op was right and many people on mn don't understand what a state without a free economy looks like.

So other posters, who may have done A levels in history or may have actually read a book or listened to the news or met someone who came from a communist system or who just aren't completely blinkered by lefty ideology, have tried to put them right.

But no, they will just keep bleating 'but that isn't real communism'. No, of course it isn't, but that is what a state without a free economy looks like, where people have tried to institute communism.

So, in essence, the thread has proved the op completely right.

And I totally agree with Helga. People who are more interested in ideas and perfection than reality and actual people are frightening and dangerous - whether they are communists, fascists, neoliberals or jihadists.

I hope I wasn't boasting Tufty, I just think it is an interesting subject to discuss and the reference to history was so the other posters thought i wasn't just making it up as I went along.

also trying to challenge people to why they think this is a good way to run a society.

Has anyone read 1984? :)

Nice.

Niceness won't stop the rats chewing their way through your eyeballs.

(yes, alemci)

I think that one of the failings of communism is exactly that human beings are flawed.

In Wild Swans, Jung Chang describes the workers in the communes, in early communist China, realisation that a lazy worker and a hard worker both got the same size bowl of rice at the end of the day. Not a great incentive for hard work.

Another one here who grew up in communist Eastern Europe. Paranoid and others, I know there is a big difference between ideology and regime. Indeed, communist regimes, past or present, have been quite different from the theory.

However, please stop telling people who lived in a communist regime that it wasn't true communism. A political prisoner and human rights activist in my country, very knowledgeable in the theory of politics and politically active his entire life, explained it like this: the propaganda began when you were born and you rarely had a moment without it. The communist regime impacted ALL aspects of your life. You knew what communism meant from a very early age. The poverty, the lack of freedom, the torture, they were all real and all done in the name of communism. Ideology is written in books. How can someone say that what they read in a book is TRUER than the real experiences of poeple who lived it.

Because we had a few and different types of communist regimes but not one matched the neo-communists' ideologic belief of how it should be, I think it is fair to say that true communism so far remains the one that actually existed.

The OP was completely absurd. It stated that 'most people' (debatable for a start) wanted to live in a communist state. Which is simply not true even on MN, this putative hotbed of leftwing ideology. As has been proved by the fact that not one person has said "Ooh yes, I'd love to have spent a few decades in the USSR, it must have been a hoot!". Everyone has accepted that in general it doesn't work. There have been attempts to suggest alternatives to the status quo which as far as some of us are concerned isn't 100% peachy. But this has lead to some of the more right-leaning amongst us doing lots of indignant, sarcastic frothing along the lines of "Oh yes, nothing like being strung up by the gulags with no breakfast, and there was never anything in the shops!" YES, WE KNOW IT WASN'T GREAT! But that doesn't mean capitalism is totally perfect. And suggesting that doesn't mean we want to see North Korean tanks piling off the ferry at Dover.

Reminds me of that Harry Enfield character. "Whingeing about capitalism Want to be oppressed and deprived of basic freedoms? 'Cos that's what will happen!"

So to answer the OP, yes YABU to think that most people want to live in communist country.

Having spent time in communist and post communist Russia and visiting Cuba and talking to the people there I would say that a country where a doctor earns more than a bin man is the place I want to be every time.

Why would you want to live in a society where hard work and ambition isn't rewarded?

And seeing the young women on the streets of Havana selling their bodies and the hillside shacks that people live in isn't nice.

There are prostitutes in capitalist/democratic countries too, and poverty in much of the world regardless of the political system.

But they aren't prostitutes nooks, they're entrepreneurs using gumption and ability to make the most of their opportunities! They're only prostitutes under communism.tsk!

If they are selling their bodies for cash, they are capitalists, not communists.

Sorry to revive an otherwise dead topic, but I saw this on the Telegraph's website and remembered this discussion.

Communism?s fatal error was in thinking that morality resided in the mechanisms of an economic system rather than in the people who operated them. There is no way of avoiding the need for individual responsibility, which lies with citizens, not governments ? or with bankers as people, not with the ?banking system?.

The full article can be found here.