To be annoyed when people think communism is bad?

[waitingimpatiently]

Not 'communism' in places like Cuba and Korea which has some sort of dictator, which a lot of people appear to think is real communism.

Why does there seem to be this ignorance?! Do people not research the things they believe in?! Karl Marx would be turning in his grave if he saw the state of some of these 'communist' countries. Surely, the images of heaven (that I see in jehovahs witness leaflets, where everyone is happy and eating breakfast with lions etc) is a communist idea! Everyone is equal, no money, no state, no class system.

I get that the sort of communism we see can be awful, but real true communism isn't bad at all!

Ask people in former communist countries for their opinion on communism and you will get short shrift.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times people say that they aren't talking about the so called communism that has existed in the world to date and which they fully acknowledge and assert is NOT communism as it has been imagined - eg everyone working together etc etc but is in fact dictatorships, totalitarian regimes and so on - people still come back with go to a communist country and see, speak to communists and see, look at X place and see, see the people fleeing and see...

I genuinely don't understand.

The idea of communism is a beautiful one, however it has never actually been achieved but wouldn't it be great...

If you think communism is so great, try living in russia.

I truly don't get it.

I'm not having a pop, cozy, I'm truly not, you're not the first or only one on the thread to say it it's just a general bewilderment.

X doesn't exist but wouldn't it be great.

if you think X is great, try having Y

which has already been established and accepted as masquerading as but not actually being - X

But communism always goes wrong and only then do it's supporters decide "it really wasn't communism". The left in this country would not have said the USSR wasn't really communist in the 1970s, it was only when it collapsed that they decided that.

Anybody read in today's papers about the $ bn fortune of one of the top communist party chaps in China?

that's because it really wasn't communism.

communism requires a degree of selflessness and cooperation that, I believe, it truly beyond the ability of the human race to achieve. Therefore all attempts to introduce it will fail. And quickly. It will be introduced in a corrupt form, developed in a corrupt form and it will fail. Because we as a species cannot cooperatively, voluntarily and with joy in our hearts work for a 'greater good'. We just can't. I don't believe we are civilised enough

Mind you, as has been said upthread, capitalism aint that great.

The few getting rich as hell off the backs of everyone else.

I'm alright jack, screw you.

Lovely species, we are.

Hecate: the element of yooman nature I believe you require lift off from is freedom. That's what gets in the way of communism.

Sad that, isn't it?

The only way to get people to work together for a collective good is to force them at gunpoint.

No it's not sad, it's largely to do with parenthood and survival. Lots of people would do the most unthinkable things for their children including killing in defence. So putting a bit extra in the pot for them, an extra potato, a savings account - that is where it starts, that is, in essence, the alpha and omega of why communism fails. Why do you think communist regimes first start with attacking the family?

In other words, take that way, you take everything away. We wouldn't be here to even consider communism if it wasn't a part of the way we are built and the way every species has survived.

You are being funny and I am being dull.

*Ask people in former communist countries for their opinion on communism and you will get short shrift

Not always. A lot of women in the former East Germany are nostalgic for things such as universal free childcare, for example.

I'm clearly not being very funny.

I'm doing that smiling inside thing that stand up comedians hate. [smile inside]

I do like the Bill Bryson quote.

It is all tongue in cheek, obviously, but I have also thought that Britain might easily have been or might still become communist.

Class hatred is still alive here ( in my country, in northern europe, Class anxiety as been killed by social mobility, so I always notice it here).

Hmmm

Social mobility was done for under Labour. How frightfully ironic.

Or to quote the Blues Brothers:
Those goons are orphan remnants of the post-Perestroika Soviet Secret Police apparatus which, until 1991, carried out its own twisted interpretation of the well intentioned original Marxist-Leninist doctrine using the State Security, which was massively corrupted by Beria at the end of the '30s. Of course once a mass popular is coerced into such behavior as a permanent condition of their mind, a radical doctrinal, dialectic shift such as Glasnost, produces guys like these: stunned headless automata whose only purpose in their lives is the continuation of brutish measures to which their genetic code has been programmed since the fall of the Romanovs

The fact that humans pretty much make the best decisions for themselves does not necessarily exclude a different social structure - it would just have to mean that the two things (best for self, best for society) would need to match, and for this outcome to be obvious at the time of decisions being made. For everyone. So technically I guess it's possible and would be lovely. But surely it's highly unlikely?

I also don't get the 'it's a good idea but it doesn't work in practice' thing. If its an idea that is meant to translate to a happy society, yet never does, then surely it's not a good idea?

So you think Capitalism meets the needs of our nature then?

Is human nature? Greed, depression, inequality? Continuous growth until we destroy the planet?

I hear this argument against communism all the time, but it is simplified and poorly understood.

I don't think capitalism does necessarily set our needs, no.

To be honest, I don't think that anything will meet all of our needs. Which is quite depressing really. I also don't think there is one thing that typifies 'human nature'. It varies between people and within individuals, depending on the environment/situation I think.

*not set, meet

Where communism works well and should work well is within a family or church or local community.

What Communism as practiced in former USSR, China, N. Korea did/does is seek to replace loyalty to family and church with loyalty to the state.

I totally agree that it can work in smaller groups much more easily.

Well, for example, the Penan tribe lead a perfectly egalitarian, peaceful and symbiotic way of life. They are true communists.

Though they face threat from logging companies, they see us, western man as victims. For they believe we have lost our way and become divorced from nature, mother earth.

There are too many of us to live tribally in the forests of course. But we could learn something, if we could open our eyes a bit.

'In many North American indigenous cultures, generosity is a central behaviour, in a broader social economic system. One anecdotal account examined what happened when boys from white and lakota communities were given a pair of lollipops. The white boys put the second one in their pocket, whilst the indigenous american boys presented it to the nearest boy without one.'

Raj Patel, The value of nothing

What really is human nature? Is a baby born selfish and greedy, or made that way?

Communism is an ideal which has been unsuccessfully applied on a macro level. We are not equal. We desire our freedom. In order to enforce communism, an authority has to be established in order to force us to be so. That authority comprises of humans - self serving and selfish individuals who remove freedoms and demand certain behaviours.

You, OP are referring to a Utopia where normal rules do not apply.

Small collectives can live collaboratively in an egalitarian manner such as small tribes but they are not under the same pressures as humans in modern society.