# What's a communist to do? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 25, 2000, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615 "2000-01-25T23:08:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2000, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/1 "2000-01-25T23:08:00Z")
It would seem that there are no pure communist economies left in the world today. The Soviet Union collapsed, China has market reforms, Cuba angles for tourism, even North Korea engages in a crude sort of foreign-aid banditry. Most people now consider communism to be an utter failure as an economic system. Assuming that there must be a few true believers left, probably in ivory tower academia, what sort of economic system do they propose? A sort of ultra-welfare state bankrolled by taxes on the free market? Aside from political or social agendas, do communists still insist that capitalism will someday collapse from it’s internal contradictions, and be replaced with a socialist paradise? ---
**Author:** ![gfouts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/0ea827/32.png) [@gfouts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gfouts)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2000, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/2 "2000-01-25T23:14:00Z")
I don’t know about ‘economies’, but the idea of ‘from each what they can contribute and to each what they need’ is still a sound way of life for small communities. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2000, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/3 "2000-01-25T23:20:00Z")
> [@](#): > > …what sort of economic system do they propose? Do a search on “Tobin Tax” and note how they want to spend the revenue. ---
**Author:** ![Road\_Rash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a8b319/32.png) [@Road\_Rash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Road_Rash)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2000, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/4 "2000-01-25T23:43:00Z")
Compared to what? Karl Marx’s original manifesto? Many liberties have been taken by other communist countries. Back in the days of the Iron curtain, certain countries, like Hungary and Yugoslavia, allowed many small, private businesses. Even the Soviet Union had a different system than Marx would have imagined. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2000, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/5 "2000-01-26T00:26:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by cooldude: > **Even the Soviet Union had a different system than Marx would have imagined.** Yes, I kind of doubt that Marx ever imagined a system where, in the name of the people, millions would be sentenced to slave labor in the gulag. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2000, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/6 "2000-01-26T00:34:00Z")
Consider the C.I.S. member Belarussia. It was part of the old Soviet Union, & is **still communist**. For the record, it is one of the few places in the Commonwealth of Independent States that is not in a state of near anarchy. Ouch. 😕 * * * With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D, and you still have the frog you started with. ---
**Author:** ![TBone2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@TBone2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBone2)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2000, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/7 "2000-01-26T00:50:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\*Yes, I kind of doubt that Marx ever imagined a system where, in the name of the people, millions would be sentenced to slave labor in the gulag. 😉 > > \*\* I doubt if Marx ever imagined anything like the Soviet Union, period! Marxism is Marxism, socialism is socialism, communism is communism. These are NOT interchangable terms. No state has ever existed that was “purely” one or the other, just as no state has ever been “purely” democratic. The one thing I can see that Marxism, socialism and communism have in common is the rather bizarre paradox that none can exist without autocratic rule, and yet each is supposedly designed to eliminate autocracy. ## Weird, ain’t it? _I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…_ T ---
**Author:** ![douglips](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@douglips](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/douglips)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2000, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/8 "2000-01-26T01:54:00Z")
Why has no one mentioned China, it appears to be doing quite well with it’s brand of pseudo-capitalist iron-fisted communism… ---
**Author:** ![douglips](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@douglips](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/douglips)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2000, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/9 "2000-01-26T01:55:00Z")
Now that I understand the OP, my post is really rather lame. Mea culpa. You are right, pure communist systems are hard to come by. ---
**Author:** ![G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c67d28/32.png) [@G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.B.H.Hornswoggler)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2000, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/10 "2000-01-26T14:14:00Z")
If you want to find a “pure” Marxist, hunt up your local chapter of the Sparticist League (most lefty liberal arts colleges have them, and probably cities of the same political inclination). Being (as they say) of the other persuasion myself, I found them mostly humorous, but their main political tenet seemed to be that everything went to hell when Lenin kicked out Trotsky. * * * …but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans! ---
**Author:** ![Erik\_Raven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Erik\_Raven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erik_Raven)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2000, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/11 "2000-01-26T23:29:00Z")
Well, if you get right down to it, there were no communist states. There were quite a few socialist states, but none of those states got to the point where the state apparatus actually withered away; they were pretty much all stuck in the “dictatorship of the proletariat” stage. Besides, a true Marxist would say, look at the countries that did go socialist: none of them actually conformed to Marx’s expectations of proletarian revolutions, they all tried to shortcut their way into socialism by skipping capitalist development and the associated class structures. No, the Marxist would continue, the problem is not with communism as a goal, the problem is that the workers have not yet become disaffected enough. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2000, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/12 "2000-01-27T01:12:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Erik Raven: > \*\*Well, if you get right down to it, there were no communist states. There were quite a few socialist states, but none of those states got to the point where the state apparatus actually withered away; they were pretty much all stuck in the “dictatorship of the proletariat” stage. > > Besides, a true Marxist would say, look at the countries that did go socialist: none of them actually conformed to Marx’s expectations of proletarian revolutions, they all tried to shortcut their way into socialism by skipping capitalist development and the associated class structures. > > No, the Marxist would continue, the problem is not with communism as a goal, the problem is that the workers have not yet become disaffected enough. \*\* So in other words, what came to pass in the Soviet Union, China, etc. was “pseudo-communism”, and classic Marxists still believe that the “real” revolution is going to happen eventually? Assuming that for the sake of arguement, that still leaves the question of just how would a socialist economy be structured? A state directed command economy? That’s been tried. ---
**Author:** ![Riboflavin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Riboflavin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riboflavin)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2000, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/13 "2000-01-28T06:10:00Z")
What magic wand makes these sorts of apologetics for communism perfectly acceptable yet makes the same sort of apologies for Nazism evil? Nazism, like Communism, preached that after a short time under an autocratic state where the undesireables would be removed, a perfect non-autocratic government would arrive. Yet somehow I don’t think the following would pass with as little comment as the similar earlier post. (NOTE: This is not my actual viewpoint on anything, I consider Communism and Nazism to be the 2 most evil ideologies dreamed up in human history). ## Well, if you get right down to it, there were no Nazi states. There were quite a few fascist states, but none of those states got to the point where the state apparatus actually withered away; they were pretty much all stuck in the “dictatorship to weed out the vermin” stage. Besides, a true Hitlerist would say, look at the countries that did go facist: none of them actually conformed to Hitler’s expectations of racial purity; they all tried to shortcut their way into Nazism by keeping the impure members of society around and not fully removing destructive social structures like capitalism and churches. No, the Hitlerist would continue, the problem is not with Nazism as a goal, the problem is just that no one has enacted pure Nazism. Kevin Allegood, “At least one could get something through Trotsky’s skull.” - Joseph Michael Bay ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_Bowe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2000, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/14 "2000-01-28T08:11:00Z")
I sincerely doubt a true Marxist state could ever exist over time. Marx spent almost half of his Manifesto cutting down capitalism and writing good sound bites, rather than plotting economic policy. Okay, that’s my opinion. Adam Smith, on the other hand, wrote about free markets that he spent a near lifetime observing. His droll “The Wealth of Nations” wasn’t much on sound bites, but did report on economic conditions that had already been in place since free markets had existed. Marx was a dreamer in the bowels of the industrial revolution. Smith was a reporter. Should this be in Great Debates or MPSIMS? ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_Bowe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2000, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/15 "2000-01-28T08:57:00Z")
GOD that rant felt good. I’ve been wanting to do that for years. Thank you. Thank you. ::lighting cigarette:: ---
**Author:** ![Erik\_Raven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Erik\_Raven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erik_Raven)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2000, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/16 "2000-01-29T06:15:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Lumpy: > > So in other words, what came to pass in the Soviet Union, China, etc. was “pseudo-communism”, and classic Marxists still believe that the “real” revolution is going to happen eventually? Assuming that for the sake of arguement, that still leaves the question of just how would a socialist economy be structured? A state directed command economy? That’s been tried. > > \*\* The distinction between communism as a ideology and communism as a socio-economic system has to be made. Communism as an ideology is probably better termed Marxism-Leninism (far more latter than former, since as Doug noted Marx didn’t really say too much about what policies a Marxist state would undertake in order to become a communist society). Marxism-Leninism basically describes how various socio-economic systems evolve into another, and if you take these theories to be accurate, of course there have been numerous Marxist-Leninist states. No argument there. But none of those states “evolved” into communist systems. A communist society could be briefly descibed as one in which there was no state and capital would be controlled by everyone communally (as opposed to advanced capitalism or imperialism where capital is concentrated in the hands of few). However, going back to my argument, Marxist-Leninist states stagnated after revolution (literally and theoretically!). This stage was the dictatorship of the proletariat, where certain proletarians had the job to guide the state into further revolution by controlling capital through state organs, which is state socialism. I can only think of one experiment with communism (not M-Lism!), and that was Mao’s Great Leap Forward, which simulatiously tried to break down still-existing bourgeois leaning classes (intellectuals, etc) and promote communes as the means of economic production and activity. Getting overly technical, this was more towards was more towards Marxism than Leninism, as it also entailed great loyalty towards the state, which of course Marx abhorred. And as of last summer, if memory serves, the PRC entered clauses into its constitution that for the indefinate future China would be in the beginning stages of socialism, which is of course capitalism. ---
**Author:** ![Erik\_Raven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Erik\_Raven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erik_Raven)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2000, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/17 "2000-01-29T06:34:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Riboflavin: > \*\*What magic wand makes these sorts of apologetics for communism perfectly acceptable yet makes the same sort of apologies for Nazism evil? Nazism, like Communism, preached that after a short time under an autocratic state where the undesireables would be removed, a perfect non-autocratic government would arrive. Yet somehow I don’t think the following would pass with as little comment as the similar earlier post. (NOTE: This is not my actual viewpoint on anything, I consider Communism and Nazism to be the 2 most evil ideologies dreamed up in human history). > > Well, if you get right down to it, there were no Nazi states. There were quite a few fascist states, but none of those states got to the point where the state apparatus actually withered away; they were pretty much all stuck in the “dictatorship to weed out the vermin” stage. > \*\* Yes. Very funny. I don’t believe Nazism actually puts forth that the state will wither away. Could you source that for me, please? And I hope you were not characterizing me as an “apologist.” Lumpy asked a question and I answered. And why do you consider Marxism (excluding Leninism) to be evil? ---
**Author:** ![APB9999](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB9999](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB9999)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2000, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/18 "2000-01-28T19:30:00Z")
_I_ consider it evil because of the things my girlfriend has told me about growing up hungry in communist Poland. And it’s not just her: I have met people from Poland, Russia, Cuba, China (_lots_ from China), Moldavia, The Ukraine, (former) Czechoslovakia, and what is now Slovenia (former Yugoslavia), and probably others I can’t bring to mind at the moment. I am yet to meet anyone who grew up under communism who thinks it is a good economic system, and the vast majority don’t think it is a good political system, either. The only people I’ve met who proudly espouse communism learned it from a book and think it’s a nice idea; they also claim to be taking a “scientific” approach to social economics. The fact that the experiment has been tried, many times, and failed does NOT seem to have an affect on this crowd, though. All it does is start a rationalization chain that is, well, kind of sad. Why is communism evil? Because, among other reasons, it has _invariably_ been totalitarian. There is no check on government power. Most thinkers since the enlightenment have recognized this as a recipe for the abuse of human rights by an elite jealous of its power. Those thinkers are correct. Why is communism evil? Because, among other reasons, it is based on distributing resources in a way that does not efficiently _create_ wealth; what wealth there is may or may not be evenly distributed (different countries have had different experiences in this respect), but without growth, it doesn’t lead to improvements. [Aside: communism _is_ often an improvement over what came before - czarist Russia, for instance, or the ineffectual Chinese government that Mao targeted; but it is a one-shot improvement. These systems have always stagnated economically and failed to provide as high a standard of living as others that could have been adopted]. Arguing that communism isn’t a failure because the people who’ve implemented it did not follow the blueprint precisely is silly. NO government has ever been instituted that followed its founding philosophy with absolute perfection, including our own; the real world has perturbations that must be dealt with. How well a system deals with those perturbations is a measure of the strength of its core philosophy. I mean, what is the conclusion here, that communism works, just not for Russians? Or that it works, just not in this world? The lesson of the twentieth century, one of them anyway, is that communism does not seem to be _workable_. The experimental results are in. They are not compatible with the theory. The theory is in error. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2000, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-communist-to-do/6615/19 "2000-01-28T20:27:00Z")
- - - For anyone who would defend communism, I would point out that it isn’t often that the US Coast Guard catches people rafting _back_ to Cuba. - MC