Why didnt communism ever work?

Great Debates
1

Most of the people I’ve discussed communism with agree that, in theory, communism would be the perfect form of government.

Communism in Russia, I’ve been told, didn’t work largely because of the way it was handled by those in power. Based on what I know of china, it’s largely the same issue (IMHO it doesn’t work in China).

So then why did these problems occur? Are there other, maybe greater, reason why communism wouldn’t work? Can it some how be tweaked to make it work? What would need to change?

I realize that this is a question, but I hope it sparks a debate, so I put it in “Great Debates”.:wink:

2

– The Tick to the Red Scare

We had a lot of debates like this already. My 2 cents are in essence that Marx was right in the general idea that societies evolve. What Lenin and Company forgot is that they skipped the socialist phase. Heck, even Engels pointed that private enterprise was not supposed to disappear in the beginning. Add to that that the workers of THE WORLD were not united (even today) and you see (in very general terms) that the Russians were running before walking.

And I may also add a factor not mentioned in many discussions: technology that only now is beginning to empower people was not available then.

Add a lack of democracy and that was that.

3

The fact that there were those in power is why communism didn’t work in Russia. It was never communist, it was a form of state capitalism, whose sole proprietor was the beuracracy.

Bakunin, a socialist and a contemporary of Marx, foresaw as much stating that abolishing classes by the authoritarian use of state power would simply lead to a new class structure.

The unfortunate result of the “success” of the bolsheviks is that many people equate communism with totalitarianism.This was a slander to its ideals, and great blow to public relations.

As yet humanity is not ready to live without striving to dominate one another. This is not necessarily the fate of humanity, but until we overcome it we will have a class structure of some sort.

I don’t think communism needs to be tweaked, humanity does. If there can be significant reforms through government that might be great. But the most effective work will be through learning to cooperate and live with each other.

Cooperatives are a start. Where I live there are cooperative houses, grocery stores, book stores, and cafes. When a significant number of services are included, a real break from capitalism without a revolution or government might begin. As people begin to see the merits of cooperation, they can take capital from the capitalists slowly and without notice simply by not trading with those that wish to profit from them or their employees.

The largest stumbling block is the means of production. Cooperative factories are a long way off. It’s hard to coordinate so many people democratically without many precursors. Also the only peaceful way to take capital from the capitalists is to buy it and getting that much money together isn’t easy. But maybe that is a more suitable project and really a more humble goal than trying to start a cooperative country.

4

It didn’t work because it contradicts basic human nature, whereas capitalism comes with assumptions about greed, etc. built in. The only way to make communism work would be to change the way human beings think. And, as it was proved again and again and again, people are stubborn, even when they are promised Paradise itself. Can’t say I blame them, either.

5

I am willing to bet the people you discuss communism with are college students who would rather smoke pot than work, right?

Communism in theory, or in practice is flawed form of government. It fails to take into account basic human nature, observed laws of economics, good business practice or from what I can tell, anything else that has even a nodding acquaintence with reality.

One question. If I don’t pull my fair share at a co-op grocery store, what happens to me?

6

Wait, there’s an elephant in the room, and no one’s discussing it. So far, it’s just been theoretical aspects of Marxism and Leninism. But the real issue with communism is lack of economic freedom. At its core, communism is the idea that society at large gets to tell someone what to do, and lay claim to the fruit of his efforts. The fact that there are significant practical and moral problems with this shouldn’t be a surprise.

7

Your critique of communism is similar to a critique of democracy based on the flaws of a two party system or a bicameral legislature. In other words, aspects of particular manifestations that aren’t necesary for the realization. Democracy does not necessarily involve a legislature much less a bicameral one. Likewise government may not have to meddle with the economy in order for goods to be distributed in a classless society.

Well, since a co-op is an agreement that you enter willingly with other people, that depends on what plans that you have made to deal with people not contributing. There are many solutions to this problem. My experience with co-ops is that this isn’t really that big of a deal since job satisfaction skyrockets with more autonomy.

8

Orwell’s Animal farm is an excellent, & I think ultimately true, simple way of explaining how it all sort of disintegrates as it tries to come into practice.

mssmith also puts her finger on one big problem: incentives vs. disincentives. You don’t need some far off lesson from China or the USSR: look at the communes in the U.S. : why do they tend to fail and/or leave folks bitchin’ at each other? Because some folks bust their ass (Orwells Clover: I must Work Harder), some people do their job and some people don’t do jack, but all still reap the same rewards as the “Clovers”. This is a disincentive to most people to try harder, or even to do their share. What starts happening is people who want more start short circuiting (getting around) the system.

One final reason I can think of (& this meandering screed is by no means meant to be all inclusive) is highlighted by the work of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian Economist. He famously argued in 1920 that socialism couldn’t succeed. Without a free market, planning officials had no market prices to guide them in planning production and could not possibly make rational production decisions. Eventually, production decisions would begin to snowball further and further away from rational market prices. That is exactly what happened. In fact his quote was that it socialism would end in “chaos and stagnation”.

So Orwell, mssmith and Mises, pretty distinguished company.

9

So far no one has mentioned the historical fact that pure, laissez faire, so-called free-market capitalism doesn’t work either.

The same greed that people are claiming is automatically factored into the laissez faire theory actually isn’t. And that results in various excesses such as monopolies, child labor and on and on.

The real argument isn’t between total central control and laissez faire but rather the argument is over the proper mix between the two in the various areas of the economy.

10

The reason communism never worked is because the communists took power. Any cooperative or communal system requires the cooperation of the people involved. But when the communists took power, they forced the system onto a citizenship that was divided – at best – about the whole thing. So instead of taking the time to convince every citizen that this was the best system (which would be pretty damn impossible anyway), they turned to purges and slave labor camps and “reeducation” camps, and ruled through fear. It’s only a matter of time before that type of system collapses.

Also, the contradiction of a “classless” society in which the powerful were clearly enjoying a better standard of living, and had a bigger say in what happened, didn’t help.

11

Communism doesn’t work because humans are greedy, selfish bastards.

12

Here’s another point: Some jobs are horrible. Let’s face it. Everyone in their Communist Utopia imagines they’ll be the artist, or the baker, or the humble farmer in the field–all of which can be very satisfying. But who dreams of being the garbage man? Or the Sewer Authority maintenance man who has to scrub out the centrifuge? (My best friend did this one summer. ONE summer.) The only thing now that gets people to do those jobs is (a) lots of money as compensation (b) desperation. What’s to keep them there–and reasonably happy–in a communist state, where everyone is supposed to be equal, when they get home from work reeking of urine and their neighbor is putting on his tux and warming his voice up for his opera performance? In a capitalist society, we realize that people are bound to end up at different economic levels (though we get pissed when such levels are turned into immovable castes), get a little grumpy, and say “that’s life in the real world.” What happens in the communist state?

13

Equality could mean that everybody gets paid more to work in the sewer. Some of those jobs are bad simply because nobody “important” has to work them. If the beuracratic muckity-muck who ran the sewer Authority had to work a shift a month in that job, you can bet they’d find a way to do it automatically.
Yes there is always grunt work, but you don’t have to do it all the time 40 hours a week. There are always compromises in life. You want a trial by jury? Well at some point your going to have to serve jury duty.

14

This quote deserves some sort of immortality.

15

Thankfully.

16

Right on! Though as a minor quibble, the horse in Animal Farm whose mottoes were “I will [not ‘must’] work harder” and “Napoleon is always right” was Boxer, not Clover. Boxer got sent to the glue factory for his trouble.

Communism can work on a very small scale; a few hundred people in a community where everyone know everyone else, slackers will be identified and stigmatized, mass decisions can be made through easy-to-organize town meetings, etc. B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two described a community of this nature, where everyone was required to submit four labour-credits a day, with higher credit values for the less desirable jobs. In the novel, the community was getting a bit too large and a splinter community was being constructed some 70 miles away to take some of the pressure off.

If you want to organize any kind of workable system involving thousands or millions of individuals, a single social structure won’t work. It’s easier by far to let individuals form associations to accomplish a task, then seperate when that task is completed or found to be unworkable. During the process, individuals can come and go (still voluntarily) but the process lives on. A corporation allows this sort of flexibility. A co-op does not.

17

Let me reply by using an example very familiar to capitalists or people who work in corporations. Our company has a break room with coffee, tables, etc. We do not hire someone to clean the breakroom every night. What we do is have everyone clean the break room. We have 4 different departments, and each department takes the duty for a month at a time. Within those departments, there are subdepartments. Each subdepartment has the job to clean the breakroom one week out of that month.

It is a job nobody wants to do. But it gets done. The thing is, you only have to do it every once in a while. Every day for a week, every 4 months. It isn’t so bad.

Why couldn’t that happen on a larger scale, assuming that “subdepartments” are small enough so that individuals are held responsible, and that the job that needs to be done doesn’t require specialization.

colin

18

Let me reply by using an example very familiar to capitalists or people who work in corporations. Our company has a break room with coffee, tables, etc. We do not hire someone to clean the breakroom every night. What we do is have everyone clean the break room. We have 4 different departments, and each department takes the duty for a month at a time. Within those departments, there are subdepartments. Each subdepartment has the job to clean the breakroom one week out of that month.

It is a job nobody wants to do. But it gets done. The thing is, you only have to do it every once in a while. Every day for a week, every 4 months. It isn’t so bad.

Why couldn’t that happen on a larger scale, assuming that “subdepartments” are small enough so that individuals are held responsible, and that the job that needs to be done doesn’t require specialization.

colin

19

Man, I hate this kind of statement. The implicit assumption here is that Communism is a superior system for enlightened, selfless, good human beings, and that we only need capitalism because we aren’t ‘fit’ for something better.

Rubbish. Hogwash. Nonsense. That statement is wrong on so many levels that it’s hard to even know where to begin. But I’ll give it a try.

  1. Looking out for one’s own interests is not ‘greedy’. It’s the natural state of mankind. People care about themselves, their children, their extended family and friends, and then society. And that’s the way it should be. Man is not intended to be a slave. Society is not an end unto itself. Man exists and lives and dies and has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while doing it. Society is nothing more than a means to achieve those goals.

  2. Communism would STILL fail even if every person in the world was Mother freaking Teresa. It’s not just ‘greed’ that dooms Communism - it is its inherent inability to allocate resources efficiently.

Here’s the key insight into capitalism - people are best able to determine the right course of action for those things closest to them. The guy actually making that chair over there is the best judge of whether his tools are too dull or not. So find a way to leave the decision-making in his hands, while somehow directing him into a course of action that benefits others. The market and the price system act both as a means of information transfer to coordinate the actions of large groups, and as an incentive form to ensure that people must trade with others and provide benefits to others in order to improve their own lot.

Communism, on the other hand, removes that incentive and replaces it with either ‘good will’ or an over-reaching bureacracy. So you have decisions on whether the chair-makers tools are too dull being made by a bureaucrat 1000 miles away. It’s inefficient. And if you leave the judgement up to the chair-maker without incentives to be efficient, he’s ALWAYS want new tools. Finding the most efficient compromise is damned near impossible. Oh, and this isn’t because the chair-maker is ‘greedy’. It’s because he has no way of knowing whether he should have better tools or not. All he knows is that his tools could be better, and he’d like them to be better. But what if the chair makers 2000 miles away have even worse tools? How are they going to know? And there are never enough tools for everyone to have all that they want. So some way of allocating them is necessary. In Communism, the actual decision winds up being made A) by the least qualified person (i.e. a central manager somewhere), and B) after a long time lag as information moves around.

  1. A corrolary to 2. Communism doesn’t scale well. It works pretty well in a very small group where everyone is in constant communication, and information can be shared readily between everyone (including information about who’s being a lazy bastard).

But as you add larger groups, you have to organize into more complex structures. That means more and more information has to be passed around. Eventually the system simply can’t keep up. Information bottlenecks are a hallmark of all communist systems, and the end result, even accounting for the best intentions of everyone is shortages, gluts, inefficiency, and a huge, ensnarling bureaucracy.

Capitalism, on the other hand, leaves decision-making at the lowest levels, and uses the price system to transmit information instantly and efficiently throughout the economy. It is a much more efficient way to organize the activities of hundreds of millions of people.

For example, in a Communist system where everyone is benevolent and selfless, the following will still occur:

  1. Shortages of a certain product (say, shoes) appear.
  2. The local manager informs the higher-ups that shoes are in short supply.
  3. The next person sends in a request for greater shoe manufacture.
  4. The government sends out the order to the shoe companies to step up production.
  5. The shoe company is now short of rubber, and informs the bureau.
  6. The bureau orders more rubber production.
  7. Rubber production is increased, which requires more trucks, more factories, and more resources all around. The rubber company puts in a request for these resources.
  8. The bureaucracy orders the companies who provide those resources to increase production.
  9. Those companies in turn start listing their demands for more raw products and other requirements for greater production.
  10. Suddenly there is a truck shortage because of the trucks diverted to the rubber plants. Now goods are sitting in warehouses and can’t get where they need to go.
  11. Now there’s a steel shortage, because of increased truck production. So now we order more steel mining…

And so it goes. Trying to organize and efficiently use the assets of a modern economy through central command simply does not work. And this assumes everyone agrees on what needs to be done. In the real world, there will be a shortage of shoes, and the guy will request increased manufacturing. But when that request gets to the top, it’ll be in a pile of 500 other requests for more goods, and someone has to decide which ones should be honored. That same decision has to be made at every step along the way. That one request for more shoes may cause 1000 other requests for changes along the way, and at every step someone has to decide whether or not to approve it. Get too many of those choices wrong, and you have big problems. And information is lost along the way, too.

Now, let’s look at how Capitalism deals with the same problem.

  1. There is a shortage of shoes.
  2. THe price of shoes goes up. This acts as an immediate disincentive for people who don’t really need shoes right now to wait for a while. So the shortage isn’t as bad right off the top.
  3. The increased price of shoes stimulates production as profit levels increase.
  4. The companies who increase production buy new trucks and factories on the market. This stimulates production of those. But note that the truck manufacturer doesn’t know anything about the shoes, and couldn’t care less. Extraneous information is stripped out, and only the essential information (that there is an increased demand for trucks) goes to the truck manufacturer.
  5. As the truck manufacturer buys more raw materials, prices subtly shift throughout the marketplace. Information travels like a web at the lowest levels, propagating through the system. And at each level, all the unnecessary information is stripped out by the price system. Eventually, a new stability is reached amongst all the various goods and services.

Think about it this way - a capitalist economy is a stable system. When something comes along to upset it (a new demand for products, new populations, whatever), information travels back and forth in negative feedback loops or in waves, like a ringing bell. Eventually, it all settles down to a new stasis.

In a communist system, it’s like trying to balance a pen on your finger. It’s dynamically unstable. When someone upsets the allocation of goods and resources, the system starts to become unstable. The bureaucracy reacts (with imperfect information, and after much delay), and fixes the original problem, but in so doing causes an instability in other areas. Just like you can never stop moving to keep a pen balanced on your fingertip, the government is always trying to play catch-up. And it never can.

20

D’oh re Clover/Boxer … thanks Bryan