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Every attempt to enact communism has gone from a putative dictatorship of the proletariat to a plain dictatorship. With a lot of very nasty consequences along t

by Kalium 11y ago

Every attempt to enact communism has gone from a putative dictatorship of the proletariat to a plain dictatorship. With a lot of very nasty consequences along the way. Famines in the Ukraine and China come to mind. Now, some kind of Platonic ideal of Communism may work perfectly. It's certainly possible, in the sense that the possibility exists in a realm of pure abstraction. However, history shows that getting there isn't very practical and requires oceans of blood. A perfect system that you cannot get to is useless. Previous work on this avenue of experimentation suggest remarkably strongly that it should not be attempted again.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "Famines in the Ukraine and China come to mind." Neither the Soviet Union nor Communist China were/are communist states. They had rulers, communist states cannot have rulers, otherwise they violate the need for absence of social classes. We shouldn't dismiss an idea just because some people misunderstood it. If you can find a society that tried communist principals (and I mean all of the core principals, not half hearted attempts), I'll definitely be interested to know about them.
- Kalium 11y ago
  I anticipated that your argument would go in this direction. It's a common line of argument for modern Communists. It's why I touched on what has happened when attempts are made. Again, a state of affairs that cannot be achieved by acceptable means is not an experiment worth repeating. There is no reason to think that a future attempt will have different results from past attempts. Given the costs, why would you think this a reasonable thing to try? Have you seriously considered the possibility that what you want is untestable, because to get to that state requires some intermediate stages we consider unacceptable? Put another way: if a friend tells you that they have invented a way to solve all energy problems forever, they just need to start with a perpetual motion machine, how seriously would you take them?
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    Are you suggesting a leaderless society cannot exist or merely that it is hard to achieve? As for past attempts, they were communist in name only. If I said the air doesn't exist because I can't find unicorns, that's the level of absurdity that calling a dictatorship a communist society exists in.
    - Kalium 11y ago
      I'm suggesting that in all previous attempts to reach the state you consider heretofore unreached, the states passed through have highly undesirable consequences. The uniformity of this result is striking and the consequences grave. I'm suggesting that attempting to create a Communist society is a really bad idea. Every previous attempt to do so has led to exceptionally bad consequences. You've provided no reason to think that a new effort will avoid repeating these mistakes. In fact, all you've done is insist that the end goal of Communism has not been achieved. That a leaderless society has not yet been created in the name of Communism isn't relevant to what has resulted from historical attempts to create such. It matters not one whit to the question of what all previous attempt to achieve such a goal have produced. Is your goal of a leaderless society with shared means of production achievable? I don't know. I do know that I don't think it's worth killing another thirty million people for the sake of another attempt at finding out. History strongly suggests that that is a significantly more likely outcome of an attempt than the creation of a stable leaderless society with shared means of production. It's in no way relevant that (Russia|China|North Korea|Cuba) are not or have ever been genuinely Communist in an idealist sense. It doesn't matter if there ever has been a True Scotsman. In conclusion, every attempt at Communism has failed. This is because every attempt to get to Communism has failed. This is significant because it calls into question the plausibility and achieveability of any kind of transition to Communism. This in turn suggests that Communism cannot ever be evaluated because it is not achieveable by means we consider acceptable. Thus, the initial question of "Has Communism been attempted and failed, where Communism is defined in a textbook manner and the transition to it ignored?" is rendered null and void. In other words, if you can't find unicorns, it might be time to reconsider the policy of virgin human sacrifice in order to search for unicorns.

by Kalium 11y ago

ZenoArrow 11y ago

> "Famines in the Ukraine and China come to mind." Neither the Soviet Union nor Communist China were/are communist states. They had rulers, communist states cannot have rulers, otherwise they violate the need for absence of social classes. We shouldn't dismiss an idea just because some people misunderstood it. If you can find a society that tried communist principals (and I mean all of the core principals, not half hearted attempts), I'll definitely be interested to know about them.

Kalium 11y ago
I anticipated that your argument would go in this direction. It's a common line of argument for modern Communists. It's why I touched on what has happened when attempts are made. Again, a state of affairs that cannot be achieved by acceptable means is not an experiment worth repeating. There is no reason to think that a future attempt will have different results from past attempts. Given the costs, why would you think this a reasonable thing to try? Have you seriously considered the possibility that what you want is untestable, because to get to that state requires some intermediate stages we consider unacceptable? Put another way: if a friend tells you that they have invented a way to solve all energy problems forever, they just need to start with a perpetual motion machine, how seriously would you take them?
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Are you suggesting a leaderless society cannot exist or merely that it is hard to achieve? As for past attempts, they were communist in name only. If I said the air doesn't exist because I can't find unicorns, that's the level of absurdity that calling a dictatorship a communist society exists in.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    I'm suggesting that in all previous attempts to reach the state you consider heretofore unreached, the states passed through have highly undesirable consequences. The uniformity of this result is striking and the consequences grave. I'm suggesting that attempting to create a Communist society is a really bad idea. Every previous attempt to do so has led to exceptionally bad consequences. You've provided no reason to think that a new effort will avoid repeating these mistakes. In fact, all you've done is insist that the end goal of Communism has not been achieved. That a leaderless society has not yet been created in the name of Communism isn't relevant to what has resulted from historical attempts to create such. It matters not one whit to the question of what all previous attempt to achieve such a goal have produced. Is your goal of a leaderless society with shared means of production achievable? I don't know. I do know that I don't think it's worth killing another thirty million people for the sake of another attempt at finding out. History strongly suggests that that is a significantly more likely outcome of an attempt than the creation of a stable leaderless society with shared means of production. It's in no way relevant that (Russia|China|North Korea|Cuba) are not or have ever been genuinely Communist in an idealist sense. It doesn't matter if there ever has been a True Scotsman. In conclusion, every attempt at Communism has failed. This is because every attempt to get to Communism has failed. This is significant because it calls into question the plausibility and achieveability of any kind of transition to Communism. This in turn suggests that Communism cannot ever be evaluated because it is not achieveable by means we consider acceptable. Thus, the initial question of "Has Communism been attempted and failed, where Communism is defined in a textbook manner and the transition to it ignored?" is rendered null and void. In other words, if you can't find unicorns, it might be time to reconsider the policy of virgin human sacrifice in order to search for unicorns.