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Regarding your second point, "They didn't do it right" is no longer a viable argument for/defense of Communism. It's been tried too many times by too many peop
by jwhitlark 10y ago
Regarding your second point, "They didn't do it right" is no longer a viable argument for/defense of Communism. It's been tried too many times by too many people and failed too terribly. At the very minimum, it would have to be "this is so hard to do right that no one has managed it, despite lots of trying."
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoState-centered command economies have indeed been tried, and have indeed shown a very mixed record. Of course, only some of those have been called Communist. The rest were called Capitalist, and are just as mixed. The 20th century's distinction between "capitalist" and "communist", "free" and "not free", doesn't seem to have actually captured genuinely relevant dimensions of variation very well.
- samastur 10y agoI am not defending communism. I think it is doomed because it ignores human nature just as some other isms do. However that doesn't mean that those who disagree with me would necessarily do it in one of the ways it has been tried so far. I also don't think words mean the same thing to all people. As someone who spent his youth in a socialist country I can assure you Bernie Sanders idea of socialism is very different to what "we" thought it was or what other socialist countries were trying. And that's really more or less my point. Left-wing doesn't really say much by itself without more information. There is no belief that would be shared by everyone who either describes themselves as left-wing or is described as such. Same for right-wing.