Personally, I don’t think the concept of communism itself was at fault. Rather, I believe it is two elements:
1: The wrong people were the leadership. They set the tone for everything that happens, creating the precedents and longterm establishment of the government.
2: A lack of consistent rules to distribute power among individuals in a relatively fair manner, that allows them to keep a modest amount of power. Things like wealth, gun ownership, the ability to unionize, freedom of speech and association, education, voting rights, and so on. While the USA’s Constitution is flawed, it did a decent job considering that we were a nation that initially only occupied the eastern seaboard of a continent, with a relatively small population.
The problems we see today come from distance, population size, technology, inequality, and our elites not being beholden to the nation’s interests. Billionaire creatures like Elon, Trump, Thiel, and so forth, can simply hop on a plane and leave for distant lands. They wouldn’t lose enough wealth if they had to jump ship from the vessel that they crashed into the rocks, free from threats to their life. Ordinary people like you and me would be left holding a bag of shit.
What I argue, is that Soviet Russia’s creation was too flawed to allow communism to be healthy, rather than communism itself being bad. They could have used capitalism, and the results wouldn’t have been any different. The big reason communism got a bad rap, is that it presented a seed of ‘what could be’ that threatened established interests. Part of that is from socialism threatening globalist capitalism, but also because Russia is dangerous to its neighbors. The other powers, regardless of size, had incentive to poke a stick into the wheels of their rivals.
Communism was just an excellent scapegoat for propaganda, because it was a newfangled concept. People are creatures of feeling, and are disturbed by things they haven’t seen before. Be it being trans, black, or socialist, a boogeyman can be manufactured out of the unfamiliar.
No, unfortunately, communism is flawed because no mechanism exists to stop those people from gaining power within it. In fact, it’s those people in general that instigate communism as their preferred system because it’s that exploitable.
Some of the ideals behind it are terrific. In a very advanced world, where we have much better control of the instinctual and irrational, poorly thought out parts of our makeup under control, it’s probably the logical direction. We aren’t there yet by a long, long way. Anywhere near that in fact. We’d have to have religion ‘worn out’ of society first; people in general would need to outgrow that. When that includes religious fanatics, you see how far we are away from a society where systems that depend on individual integrity entirely can be successful.
If we survive the next few centuries, yeah, our successful society could quite possibly be something quite communist in design.
IMO, communism hasn’t gotten a truly fair shake. Many, MANY feudalistic and capitalistic societies died for all sorts of reasons. Nowhere nearly as many communist existences were attempted, so the apparent survival and success rates would seem lower.
In any case, I think that some form of democratic socialism would be the next step beyond the USA’s Republic government. Much as how the Magna Carta and the Constitution reduced the political power of rulers, I believe an economic Bill of Rights would be needed. Things that guarantee housing, UBI, wealth floors and ceilings, worker unionization and voting on leadership pay, ect.
Yeah look, I’d agree with your view on the fair shake to a degree.
I don’t think it’s the right time for this style of government. We have to be a lot more at peace, with higher integrity across the board and be thinking a lot more critically for something like communism to succeed. The Chinese don’t practice it, that’s for sure, though even there you see many of the social aspects of it doing the good they natively do.
I’d agree with where you say the US might head too, if its people can pull it out of its mess. There’s a lot of reconciling to be done though because all the powerbrokers on the right side and some on the left are guilty of crimes and need to face those.
Personally, I don’t think the concept of communism itself was at fault. Rather, I believe it is two elements:
1: The wrong people were the leadership. They set the tone for everything that happens, creating the precedents and longterm establishment of the government.
2: A lack of consistent rules to distribute power among individuals in a relatively fair manner, that allows them to keep a modest amount of power. Things like wealth, gun ownership, the ability to unionize, freedom of speech and association, education, voting rights, and so on. While the USA’s Constitution is flawed, it did a decent job considering that we were a nation that initially only occupied the eastern seaboard of a continent, with a relatively small population.
The problems we see today come from distance, population size, technology, inequality, and our elites not being beholden to the nation’s interests. Billionaire creatures like Elon, Trump, Thiel, and so forth, can simply hop on a plane and leave for distant lands. They wouldn’t lose enough wealth if they had to jump ship from the vessel that they crashed into the rocks, free from threats to their life. Ordinary people like you and me would be left holding a bag of shit.
What I argue, is that Soviet Russia’s creation was too flawed to allow communism to be healthy, rather than communism itself being bad. They could have used capitalism, and the results wouldn’t have been any different. The big reason communism got a bad rap, is that it presented a seed of ‘what could be’ that threatened established interests. Part of that is from socialism threatening globalist capitalism, but also because Russia is dangerous to its neighbors. The other powers, regardless of size, had incentive to poke a stick into the wheels of their rivals.
Communism was just an excellent scapegoat for propaganda, because it was a newfangled concept. People are creatures of feeling, and are disturbed by things they haven’t seen before. Be it being trans, black, or socialist, a boogeyman can be manufactured out of the unfamiliar.
No, unfortunately, communism is flawed because no mechanism exists to stop those people from gaining power within it. In fact, it’s those people in general that instigate communism as their preferred system because it’s that exploitable.
Some of the ideals behind it are terrific. In a very advanced world, where we have much better control of the instinctual and irrational, poorly thought out parts of our makeup under control, it’s probably the logical direction. We aren’t there yet by a long, long way. Anywhere near that in fact. We’d have to have religion ‘worn out’ of society first; people in general would need to outgrow that. When that includes religious fanatics, you see how far we are away from a society where systems that depend on individual integrity entirely can be successful.
If we survive the next few centuries, yeah, our successful society could quite possibly be something quite communist in design.
IMO, communism hasn’t gotten a truly fair shake. Many, MANY feudalistic and capitalistic societies died for all sorts of reasons. Nowhere nearly as many communist existences were attempted, so the apparent survival and success rates would seem lower.
In any case, I think that some form of democratic socialism would be the next step beyond the USA’s Republic government. Much as how the Magna Carta and the Constitution reduced the political power of rulers, I believe an economic Bill of Rights would be needed. Things that guarantee housing, UBI, wealth floors and ceilings, worker unionization and voting on leadership pay, ect.
Yeah look, I’d agree with your view on the fair shake to a degree.
I don’t think it’s the right time for this style of government. We have to be a lot more at peace, with higher integrity across the board and be thinking a lot more critically for something like communism to succeed. The Chinese don’t practice it, that’s for sure, though even there you see many of the social aspects of it doing the good they natively do.
I’d agree with where you say the US might head too, if its people can pull it out of its mess. There’s a lot of reconciling to be done though because all the powerbrokers on the right side and some on the left are guilty of crimes and need to face those.