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Suppose you were a revolutionary socialist who had just managed to overthrow the government in a highly developed, first-world country (pick any one you like). Starting from here, how would you build "true communism"? I'm not saying "communism" is necessarily good or evil, but I would like to know if it's actually possible. From a quick read through Soviet history, it seems like they never got anywhere close. 78.105.228.3 (talk) 11:50, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- We don't do hypotheticals, debates, speculation, what-ifs, crystal ball gazing and the like here. We deal in matters that can be referenced. Sorry. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 11:58, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think it's an unreasonable question at all, and I'd be very interested to see what answers people come up with. It's simply asking for the theoretical steps by which a communist society would be achieved. That doesn't sound like speculation or crystal ball gazing to me. --Viennese Waltz 12:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- The usual way of dealing with hypotheticals like that is to point to an article or book which tackled a subject like that. Mark and Engels The Communist Manifesto would be a start on that. You'll see where all the turgid mind numbing prose of communism came from. Dmcq (talk) 12:51, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Hmm, I just looked up longest speeches expecting the communists to have a overwhelming pole position but in some Indian politician speaking to the UN security council took over eight hours, easily beating Castro's four hours and 29 minutes to the UN general assembly. Dmcq (talk) 12:58, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- V. K. Krishna Menon was the first defence minister of India not "some Indian politician". Solomon7968 (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- @ Viennese Waltz, he wants more than the theoretical steps. He says the Soviets never got anywhere close, so the theory didn't work there. There have never been any actual, real-life examples of truly communist societies, so to get from the theory that failed in the USSR and has manifestly failed in other so-called communist countries, to one that might actually work, he wants ... well, more theory. Trouble is, he hasn't asked for what reliable sources have said about this new theory, he's asked how to actually implement and achieve it. Nobody in the world knows that, because 100% of attempts have failed. It's unanswerable. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 13:17, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- The followers of Marx and Engels many flaws were the perfect case study in how to fail, using gulags. Societies artificially constructed by a tiny group of individuals can never compete with those that develop naturally. 71.127.137.190 (talk) 13:59, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Neither Marx nor Engels ever advocated 'societies artificially constructed by a tiny group of individuals'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:04, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- As Margaret Thatcher said "The problem with socialism [or for that matter communism] is that you eventually run out of other peoples money". The example that is most telling to me is that of Cuba, an immensely wealthy island that is capable of feeding the world and one of the last colonies Spain was willing to fight for up until almost 1900. Today nobody does anything because Castro "owns" everything and the nation can't feed itself, in its quest for communal equality of outcomes it punishes innovation and creativity and is basically a race to the bottom, but hey you have the greatest equality there, everybody was suffering, until capitalists came by with more tourist dollars in the last 15 years. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 16:02, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Okay, now that you've got John Galt's theory about why communism can't work (certainly it contributes to Cuba's backwardness in major areas, but look at its closest neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean which have never come nearly as close to implementing communism, and see if you think they're doing better in most sectors) to get some idea of why it hasn't worked, you might take a look at the kibbutz experiments in Israel, which were never on a national scale but the cards weren't stacked against success by the abandonment or resistance of so many unwilling participants. There, it looks as though whatever economic challenges the founding generation encountered (and they were significant), the death knell seems to have been sounded by the next generation's rejection of the discipline and attraction to the opportunities they felt were only accessible outside the system. They left and didn't come back to raise their children. FactStraight (talk) 17:49, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I think the fatal mistakes in communism were it's dismissal of religion and democracy. Religions should have been appropriated and put to use, not banned. True Christianity, for example, has a long tradition of charity and egalitarianism. It could be argued that a true socialist nation, where everyone "works according to their ability and takes only according to their need", is the best form of government for a Christian nation. Similarly, if you convinced the population of that, so they were willing to work hard, not for rewards in this life, but in the afterlife, then democracy would ensure that leaders who actually believed in the cause would remain in power, too, as opposed to those who just give lip service to communism as they steal from the nation. StuRat (talk) 18:36, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- And now we have exactly what I told the OP we don't do here, a round-table discussion or debate about the flaws of communism. That was not what he asked. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 20:52, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- And I still maintain we could have answered the question without descending into such a discussion. I don't know a whole lot about communism, but one thing I do know is that it calls for redistribution of wealth. Therefore, one possible answer to the OP's question would have been that a hypothetical revolutionary socialist leader would build communism by redistribution of wealth. What is unacceptable about that? --Viennese Waltz 20:57, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- As I said above, he's gone beyond the hypothetical. He's not interested in the theory (he cited the USSR as a notable example of how that theory failed) and is asking what would ACTUALLY work. Trouble is, we cannot point to an example of how communism has actually worked, because it never has actually worked. All we could ever do is give cites about what people say, think, assert WOULD work, but they're untested, and hence still in the realm of theory, and hence inadequate as an answer for what the OP is asking for. There is no answer we can give that satisfies the question. I'd say the same thing about a question asking what could Politician X do to guarantee he becomes the next President of the USA. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 21:32, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Well, he starts by asking "how would you build "true communism"?" That sounds pretty hypothetical to me. The statement "I would like to know if it's actually possible" doesn't really fit with what has gone before. I would be tempted to ignore it and focus on trying to answer the first part. --Viennese Waltz 21:36, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Only if you regard communism as inherently hypothetical and unrealisable, which the OP seems not be doing. If he'd asked "How would you build a house" or "How would you travel to Patagonia", we'd answer that as a real and un-hypothetical question. This question is being asked on the same real basis (albeit within the context of a hypothetical overthrow of the government in a highly developed, first-world country). -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 22:58, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- In any case, even if I agreed with you that it's a hypothetical question, we still can't answer it because of our policy of not answering hypothetical questions. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 00:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- To answer OP's "how would you", perhaps the banishment of Wikipedia? The almost total control of information was a common thread among many communist regimes, in which case JackofOz's point is supported in another way. And hey in reference to several posts above the John Galt response wouldn't entirely work since my userpage clearly demonstrates an aversion to Objectivism ;-). Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 01:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I believe Stalin said something along the lines of "Ideas are more powerful than guns, and we don't let enemies of the state have guns, so why would we let them have ideas?" --Jayron32 02:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Excellent find there Jayron32! Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 02:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I partially agree with Jack of Oz that a lot of this discussion has shown the problems with these sort of questions on the RD. Since the OP themselves believe the Soviets didn't get close to achieving true communism, and we can assume that they don't believe anyone else did either (otherwise they would already have a model), I don't get the relevance of all the other failures to demonstrating how to achieve true communism, unless you're saying you should not do that which doesn't appear to be what is being suggested here. Even then, it's illogical to assume that everything they did was the wrong idea, so ultimately you'd need a more careful analysis (and really a whole lot of hypothetical and highly debately arguments) to tell whether anything was a good or bad idea in achieving true communism and that's not really something we should be doing. You could also use this as an argument for why it's not possible to achieve true communism but again you'd need a more sophisticated and detailed consideration (and this doesn't seem to have been the suggestion above, at least by Marketdiamond).
- However I don't entirely agree with JackofOz on this question being unsuitable for the RD, although nor do I agree with VW. We shouldn't be coming up with our own OR and ideas on how to achieve true communism, that's not the purpose of the RD and while we tolerate it to some extent in some cases, this is the sort of case where it just doesn't work. But even though the OP's question was perhaps poorly phrased, there's no reason it can't be taken as a decent RD question, i.e. a request for references. And there must surely be many references with various ideas of how it can be done including those concentrating on first world countries and where all the others went wrong, and a lot more saying it's not possible with reasons given both of which would likely be of interest to the OP. Perhaps the only issue is the OPs scenario starts with the unclear 'overthrow of government' which is problematic particularly since the vast majority of highly developed first world countries have decent democracies with fairly free and fair elections. So overthrow of government would seem to imply some sort of coup by a small group of people which lacks popular support. I suspect a number of commentators who do still believe achieving true communism is possible would suggest trying to achieve it in such a scenario is difficult or impossible.
- Nil Einne (talk) 15:16, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I believe The State and Revolution is the classic work on the subject.-gadfium 01:25, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Counter-intuitively, communists haven't spent much time analysing a potential transition to communism, focusing on the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. The most relevant Wikipedia articles are stateless communism, the (very weak) world communism, and Engels' withering away of the state. Warofdreams talk 10:27, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Frank Zappa once said that communism doesn't work "because people like to own stuff." The OP would have to get past that barrier somehow. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- To further evolve on Zappa, see Liberal paradox or an interpretation of the "architect" here since despite communism theory there will always have to be organization which is centralized and total in nature, again to add to JackofOz's overall point, wikipedia like google and Youtube in China would be censored to the point of being useless and banned, so its a bit ironic asking it here. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 20:44, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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