Communism, ostensibly about eradicating class, seems to end in wealth distributions that make ours look egalitarian.
Maybe we need an experiment in a society explicitly founded on elitism. Would it turn into an egalitarian paradise?
Maybe we need an experiment in a society explicitly founded on elitism. Would it turn into an egalitarian paradise?
For a start, a heriditary totalitarian dictatorship is the antithesis of communism.
I think the concept of communism sounds fantastic on paper for a lot of people. The problem is that it is an idealistic social order that assumes one person won't come along and manipulate the masses into transforming the whole thing into a totalitarian dictatorship. It doesn't seem to consider the power of crowd psychology, propaganda, etc, which would still exist in an environment of 100% equality.
I think at the heart of it is that too much liberty would eventually lead to a total loss of liberty. A nation with no state or laws? No one stopping a charismatic leader gathering together enough resources to take over the nation, implement a fascist state with 0 liberties. It would definitely happen since history shows us it already has in conditions less favourable to such a take over.
First off, I'm not sure you can classify Marx's communism as a "social order"; Marx is envisioning a systematic failure of capitalism as a cohesive institution and pontificating about what might come in its wake. Because Marx doesn't believe that change happens "naturally" but only in violent upheavals, he thought "now is the time for a new social order!" in his own context, sure, and supported a Communist Party, but his analysis in Das Kapital is much more about the failure of capitalism with the increasing mechanization of the means of production.
The point is basically that Marx wants to start every social analysis by asking, "OK, in this society, who is the slave class? And who are the people who own them?" Marx saw that industrialization was increasingly multiplying the capabilities of this slave class, and indeed supplanting them. Marx envisioned that eventually, the slave class would entirely consist of robots of one form or another, with the only humans entering being the ones who voluntarily wanted to do that sort of work -- sort of the model of the CEO who leaves his cushy job because he wants to be a farmer at heart.
It's a very techno-utopian vision of the world, and it's hard to see what the social order that lives atop this is going to be. Marx famously extrapolated that the control of the 1% over the 99% was going to persist into this technological switchover, and that the 99% was going to realize it and lead a revolution-to-end-all-revolutions, because afterwards there would be born a society where every human was guaranteed the basics of everything they need (by the robot slaves and the volunteer slaves) and could pursue whatever artistic calling suited them.
But that remarkably underspecifies the nature of the underlying state, of course. The "nation with no state or laws" is one possibility, an anarcho-communist vision, but there could also be a normal modern constitutional republic, where there would be the normal boundaries in place preventing people from gathering the resources to take over the nation. It's rather hard to say.
Here's a quote that illustrates the idea: "The totality of the relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness." [2]
This notion comes from Marx's critique of Hegel and German idealist philosophy. Marx believed that Hegel's notion of history [3] couldn't adequately address it's own basis in time. (You might think of it as Marx asking Hegel 'Why now?').
The ramifications of this idea that consciousness itself and one's very way of being in the world are determined by the current forms of production has far reaching echoes in 20th century western philosophy, with existentialism ("existence precedes essence"), phenomenology, and deconstruction ("any description requires a prior Inscription') being examples.
Representative critiques of the idea come from "the outside" by Karl Popper (who says the theory can't be falsified)[4] and from 'the inside' by Walter Benjamin (who says the concept is indistinguishable from theology).[5]
But it's still a big idea.
[1] See "The German Ideology" https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideo... [2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-po... [3] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/#GerIde [4] fun animation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-sGqBsWv4 [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theses_on_the_Philosophy_of_Hi...
If you eliminate capitalism, you just force that inequality to be expressed in non-market mechanisms (ie. politics) which are altogether more corrupt, brutal, and inefficient.
The problem really is black and white thinking. The best thing for humanity is balance. Kids and less fortunate shouldn't be forced to do hard labour for either nothing or next to nothing. Smart, hard working people should be rewarded for their contributions.
What about a smart, hard working kid who has a poor family? Let them shine by preventing poverty from being so crushing we lose out on a talented mind.
There's nothing wrong with regulation or business or markets or rights. We shouldn't fear any of those as they are merely economic tools that can be used to benefit society as a whole. By taking one or the other to the extreme, we're faced with a dangerous case of hammer-nail.
Marx was never very specific about what communism should be. Ironically his writings are 99% a critique of capitalism and 1% a vague proclamation that there ought to be something better to move towards.
For all of the faults of communisms' implementation across the world, there have been a number of clear successes (fastest industrialization, first spacefaring society, defeating the nazis+++, pioneer of guaranteed healthcare, housing and jobs).
These weren't individual successes either - they were successes that the western elites felt compelled to imitate.
>The problem is that it is an idealistic social order that assumes one person won't come along and manipulate the masses into transforming the whole thing into a totalitarian dictatorship
Likewise "pure" capitalist societies without corruption and with much vaunted "free markets" are an idealistic fairy tale.
There are no social orders that are immune from the overbearing threat of dictatorship or that turn off the apparent innate desire for absolute power.
+++ https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d5f0af668b46f568255090...
A place like Hilton Head Island, SC is paradise on earth for the guests. Great beaches, awesome golf, a wide variety of amazing restaurants, shopping and cultural stuff.
But the help is bussed in from 2 hours away, and the riff-raff is kept away by gated communities guarded by private security with police powers.
Like, the history of Western civilization? Feudalism, for a start.