^CoSMic DoRiS^^ said:
my opinion on the practice of communism is that, while in theory it sounds great to have everybody on an equal playing field, in practice it cannot work so smoothly because of the human nature I was talking about before. it looks ok on paper but trying to get people to actually do it and not have it fall flat on its face or have to be propped up by a dictatorship to ensure it keeps going, is a much more difficult thing, and in the end i think it's neither worth it, nor entirely fair, despite what the ideal is meant to be.
It is not practical to implement Communism, and I have never known a person in history to try and do this. Maybe Pol Pot, though this is a very murky area.
What others have tried, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim-Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh and various other, they made the first attempt to element all forms of oppression, through socialist construction. Now I say construction, because they had to develop industry and argiculture.
What they acheived was very positive. What they failed to stop, the restoration of capitalism (not yet of DPRK and Cuba, maybe Vietnam even) is a hard problem to understand.
Part of the problem, which you call human nature, is some people in the bureaucracy represented managers in the socialist system, and their drive to control resources and be rewarding for producing above the quota. They allowed the introduction of profit incentive, which under people like Stalin was secondary to need of the people, under Krushchev it was awarded. This I guess can be called greed, it can be called revisionism, a capitalist form etc. And I think it was a huge problem, however Communist have noted this. Mao noted this rise of bureaucracy, and the revisionsim that followed.
This revisionism, however does not equal to the idea of a common human nature of greed. This idea of greed, is based on primarily on Western consumption, where people can afford to be greedy. The idea in the socialist, third/second world camp is collective consumption. Collective effort and you get a collective return. For instance the industrialisation of Russia in the 30s and the collectivisation of argiculture, was a collective effort of the workers and peasanty, and there was a collective consumpstion. Living standards of the workers and peasants were raised at what would have to be a world record
I don't think people look at the "toiling masses" in this countries. It is a huge thing in a country like DPRK, for the government to be able to provide, a warm meal, a house and clothes under a independent socialist system. And being in Cuba earlier this year, I know that people do want more, they would like the little luxuries in their life. However except in the extreme cases, such as people using rafts to leave Cuba, these people support their government.
If greed was a huge problem, I don't think the socialist systems would have lasted as long as they did, nor would people in India, Nepal, Philipines, Peru and Colombia (the most notable countries with a communist insurgency) continue to fight for this system, or in countries like Moldova, India (West Bengal etc) Cyprus, Mongolia etc (places where Communist have been elected and win a majority in parliament) would keep voting for Communists. This "greed" element only becomes a problem when the beuraucracy allows a group of representatives (managers) to create similar styles of economy to that of capitalism.
What I am trying to do is show that the most poor people in this world, the $1 a day people, really benifit from Communist ideology when put in practice. Even if it is getting the bare essentials, food, or for woman to be allowed an education. And that this idea of "greed" has be theorised as "revisionism" and thoose who fight today for Communism, have the knowledge of this problem.
What I am saying is there is going to be a new era of Communism. And this discussion about Capitalism against Communism, has no relevance to the actually contradiction between Capitalism and Communism being played out mostly in the third world.