I'm going to get the ball rolling, whats your opinion and what basis do you hold those opinions on?

Pure communism (i.e. everyone is equal, gets an equal share, etc) never works because human greed always fucks it up. It sounds nice in theory but human nature ensures it'll always wind up oppressing the people.

Marx' theory was good, yes, I agree but only in theory.

Although with the mention of human greed creeping in you have to question whether or not humans are innately evil or innately good. I believe that people are innately good but competition in this world drives us to evil because we have to walk over people to get ahead (in my views anyway). If you had pure equality then there would be no backstabbing because there would be equal distribution of everything to everyone.

communism stifles creativity and growth, while capitalism creates elitism and the exploitation of the disadvantaged. Both lead to oppression. Why democracy has been so successful is because it allows the full spectrum of opinions to be expressed, and a balance to be struck between the 2 extremes.

Ambition is just human nature. People are always going to try and climb the ladder, even if we try to take the ladder away.

Communism is nice in theory, but when put into practice, a new society hierarchy emerges. Where the hierarchy in a capatilist society is based on income, in a communist society it is based on social contacts with givernment officials. At least in the capitalist system status is based partly on merit. Under communism its just based on your ability to suck up.

nice comments. there have been huge successes, however, in Cuba, and although its not so much communism but special castroism mixed with a free-ish market, Cuba, despite the repeated and illegal attempts at intervention, the barries placed on trade and the illegal outside control of sugar pricing, the Cuban population have the lowest rate of unemployment and highest rate of literacy in the third world, certainly high and away above latin America. Granted those are not the only yard sticks, and there are nasty tales of politcal smothering of dissenters, but that is rather more related to castro, America, and personal situations, than too communism in itself. I guess still there are similarities between Castro and Stalin. Bring back che i say....

Can you name a communist country that doesn't have tales of political smothering of dissenters?

I would actually quite like to go and see Cuba before Castro dies.

haha no. but what the fuck do i know, right?! i hear north korea has a good , open politcal regime....

mind you, to an extent everyform of government smothers politcal dissent to a degree and in differnt ways.

I understand tehre are 5 communist countries still operating, and castros is the most 'successful' under western perception. a case study, if you will...

That is true but there are people in the world who lack ambition, those people make it easy for communism to succeed. This is because they would be happy with the status quo.

I wasn't really talking about whether communism would succeed or not, rather if it was fair or not. The people without ambition aren't going to be the ones who make pals with the government and make influence. In fact, in the USSR at least, it was ambition more than ability that determined how far you got in life.

That is very fucked. I very much think that you should be judged on your ability rather than ambition. Ambition is important because without that nothing would ever get done but ability matters so that things can be done efficiently and effectively.

This is a great piece to read on North Korea. Its about a guy who took a trip there, and recorded what he saw. I've never seen anything more comprehensive, and its all first hand information.


Journey into Kimland