Would communism work if people weren't selfish and greedy?

Would communism be a good idea if people were willing to work for the greater good ?
I mean theoretically communism makes sure every person has food,water, a small house and everything that is necessary for survival . Why do you need 3 cars, expensive clothes and other useless luxuries while others have nothing to eat ?
Another argument against communism I have heard is that it doesn't motivate people to study and work hard. Really? What happened to education for the sake of education?Why not work hard because you care about the society you live in? Why should everything be about money ?
Also, while I'm not a fan of the Soviet Union there were actually a lot of educated people and scientists there, so I guess these people managed to find motivation.

 

It sounds like you either did not take the time to research the negative impacts of communism in the Soviet Union or that you are choosing to ignore them.

I would list them for you but it appears you already have your mind made up.

 

Oh Communism in the USSR, what a joke. That being said, Communism can be possible, just like any ideology. It just takes society to be willing to agree to the norms behind it.

 

There are no societies that will ever or have ever agreed with it though so it is irrelevant.

That is why it will never work.

 

Name one society that has ever agreed to any ideology in whole.

 

One might argue, that human societies agreed with these principles for the most time, in most places. The sharing of people by wealth came in the Middle East, Indus, China like 4,000 years ago, in other parts of the world later.

 

Communism can only be brought about by revolution. Reformism cannot work, because the party will eventually loose an election.

Anyone who is radical enough to support armed revolution against the bourgeois is not going to tolerate anything that could possibly result in bourgeois popping up again. As a result, they will probably support a form of Soviet democracy.

Soviet democracy | Wikipedia.org

Soviet democracy will result in a legislature of radicals. The government will eventually start cracking down on anything it deems to be pro-bourgeois, suppressing all dissident and doing away with civil liberties.

Their unsustainable economic policies will result in famines, widespread poverty and, eventually, economic collapse. Soon thereafter, the regime will be swept from power by a revolution, and communism will be abolished.

That is why communism can never work under any circumstances.

 

None of those were pure communist.

America shares wealth to some degree but it certainly is not communist.

 

The original idea was, that being determines consciousness. This should lead to a new kind of person, who is not selfish or greedy.
However, in practice, it rather led to loss of control of power, and people often developed a greed for power.
This went through many parts of society.
While being may determine consciousness in practice, too, it did not lead to the expected results.
I doubt, it works this way at all.

 

Not Communist by ideology, they did not even know the idea behind it. However, they did not try to get rich, because they mainly had no idea of property away from what was useful or comfortable for them to have in daily life. In this way they may have accepted these principles.

Yes, modern societies try to find a balance where possible. Well balanced societies seem to be more economical successful and more stable.

 

You will find that even in ancient cultures there was division with those who had access to resources (whatever they were) having more power than others. Then you had the leaders in the culture who rose above everyone else. The Aztecs or Mayans are very good examples of this even though they did share everything such as food and supplies. However, even these cultures did not practice what could be considered communist principles.

The problem with communism, which Marx and Engle quietly skipped over, is that you can Never have a society where power does not eventually accumulate because if you want rules and laws to govern your society then you need to enforce them. Once you select a group to enforce, or have the ability to command others to enforce, you no longer have a communist society, you develop into an oligarchy.

In order for a communist society to work properly you would need the entire society to set laws and enforce them which means that your neighbor could try and convict you of a crime if he wanted to.

 

Guys are you ok? Communism isn't ideology. It's a socioeconomic system. Ideology is bs.

 

Would a bull give milk if it was a heffer?

Perhaps, but it can't happen so what's the point?

 

Communism has never worked because people will always want more. If everyone is the same, what motivation to work more? I remember when one reporter asked this guy that broke out of E. Berlin and asked him what he thought of communism. He said with communism, government pretends to pay you and you pretend to work. You will always have many who pretend to work.

 

No.

in communism there is no checks and balances to keep some people from corruption.

Therefore you are back to square one.

A few people who control the wealth and power.

And those who control the wealth and power control the masses.

And that is not any different than what we have here in America.

 

You need to read about the early settlers to Jamestown. They worked for this company and everyone was suppose to work for the common good. Everything was divided equally. Trouble is, they couldn't grow enough to feed themselves until the company allowed them each to have a parcel of land for themselves. It was only then they were able to grow enough food to feed everyone.

When government controls everything, they are under no pressure to compete and they won't put money where it belongs to compete. When they tore down the Berlin Wall and the city united, West Germany also tore down almost all the East's factories, because the communist didn't keep them up, didn't modernize them. Their factories could not compete on the world market. All communism does is make everyone equally poor except the government. Most people don't want to settle for next to nothing, even if it supplies all your basic needs. They want more than that.

 

Communism would work just fine if it did involve humans and their natural instincts. kind of a hurdle for communism.

 

Historically Communism never worked. For one thing, why should everyone get equal benefits when those same individuals do not contribute to the wealth of the economy equally? Our Country has gone far enough to attempt to help those that are unable to help themselves. But, what should we do when virtually every person now has the same K-1-K-12 opportunity, equal employment opportunities, grants for College education based on low income/inability to pay?

Some students simply don't apply themselves or take advantage of opportunities available to them, are we suppose to support them? Many individuals on Medicaid, frequenting our business drive up in very expensive cars, better cars then we can afford to drive, how? Single mothers and other low income families are given subsidy to pay for their rent, food, secondary education. Should we be paying more?

One thing is for sure, what we fought for when leaving England and coming to America is happening again IMO. Our freedom, over taxing, over Government regulation, over policing ; is happening again and we seem to be unable to do anything to stop it. Especially when an increasing number of people support it so they can get "free benefits" at the expense of the working class.

 

Yes, I was rather referring to even older societies.

This is the practical problem with Communism. The grassroots democratic approach does not work this way with a larger group of people, it will turn into an oligarchy, autocracy ... or away from Communism.

Ok, this is the not only grassroots democracy, but democracy at all. Based on a constitution, it's all about majorities. My neighbour needs to find a majority.

 

Communism will never work because there are the lazy drones that wont work but feel entitled to what others have.

 

the OP merely noted that communism does not obviate education and academic ambition.

 

this is very true, and can still be seen in many primary societies. the village or tribe is a whole entity, and it's this which is catered to, rather than individual wants. subsistence and shared living can even be seen in many indigenous communities in developed nations.

 

and you don't think that's the reason the planet is in the trouble it's in?

'most people' are lazy, acquisitive, shopping-addicted #$#$wits.

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some humans have grown out of the need to spastically consume like greedy children. these people can and do live communally.

 

What are the negative impacts of communism?

 

Lets look at East and West Germany after the wall was torn down and see what the difference was living there. First though for the reason for the wall to begin with. It wasn't to keep people from coming in, it was to keep those living there under communism from leaving. Why when communism supplies all your needs? Now lets look at the two after the wall came down

"Never had it so good’

“Twenty-five years after the peaceful revolution, Thuringia is one of the most competitive regions in Germany and in Europe,” Christine Lieberknecht, the premier of the eastern state, said in an e-mailed reply to questions. “Our economic strength has tripled since 1991.” She goes further: Her state and Germany as a whole, Lieberknecht says, “have never had it so good.”

The transformation of the east hasn’t been easy, and, above all, it hasn’t been cheap: Public investment in the east since 1990 has reached 1.8 trillion euros — an amount roughly equal to Germany’s gross domestic product at the time of reunification — according to Joachim Ragnitz, managing director of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research.

It has been a commitment without modern parallel; this is the age of separatism, not of integration. And it has worked. “German unity has turned out much better than people thought,” says Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Center for International Political Economy in Brussels. “Back in 1990, the economic cognoscenti almost all believed it would end in tears.”

Instead, Germany’s economy is the largest and among the healthiest in Europe, producing more than 25 percent of the euro area’s GDP. German GDP will expand 1.8 percent this year and 2 percent in 2015, the Economy Ministry forecast in its annual economic report, published Feb. 12. Unemployment, which stood at 6.8 percent in February in seasonally adjusted terms, may fall to a post-unity low this year. Germany had a balanced budget in 2013, its first since reunification.

“Size matters in global political and economic clout,” Erixon says, “and without its eastern wing, Germany wouldn’t have been as strong a factor in European politics over the past two decades.”

Germany has devoted 33.9 billion euros to the transportation infrastructure in the east, which now boasts the finest autobahns in this car-crazed nation. Remote sections, such as the A15, which hits the Polish border at the German city of Forst, and the A20, which skirts the Baltic Sea, are loved by speedsters because the pristine, pothole-free conditions allow them to get their Porsches and BMWs to more than 155 miles an hour.

The eastern infrastructure is now so modern that western Germans are grumbling and demanding equal attention for their comparatively decrepit bridges, roads and railways. “Now, it’s west Germany’s turn,” Hannelore Kraft, prime minister of North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, told the business newspaper Handelsblatt in 2012.

Eastern Germany isn’t just catching up economically. Its people are running the country. Chancellor Angela Merkel, 59, and President Joachim Gauck, 74, both grew up in the communist east. She was a physicist, and he was a dissident pastor in the Lutheran church. Leading roles for easterners were unthinkable after the first all-German elections, in 1990. In Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s first post-unity Cabinet, easterners were relegated to second- and third-tier positions. He made Merkel minister for women’s affairs and dubbed her “my girl.”

Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, was reelected to a third term in September. She may even be on the cusp of an oil boom in her eastern election district: Central European Petroleum GmbH plans to start production in 2017 in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania. Proceeds from drilling rigs, operating costs, royalties and taxes may pump $27.6 billion into eastern Germany’s economy during the next 25 years, according to data provided by the oil company.

Eastern Germany still lags behind the western part of the country in most economic indicators. The unemployment rate — which rose to 18.7 percent as recently as 2005 — was 9.9 percent in February, compared with 6 percent in western Germany, according to the Federal Labor Agency. The east, with about 20 percent of Germany’s total population of 81 million, produces 15 percent of the nation’s GDP. Wages and salaries in the east are on average 70 to 80 percent of those for comparable work in the west.

Struggles such as these suggest that 25 years isn’t a long time when set against 45 years of communist rule.

“The communists meant four decades of being cut off from the global economy,” said Hartmut Vorjohann, Dresden’s mayor of finances. “This all had even graver, deeper and more sweeping consequences than we imagined 25 years ago when we set about rebuilding east Germany.”

All major businesses were confiscated by the state in the Soviet zone of occupation — what would become the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany — after World War II. So were large farm and forestry holdings. The GDR was locked into the East Bloc and subject to shortages of anything and everything. The East German mark, though officially pegged to the West German mark, bought less and less.

“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work,” was the joke.

There are still regions of eastern Germany that are struggling economically, including parts of Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg states. Here you see what infrastructure spending can’t do. Several state-funded projects in Brandenburg have failed, including the EuroSpeedway Lausitzring racetrack and a bid to build zeppelins for transporting freight. The giant hall built for the now-dead zeppelin company, CargoLifter, has been sold and converted into an indoor swimming pool and resort called Tropical Islands.

Brandenburg is also home to Germany’s most-notorious delayed and overbudget project: Berlin’s new airport, which was supposed to open in 2011. After the repeated cancellation of announced opening dates, there’s still no concrete time frame for completion; 2016 is being held out as a possibility. The price for the project, originally set at 2.8 billion euros, is approaching 5 billion euros.
Some still struggling

There are many broken work and life biographies in eastern Germany, especially for people ages 50 to 70, who in many cases saw their jobs vanish as huge state-owned factories were shut down or sold and made drastically smaller. Other people saw their qualifications made worthless overnight, such as those who had received degrees in Marxism-Leninism. Still others were branded by having worked for the hated Stasi, the East German secret police.

Fifty-six-year-old Rainer Rieck was one. He was a policeman in Guben, a town on the German-Polish border. “When the Stasi came to recruit me, I wasn’t man enough to say no,” he says. Rieck says he lost his job in 1991 after his bosses found out about his Stasi past. Then, he says, his wife left him. He was a metalworker until 2003 and has been unemployed since.

“For me, they might as well rebuild the Berlin Wall,” he says. “I’ve never found my bearings in unified Germany.”

About a two-hour drive southwest of Berlin, in the hilly state of Thuringia, is the city of Jena, which has been a center of higher education and technology in Germany for centuries. Famed lensmaker Carl Zeiss, among other stalwarts of the Mittelstand (the small and midsize companies that are at the heart of the German economy), was founded here in 1846. A post-reunification spinoff of Carl Zeiss, the optoelectronics company Jenoptik, is among Jena’s largest employers.

Jena, with a population of 105,000, has one of the strongest property markets in central Germany. The average price of a home rose 27 percent from 2009 to 2013, and the rental market has been swept clean, with just 1 percent of apartments empty in the city, according to a study by real estate company Immowelt.

“The people moving into management positions here are aged around 35, meaning they were 10 when the Berlin Wall came down,” says Christian Graf von Wedel, a real estate investor and head of Frankfurt-based GW Wohnen GmbH, which owns thousands of apartments and several office buildings in the east. “So they don’t have all this communist stuff in their heads. Easterners are more ambitious and harder-working than west Germans. They don’t have the luxury of inheriting, and so they’re hungry and want to get ahead.”

Wedel says the 15-story office building his company owns in Jena, one of the city’s two skyscrapers, was 70 percent empty when he bought it in 2011. It’s now 100 percent rented. Wedel says reducing the size of rental units to cater to information technology start-ups had led to the surge of tenants. The city lists 45 IT companies on its Web site.

Twenty-five years after he joined the anti-communist protests centered at Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche, or St. Nicholas Church, Busse, the construction engineer who helped rebuild the city, has bought a house in Leipzig, and he and his wife are raising their three children there.

“History has been good to us,” he says. “That’s why we have three kids.”

Aside from political and economic freedom, Busse says, the thing he most appreciates about modern eastern Germany is the clean air and water. In his youth, Leipzig’s canals were filthy and stinking; now, he boats on them with his family. On the edges of the city, he visits lakes and parks built where the East German government once tore up the ground to mine cheap, dirty coal.
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