Is Communism misunderstood?

I've never read about any of these claimed lawsuits and without a link to such a lawsuit I find the claim to be dubious.

I've worked for major corporations most of my life and typically they target a 6% to 9% return on investment for their stockholders and don't seek "maximum" profits for the enterprise. I've also known literally hundreds of small business owners and they have never used "pricing" to obtain maximum profits even when they were in markets with no other competition.

Successful enterprises actual exist based upon providing "value to their customers" and that excludes seeking maximum profit because as the cost goes up the "value to the customer" goes down. They want a reasonable profit where the maximum "value to the customer" is provided by the lowest reasonable cost.

 

I have a friend who works for J&J which is one of the oldest and most successful corporations. Their motto is customers first, employees second, share holders third. And they live up to it. Seeking to maximize profits is not successful long term because you will lose customers and essential employees.

I have found in my life that one thing that both socialists and hard core low information conservatives have in common is a very low opinion of the worker.

 

Or, as has been established where "communism" has been imposed by government millions typically starve to death while the leaders of the government live in lavish luxury. Tens of millions died in both China and the USSR under "socialism" and millions more would have died in the USSR if the US didn't provide millions of tons of food to the Soviet Union.

 

How many apps should you be able to buy? Movies? mp3s on Itunes? Videogames? How many cars? What kinds? What you speak of is lunacy =) And who gets no rules dictated to them? The leaders and their families certainly have no limitations, in your scenario.

 

An industrial automation race instead of Cold War could have made a difference. And, how does your point of view account for the "communism" of Sparta?

 

The Communist agenda according to you is misunderstood by the masses. You quote Karl Marx and his Communist Manifesto, and Das Kapital co written by Frederick Engels and Marx. Strangely everyone attributes Communism solely to Marx when Engels was also instrumental in the ideology. We also don't take into account that Lenin the chief architect of Russian Communism inserted his ideas into what we know today Marxism. Each leader of Communism whether it be Stalin or Mao Zedong have imposed their brand of Communism on others.
So what's so difficult with this? You either accept the ideology or reject it.

 

And if you don't meet the quotas and complain they place you in re-education camps. If you continue to fight for you inherent liberties they shoot you and charge your family for the cartridge they use. Hmmm

 

I seriously doubt that a Helot would regard Sparta as a classless society.

 

To expect a sucessful appliation of communism through a central government is like expecting to proctreate through anal sex .

 

I can say the same of any form of anarcho communism. It never occurs to communists that Marx and Bakunin can both be right about why the other is wrong.

 

I am not sure "classless" is an accurate term in modern times. Besides, Helots were not citizens of Sparta.

 

Maybe the oppressive part is, but an absolute dictatorship is the most efficient form of government.

 

The government can focus on bigger and more important things. I'm not against some free market on lower levels, but if it's possible, the government should discourage people buying (*)(*)(*)(*) they don't need. People work too long to enjoy most of the things they buy, anyway. The shoes example is just a demonstration that the free market and people choosing to buy certain things does not lead to the best utility, and in fact rarely does.

 

Why were incarceration rates consistently higher in the U.S. then?

 

Another thing with automation, as more and more jobs start being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence, we are going to have to transition to a communist or socialist economy. Capitalism cannot work in an automated society, because all wealth will be concentrated to a very small group of people who own the robots. Robots will eventually be able to perform any job a human can. There will be no new economic sectors or job creation, because robots will perform those jobs as well. It should be obvious that some type of social economic system that distributes wealth relatively equally among all people is the most effective solution for an automated economy, no matter what you feel about social economic systems now.

 

If men were Angels, they would be happy providing, from each according to his ability to each according to his need.

 

With such productive possibility frontiers made possible through industrial automation, it could simulate more idealistic forms of communism.

 

I'm still going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you're joking because no one can be serious about something this ridiculous.

 

Why is it ridiculous?

 

Nevermind.

 

Political theories are always standing on assumptions , we can go on for years talking about which is the nature of man and what constitutes freedom but Bakunin was right , you can not go from A to B through bourgeois institutions like parliaments.

 

1) Millions were starving in Russia and China before the advent of "communism" (state capitalism). Seriously, people were starving on the streets - more than half the people in Russia didn't have shoes.
2) The "leaders" of the USSR did not live in luxury compared to Western leaders. Their system did not allow them to live the affluent lifestyles of capitalists in the West - they hated their own system because they couldn't directly extract wealth from their own workers, that's why they found it necessary to replace State Capitalism in Russia and become the new oligarchs.
3) The US did not have any good intentions for Russia, they - along with the armies of 14 nations - supported the Tsar is Russia, who would've continued to let people die of famine. Central planning was vital to securing food for Russians and their economic development in general. That's why so many countries - like India - went through stages of economic planning. Perhaps you should condemn per-Mao China and Tsarist Russia for the huge levels of starvation before they were saved by the Soviets and Chinese CP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

 

Comparisons of tyannical government (e.g. pre-Mao China and Tsarist Russia with the Mao era and the communist USSR) really serve no purpose. The people were oppressed under both and many millions die as a result of oppression.

I have found no evidence that starvation was greater prior to Mao or the Russian Revolution but it could have occurred because pre-communist China and Tsarist Russia were highly oppressive. Of course we can always condemn "Western" nations for their support of tyrannical regimes which continues today.

The fundamental problem with communism/socialism is that it won't work at the macro level. To be imposed at a macro level there has to be "someone in charge" and those individuals will always reap huge financial benefits from their position resulting an a concentration of wealth at the expense of the general population. To believe the leaders in such a system will be purely altruistic in their actions is delusional as a person that seeks power does not do so for altruistic purposes.

Macro level communism/socialism will always result in the concentration of wealth in a small ruling economic class at the expense of the general population.

There is a flip-side to this though that many seem to miss.

Crony caplitalism, which is what we have in the United States, will also result in the concentration of wealth in a small ruling economic class at the expense of the general population.

That is the irony for me. In the United States we have those that support crony capitalism in the United States while condemning communism/socialism when the results of both is the concentration of wealth in a small ruling economic class at the expense of the general population.

 

I'm not surprised you've never known about the starvation in Russia and China prior to the Soviets and Chinese CP, it isn't mentioned in Western textbooks because at the time America supported both of those regimes.
"Authoritarianism" was not the problem with China and Russia, it was that the Imperial regimes were genuinely indifferent and were fine with letting local warlords and economic chaos wreak destruction. "God is high in the sky and Tsar is far away" as the Russians used to say.

 

There was even an episode on the original Star Trek series that covered this concept.