I have noticed a couple of posters here who are openly Communist. I have no problem with that. This is America, and ALL views should be heard. However, I have a question for them.

Actually, I like the idea of Communism....... In small groups, where ALL have agreed to share the wealth. This is the logic behind the running of a kibbutz in Israel. And for a household, or small community, Communism is not a bad thing. However, when you apply Communism on a larger scale, say, a state, or a nation, the logic of Communism breaks down. On larger scales, you are forcing those who dont want to share their wealth to share it. As the Soviet system showed, that could not be done without a massive police presence, and individual rights were severely restricted. And, in the process, as the state took over the management of Russia's production, you had essentially the merger of the state with corporate power, since the corporations became part of the state. The merger of corporate power with the state is the definition of Fascism. The abuses of power that you see in Communist nations are exactly the same abuses you see in Fascist states. In the end, there is no difference. When George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, he was writing it as a condemnation of Communism. The sentence that ends the book tells it all. It says that humans and pigs were sitting around a table and nobody could tell which was human and which was pig.

In the end, Communism works on very small scales, but utterly fails and becomes Fascism when people attempt to run nations with it.

You may be in America, this is the internet.
It was not a "condemnation of Communism".
The novel is far more than just that. That line is the culmination of the long and well crafted allegory of Stalinist Russia. It has to be taken as such.
Orwell never ceased being a socialist, despite his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. His opposition was to party-based communism, rather than the ideology behind it.

What's the question?

I think he is attempting to say something like, he likes communism but when it is actually practiced by a government it becomes fascism, I believe he means totalitarianism. In other words communism only works in small groups and breaks down when you go beyond that, then do you agree or disagree.

Anyways he can correct me if I'm wrong.

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Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left. - F.A. Hayek

Where have all the Conservatives Gone?

I think he is attempting to say something like, he likes communism but when it is actually practiced by a government it becomes fascism, I believe he means totalitarianism. In other words communism only works in small groups and breaks down when you go beyond that, then do you agree or disagree.

Anyways he can correct me if I'm wrong.

__________________
Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left. - F.A. Hayek

Where have all the Conservatives Gone?

I tend to think of myself as an anarchosocialist when in ideologue mode- so that's pretty consistant with my beliefs.
The trouble with too much decentralization, however is that it creates very small groups with different interests who don't always see their interconnectedness. It also might make it more difficult for people to move around to and from communities as necessary or preferable.
I suppose that's why we came up with federalism.
My belief is that federalism should be taken even further to smaller communities than the states and that it should apply to the whole world rather than just one country- since ideally we'd like to have the fruits of open trade and an end to warfare.
Not sure how to accomplish that. But when I get into ideals, that's what I do. If you're going to be an idealist, be a ^$%#$@^#$ idealist! That's what I say.

You quite correctly typed the word communism with a lowercase c, and not a capital one. I like the idea of sharing what I have with my family members, and very close friends. In that respect, I could, ideologically speaking, be considered a communist, but only up to that point. I have no intention of sharing what is mine with people I dont know, so after a certain point, I am no longer communist.

My philosophy is that unbridled Capitalism, with a large C, is what works if allowed to exist, but governments manage to screw that up by intervening in markets. Within a capitalist system, if some want to share their wealth with others, they have every right to do that, and they are communistic to the extent that they wish to share what is theirs.

However, my whole point is that, while communism as an ideology might be fine and dandy, the whole concept breaks down when applied on a large scale because many do not want to share what they have with others. There are many reasons. Some are just greedy. Others dont want to work hard to make a living for someone else who is lazy. And some others want nothing to do with Communism for ideological reasons. However, whatever the reason is, once a government attempts to force Communism on its citizens, especially those who dont want it, that government is no longer Communist, but a police state. Add to the fact that government is merged with corporate power under such a system, and we have the classical definition of Fascism. Name one nation where Communism has truly worked. Just one. You cant, because none exists. Yet you have Communist parties in many nations, including America, whose members are naive enough to think that, once they take power, they will be running a Communist nation. They couldnt be more wrong. How would they enforce such a government without committing actions which run contrary to the concept of communism itself?

Communist communities? Perhaps. A nation based on communism? no longer communist, but Fascist.

Since America controls the internet, this is America by proxy, heh heh

Yeah, thats an important distinction. People get them confused, but they are not the same thing.

Not necessarily. Communism is just centralization of resources and education. Fascism is basically nationalism taken to an extreme, with a dictator as opposed to the Oligarchy of communism.

You could easily have one without the other.

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