are nothing more than the failings of effective democracy.
In all the places where communism has been tried, democracy was the framework which carried the philosophy. The two are of course not mutually exclusive. Communism states that the tools of production are owned by the entire population and democracy states that the government is by the people. By effective democracy, I mean democracy in its bureaucratic manifestations. A non-elected official can never claim to be a communist, by controlling the means of production without having the title of "for the people" that democracy conveys, one negates the definition of communism.
In those nations the governments controlled production and that control was centralized. Decisions were made far from where the repercussions were felt. All that the person holding the power knew is that they had much power. Governments of the democratic kind are filled with yes-men, just look at what happens to members of parliament in Canada who keep their word and go against their party, and the heads of state are quickly filled with the stench of their own "greatness." As we see so often even in our governments, the politicians easily become corrupt or only seek to please their friends, but with so much power in a communism, things go horribly wrong.
Does that make communism unfeasible? Only if you find decentralization of government unfeasible. Communism essentially states that the people who work in factories are the people who own the factories, not that the owner of all the factories is the current head of government. Only a decentralized government can make the claim to true communism, and only through the actual decisions of many of the small atomic governments acting on their own does this fact become manifest.
In this sense, communism is not even distinct from capitalism. The local governments (the factories) work for their own profits and feel the repercussions of bad decisions directly; factories cannot be unified over large geographic areas or else the power would again become centralized. The owners of the factory (the workers) are free to make their own decisions about how their goods are exchanged, the very definition of free enterprise. The power cannot corrupt them because they are even more effective price takers, more atomic than in our form of corporate capitalism- they are closer to the idealized perfect markets that conventional economics use to show the efficiency of the free market. This happens because decisions are only made locally, they must make effective use of their comparative advantage because a factory on the other side of the country will not necessarily save them.
That disasters occur and a "factory" on the other side of the country must save one calls for the existence of a special type of localized, but mobile, business: the insurers. This can of course be accomplished without accumulation of wealth and a de facto central government through balance of payments.
Note that nowhere has the mention of equal wages for equal hours regardless of the skill or effort come up. Nay, the very essence of the communism I am espousing is that the efficiency of the factory will determine its income through normal economic workings, and of course the local factories are free to (locally) make the democratic decision to exile (fire) a lazy worker. The only difference is that there is no person who gains wealth simply for "owning capital". A person owns the capital of their own hands, and nothing more in this system.
This then is a rebuttal to the economic and political Darwinism arguments that frequently target communism. Although I do not argue it here, one could show that the converse, the decentralization of power, will naturally lead to a form of communism.
In all the places where communism has been tried, democracy was the framework which carried the philosophy. The two are of course not mutually exclusive. Communism states that the tools of production are owned by the entire population and democracy states that the government is by the people. By effective democracy, I mean democracy in its bureaucratic manifestations. A non-elected official can never claim to be a communist, by controlling the means of production without having the title of "for the people" that democracy conveys, one negates the definition of communism.
In those nations the governments controlled production and that control was centralized. Decisions were made far from where the repercussions were felt. All that the person holding the power knew is that they had much power. Governments of the democratic kind are filled with yes-men, just look at what happens to members of parliament in Canada who keep their word and go against their party, and the heads of state are quickly filled with the stench of their own "greatness." As we see so often even in our governments, the politicians easily become corrupt or only seek to please their friends, but with so much power in a communism, things go horribly wrong.
Does that make communism unfeasible? Only if you find decentralization of government unfeasible. Communism essentially states that the people who work in factories are the people who own the factories, not that the owner of all the factories is the current head of government. Only a decentralized government can make the claim to true communism, and only through the actual decisions of many of the small atomic governments acting on their own does this fact become manifest.
In this sense, communism is not even distinct from capitalism. The local governments (the factories) work for their own profits and feel the repercussions of bad decisions directly; factories cannot be unified over large geographic areas or else the power would again become centralized. The owners of the factory (the workers) are free to make their own decisions about how their goods are exchanged, the very definition of free enterprise. The power cannot corrupt them because they are even more effective price takers, more atomic than in our form of corporate capitalism- they are closer to the idealized perfect markets that conventional economics use to show the efficiency of the free market. This happens because decisions are only made locally, they must make effective use of their comparative advantage because a factory on the other side of the country will not necessarily save them.
That disasters occur and a "factory" on the other side of the country must save one calls for the existence of a special type of localized, but mobile, business: the insurers. This can of course be accomplished without accumulation of wealth and a de facto central government through balance of payments.
Note that nowhere has the mention of equal wages for equal hours regardless of the skill or effort come up. Nay, the very essence of the communism I am espousing is that the efficiency of the factory will determine its income through normal economic workings, and of course the local factories are free to (locally) make the democratic decision to exile (fire) a lazy worker. The only difference is that there is no person who gains wealth simply for "owning capital". A person owns the capital of their own hands, and nothing more in this system.
This then is a rebuttal to the economic and political Darwinism arguments that frequently target communism. Although I do not argue it here, one could show that the converse, the decentralization of power, will naturally lead to a form of communism.