Is communism really bad?

I mean, the idea looks really good, but it isn't viable at all.
People naturally take charge, therefore a higher class is automatically formed.
Plus my geography teacher said communists knew how to look after their own.

no, it was destroyed by Capitalist properganda cos it didnt suit them to share their wealth.

Communism; great Idea. Wrong Species.

Who wouldn't want to live in a society where everyone's basic needs are satisfied and in an atmosphere of mutual support and cooperation?

Would you not then be limited to having only your basic needs?

It'll work when the robots take over the means of production, and we humans live on a post-scarcity planet. You heard it here first.

True that.

There's a great little book by a very famous philosopher called G.A. Cohen called Why Not Socialism? (Princeton University Press, 2009).

In the book Cohen uses a simple example of a camping trip among friends to show how humans can and do think 'communistically' in the right contexts and that it can easily enhance their conditions and social life.

If I was to concede anything it would be that communism's problems are to do with political organisation and power not to do with economic and social arrangements.

Who wouldn't want to live in a society where everyone's basic needs are satisfied and in an atmosphere of mutual support and cooperation?

Why do you log onto TSR, and then take apart a political doctrine with 2 embarassingly simple lines?

I mean let's just stop and think... do you think that Lenin, Marx, Kropotkin, Bakunin (I know they're Anarchists, using it interchangeably here), Engals, Gramsci, Lukacs all these incredibly intelligent men, it never occurred to them "Oh it just can't work, hurr durr, people naturally take charge, we is so stupid for not knowing this!"

Do you really not think they don't address these issues? Do you think in the whole of the collected works of Marx, there is no reference to this? Do you really?

In short, Marx states that capitalism is the ideology that perverts men. Men are not inherently greedy, selfish, domineering etc.. they're perverted by capitalism. He points to pre neolithic men, before capitalism, before the concepts of money... where everything was just collectively shared. I think it's in the German Ideology (it's been a while since I've read Marx) where he discusses how men are perverted by capitalism into being selfish etc... you manage to break away from capitalism, and eventually you can escape these ideas about taking charge, avarice, jealousy... these are all bi-products of Capitalism, man himself is inherently benevolent. Furthermore, you may not think you can't escape capitalism but you can, you have a false-conciousness. Your material life informs your ideology; "Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour... Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life". < German ideology.

Remove the capitalism, your false conciousness goes, your ideology goes, man will no longer be selfish and individualist.

I read that and came to it empathetically, but to me it seemed very shallow (not only because it's a small book) and up-in-the-clouds. (I mean, he even started quoting a sixties camp-fire song about the brotherhood of man etc. at one point.) One can't generalise from groups of friends (i.e. everyone's in the same 'in-group') taking part in a consciously co-operative activity with consciously similar aims to humankind as a whole with all of its various competing aims, desires and factions. Indeed, even in the microcosm of camping trips friends do fall out -- or, for example, someone in the group may meet people in another group, get on with them and decide to spend time and resources with them etc.

I like the idea of socialism, and hope that forms of government/economics are available other than free-market social Darwinism (although I do too have doubts that we ever will get past such a condition of 'might is right' that increasingly seems biologically inherent in the human condition [even individual acts of altruism can be explained via selfish motivation, for example]), but I wouldn't recommend this book as a way of convincing others of the merits of socialism. He was reasonable in pointing out the problems socialism would have to overcome though (e.g. the economic calculation problem).

But, as I say, I'm all for attempting to better society -- even if all we can do is attempt. As Samuel Becket said, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Communism would be great if we were all robots

It'll work when the robots take over the means of production, and we humans live on a post-scarcity planet. You heard it here first.

That would allow for humanless production, but there would still only be limited natural resources (i.e. means of production) -- and people (and, perhaps, robots on our behalf) would still fight over them.

One is generally seen as a better potential partner the more resources that one has access to (since, even if society collapses or someone steals from you etc., you'd still be able to provide very well for children), so our Darwinian wiring dictates that we will never be happy with just the minimum necessities of life. It's the same in all animals; we humans aren't particularly special.

If the evidence of hunter-gatherers is anything to go by, and we have essentially evolved as hunter-gatherers, then our 'hard wiring' tends to be towards wanting 'fairness' above all else. There's a big danger of thinking human evolution is a) only about self-interest and b) behaviour directed towards mutual support and cooperation doesn't serve self-interest anyway, it easily does. Humans haven't evolved 'going it alone' and we don't even do that now, even while capitalism promotes an ideology to that end.

I mean, the idea looks really good, but it isn't viable at all.
People naturally take charge, therefore a higher class is automatically formed.
Plus my geography teacher said communists knew how to look after their own.