Communism to fight poverty?

Well, I said that a simplified version of communism worked for the Native American tribes, and it did. You brought in the idea that they were butchers and warmongers, when many weren't. They fought, yes, and they killed violently, yes, but they hardly waged war in the sense that the Europeans did, and that's a fact. War was avoided as much as possible because it hurt the victorious side substantially as well. They were different than the Europeans, and their way of life worked for them.

As for small pox, of course it killed Europeans too, but it wiped out hundreds of thousands of of Native Americans who had absolutely no immune system against it. It's a fact. Small pox and other pox viruses evolved after humans adopted animal husbandry in the Fertile Crescent, which was after the ancestors of later to be Native Americans migrated from the area, those the entire genetic pool had no exposure to Small Pox, unlike the Europeans.

Also, if you want to think that small scale communism didn't work for the Native Americans and that it allowed them to be decimated while ignoring the fact that they were thousands of years behind the Europeans because the Europeans had less distance to travel from the fertile crescent, thus allowing stationary settlement, thus agriculture, thus specialization, thus science, thus technology, be my guest. Many native tribes were hunter/gatherer types, but as you brought up the Mayans and Aztecs, I think it should be noted that they were sedentary, and beginning to develop systems similar to early European.

I never said one was better than the other, I said communism worked for the Native Americans. Their being thousands of years behind in technology, and as I said before, more importantly lacking any exposure to small pox, is not a fault of communism, rather their migration into the Americas is what left them thousands of years behind.

(interesting note: the origin of syphilis is currently under debate)
 
There are too many people. With such a huge population, communism requires very restrictive regulation and what such. The way to go is this: Split up the country into fifty different countries and allow them all to govern themselves YEEHAW! (Joke.)

Communism seems to be something that works better for smaller populations.

There has to be other options besides communism vs. capitalism.
More ideas to dream up. Neither seem viable.
 
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I think we need to find and implement a stable form of government first before we come to the fine details on what we'll need for a world based government.

Cultural factors have to be added in to, many Americans don't mind a forty hour work week, but hate the idea of losing the majority of their money to taxes, other countries function on the opposite end of the spectrum.
 
Peppermint said:
Shared property gets taken advantage of.

/thread
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how? like in what countries today

I think China is not really a communist country... didn't they engage in capitalism now? they're like 50 % capitalists that's why they're progressing.

oh and... does communism work this way

like for example, person A gets $300 and person B gets $200 then they'll surrender it to the government. in the end you will get equal things. So can it be possible that communism decreases the people's incentives to work. Or do communist countries have a certain quota before you'll get your salary?<-- so it turns out to be equal?

can a communist country engage in a free market? like china's open door policy?
 
No, here in the United States we fight poverty by convincing everyone that they are middle class and not caring about the rest.
 
soulseeker said:
true :)

communism will never eliminate the greed that is inert in man.
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I don't think that we should make a blanket statement such as 'man is greedy'. The reality which i see everyday around me is people working together and cooperating.

In fact people cooperate with each other all the time despite the fact we live in a capitalist system which is predominantly about competition.

Even in this current messy ideology of capitalism which tries to turn everyone into a selfish, self obsessed consumer we still see everyone cooperating peacefully all the time

It is like a game. The game we are playing at the moment is a game of greed where success is measured in monetary terms, so we see the excesses of greed. If we change the rules of the game and make the game about sharing, with success measured by how you contribute to the common good (any contributions to the common good will in turn enrich your life) then we would see excesses of kindness and compassion

The problem is that the people who decide what the rules of the game are are a few extremely rich people and they don't want to see the rules of the game changed because then they would lose all their wealth and power. It therefore must fall to the majority of players....namely us the people, to decide to stop playing the current game and to start playing a new one.

We need to take the childish counters of the current game (money) off the super rich and discard them. We then need to tell them firmly 'your game isn't working, we need a new one'
 
I'm not sure communism has been practised yet. No one has managed to get past the dictatorship phase

That is why a change in system must be done without exchanging one form of oppression for another. There must not be a transition phase. Power must go directly from the capitalist class to the people and then held by the people

Anarchism was used to great effect in Spain during the Spanish Civil war but was eventually crushed by fascist forces because they were supported by the outside industrial strength of Nazi Germany

The idea however worked and worked well
 
muir said:
I'm not sure communism has been practised yet. No one has managed to get past the dictatorship phase

That is why a change in system must be done without exchanging one form of oppression for another. There must not be a transition phase. Power must go directly from the capitalist class to the people and then held by the people

Anarchism was used to great effect in Spain during the Spanish Civil war but was eventually crushed by fascist forces because they were supported by the outside industrial strength of Nazi Germany

The idea however worked and worked well
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According to my understanding of Marxist theory, nobody has been able to achieve the dictatorship phase. That is, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is not synonymous with having a dictatorship of the party.
 
muir said:
I'm not sure communism has been practised yet. No one has managed to get past the dictatorship phase

That is why a change in system must be done without exchanging one form of oppression for another. There must not be a transition phase. Power must go directly from the capitalist class to the people and then held by the people

Anarchism was used to great effect in Spain during the Spanish Civil war but was eventually crushed by fascist forces because they were supported by the outside industrial strength of Nazi Germany

The idea however worked and worked well
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Anarchism might have been a stable system, but that doesn't mean it "worked well." I don't think much scientific, economic, or social progress was made during the Spanish Civil War. Of course, war was a huge limiting factor, but I think most people would agree that anarchy is not a "system" (of course) as much as it's just the interregnum between two different leaderships.
 
I think the anarchists had some of the highest output. The reason for this is anarchists are getting the direct fruits of their labour and have a say over their work conditions, so the incentive is there to work hard. Capitalism dissincentivises people from working hard because they only get a cut of the profits (a wage). Usually in capitalism the employer pays the employee just enough that they don't quit and the employer works just hard enough that they don't get fired.....it
 
Billy said:
Didn't many of them also leave their elders to die in the winter, war constantly on neighboring tribes and enslave women and children, while living often like nomads in many areas? I guess communism works when we factor out standards of living or when we are stuck in the stone age.
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[MENTION=1451]Billy[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1009]mf[/MENTION] regarding the elderly...

In defense of my inupiaq eskimo culture I must say whatever genuis came up with that was simply observing a self-sacrificing elder in a not encouraged sort of tradition....which to a civilized western genuis who considered these people as savage took something slightly out of context and managed to spread that these crazy natives kill their old people to the rest of the civilized world.

Growing up part eskimo in Alaska, I had never heard anything about elderly people being left to die in winter.

The first time I heard this was from a friend down here in the south who majored in anthropology and rightfully so questioned the validity of this topic and asked me "Is it really true the Eskimos would put their elderly people in kayaks in the middle of winter and send them out to sea"? I never heard of such and was so curious I called my full blooded savage eskimo mother in her tiny village of 700 nomadic people located above the Arctic Circle on her cellphone..

Her village has only been introduced to the "white" man for maybe, maximum 150 years now. Wow. As a matter of fact my Great Grandmother "had lived 16 winters before the white man came". The white men were actually French missionaries and my Great Grandmother was the first of her people to convert to Christianity and she actually became an official pastor of a Quaker church.

So back onto what I was saying...I asked my mom if this were true. It gave her a good laugh because she must have been asked that all her life and now here is her grown daughter asking the same thing. She explained to me:

When the elders (and certainly not all of them) became too old and weak to contribute to the community; rather than consuming scare amounts of food and supplies, some would essentially committ suicide by sneaking out at night and getting into a kayak to float out to sea and die. This was pretty devastating for the people and it was never accepted or encouraged at all.

When the Eskimos were introduced to the western world new reliance solely on their immediate environment for food/clothing/supplies etc. slackened just a bit and the self-sacrificing well faded out. And it breaks my heart to say, that for those in rural villages like where my mother lives, life is harsh. They are forgetting to live like their ancestors have done for thousands of years and now still trying to adapt to the western world. I'm proud of my heritage. Go to a rural little village and see how long you would last.

I can only speak specifically for my culture and what I was told...but I imagine Indians may have felt too they were a burden and sacrificed themselves...I just know what I know about my culture :)
 
Communism has quite an appetite and cannot survive on its own. jmo
 
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