Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Communism

Communism and primate behavior
Robert — (archived)

You're right about how utopian Communism fails when it confronts real human nature. The ideal of complete egalitarianism hits the wall of the hardwired primate instinct to form hierarchies and establish dominance and submission. Differential power always arises.

That's true in a closed system, as Mary Anne points out. It's hard to build a tyranny if membership is voluntary and exit is easy. Nothing deflates a tyrant faster than seeing his subjects just turn their backs and stroll casually away. That kind of openness would change the equation considerably (maybe the UN Charter should stand up for free emigration to allow people to vote with their feet), and would probably lead, finally, to the opportunity to see what Communism and other -isms would look like when the coercive aspect is removed. Communism's been known to work at the voluntary small scale, as so many have pointed out.

I reacted like you to reading Marx's ideas--pretty, but naive, at least in the world as it is today. You could say that the problem isn't that Communism isn't good enough for people, it's that people aren't good enough for Communism. That's not a defense, because any useful social system has to take people as they are, not as one wishes them to be. Failure to be realistic leads to heavy suffering indeed.

But if you change some of the groundrules of reality, such as emigration, some systems that are currently dysfunctional might prove to have strengths that were obscured by tyranny. What would the Right's objection to Communism be if its favorite denunciation, that of tyranny, is removed? (Oh, I have faith they'll find something. At least we'll get to argue about something new.)

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (55 posts)