Would you live in a communist state?
 

Like it or not, the Occupy Wall Street movement has done one thing decisively well: exhuming the concept of class struggle from philosophical tedium into modern awareness. And while many of the movement's aims don't fall explicitly within the regime of communism per se, there remains a prevailing sentiment of disparity between capital-owning and capital-producing (bourgeois & proletariat) classes. Without drastically restructuring American economic policy, we cannot meet (most of) these goals, which begs the question...

Would you live in a communist state?

Bear in mind, communism is defined as the abolition of private property, or the abolition of capital-producing property. If you are unsure of the implications of this statement, I suggest reading Marx's The Communist Manifesto, not a Wikipedia article. NOTE: The modern interpretation of communism is very, very different than what Karl Marx envisioned...where even laissez-faire systems implemented in the PRC can come to call themselves "communists."

Karl Marx originally envisaged a rich industrialized country for his doctrine and not a peasant based society like imperialist Russia. He probably had Great Britain or Germany in mind when he wrote his Communist Manifesto in the 19th century. If he were around today he`d probably be looking at the USA as the perfect model for a communist society.....its an interesting concept.

But the USA is no longer in a period of industrialization...we've been a consumer service economy since the 1980s. Manufacturing jobs are virtually nonexistent, and though they are on the rebound, they still represent less than 10% of the American work force.

However, we still have a small number of people who make money using money (rather than wage-labour), which essentially dominates the gulf between capital-owners and capital-producers and is a primary focus of the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I used industrialized in the past tense as in the country is already industrialized, sure you`re a consumer service economy like most of the western nations now, but the point is that despite the recent economic downturn which has hit the USA hard, the country still serves as a great example for the Manifesto, you have great disparities between rich and poor and a society that is highly educated and politically and socially aware, just the attributes needed for a communist society to succeed. Whether an economist would agree with me is another matter though.

I don't think the economic downturn has hit the US any harder than Europe. We just don't have as large a safety net for the working class as western Europe does.

I should say, I didn't really want to discuss whether (or where) communism works, but whether communism works for you. As in, how many of you would be willing to forgo your material luxuries to ensure that everyone got a piece of the pie?

Well I spent some time in the Soviet Union when I was younger and studied there for a few months as part of my uni programme and despite being very interested with the country and the society, the word GRIM is what I would`ve described the lifestyle there as.

In answer to your question, well despite believing that man will never be equal, I`d still give up some of my luxuries to help my fellow human being, so the answer is yes. Over the last couple of years in the UK, we`ve had the logo of "The Big Society" where each individual is being prompted to take on a bigger role in society and thus taking the burden away from the government.

Q: Would you live in a communist state?
A: No ****ing way. No to Eurocommunism, no to anarcho-communism, no to any variation including "Lenin"...

If it worked, I'd totally go for anarcho-communism. People evolved to live in small family groups anyway. Living in a city of millions of people where you have to rely on a supermarket to feed yourself? That's not natural. Seriously, for any of you libertarian types who think that you're "self-reliant", imagine what would happen if all the supermarkets and convenience stores all closed down and stopped selling food. How many millions would starve just because of the loss of Farmfresh?

I would be willing to be part of a communist system only if we did it right and it could be guaranteed that it wouldn't get super corrupt and ****ed up down the road. I've always liked the idea of communism, but the problem is true communism has never been more than an idea. Who's to say that we won't twist communism into some sort of dictatorship as well?

You could be right though. As far as I know communism has never been adopted by a nation as educated or as wealthy as the US. I'm willing to give it a try (though the entire right will undoubtedly close their ears as soon as they hear the dirty word).

Do you live in a rural location?

Every communist system has been corrupt and always bred dictators, but if a state that was already educated, wealthy and transparent adopted it then it could feasibly work.