Can Communism work?

[ingemann]

Communism as the ideological construction we know. No that couldn't exist. Could communism have been made workable? Yes quite likely and to some extent it was made workable in the short and medium term by USSR, through not in the long term.

So a better question would be; what policies could USSR have implemented which would have made them a long term viable state? And would such a state be truly communist?

[ingemann]

Communism as the ideological construction we know. No that couldn't exist. Could communism have been made workable? Yes quite likely and to some extent it was made workable in the short and medium term by USSR, through not in the long term.

So a better question would be; what policies could USSR have implemented which would have made them a long term viable state? And would such a state be truly communist?

Doesn't that term automatically exclude something from being communist?

If we go back to the original Marxist model yes, but not even Marx embraced that one. But I think it's more interesting to deal with Communism as Lenin shaped it, because that's what most of us think off, when we say Communism.

Here it's interesting to ask how much could we twist the Leninist model and still have something we would reasonable call communism. Poland kept private farming, GDR had in the first many decades semi-private light industry, in Yugoslavia it was legal to fire people. These aspects was important for why these three countries was relative well functioning, removal (or rather partly removal) of the planned economy would also have been positiove. But the question is when do Communism stop being Communism and just become a undemocratic version of Social Democratism?

[ingemann]

Trouble with Ingemanns approach is he is de facto discussing if Socialism can work - not Communism.

This is of course a more relevant topic, but not what the OP wanted to discuss.

Again, the Eastern European dictatorships did not claim they had implemented Communism, just that they were Socialist societies. If you moderate them towards a mixed economy, that is even further  from Communism.

I think it's meaningless to discuss a theorectical construction instead of what people mean when they're talking about Communism, the kind of institutions we saw in the east block.

Would what you mean with Communism function; of course not, neither would any other platonic ideal. So let's not discuss platonic ideals and deal with whether you could produce a functional real world example of the ideology.

[ingemann]

Denmark is happy.

snip

What a bunch of bullsh**t.  I will ignore most of it except for that one comment.

Measuring happiness is hard, much harder than monolingual people think, happiness may not necessary mean the same between different people, and I would be surprised if any people who had dealt with Danes in reality would describe us as a happy people. A important aspect here is the difference in how Danes and as example Americans perceive the world.

Very simply said; (and it's very simple, because this is only trend, not something universal) Danes are pessimistic, while Americans are optimistic. This mean that for a Dane who don't expect much good, life is full of positive surprises, while for Americans who expect much, life is full of negative surprises. Of course if you expect the worst, you also make some long term plans, if things should go wrong, this mean that the consequences of failure is lower for a Dane. At last it's seen as bad taste for a Dane to show his wealth (unless it's done subtle), which mean the social consequences of poverty are also smaller for a Dane. That doesn't make Danes happy, but it make them less unhappy.