User blog comment:Commissar. Dmitri/Communism Explained/@comment-74526-20110424135511

In itself, communism is a wonderful idea. It is laudable to desire to create a society with no want, no hunger, no crime, and no violence. In practice, however, it is impossible: it's like trying to reclaim Eden.

I am opposed to communism because all those who believed they were creating a communist state - Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - truly believed they were communists and only succeeded in getting a lot of people killed in the process, since they believed any number of deaths was justified if it meant saving the "perfect" communist future of humanity. We should all be deeply sceptical of any ideology that claims to offer all the answers, since its adherents will go to any lengths to enact it if they believe it will ultimately benefit all.

Marx writes that the path to communism actually requires a transitional dictatorial phase (a "dictatorship of the proletariat", as he called it) to make it work. Whether Marx meant it or not, this transitional phase has only ever led to the deaths of thousands in whatever state it was tried, and that state never made it out of that phase: Those in charge become fixated with the immense power they hold over the population, and never want to give it up. You say that there should really be a "multi-leftist-party council in government which take votes to make decisions", and call it democracy. That is not democracy, it is democracy for those who "think properly". In most so-called communist states, if you didn't think properly you'd often get a midnight visit from the secret police. You say the "economic balance is achieved through collectivization". Well, Stalin tried collectivisation, and it led to what is now called the Holodomor. I think we can see from this that it is not communism itself that does not work, since no one had ever got to communism to see how well it works, but it is the methods used to, and the people trying to, get to communism that do not work.