Yes, it is impossible. *Ahem. some countries are democratic, while other's are just a dictatorship in the guise of proper political systems.

- If the government, controls information.
- Use scare tactics to sway votes.
- Use government resources so to win in future elections.
- Use government influence to gain support

Then it is by no means democratic.


Perhaps, a better system of democracy would be that, campaigning will be organized for both parties equally. And no outside effort, or benefit of how rich you are at advertising would be permitted?

This post has been edited by TheDoer: Dec 14 2009, 11:55 AM

My personal thoughts on the entire thing:
- Marx never had a chance to fully explain what his idea of communism is. His works were still incomplete before he kicked the bucket.
- The issues with countries that claim to be practicing communism is not really to do with communism itself. Come to think of it, even George Owell's animal farm shows as much, that its not the ideology that's the problem, but its the revolution to get rid of the previous regime that's the problem, in the sense that those heading the revolution will end up being so powerful that they can just claim that they embody the ideology behind the revolution that has taken place. This is something applicable regardless of what that ideology is, not just to communism

This post has been edited by fyire: Dec 14 2009, 12:01 PM

One main reason why Communism ideology fails is the way it handles the economic of a country. It assumes that the economic of a country is finite. Don't get me wrong, finite here doesn't mean that the regime leader comes out with a GDP of says 1Billion for year 2010 for that country.

"Finite" means the economic is determined by the regime leader and his team in a hierarchy structure. A team does infrastructure, B team food, C team medical, D team weapon....etc. The nation's wealth is determined by the top tier of the hierarchy. The job creation, the number of companies are all are predetermined by the leader. Food is distributed to each citizen in the form of coupon (like North Korea). The country will need to shield the entire nation from the outside world (capitalism) in order to maintain the ideology.

On the other hand, why capitalism is a better model? Because it started with the assumption that economic of a country is theoretically infinite.

Looking back at the history of western economy capitalism model, prior to 17th century, there were kings, dukes, rich man or central planner who control the entire piece of lands and everything (includes everyone) in it.

There was one Scotsman who proposed a new model called "Invisible Hand". He argued that when each person pursues his own line of work, the general population is far better off that it is when the king or the central planner runs the economic show and dictates who does and gets what (e.g. cloth, hat, vegetable). He argued that if millions of individuals making and selling whatever they pleased, and going off in all directions at once, could create an orderly society in which everyone had clothes, food and a roof over their heads. What if 99% of the people decided to make hats, and only 1% decided to grow vegetables? The country would be flooded with hats, and there would be nothing to eat. But this is where the Invisible Hand comes to the rescue.

There wasn't really an Invisible Hand, of course. It is a metaphor. For instance, if too many hat makers made too many hats, hats would pile up in the market, forcing the hat sellers to lower the price. Lower price for hats would drive some hat makers out of the hat business and into a more profitable line of work, such as vegetable farming. Eventually, there would be just enough vegetable farmers and hats makers to make the right amount of vegetables and hats.

The "invisible hand" method proposed is the basics of how a free market works, and they still hold true today. He was referring to supply and demand kept goods and services in balance. His idea seems obvious today, but in 17th century, it was a novel idea by one human being when such ideology was never heard and never implemented before.

His name was Adam Smith aka The Father of Modern Economics. And his idea was written down in the book called "The Wealth of Nations".

If a country wants to be prosper, it needs to adopt "free market" concept where the wealth generated is theoretically infinite. In summary, bottom up (capitalism) is a better model then top down (communism) from economical perspective.

One can still argues that there are pro and con with "free market" capitalism concept. I agree. Look at Tulip bubble, Automotive bubble, .Com bubble and lately property bubble in Dubai. Again, as Adam has mentioned, this is how the free market work in cyclic order, where price goes up will eventually comes down and this cycle will continues......just like the hats maker and the vegetables farmer.....

Communism is sometimes called "scientific socialism" which means you can implement the ideology in scientific ways, which can be in different way that you can scientifically perform it. It is actually a form of socialism in its final stage, where social equality can be fully performed and everyone is treated equal without class, race or even religion. That's why most communist countries are banning religions.

The huge different between socialism and Communism (defined by Marxists) is the separation of "socialism," a society ruled by workers, and "communism," a classless society.

Practitioners of Communism have their own ways of implementing Communism. And yeah, there were communists (not Communist, we should know the differences now) states, but that's is a general collective name for the countries that applied the ways of implemented Communism e.g. Maoist, Marxists-Leninist, Stalinist and even Juche (DPRK). There even religious and non-Marxist form Communism like anarcho-communism and Christian-communism. There even some that combined communism/socialism with right wing politics like racial fascism e.g. Nazi party in German circa WWII, even though in practice they never implemented that.

If you read Karl Marx Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, you'd come to your sense that Communism can be fully achieved after the all the human basic needs are fulfilled. In reality, this is very hard to achieve but it is not impossible.

Basically, there are two ways to implement communism

a) Revolution - via firepower, coup, war
b) Democratic solution - by winning election and changing the state's constitution (sometimes called anti-revolutionary) to most of the time single ideology parties (not to be confused with single-party state) - commonly known as Workers' Parties or Communist Parties.

Hence, there is no actual ideological barriers that Communism must defeat Capitalism. You can still achieve communism with a strong economy, and especially when you have a strong economy.

On the other hands, the ideology does not fail. It is the implementation that fails. Unfortunately, Communist leaders in the past eventually became dictators, autocratic and somewhat ruthless.

We forget that human nature has corruption and madness on the its list too. Even capitalism can collapse when there are corrupt people around. I don't have to give the examples, you should know this already.

Human aren't perfect even they have perfect ideas.

It's not wrong to embrace either Communism or Capitalism. It is the way how you implement and taking care of it.


Pictures related to Communism

This is how the Marxists view Capitalism | Soviet Propaganda "Workers (People) and Army are one"

[attachmentid=1361610] [attachmentid=1361861]

This post has been edited by dopodplaya: Dec 17 2009, 12:47 PM

I love this picture...

somehow, no matter how civilized we get, or how democratic we get, we still stuck in the pyramid.. just the one on top of the pyramid changed.... from kings to president to prime minister to chairman etc

Like I said, humanity failed Communism, not the other way around.

If human achieve the cohesion of bees or ants and take up Communism, the selflessness in humanity will propelled us to a new heights.

But yeah, it's a fantasy that pretty much not gonna happen.

communism can't work for us cos

we're all lazy and greedy...if we're like ant and work very hard for the good of the nation then yes(it's kinda like the hive mentality thingy) but how can a pig be a worker ant?

imo communism can work if we're invaded by alien hehe cos if it's capitalism then...then economy collapse ppl jumping off building etc....if it's communism ppl in charge of food and supply will work their part while soldier will fight cos nobody give a damn bout the econ and self gain

i feel theres no difference in democracy either, its just how people handle something