Verily I say unto thee, that The Ghost In The Machine spake thusly:
> Not that communism worked all that well, either
Communism is just fascism in a red uniform.
> but one might ask whether ultra-pure communism (or for that matter
> pure capitalism!) would be a perfect Utopia
Pure communism (i.e. Marxism) has never been realised as a working
political system. The practical communism that we see (and have seen)
around the world, in Russia; China; Cuba and elsewhere, is only the
intermediate stage of what was supposed to be the ultimate goal, where
the state passes control to the people.
IMHO neither the intermediate nor the final phase of communism is
workable, since practical communism is simply another form of
totalitarian regime by the state, and utopian communism amounts to
nothing more than anarchy ... essentially mob rule.
In the former, one is a prisoner of the state - which is no better or
worse than fascism, and in the latter one is a prisoner of chaos, since
without the infrastructure of democracy, one is rendered powerless and
unprotected.
Pure capitalism (i.e. corporatism) is essentially the same as practical
communism, with corporations playing the role of the state.
Neither of these extremes resemble anything close to utopia, which is by
definition unobtainable anyway. The best compromise is of course
democracy, but that necessitates tolerance for those on both sides of
the political divide who seek to pervert that democracy - each pulling
against the other. In that sense, I suspect that communism is nothing
more than a kind of reverse-reactionism against the propensity of
capitalism to veer towards fascism - an extreme reaction to extreme
circumstances.
The law and the will of the people, as administered by the
democratically elected representatives of those people, is supposed to
curtail the fascist tendencies of corporatism and thus moderate the
left-wing reaction to those tendencies. Where the law and politics fails
is when it becomes corrupted by those it is supposed to control -
typically the corporations, since nothing corrupts more readily than
money. It's at this point that society begins to spiral downwards
towards corporatism, and ultimately revolution against that corporatism.
It's clear that western society is already well on its way down that
slope, particularly in America. This may account for why Dubya is so
keen to build all those FEMA concentration camps.
> and all implementations thereof heretofore were corrupted by human
> nature.
And all implementations henceforth will continue to be so. The political
pendulum swings eternal, as does each individual's propensity for good
and evil.
> Presumably, China among other recognized the corruption, and is
> attempting to deal with it by switching supply models.
Another swing of the pendulum, much like Russia, although the latter's
success has been somewhat limited.
> There are also issues regarding economies of scale; not everyone has
> a chip fab in their basement. Heck, not everyone has a *basement* to
> put a chip fab in...:-) )
It's interesting to consider the impact on society of solar-powered
multi-purpose fabrication equipment for the home (a la the Star Trek
Replicator or von Neumann's Universal Assembler, although IIRC the
former was actually powered by dilithium crystals rather than sunlight).
It'd be like the industrial revolution in reverse, and might contribute
in no small part to the ultimate demise of corporatism.
We can but dream.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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