Luminis, on 25 May 2018 - 09:09 AM, said:
Exactly, which is why I consider it a failure. The reality is that communism hinges on re-distributing the means of production to public ownership. Whatever the postulated long-term goal might be, this will place the economic and political power in the hands of the few leaders of a supposed leaderless, classless society - even if it's only supposed to be an interim period - thus, corrupting the entire thing right then, right there.
I don't buy into the argument that "true" communism hasn't been tried and has, therefor, not failed. It has been tried but has never been achieved, exactly because - as you lined out - it runs contrary to human nature. Calling the failed state something other than communism doesn't change a thing about the system failing, from my point of view. This really boils down to "it's not true communism if it failed", doesn't it?
Not exactly. "It's not true communism if it failed" is a No True Scotsman statement and if I argued that, I would well and truly need my head examined. The actual argument I'm putting forward is that it's not that the system fails the people, it's that the people fail the system. I don't intend that in the insulting sense, either, there are any number of systems of governing an organization (country, company, otherwise) that will work in one instance and won't work in another. It's just that human beings happen to be, nearly on the whole, a poor fit for a full-on communistic government. But the concepts contained within communism are not inherently bad.
It's mostly a matter of optics, but it means you can extract certain aspects of communism that DO work with how humans operate and, properly applied, benefit. It's just unfortunate that so many of the examples we've been provided with historically have been terrible. The long string of dictators calling themselves communist leaders has effectively poisoned the well for even bringing up the term communism.
But on topic and in response to Tina, does that mean that EVERY instance of bringing up another player's stats, despite those stats being public information, is now being considered a moderation-worthy offense? 'Cuz that's a pretty hefty shift in tone, even if it was intended that way from the outset.