Will Communism work in our 21st Century today?

[Strength of the Iron Will]

As much as the Communist ideal world would be wonderful, i often wonder about the practical and even plausiblity of it ever occuring. It seems that in this day and age, capitalism is so deeply rooted within the world's major powers, that a revolution is way off or not even possible. What do you think/ How is it possible to achieve the desired utpoia in the 21st Century?

[Jimmie Higgins]

As much as the Communist ideal world would be wonderful, i often wonder about the practical and even plausiblity of it ever occuring. It seems that in this day and age, capitalism is so deeply rooted within the world's major powers, that a revolution is way off or not even possible. What do you think/ How is it possible to achieve the desired utpoia in the 21st Century?

I don't think anyone in the early 1970s would have predicted that the USSR would collapse as it did. Few in France would have predicted the French revolution more than a year or two - even in the midst of the Revolution, most people were still trying to make accommodations to the king and monarchy because they didn't think that they could run society differently. It's the same with the Russian Revolution where workers councils existed and cooperated with the Parliament before being won to the idea that workers could run society through the councils.

So all ruling classes at all times promote a sense of their own infallibility and indestructability - but that doesn't stop people from fighting against oppression.

[Hyacinth]

As much as the Communist ideal world would be wonderful, i often wonder about the practical and even plausiblity of it ever occuring. It seems that in this day and age, capitalism is so deeply rooted within the world's major powers, that a revolution is way off or not even possible. What do you think/ How is it possible to achieve the desired utpoia in the 21st Century?
Firstly, socialism isn't a utopia, we've got to dissuade ourselves of this idea. What we are aiming for with the establishment of socialism is the abolition of oppression and exploitation via economic democratization and planning.

20th century socialism, in its various incarnations (e.g., Soviet state-capitalism, Yugoslav worker-managed enterprise market socialism, etc.), failed in large part due to the absence of the appropriate material conditions. These societies lacked the technical means by which to actually effect socialism. Specifically, they lacked the sufficient data processing and gathering capacity to effect a democratic and planned economy, which, as defined, is just socialism.

Due to the developments in computation in the last few decades we have today overcome the technical roadblocks which make impossible the establishment of socialism in the 20th century (though, it should be noted, the technical capacity to effect socialism probably existed in the late-80's, early-90's, so it is false to say that socialism was impossible in the 20th century, but by the time we have sufficient computing power to properly plan an economy the so-called "socialist" states had already opted for the restoration of market capitalism).

Socialism is not only possible today, but also preferable, in that a socialist system could outperform the existing capitalist systems that we have today, in the sense that it could, for the vast majority of people, provide a higher material standard of living (noting, of course, that capitalism's track record on this is rather abysmal globally, so it wouldn't take much to outperform it—but I would further claim that socialism could outperform capitalism even in the existing advanced industrial countries).

For more detail about this see either the numerous threads in the Economics subforum on the subject of socialist planning, or else the work of Paul Cockshott (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/index.html#econ).

As for the worry that capitalism is too entrenched, and that revolution, even if possible, is improbable. Consider that capitalism as a system is inherently unstable, and is currently undergoing the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Moreover, resistance to capitalism around the world is quite active, especially considering the major propaganda blow suffered by the left with the collapse of the Soviet Union (for better or worse socialism was associated with Soviet state-capitalism, and its failure was equated with the failure of socialism, but even that blow hasn't killed the idea, which is a testament to its strength and appeal). This isn't to say that a revolution will happen, only that it is certainly something on history's agenda.

[Hit The North]

I've corrected the title and moved this thread to Learning.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Only one way to find out...

[x371322]

I sure as hell hope so...

[Morgenstern]

With the rapidly changing technology Communism is possible, we just need to achieve it first. The hardest part will be the revolution but these new technological systems make distribution and communication so much easier.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I reply to questions of whether communism can work with, "Does capitalism work?", "working" being defined as the ability to fulfill basic human needs. A year and a half ago there were food riots in 33 countries. This was directly attritubable to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US. Investors took their money out of the housing market and put it in biofuels, jacking up the price of basic foodstuff around the world and creating misery and famine.

A billion people in the world live on $1/day and 2 billion people subsist on $2/a day while there are individuals who are "worth" more than the GDP of many countries.

Capitalism, quite obviously, itself does not work.

[mikelepore]

To address the point about "the plausibility of it ever occurring": if not in the 21st century then perhaps in the 22nd century or the 23th or the 24th or 25th or 26th or 27th or the 28th. That's not too long compared to the whole time that we have been here, 160,000 years just to count Homo sapiens, or 1.8 million years if you want to count the smaller-brained Homo erectus. Writing and therefore recorded history began only about 6,000 years ago. It's been 180 years since the invention of the electric motor. We have to give people a chance to catch up.

[Lyev]

I reply to questions of whether communism can work with, "Does capitalism work?", "working" being defined as the ability to fulfill basic human needs. A year and a half ago there were food riots in 33 countries. This was directly attritubable to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US. Investors took their money out of the housing market and put it in biofuels, jacking up the price of basic foodstuff around the world and creating misery and famine.

A billion people in the world live on $1/day and 2 billion people subsist on $2/a day while there are individuals who are "worth" more than the GDP of many countries.

Capitalism, quite obviously, itself does not work.
To add, 5% of the world's population, roughly, own about 95% of the whole, net wealth. About 10 million a year die of starvation. 2 million a year die of malaria, and a further 2 million of diarrhea; both of these are easily preventable diseases. And the wealth of the three most well-to-do individuals now exceeds the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries. Makes you think, don't it?

[RadioRaheem84]

As much as the Communist ideal world would be wonderful, i often wonder about the practical and even plausiblity of it ever occuring. It seems that in this day and age, capitalism is so deeply rooted within the world's major powers, that a revolution is way off or not even possible. What do you think/ How is it possible to achieve the desired utpoia in the 21st Century?

I could never figure out why people say that Communism seems utopian and unsuitable for the new millennium. Capitalism has had us going around in circles and has actually regressed the standard of living in the past decade. We're having the same arguments with the capitalists as the German Communists had with the capitalist at the beginning of the 20th century. Suddenly, capitalists discovered co-ops! And gasp, they still still think nationalizations = socialism. I mean this group has done more to keep the world from progressing socially than anything else in the world.

Socialism is the future.

[ZeroNowhere]

To address the point about "the plausibility of it ever occurring": if not in the 21st century then perhaps in the 22nd century or the 23th or the 24th or 25th or 26th or 27th or the 28th.
True. Especially given that by that time, if capitalism continues, it's questionable how long people are going to put up with crises. Even now, policy makers are pretty much papering over the problems with the economy through debt, and trying to avoid a repeat of the Great Depression, which supplied the necessary destruction of capital values for a boom to take place. However, this may lead to fairly brief boom-bust cycles, which could also lead to discontent if continued for long. On the other hand, if we do have something akin to the Great Depression, then that's another depression that will be referenced by the time of the next crisis, and so on. For that matter, we also have the kind of statistics now which Andrew Kliman used in his recent work on the falling rate of profit and the current crisis, and if that starts showing some repetition, then that could also cause people to take more note of us lot.

So yeah, I think that, all in all, the longer capitalism can go from here, the harder a time it will have justifying itself.

Of course, we don't actually know that there will be a next crisis; it could be that somewhere between now and then, there will be a revolution and capitalism will be abolished. That would be pretty cool.

[CartCollector]

Due to the developments in computation in the last few decades we have today overcome the technical roadblocks which make impossible the establishment of socialism in the 20th century (though, it should be noted, the technical capacity to effect socialism probably existed in the late-80's, early-90's, so it is false to say that socialism was impossible in the 20th century, but by the time we have sufficient computing power to properly plan an economy the so-called "socialist" states had already opted for the restoration of market capitalism).
Actually there was discussion in the USSR of using a computer network to coordinate the economy all the way back in the 1950s. See this: http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNyet.pdf
Also, the Chilean government built a network called Cybersyn that was used from 1970 to 1973 but was destroyed under Pinochet's iron heel.
Anyways, there is modern day proof that the computers can be used to control the economy, and that's the existence of online banking and stock trading.