Is pure socialism achievable?

[1848]

Many of my right-winged schoolmates claim that socialism simply cannot be achieved due to inherent human greed. Is a purely socialist state achievable by modern context?

[ind_com]

Many of my right-winged schoolmates claim that socialism simply cannot be achieved due to inherent human greed. Is a purely socialist state achievable by modern context?

Capitalism itself is the cause of greed. Eliminating capitalism completely will create a new society where greed will no longer remain a driving force behind our actions.

[Brutus]

Of course. The state arose through class antagonisms, so when the bourgeoisie are eliminated as a class, and due to the people owning the means of production all classes will cease to exist. When capitalism is abolished world wide, no army will be needed. Under the lower stage of communism, (or socialism as it is now commonly known) there will be no classes or army so the state shall have no purpose, so will 'wither away'. Thus we have the upper stage of communism, communism, or pure communism, as it is known by many names.

[Ostrinski]

To answer the OP, no. The state of something being "pure" is a useless ideological abstraction.

Tell your friends to stop buying into the pseudo-scientific bullshit of evolutionary psychology. Greed is the effect, not the cause. Human consciousness, and therefore behavior and patterns of communicating and relating are defined by the social, material, and environmental circumstances that shape them. So human nature is an ideological construct which bases itself on the premise that human behavior is set in stone, and that certain stimuli will always be met with certain responses, which is horseshit.

[tuwix]

Many of my right-winged schoolmates claim that socialism simply cannot be achieved due to inherent human greed. Is a purely socialist state achievable by modern context?

Socialist state is not achievable because term 'socialist state' is a oxymoron. There can't be socialism with state.
But greed is built-in by phenomenon of property that communism is going to abolish.
.

[Yugo45]

I remember reading somewhere about how greed was very different in the Middle Ages then it is today. How greed today is shown as "human nature" and how it is socially acceptable, opposed to how it was despised back then.

Just google "greed middle ages" and you will find a lot of articles on the subject, like this:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/greed-middle-ages-080212.html

The point is, greed is a social construct and it's mirrored by society and the system, it's not "human nature".

[Fourth Internationalist]

Many of my right-winged schoolmates claim that socialism simply cannot be achieved due to inherent human greed. Is a purely socialist state achievable by modern context?

Humans are social animals. Even the smallest amount of knowledge about human biological evolution indicates this.