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That's why Lenin came up with the soviets, though that was pretty naïve, too. Joel Send a noteboard - 10/10/2011 05:54:37 AM
The principles that Locke spoke of need one more element to make them work effectively. Self-Responsibilty. In Locke's vision, people should be and are responsible for themselves in most things, and only come together for things that cannot be done alone, namely defense from other nation's and the few laws needed to make society run efficiently (murder, thieving, etc).

In Communism, it's principles are based an idealistic view of humanity. In communism, Marx's true vision (which there is not much said about in his writings), humanity has no greed, no reason to be jealous of anyone else, no reason to be selfish. It completely ignores the truth about humanity in that humanity as a whole are greedy and selfish and will not normally do something unless it directly benefits themselves, and that as whole, they are lazy. You have probably worked with the people who will do the bare minimum at any given thing. But there is no oversight for the people at the top.

People tend to forget that Marx was neither economist nor political scientist; he was an historian, so he left the details of his grand socio-economic creation to folks like Lenin. The soviets were supposed to provide oversight at the top from the bottom, as you probably know; unfortunately, that did not work too well. Like I said, Lenin was a bit naïve himself, IMHO, which I personally suspect has a lot to do with why a year after the Russian Civil War he was dead and the very pragmatic Stalin was in charge. Thing is, though, any system needs oversight, and social contract governments require that oversight come from the bottom; any system will work well when that is present and fail in its absence (kinda like what is going on in DC these days.)
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Is communism the true economy of democracies? - 10/10/2011 01:35:24 AM 734 Views
Sorry, not following this..... - 10/10/2011 03:33:11 AM 550 Views
Re: Sorry, not following this..... - 10/10/2011 03:54:45 AM 464 Views
Um, a LOT of places have mixed "free" market and state rule. - 10/10/2011 05:43:49 AM 572 Views
WTF? Canada, Western Europe, and Japan are democracies, not state-rule like China - *NM* - 10/10/2011 05:53:17 PM 203 Views
Think he means we all have public sector enterprise. - 10/10/2011 06:24:10 PM 405 Views
Yeah, I thought it was clear as well. - 10/10/2011 06:32:02 PM 441 Views
Yeah, Stephen pretty much covered it. - 11/10/2011 06:10:38 AM 478 Views
They are not similar. - 10/10/2011 04:01:59 AM 425 Views
Re: They are not similar. - 10/10/2011 04:47:26 AM 500 Views
That's why Lenin came up with the soviets, though that was pretty naïve, too. - 10/10/2011 05:54:37 AM 371 Views
No, but socialism is. - 10/10/2011 06:09:55 AM 478 Views
No. A thousand times no. - 10/10/2011 07:46:22 AM 564 Views
Guess I count myself among those fools, though I pretty much agree with Danny. - 10/10/2011 10:52:11 AM 466 Views
I don't usually answer your scattershot rants, Joel, but you have overextended yourself. - 10/10/2011 05:28:07 PM 508 Views
That still looks like Stalin and Mao rationalizing away the impossibility of their stated goals. - 11/10/2011 05:59:06 AM 515 Views
No time to today, but you're very wrong. - 11/10/2011 02:32:38 PM 402 Views
OK. - 11/10/2011 03:08:17 PM 388 Views
You really should read more about the Soviet Union. - 11/10/2011 03:19:32 PM 471 Views
Not sure it would change my perceptions. - 11/10/2011 03:41:08 PM 377 Views
In a single word: No. - 11/10/2011 08:26:36 AM 398 Views

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