[seanmcdirmid]

In practice yes, but not in theory, which is an important distinction. To use an analogy, genocide of Jews is an unacceptable ideal, you don't have to try it out to know its bad. In retrospect, no one thought the nazi's plan could have ended up working in a "good" way. Compare that to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, given communism as an ideal alone, it wasn't inherently flawed or "evil", it just turns out people are selfish enough for this not to work, leading to a lot of collateral damage in the form of bad ideals (like genocide).

Fascism is quite similar, though I'm not sure one could say communism is worse than fascism, given that the latter was only tried a couple of times and was put out relatively quickly, while the impact of the former happened over a much longer period of time and under much larger populations.

[maxlybbert]

> In practice yes, but not in theory, which is an important distinction.

Communism is an economic system that falls apart in practice because of greed. An economic system that fails to account for greed is not good, even in theory.

[seanmcdirmid]

If someone said "let's go communist", you would have to argue with them why it was a bad idea. A reasonable proposition that turns out not to be a good idea.

If someone said "let's kill the Jews", you would probably slowly and carefully walk away from that person because they were nuts. An unreasonable proposition that you probably don't want to bother arguing against (because what kind of person would even say that?).

[maxlybbert]

When I hear that something "works in theory," I understand that to mean "if you oversimplify a little, this would work well." "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is."

But it's only valid if you oversimplify a little. Starting with "first, forget everything you know about human nature" goes too far.

I don't think of "works in theory" as shorthand for "doesn't have internal contradictions" or "sounds reasonable if you forget everything you know about human nature."

[jdimov9]

I happen to have the exact same reaction to both (and it's not the kinder one).

[blfr]

It turns out that public ownership of the means of production actually leads to an even worse world than planned, industrial genocide. Part of the reason why is people clinging to this idea long after it has been shown not viable and leading to absolutely horrific events like Holodomor (a Holocaust level genocide before Holocaust) or The Great Leap Forward.

I can see how one might find communism interesting from the perspective of 19th century. I cannot believe anyone still does in the 21st.

[seanmcdirmid]

I think you are really misinterpreting the meaning of "an acceptable proposition". It doesn't have to evaluate to T, only that, as an abstraction, it does not evaluate to F based on its structure alone.

No we don't want communism (at least I don't), but for someone to say it is illogical is completely incorrect.