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by WalterBright 357 days ago
All attempts at communism failed. Did you know that there have historically been 20,000 communes founded in the US? I wonder what happened to them!

I never said American free markets were perfect. They certainly aren't. But they are very successful.

> responding to your comments is like talking to a brick wall

I could say the same of the people I respond to! I don't expect to change anyone's mind here. The average stay at a commune is about 2 years, after which the members leave, cured of the notion that communism is better. I encourage you to join one.

2 comments

I would consider co-op businesses a form of small scale communism, and they have steadily been growing in number for many decades with both workers/owners and customers praising them.

I also would consider many nation level communist movements that are held up as examples of failed communism to not really represent basic communist values very well at all, and to be mostly a thin PR cover for changes and turnover within the ruling class. Its not like the USSR was actually paying fair or equal dividends to the working class citizens who they claimed owned and controlled the country, the vast majority of the wealth, power, and control was still mostly diverted to a small class of elite.

Communes of that sort don't really have anything to do with Communism. At least not the political traditions that the word is typically associated with originating with thinkers like Marx, Bakunin, Lenin, Mao, Kropotkin, &c. Which specifically define communism as a level of economic development with certain specific prerequisites that none of these "intentional community commune" projects even attempt to meet.

Communism as a pure failure is literally propaganda, but I don't have time to cover the full comparative history of economic development under capitalism and socialism in a comment. All human projects have flaws and it's hard to compare them if you don't get into the nitty-gritty of both the successes and failures.