Why Communism Fails
The most recent PhD comic got me thinking. Conventional wisdom, even among fairly liberal people, seems to be that communism will always fail because people are too greedy to share–call it “the Tragedy Of The Commons,” if you like, or “the Incentive Problem.” But I don’t think this is historically true.
As in the comic, or in The Onion (and again here), the assumption seems to be that Communism establishes a communal set of goods which tempts people to take more than their fair share, so the system breaks down. But can anyone think of a Communist or socialist country in history that has ever managed to accumulate such a set of communal goods to be shared? I can’t. Because in order to get that community stock of goods, you have to confiscate them from their prior owners, which means you have to centralize power and probably use violence. Human nature being what it is, there will always be someone who will hijack this mechanism for his own benefit. [Obvious Cliched Examples here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) So, long before the Tragedy Of The Commons or the Incentive Problem rear their ugly heads, there will be tyranny.
Thus the problem with Communism isn’t that it always breaks down, but that it can never really begin. In this sense die-hard Marxists are right, Communism has never actually existed. But they fail to realize that people are people, and it doesn’t matter how long they fantasize, communism can never work and will always devolve into bloody tyranny.
Obviously Communism is dead, but I think this is still an important point because of the eternal allure of schemes that promise that we can just start over from scratch. We can’t. Everything happens in a historical context, and Communism’s real failing is that it doesn’t recognize this. Communists are so busy fantasizing over how the world will be that they usually don’t give much thought to how they’ll accomplish the preliminary step from the world-as-it-is to the world-with-goods-consolidated. But it’s exactly this step that will end in gulags and unmarked graves, long before the Incentive Problem ever shows up.
on September 26th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Great post, Will.
on September 27th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I second Marty. A fantastic post.
And the permanent address for the PhD comic is -
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=917
(anyone know how to make this a hyperlink? or will it do it automatically?)
on September 27th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
[…] of Wisdom, Why Communism Fails the assumption seems to be that Communism establishes a communal set of goods which tempts people […]
on September 27th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
You guys should really utilize a Preview button for posting comments. Also, your blog does appear to automatically translate raw URLs into clickable links (this may be a bad thing in terms of spamming potential though). In any event, to post a hyperlink, do this:
PhD Fridge Comic
on September 28th, 2007 at 7:01 am
[…] of Wisdom, Why Communism Fails the assumption seems to be that Communism establishes a communal set of goods which tempts people […]
on October 4th, 2007 at 11:11 am
It’s worth noting that, like it or not, some peasants in history probably genuinely supported collectivization and gave up their property willingly. That said, it’s certainly true that in every case in which economic collectivization of agriculture has been tried, a significant proportion of the peasantry opposed it, and it was forced upon them through violent means. So your point remains valid.
on October 10th, 2007 at 9:50 am
[…] (The second definition also makes me think that Scheer’s one of those who believes Communism never really existed, so it can’t be blamed for Communists’ […]
on November 25th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Thanks for a lovely site, I am very impressed
on September 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 pm
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thx