While many people here have made good points about how communism in practice differs from communism in theory, I think the theory itself is severely flawed. Most of my information is coming from the book “Why Nations Fail” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, which presents very convincing arguments on the effects that political institutions have on economic and technological innovation.
Acemoglu and Robinson spend most of their time explaining that “Extractionist” and “Inclusive” political structures lead to “extractionist” or “inclusive” economic structures. They they go through a ton of examples as to how inclusive political structures eventually foster technoligical and economic innovation, while extractionist structures stifle it.
Extractionist political structures – The vast majority of the population is not included in the political process in any way. Dictators, the wealthy, or some small elite control the entire political process.
–> Foster extractionist economic structures – Individual property rights become a joke. Laws that dissuade corruption in business/government are never put in place because the elite get rich by extracting wealth from the rest of the population. Your personal property is subject to seizure by the government or whatever roving band of bandits come across it. There is no motivation to start a business or further your education.
–> Which stifle innovation – under extractionist economic structures, intellectual capital is highly underutilized. There is no motivation to innovate, the only way to become rich is steal, intimidate, and know whose palms to grease. This is why Carlos Slim was not able to succeed in business in America, but was able to become vastly wealthy in a more extractionist country, Mexico.
Communism, while it has never really been practiced the way Marx envisioned it, is still doomed to fail because it doesn’t allow for individual property rights. Acemoglu and Robinson effectively prove that countries with more inclusive property rights (ie, everyone is allowed to own whatever they want if they can provide the capital to purchase it) outperform (in terms of technological and economic innovation) those where owning property is impossible unless you are a government official or already extremely wealthy. While there are barriers to property ownership to the poor in the US, they are far less insurmountable than those that exist in Mexico, which are far less insurmountable than those that exist in North Korea.This is why immigrants consistently flock to the US – we have very liberal property rights laws. Even with our dismal public education, we consistently outperform the majority of the world in terms of technological breakthroughs because we can import the best and brightest minds from around the world.
Communism and planned economy governments can see a short term boost to production and technological advancement, however, which can mask the true damage they are doing over time to the economic institutions of the countries they occupy. For example – the US has yet to match the economic growth of Russia during Stalins 5 year plan, and Communist Russia was in fact the first country to put a satellite in space. This can only happen if, prior to the centrally planned economy, resources were as terribly allocated as they were in Tsarist Russia. Communism usually takes over from another extractionist institution, and the advantage of a centrally planned economy is the ability to quickly reallocate resources. No communist revolution has ever happened in a country with liberal property rights and a higher than average level of social mobility. You didn’t need to be a economics professor to see that Tsarist Russia desperately needed to reallocate resources to the industrial sector, which is exactly what Stalin did. Once this happened, however, there was no more room for advancement to the Soviet economy. Their extractionist political institution stifled innovation, and they eventually dissolved.
Karl Marx essentially thought of the progression of technology as separate from the political institutions under which it advances. While technological progression was central to his theories, he saw it as the cause of political change, not something that results from it. He falsely assumed the same levels of technical advancement under a planned economy as would exist in one where individuals were given liberal property rights.
Now, it’s easy enough to point out the faults of “communist” regimes, but the fact remains that nothing like Marx’s communism has ever existed. For this to exist, (as Faye Wang) points out, you need unlimited production, so that the wants and needs of every individual could be met. I’ll take this a step further and make the claim that even with unlimited resources, communism would not be the best system, and would stifle further production. It simply comes down to individual property rights. Those who do not own the means of production, no matter how unlimited it is, will have no interest in advancing it. You might think that with unlimited production, humans would simply be satisfied, but then you would not be very observant of human nature. Our needs become relativistic once our basic needs of food and shelter are met – and a communist society would not be the best for meeting those relativistic needs.
Too often, the debate about planned economies devolves into some left-vs-right, rich-vs-poor screaming match, where any sort of wealth redistribution is seen as communism, and any sort of free market ideal is seen as harkening back to the early days of industrialization, where the average lifespan actually shrank for a short time period, and large-scale urban poverty really took off. But to those of us who aren’t entirely compromised entirely by our emotions, I think it’s pretty clear that the world does not operate on simplistic linear scales, where business and government control exist on opposite ends of the spectrum. In “Why Nations Fail”, Acemoglu and Robinson actually highlight one of the benefits of “communist” nations – a central authority that provides some regulation. This is always necessary for the construction of inclusive economic institutions – otherwise those who become the richest will take control of the government and create higher barriers to entry for other businesses, stifling innovation and creating an extractionist regime.
Since the beginning of civilization, the vast majority of agricultural societies have been extractionist. Those who install themselves as the elite cannot resist the temptation to continually expand their power and wealth, and eventually restrict the political and economic power of the average person. Slave or serf societies were the norm for a very long period of human history. Pre industrial revolution, there were short “flashes in the pan”of politically and economically inclusive societies (Athens, early Roman Republic, some Italian city states, Britain). At the “dawn of industry”, those societies that were leaning toward inclusiveness became more inclusive (There has never been repeated the degree of upward mobility that existed for the average white man in America in the 1830s), while those who already had extractionist leanings either continued down that path, or had communist revolutions, which simply replaced who was in charge of the extractionist regime. The communist regimes ultimately crumbled because the elites would not allow the average citizen property rights.
It seems fitting to me that only with unlimited resources would Marx’s ideals be fulfilled. As in, only under a borderline impossible situation would ideals which have continually failed succeed. It seems reminiscent of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. I’m of the opinion that ideals are not what people say they are, but rather the actual results of the actions of their believers. By this notion, Communism has objectively failed. I’m simply taking it one step further to claim that even in it’s “purest” form, Communism is doomed to failure.