Re: red herrings

Mark, Re:

> Communism is the most scientific of any form of government.

Hm.  Scientific?  No, it is just a very simple and very idealistic concept.
Only geeks like Marx and Lenin could think of writing (supposedly) scientific
volumes about it...

> Unfortunately, it's never been practiced anywhere in the world.

Sure it has.  It was the organization form of the very first Christian
communities, and it worked well there because everybody expected the end of the
world to be imminent, and nobody cared much about secular matters.  Marx
modelled his theories on those communities, but then he began to draw weird
conclusions...

Communism works fine even today in many small communities (especially religious
ones like convents etc.), as long as it is the deliberate choice of every
individual within the community.

Enforcing communism on a large entity, even a nation or a state, however, will
never work, because this unpardonably ignores the simple fact that competition
is a natural human urge which cannot be suppressed by force...

> The big problem, of course, is greed. As long as there's greed, there will
> never be true communism.

It's not only greed.  It's also the simple individual desire to be different
from the rest which makes enforced communism very unpopular.

> Your assignment is to read Karl Marx and see what I mean. You might even
> enjoy it...I did, when I was about your age. It's good knowledge to have,
> even if you never use it.

Reading Marx is not that enjoyable to me:  Sometimes it is hard to believe how
many false premises he states without checking their validity.  But that's a
general problem of second-class 19th century philosophers:  Often sounding good
was more important than being logically honest... :-)

So long, comrade.

Bernd