It's still selfish, because you want to avoid death/injury.

That's an idiotic and pointless line of reasoning.

Exactly. A collectivist would say that their goal is to improve opportunity for those who would choose better, but lack the ability/resources to acheive it.

I don't count enslavement to an all-powerfull state as an improvement.

Communism seems to me to be an ideal only - a theoretical construct aimed at finding a way towards a society where people are truly equal. To my mind that is an extremely noble motive.

However, history has shown us that attempts to implement it have failed due to human nature - individuals exploiting the system for their own gain in various ways. For communism to work, I think humans have to evolve a long, long way.

Which leads us to socialism instead, or social democracy etc. Where *some* of the ideals of communism are implemented in a democratic environment.

Please, no inane comments about how there's no such thing as 'democracy' - for the record I believe there are two meanigns to the word democracy: one is specific, "pure democracy", the other is the more generalist use of the word, which *does* include countries such as the USA, no matter what may be the particulardetails of how they run their government.

People cannot ever be "truly equal", because, well, people are not equal. Some are superior and some are inferior, in many different ways. We are an extremely diverse species.

Any attempt to force people into some false equality is doomed to failure. It is in opposition to not just human nature, but nature itself.

I do believe in equality. I believe in equality under the law, which is impossible in any collectivist system.

Democracy is mob rule. A lynch mob is democratic. The U.S. is a republic, or was designed to be. The right of the majority to rule does not extend to the oppression of the minority, which is what collectivism inevetibly is.

Oooooh, harsh. If you are being forced to do something you don't want to do, you aren't being selfish for doing it. But again, your gripe is with Ayn Rand and her virtue of selfishness, I don't like applying the word that much in this way. This is why people should try to use words as most people understand them.

Even beyond that. There are plenty of charities that improve other people's lives in ways that peripherally benefit the giver.

Humans would need to de-evolvle a long long way for communism to "work." People are at their best when they are free to pursue their interests. Communism doesn't fail because its exploited, it fails because people don't have the incentive to be productive. If you were told you would never get another raise in pay - in fact, if you were told you were going to be paid the same as a trash collector or dish washer the rest of your life, would you put any effort into making yourself more productive? Or would you decide you aren't going to do any more for your boss than enough to get by? Would you try to gain skills, take on more responsibility, etc, to be better at what you do?

Communism means you give up the right to decide what you need, someone else decides for you.

So what would you regard the theoretical construct/ideal that is communism as being?

Your line of reasoning seems to be based on the motivation to have more money - the aspiration to get rich. This is the kind of motivation that I think humans will eventually evolve beyond. You seem to discount the possibility that a person would work hard to achieve something other than financial gain, such as job satisfaction. Personally I like to learn things purely for the sake of learning them and seeing the results when I put them into action, and not simply because they might lead me to a better paying job.

See ... I knew someone would have to pipe up with this semantic/pedantic rubbish as soon as I used the "D" word. Happens every time. Why can't people accept that if 99% of the people in the world use a word to mean something, that becomes what it means? Sure, if you don't want to lose the original meaning, you can have two meanings for the word - we even have a word for that - it's called a homonym. Another example in the same vein would be the word 'hacker'. To almost everyone this word now has a primary meaning related to mischievous types who cause trouble, steal passwords, etc etc. But there are an extreme minority who still insists that is wrong wrong wrong - that it is a word meaning hard-core programmer with improv skills or something along those lines. Language is an ever changing thing, about communication. Words mean what they come to mean.

The ideal is a society where people are truly equal as I said. Note, for clarification, equal does not mean identical. Equal in this sense means equality of rights. Some particularly important rights being the right not to be exploited due to 'class' (another historical construct which is all about exploitation in our society), and the right to be rewarded equally no matter what one does as a contribution to society.

Note that its been many years since I read the Manifesto and other Marxist literature, so I can't make any claim that my interpretation/understanding of it is precisely that proposed by Marx/Engels.

The idea of communism is a classless society. beyond this, your explanation is probably the worst I could imagine, as it doesn't have anything to do with the subject. Well, it has one thing in common, one word was put in both...

I must have missed this post until MRiGnS replied to it. As he said this is completely and utterly wrong. What you are describing sounds closer to a social caste system which for example has existed in the past, and still does exist to a lesser degree, in India. And I think it's more social/cultural in nature than political. I'm certainly curious where you got the idea from.

Okay, thanks for that clarification. People have generally wildly varying definitions for what a given political term or idea means. For communism, I've heard everything from "It's just like More's Utopia!" to "USSR == Communism,", and even for the notion of "equality" there's plenty of variation and the same for "rights".

Another question: you refer to a right to be "rewarded equally no matter what one does as a contribution to society." What, exactly, do you mean by that? Do you mean an architect should recieve the same compensation for their work as, say, a bricklayer? Or am I reading you too literally?

As an extension to Rasczak's question. If this is what you mean then where is the incentive for Doctors, Architects, Lawyers, etc. to spend all those years being educated to such a high standard.

Their answer is something like "job satisfaction." "Some people are just happy being good at something." What about the guy who has the smarts and what it takes to be a doctor, and might even like being a doctor too, but he also likes to play the flute - so instead of being a doctor, he decides to be a musician by profession being it pays the same as a doctor anyway and its just as fun for him. And the communist state will make sure he's trained to play a flute because that's what he wants to do right?

Or will the communist state, instead of the individual, have to pick what jobs people get to make sure it gets "from each according to their ability?

Problem is that Job Satisfaction while very important is not the only thing you need to survive college. I know from personal experience there were other factors involved.

And, if job satisfaction is the prime incentive, the problem is there are more than one job someone might get job satisfaction from. If everyone gets to be whatever they want, I'm guessing a lot of people will like being video game programers, artists, musicians, interior decorators, etc. Unless the state is going to have a say in what people do for a profession.

True, too many people joining a certain type of profession and not enough joining others wouldn't work. At the very least it would require some kind of quota system which would inevitably lead back to the class system they say they are trying to get away from.

In all honesty I'm not bashing communism as I think its a laudable ideal. I just don't think its very practical.