Let history not be the only judge: an arguement for communism.

I must to say I do like this debate. Now then as to liberation, I will outline exactly how this works, why it didn't in China and Russia (not Albania as I am not familiar with its history) and finally how we can achieve it. Firstly, the way we organize the control of the economy by the people is relatively simple if you are familiar with basic political hierarchies. Everything is organized into councils, of which there are four broad levels, factory, local, regional and national. The first level of councils are in factories and farms, and they run the day to day affairs of the unit. The council is DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED by the workers and they have full power of recall at all times. You do not even need to be a communist, you just need to show you can do the job to your fellow workers. From each factory council is elected a representative who goes to the local council. This wold correspond to a county or Parrish in size. They are in charge of the logistics and organization of their little region and handing out quotas to the factories. From the local council's ranks is elected a representative who goes to the regional council. It is basically a bigger local council with slightly more power, runs day to day affairs. Finally, from the regional council representatives are elected who go to the national council, which is the supreme organization unit of the economy. It calculates demand, national quotas for production, and other aspects of the economy. All of the levels are have power of recall of the level above it. This system ensures that the economy is organized in such a way that the workers have control over what the organizers do. If they don't like what is being done, they can change it. Now then, this is pretty basic communist hierarchy, in fact it is very similar to what was done in the USSR. The obvious question is, why did it not work? Well, that requires us to really look at power in the USSR. You see, when the Bolsheviks took power they put restrictions on the system designed to make it so only people they could trust could vote (workers, communists), because most of the country was made up of uneducated peasants. That sounds bad, but I would remind all Americans that when our country was founded only white rich guys could vote, an even smaller percentage of the population than could vote in the USSR. But anyway, the restrictions the Bolsheviks had placed on the system were designed to be temporary, but they were there long enough for Stalin to use them to take power while it was severely centralized in the party. He then proceeded to install a highly immobile and loyal bureaucracy, rather than the democratic and fluid one that should have been there. Skip ahead fifty years and the Soviet Union is a bureaucratic mess on the verge of collapse, which it did. China's problem was more that Mao had WAY too much power from the start and happened to be a complete idiot (he once had all the Chinese people go out and start killing birds because he thought they destroyed crops. turns out they eat locusts who do destroy crops. caused a massive famine. Most of his other ideas were just as bad). So why would another attempt, say in the US or Britain, be different? Two things come to my mind. One: we are much better educated than either the Chinese or Russians were at the time of the revolutions, no need to restrict voting. Two: we love democracy. When the Russian revolution happened most Russian people did not give a crap about democracy, they just wanted someone who could get the job done (Heavy restrictions on my rights? But I get cheap vodka? Alright!), and they still do. Want proof? Surveys show that Stalin is viewed as one of the best Russian leaders of all time by the majority of Russians today. Even I go "wow, really guys?" when I hear that. As for my statement about capital and wages, you have to understand that there is no way for a capitalist business to do it any other way. If the the boss paid the workers dollar for dollar what they produce he would have none left for himself. And its not a fair wage unless the worker make money equal to what they produce. As for your stuff about Christianity, I think you are misinterpreting that religion's history. The papacy was created because the Romans decided they like the religion so much they we gonna make it the official one of their empire. Christianity needed a way to organize the converting of an entire empire (often violently) and so organized the papacy to control it all. I would look rather to the native Americans, who did live in a primitive communist society, and actually had a heavy influence on Marx's theories. The Iroquois in particular had an interesting hierarchical council democracy. They, like most natives, found materialism horrifying, and were destroyed. Capitalism is a self destructive ideology. Selfishness may be the most effective motivator, but what does it motivate us to do? Starvation, poverty, these things are not changing. Even as segments of the population are raised out of poverty, in places like China, people in first world countries seem to be slipping down. Capitalism is an ideology which tells us that the profit is king. This justifies corporations like Monsanto to leave fields empty while there are still people starving across the world. It allows companies and banks to wreck the global economy and destroy lives and then not even be punished. It destroys the environment with oil spills and toxic emissions and then lets those responsible to pay their way out of trouble. You say that communism is unsustainable, I say you have no proof that it cannot work if we do it right, but I have two centuries of proof that capitalism has not, cannot, and will not work. Selfishness is the most effective motivator, but it is not a GOOD one, and it is not the only one.