CameronPoe wrote:
Pure communism cannot circumvent the fact that human nature is largely dictated by the 'pleasure' principle and the 'survival of the fittest' principle. IMO, pure communism runs counter to these principles of human nature and counter to the advance of the human race due to the absence of incentives for adherents to put additional effort into their work (or indeed to work at all depending on the task). Subsistence living does not lend itself well to the kinds of technological advances and improvements in living standards that fascism has been shown to generate. At least in fascism, if one defers to the despot in command, you and the greater part of your compatriots will enjoy a higher standard of living than ye would enjoy under communism and ye would also benefit from the technological advances that make life easier (advances that would occur at an accelerated pace under fascism). In short fascism is the ruthless embodiment of self-improvement whereas communism would likely bring human progress to an abrupt halt.
As much as I am loathe to defend communism, much less the regimes that carried the name, this is a bunch of patent nonsense. I will play devil's advocate for what the majority seems to consider
boonga boonga to fascism's
death by boonga boonga...
Neither system inherently favours scientific advancement. But for the sake of argument, did a fascist nation build and deploy the world's first satellite? And put the first man in space? And woman? And dog?
Refractive eye surgery was first perfected in the USSR (and made available for free!). There are other examples, but you get my point. Neither system inherently favours scientific advancement.
The human nature argument is more important, since it seems so prevalent in countries heavily affected by Cold War-era propaganda. Human nature is complex. To say it
all comes down to "survival of the fittest" or the "pleasure principle" is to basically ignore what gave our species the edge over far superior predators in Africa millions of years ago. Humanity owes its dominance of the planet to communication and cooperation.
There are many other examples, but this is already getting long so I'll just mention two other things: Firstly, Darwin himself understood that "survival of the fittest" doesn't tell the whole story.
This doesn't either, but it's another piece of the puzzle, and it too has analogous relevance to "human nature". Secondly, Squad of 5 > 5 Lone Wolves. Nuff said.
And before anybody starts, I'm no more a communist than CameronPoe is a fascist. Just looking to balance his points is all.
