[Sir Kenyth]

Originally posted by Azred: Like many theories, communism looked good on paper but flopped miserably in practice. You cannot dictate that people willingly not strive to advance economically; people are too self-oriented to blindly follow "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need". Most people are just not that selfless. Anyway, Russia never posed the threat that the US thought it did. True, they had nuclear missiles, but their technology was overrated. Stalin was too anti-science for Russia to truly succeed (that nutcase killed more Russians than the Germans did in WW2). I agree that communism would be a "natural" reaction against centuries of monarchies/dictatorships, because when many people grow tired of being ruled by an aristocracy they will eventually revolt. On the other hand, the Cold War was really profitable for the military-industrial complex, yes? [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

Great thoughts! My opinion exactly. Take away the carrot of economic advancement and the mule of the populus quits moving. Another problem is with a central government so powerful, it's bound to be abused. It would eventually degenerate into a "Rich and powerful nobility vs. Poor working peasant populus" system. Power is almost ALWAYS abused in one way or another. Even in the US you see a lot of rich staying that way by leeching off the poorer common citizen. It's economics. That's the way it works. When you have control of what you pay the work force and what you charge for goods, it's easy to control the flow of money. The only deterrent to abuse is competition. Large corporations and unchecked monopolies pose problems to this system though as they undermine the spirit of competition.