Influence your thoughts and feelings

[Occhidiangela]

Hi,
I don't think so.  Communism is not just the process of "From all . . .", but fundamental to the concept is the participants' free and willing desire to be part of the process.  This is not true in families, which are typically either a tyranny, or an oligarchy (as long as the parents are the oligarchies, a situation that is all too commonly not true).  Thus the natural tendency for children to move out (and in and out and in, etc. in some cases ;) ).

In the case of tribes, clans, religious groups, etc.,  you can only have communism by permitting people to leave, indeed 'shunning' them if they don't comply with the rules.  So, in effect, you have a commune, cut off from the main stream.  They may adhere to the selfless rule of communism, but they are not the 'logical endpoint' of the Communist conception -- rather they are, at best, dead end escapes for a few people.

Perhaps this is all a matter of semantics.  Perhaps it is just that I'm using 'communism' wrong, and should be saying 'Communism'.  Indeed, it is a strange insight to see that 'Communism' as practiced is nothing like 'communism' as preached.  So much difference on one letter's case -- and how do you distinguish 'C' and 'c' in conversation? ;)

--Pete
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Maybe it is just me, but it seems to me that the theoretical basis for Communism is best treated as a work in Utopian thought. Delving into the slightly Hegelian for the moment, the true Communism is an ideal, of which any number of the models found in reality of communism or attempts thereat can only be a partial representation. (Hegel's ideal of Table versus the tables one finds in everyday life. Or was that Fichte? I forget.)

It still doesn't work, since the ideal of Communism is that it transforms an industrial society, which implies the large populations, scale, is likely diverse but not necessarily so. That societal model goes well beyond the commune, clan, or familial micro-social entity. As in computers, not every thing scales up and down smoothely.

A well exercised clan or family model gone macro would be found in Rennaisance Europe, Enlightenment Europe, and in a number of modern day Arab states. None of these approach Communism, however, there is a certain care and feeding of family members, and ostracism for being too far outside of norms (Osama, anyone?). That clan/commune reality points to Communism in the macro being fundamentally untenable, unless, per the usual philosopher's dream, we'd all start thinking alike and correctly: to whit, thinking like the philosopher in question. Since he is right, and the rest of us are just unelightened, we just need to . . . get our minds right. Eh, Luke? :rolleyes:

Occhi