Hacker News Reader

Comment by ffwacom | Hacker News Reader

Doubt, there's no pure communist states left, they all fell after killing a bunch of their citizens by "knowing what's best". The economy is a chaotic system and any earnest attempt at top down control will fail, let alone communism which historically was more about transferring power to your friends than any real belief in an ideology.

View on HN

Just FYI (has been said a gazillion times on the Internet): no state on this planet was ever communist. Communism is a society without money, no such thing existed on a state level anywhere. The states you are referring to were 100% socialist, i.e. no private property in any form or share with very very few exceptions; money tightly controlled by the state; all businesses are state-owned.

The comment above though probably meant the true communism, i.e. society without money.

>Communism is a society without money, no such thing existed on a state level anywhere.

While it might not be something you can compare to communism, the Inca Civilization had a centrally planned economy with no form of money at all and was HUGELY successful [1]

[1]: http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/

A society without money is even more absurd.

The Inca Civilization had no money was was pretty darn successful

http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/

Tiny fiefdom. Think of the insane size of what we call society even 100 years ago, money is what makes us cooperate.

I wouldn't call the Inca Empire a "tiny fiefdom", at its height they had 10 million citizens and covered 2 million km2

doubt they had the absolute control on law that a modern state has, empire in the loosest/historical sense

Communism in practice is the unending struggle to achieve the imaginary, theoretical communism you refer to.

That's pretty much how all ideologies work. Listen to some hardcore libertarians and you will hear them longing for the imaginary, theoretical free market that never has existed and probably never will.

Couldn't the same be said for what most people call capitalism?

>The comment above though probably meant the true communism, i.e. society without money.

Why would you think that? The term "communist experiment" implies that it's one being conducted right now. There are no states with even hints of plans for this "true communism" you speak of.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com