Mr. Moderate

The economic philosophy of communism is based upon shared ownership of all property by the people through their government. In a communist economic system, business leaders are government officials and are responsible to the higher government leaders for the performance of their business. There are many reasons why a communist economic system is unworkable. The biggest reason is that the free market is curtailed, preventing the Law of Supply and Demand from functioning properly. That also means that individual incentive to do well at a job is removed since compensation is based upon political realities rather than job performance.

In their 1968 book The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant predicted the downfall of the communist system:

The Revolution took a communistic form because the new state was challenged by internal disorder and external attack; the people reacted as any nation will react under siege–it put aside all individual freedom until order and security could be restored. Perhaps communism survives through continued fear of war; given a generation of peace it would presumably be eroded by the nature of man.

George Orwell in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four had a similar conception that a totalitarian state almost necessarily requires an external threat or else the people would revolt. Thus, the totalitarian leaders of the fictional future divided the world up into blocks that were constantly at mock war with each other, with shifting alliances and treachery enough to keep the population ever afraid of dissent from the path forward envisioned by their leadership.

Soviet communism collapsed after “a generation of peace” including peace treaties and other peaceful approaches by Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush (I). It is almost like President Nixon read the Durant book (above) and tried to put its casual plan into effect.

The bottom line here is this: communism as an economic system is incompatible with a free people. At the end of the day, a communist government must maintain itself in power using the same brutal techniques as a fascist regime.