Quote Originally Posted by Anaralia
Shadow Nexus, I understand what you're trying to say, but I honestly can't imagine any kind of Marxist/anarchist large scale scenario that doesn't lead to hoarding and violence. The example that you gave, from Spain, was limited to a relatively small portion of the population, (if I remember correctly) and I've seen socialism work very very well in small communities, but as more people are involved, it breaks down. How can you possibly avoid that?
In that I agree, the concept of marxism or anarchism taken to a large scale tends to fail in large communities, or so experience tells. OK, but the thing is more complex than that, you cannot simplify the failure of the implementation on human nature, because that is ignoring all the other factors arround that failure. For example, let's take Russia. According to Marx, the best countries for communism, when he wrote, where England and France, because both were facing capitalism, and it is from capitalism we move into socialism and then, communism (Again, according to Marx: my outlook in the idea is not so optimist). Russian revolution failed with the basic idea of revolution: You cannot change what is above without changing the bases. Starting a war or revolution to bring down a tyrant won't result in anything better if people are not ready for a change. Lenin knew this, that why- along with the problems in economy- decided to implement state capitalism temporally. Then Stalin arrived and well...you know the story. Stalin is one of the most horrible persons who has ever been into power.

Cuba is a different story, then again, I question wether the people were ready or not. However, Fidel Castro is and was a very intelligent person, yet of course, the situation was of Cold War, so he was under the wing of the Soviet Union and under the pressure of USA. From that arrived the whole blocking thing, something I believe to be criminal. And of course, add that to Castro's rather megalomaniac personality, and you get what you get now: Preassure, political opression. However, for now Fidel is the best socialist leader in any country, even if I can't say I like him much, he still has death penalty in his law and six articles in the Cuban constitution that are against freedom of expression. 27 journalists in prision and 50 people on death row (Even those, contrary to believe, are NOT political prisioners...I still do not believe it to be justified, however).

So yeah, for the things to really work, we would need the ideal conditions for an actual well done revolution. And that is not easy.