Thread: Does Communism still have a role to play, or is it dead?

But anyway - who will invent new things?
Who will innovate existing?
If they will not get any benefits for their hard work - why bother?
If they will get benefits - then sooner or later - everyone will not be equal anymore.

I think that USSR was lagging behind the West partially because its inventors/scientists/etc. did not get fair compensation for their work.
For example Mikhail Kalashnikov - his invention is produced in massive quantities - yet - he does not have any benefit from that.

Originally Posted by nulle

If they will not get any benefits for their hard work - why bother?

because they care
Communism won't work for mere mortals people who don't give a damn

Originally Posted by nulle

I think that USSR was lagging behind the West partially because its inventors/scientists/etc. did not get fair compensation for their work.
For example Mikhail Kalashnikov - his invention is produced in massive quantities - yet - he does not have any benefit from that.

I'm not sure the USSR was lagging behind the West. It was lagging behind in certain things and was a way ahead in the others. The scientists were compensated worse than their counterparts in the West, however adequately. The problem was not the compensation, but the centralization and as a result the bureaucratization of everything that resisted any innovations. Each bureaucrat had only to report the success up the ladder, so they couldn't take risks. As a result, it was more beneficial for the bureaucracy which led the country to sell raw materials to maintain the best spy organization in the world which would steal and buy new technologies from the West and then copy them and promote to production than to promote the local inventions. The local inventions were reported up the ladder, but rarely experienced practical implementation. That caused the inevitable lag between the invention in the west, trial and error in the west, mass production in the west, success in the west, and ONLY THEN copy in the USSR, trial and error in the USSR, and mass production in the USSR. All that took years. Hence the lag. By the 80s the Soviet-manufactured calculators were displaying the magic word ЕГГОГ which meant nothing in Russian, but everybody knew it meant an error. That situation caused enormous frustration among the scientific community in the USSR hurting the motivation.

Originally Posted by nulle

But anyway - who will invent new things?
Who will innovate existing?

People will.

Originally Posted by nulle

If they will not get any benefits for their hard work - why bother?

Have you ever done anything just because you wanted to do it? Not because somebody paid you, but simply because you wanted it done? That's what I've been talking about - there will always be people who will be curious enough to continue pushing sciences further and further. Besides, there are non-material benefits that will remain - respect of others, for example, taking pride in your own work, etc.
There will be a choice - to work and get everything and not to work and get the same. Some will choose not to work, but there will be plenty of others.

Originally Posted by Ramil

Have you ever done anything just because you wanted to do it? Not because somebody paid you, but simply because you wanted it done? That's what I've been talking about - there will always be people who will be curious enough to continue pushing sciences further and further. Besides, there are non-material benefits that will remain - respect of others, for example, taking pride in your own work, etc.
There will be a choice - to work and get everything and not to work and get the same. Some will choose not to work, but there will be plenty of others.

I'd rather agree with what you said before - there will be plenty of those who will choose not to work, and there will be some who will consider working as a privilege. But again, it's a fantastic system that would in no way be working now.