As you said: socialism is an idealistic system. however, humans are far from ideal beings. even if you find the ideal group that agrees on their flavour of socialism and manages to actually do it - there is no guarantee, that this will stay as it is. as you mentioned yourself: humans change - sadly not always for the better.
don’t take my word for it. watch a documentary about a bigger commune (small village, houses scattered through a forest and such), or even better: visit one. They all will tell you that heavy moderation is needed. not everyone is allowed to join, sometimes old members even have to go. if you try to scale up these systems to the size of even a small country, they will fail.
As you said: socialism is an idealistic system.
I did not. I said you were practicing idealism, the philosophy that states that ideas create reality, rather than Materialism, which states that reality creates ideas. The idea of a nebulous, unchanging, static “Human Nature” is idealism and ahistorical.
We are not talking about Communes, we are talking about Communism, with central planning and whatnot.
We are talking about communism, agreed. That means we are also talking about communes: small(ish) groups of people who want to live together in a communist system. I come from a practical approach: if you want to do something, it needs to work under sterile laboratory conditions first (communism does this). then you can take it to smaller experiments (communes which survived for long, usually have a low hierarchy). after gathering real world experience, you can slowly increase the size of these experiments. so far none of the countries, which had a socialist government still have a (valid) socialist system.
{…} Communism, with central planning and whatnot.
seems like you are suggesting a more centralised form of government and stronger hierarchical structures than any of the communes i personally know. what is your suggested path to avoid the pitfalls of the past communist governments? what safeguards do you suggest to prevent a (group of) person(s) accumulating power and perverting the government into a dictatorship?
We are talking about communism, agreed. That means we are also talking about communes: small(ish) groups of people who want to live together in a communist system.
Communes are not communist systems, they are their own separate category.
seems like you are suggesting a more centralised form of government and stronger hierarchical structures than any of the communes i personally know.
Correct, because we are talking about Communism, not Communalism.
what is your suggested path to avoid the pitfalls of the past communist governments? what safeguards do you suggest to prevent a (group of) person(s) accumulating power and perverting the government into a dictatorship?
Soviet Democracy was already good, but Mass Line theory improved upon it.
