Reply #52: Most people hear "communism" and think "national"

[DireStrike]

which explains a lot of the dynamics of the argument. Sometimes "communists" are talking about small communities.

It can work on a personal level, because people are tribal creatures. But once it starts getting outside your circle of friends and relatives, people generally don't see others as their brothers and sisters (barring some identifier.)

As to whether this way of thinking is absolute or ideological, it would take a lot of proof to show either. But right now, I think most people feel that it's natural. Marx said that this thinking was based on there being private property. We would need a large-scale, non totalitarian communist nation to test it. And probably several generations to cleanse the idea pool. And furthermore, interaction with market based countries would have to be cut off, or the countries destroyed. One market based country would provide an outlet for market based thinking, which would "cause" greed.

It just seems like an awful lot of work to me.