The Communists Should Have Sought Enlightenment

    My search for improved understanding of economics obviously dragged me across the age-old false dichotomy of Capitalism vs Communism. In this day and age, if you point out the many problems with Capitalism, you are labeled a Communist...which is a sad because it prevents us from having intelligent discussions about economics. That said, I am not a Communist and this is not a comparison or a rant about our economic system, but rather an observation and some funny imaginings.

Note on my economic philosophy:
I think there are a great many people like me that like the ideas of cooperation over competition, intelligent management of resources over Social Darwinism, a healthy balance of ideological ambition with methodological efficiency, and a desire to be sustainable. The best way to describe my ideology is probably a Structuralist form of economic philosophy.

    When I look at the many things communist regimes have done wrong (granted most were just authoritarian regimes that leveraged the populism of "communism") I notice that there is one thing that they did really wrong...and it was CULTURE. They tried to force people to do the right thing, rather than teach them HOW and WHY to do the right thing. Egalitarianism is a beautiful thing to strive for, but you can't force it upon a population who doesn't understand why it is important. It's the same with cooperation, you can't "force" people to cooperate. So we can see why an authoritarian approach didn't work for forming an egalitarian society. Sadly enough, even though we use a very similar authoritarian cultural approach in capitalism (yes your workplace is a dictatorship, tell your boss to "fuck off" and then tell me how you voted yourself out of being fired), it marries well with an economic system that values hierarchy and competition.
    This leads me to another observation, and that is about the culture of Buddhism. The Buddhist tradition has thousands of years of development, and it seems to value the ideas of equality, living frugally, sharing and harmony. This strikes me as fairly compatible with the spirit of communism (the whole "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" bit), but is prewrapped and ready to be adopted by proponents of that economic system.

Note on my religious background:
I am an Atheist and I do not think religion (i.e. ideological dogma) of any kind is good, but I do think Buddhism is probably one of the more benevolent religions.

So just to tie things up, I just started imagining what would have happened if those two things had met up in a serious way, and think they would have made interesting bed-fellows. I don't suggest either of these things, but if you are already a communist with culturally authoritarian tendencies, perhaps you should start looking into Buddhism.