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RE: Hit the road Jack, or how Im hitchhiking between Tunka valley & Ulan-Ude. (Lots of photos!)
You should probably read up on communism. It is one part anarchy, one part voluntarism, and several other different part. You can even start with the wikipedia article. I heard here on steemit that communism equals taxation.
Actually it has nothing to do with it.
Anyhow a lot of cool things that exist today first appeared because of "communism", reduced work week & work day. Mandatory safety techniques. The list is quite long actually. Check it out.
I am ambivalent about how "The Party" in USSR did things, but I wasn't there so it is somewhat hard to have informed opinion, since history is written by the winners.
I don't identify as communist, or any other way, but there are a lot of cool ideas there, check them out.
I have read plenty about communism. It's failure in general is because it is completely contrary to the natural laws of economics, and it in fact favours the power of corrupt elites.
But I think it is in fact the inherent strengths of the cultures where it flourished, that it did not fall in a heap in a year, which is exactly what would have happened in any capitalistic culture, either britain's far flung colonies, or most of western and especially north western europe.
I am not one for throwing the baby out with the bathwater either. But you don't need a top down authority. An insurance system punishes poor safety procedures. Insurance is more profitable when privately, and cooperatively run. Insurance agencies share data, as do lenders, who depend on the same kind of data. Information about risky clients enables them to minimise their losses and benefit more those who take the time to improve their safety procedures and security mechanisms.
Inevitably, there was good things that managed to arise within the communist bureaucracies. But a clock tells the right time once a day as well.
What worked with communism, has largely been adopted by not just non-communist governments, but also by private business. Communists were not alone and I am sure as time goes on more material will turn up to show that these inspired Aparatchiks were inspired by things they saw when they snuck out from behind the curtain or talked to someone who did.
Good ideas cannot be contained within ideologies, but grow within competitive meritocracies. This site itself demonstrates the power of that even just by the way that it weights votes by vested stakes, just as is done within corporate shareholder meetings.
I think that what allowed communism to survive so long was mainly because the people who accepted it, were humble, and mentally flexible. This is the only way people could manage to not have it destroy their morale so much that it was over the next day.