Communism has nothing to do with 'human error'. The best way to explain why communism doesn't work is game theory. Game theory says that, when an individual is faced with a choice that involves one or more other individuals, the individual will do whatever is best for himself, even though a different action will have a great benefit to the group as a whole. So if I'm a Soviet peon, I have a choice: I can work hard and recieve X as payment, or I can do the bare minimum and... recieve X as payment. I have no reason to be an entrepreneur, because for my effort I will get in return exactly the same as if I was a store clerk. You can imagine that this would stifle economic growth a little bit.

There are many forms and variations of communist doctrine/theory in terms of how distribution works. But the main premise is the masses own the means of production instead of the few. Which raises an interesting twist. Since in the US, I think something like 50% of the population now owns corporations via the stock market, and that figure is growing, it sounds like the US is surprisingly moving towards that goal through private markets. As for measuring failures, game theory approach is quite an accurate way to analyze it. The problem is it create not just an incentive to work as little as possible as Mav pointed out, it also creates an incentive to consume if you use the need-based version of communist distribution. Specifically, if I create need, I get more stuff. If I pump out more babies, I get better housing to support their shelter needs. If I make sure my clothes don't stay in good shape, I create a need for clothing sooner so I can get them replaced for free with the latest style of clothing. So you end up with about as large of a degree of materialistic consumerism as possible due to the game theory incentives, which is compounded with the disincentive to work due to getting no additional reward for hard work. The combination of excessive materialistic demand with excessive shortage of labour would, in game theory, create widescale poverty. So I don't think communism "works in theory" because Marx really didn't understand the theories of human action very well. (There are other examples of that, but that'd be too long to post about.)

As for China, a friend of mine recently went there to adopt a child and he said that capitalism is more alive in China than the US. (And indeed Bob Avakian, the chairman of Revolutionary Communist Party in the US, strongly denounces China, accusing them of having abandoned communism and embracing markets.) My friend claims that most of the oppression there now is social oppression, especially censorship or speech, but that market oppression is not that bad. And even the social oppression is letting up: they now turn a blind eye to many religious activities, and though they officially say you cannot speak of the Tienemen Square massacre, they unofficially let people speak of it so long as they don't make a disturbance of it. His theory is that China's power class saw what happened in the USSR where a massive power vacuum was left after its fall, and so they are moving towards a private market economy while pretending they are still communists. That way they can maintain their political power after communism collapses there, though the collapse would be a small poof rather than a big crash like in Russia. But regardless of their actual intent, he seemed to think China is poised to become the world's strongest economy my lifetime because it is freeing up its markets while the current world's strongest economy is doing the opposite.

Also, I'm moving this to the Real World section.

See, that's a big fear amongst my gov't and history professors and their consituents. China overtaking the U.S. as an economic power.

Look at the population, their means of production, and how cheaply they can produce things, and sell a product of equal quality (or better, really) in comparison to a US-made car, for so much less.

It's a dangerous thing.

I don't see whats so "dangerous" about it. Europe and America are constantly becoming a more Service based economy rather than a Manufacturing economy.

So that sucks that China blocked you out Chade. We miss you!

On a slightly unrelated note, my college firewall has just today started to block access to this forum, as well as Aetolia, Imperian and Achaea, it gives the reason discrimination. No more reading the forums from college for me

Which college is it?