All widely-held positions have SOME strong power behind them. However, Communism in real life is atrocious, and AFAICT, unsupportable. WTF?
My suggestion: Communism's attraction is an evolved emotional response to hating power-differentials. Communism works beautifully in a scarcity-free economy...like, say, the forager economy that our brains evolved in, and the projected post-singularity economy of 2050 that we are currently teasing around the edges of. In particular, the life of a rich youth (all American youth?) looks suspiciously similar to the post-scarcity world. In the situation that individual effort is a deciding factor in wealth-creation, on the other hand...Communism fails badly.
Just so story that makes a whole section of people make better sense.
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Communism works just fine within a nuclear family---it's the normal mode for it in fact. Communism CAN work for an extended family, but it's harder. The largest scale of communism that has ever been feasible in practice is around 150 (that's the level at which the Hutterites do a mandatory split). My guess is their fairly intense religiousity lets them scale at least twice as much as a more normal group of families. When your group is small, you can through giving status directly emulate some of the market rewards that would normally go to your more ambitious and capable members. As your group grows and members become more anonymous, more and more of your 4x average performers dial it back to 2x, your 2x performers phone it in at 1x levels, and so on. This is brutal in terms of your standard of living, because a huge fraction of your output is the result of your top 20%, the top 20% of that, and the top 20% of that.
I was going to bring up many religious orders, such as monasteries and nunneries, as other communist success stories.
In short, communism works at small, personal, intuitive scales. Which is exactly where people's instincts are honed.
Now for the next question. Why is the idea of a strong leader who will save us ALSO such a popular idea. Is it Daddy?
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