Why doesn't communism work well in practice?

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受人之托翻译了一下 reddit 上的一条帖子下的两个高赞回复，原帖Why doesn’t communism work well in practice? 觉得写得挺通俗的，贴一下。

The biggest problem is that someone has to be in charge to oversee things and make sure things are distributed properly (and also what “properly” means). People being people, those who get to power are the type who want to be in power, and often rig the system for the gain of themselves and those they care about. So you get some built in corruption. Of course, there is grift everywhere, but in a system where those on top closely manage distribution of resources it’s going to be worse.

按：为什么共产主义至今都没有成功？就作为一种意识形态或者一个社会体制来说，它还是相当不错的。

最大的问题就是，共产主义下的一切都被政府挟制着——以便能被“公平分配”（译注：参考市场经济）。（身居高位者）常以权力寻租，攫取利益——即腐败。在高度集权的体制下，资源由顶层分配——因为权力难以被监督——会导致官员的腐败愈加严重。

There are also problems of incentives to do beyond the bare minimum for people, or rather the lack of those incentives. It’s why socialist/communist policies can work on small scale communities where you need little innovation and know and care about your neighbors but don’t work as well on larger scale things like…countries.

另外一个就是对劳动和相应的回报实施“平均制”（译注：即，不能按劳所得，为不劳而获者创造了可乘之机。参考中国改革开放前的公社制以及之后的安徽小岗村）。这也是为什么社会主义 / 共产主义可以在小的范围内施行而在国家范围内难以照搬成功（译注：1. 参考 19 世纪及之前的空想社会主义实验；2.  参考苏联的失败）。

It works incredibly well in family or tribal units.

If you think about it, almost all families are communist. You share resources and distribute labor across the family.

可以细想一下，家庭内的所有成员都可以称作是“共产主义者”——一个家庭里大家一起出力，共享资源。

But once the tribal unit gets large enough that you can’t possibly know everyone in the unit then blame and suspicion start to take hold because it becomes very easy to blame the “other” that you have no attachment to.

不过一旦这个“共产主义全体”足够大，人数足够多——那么个体间就不可能全部相互认识——对资源“分配”的质疑，对出工不出力的责怨都会渐渐占据上风。