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Communism - can it work? A mature discussion on improving the welfare of all.
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Post by
Rankkor
Does this mean we shouldn't strive for change? of course not, because the current proposed methods suck, but if we're gonna attempt to change the system, doesn't it make sense to try for a system that hasn't already proven to be an epic fail several times in the past? Seriously, name me ONE country that in the past has gone communist without becoming a despotic and dystopian nightmarish wasteland of a wretched hive of villainy in the past.That's funny, because Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam all seem to be way better off than they were under a backwards Tsarist theocratic monarchy, a reactionary exploitative conservative state, Spanish/American imperialism, and French/American imperialism, respectively.
Ohh really?
1: Russia's communism fell for a reason. It didn't work out man. It just didn't. And while the Tsarist monarchy was awful, Stalin was hardly an improvement. He's considered a mass murderer for very good reasons. Again, imagine being ruled by Freddy Krueger all your life, and then he's replaced by Jason Vorhees. Sure, he's less scary than Freddy, but
he's still a bloody murderer that will gut you with his machete for no damned reason.
Maybe the solution then is not replacing Freddy with Jason, but rather replace Freddy for...... gee....... I dunno....... Charles Xavier?
2: China's success cannot be replicated by anybody else, simply because nobody else has a labor force of 2.1 billion people. They actually have the luxury of making the impossible work because their numbers are endless. Try to make a nation of 30 million people go communist and watch it crumble to dust in less than 10 years (AKA Venezuela)
3: If you seriously think Cuba is "better off", I suggest you live there for a couple of decades and then say that again. People flee from there en masse for very good reasons. How do I know this? Because our government brings cuban doctors and officials to venezuela to replace our infrastructure, and having the chance to talk to some of them, they're actually glad to be here, why? because as bad as our country is right now, where
these guys
will literally behead you and mangle your body in the middle of the street if you dare to speak ill of their glorious supreme eternal commander and revolutionary leader, its STILL better than cuba.
Let that thought sink in for a moment. A country where an armed xenophobic, ultranationalist militia of fanatics can legally murder you and desecrate your body and get away with it, is STILL better than living in Cuba. Still think that's a great nation to live in? Maybe, MAYBE its better than during the Spanish/American Imperialist, but that's like trading an execution via drawn and quartering, vs an execution via the Lethal Injection. One is worse than the other, but both suck
because you're still gonna die.
I can't speak for vietnam though, I'm not sufficiently informed about that country, and whether or not they're still communists.
Do not confuse those who started the holocaust with those who ended it.
Its hard for me to tell them apart because they're both mass murderers who still butchered lots of innocent people and oppressed their nations with an iron fist. Don't try to paint Stalin like a great hero, because he wasn't. He was a dictator, a murderer, and a monster. And his horrendous legacy still haunts the world this day, in the form of the castros, the kim family, the PSUV movement in venezuela, and several others.
Just because one was worse than the other, doesn't make the latter any better.
I keep going back to my movie monster example: Freddy Krueger is undeniably worse than Jason (The former kills children, and submits them to intense psychological terror before finishing them off. The latter is just an unkillable dumb brute that butchers teenagers.) But just because he's worse than Jason, doesn't automatically makes Jason an amazing guy that should be honored.
Capitalism is terrible, its a system that encourages and allows a small elite to live a life of luxury and decadence, while the majority spends the rest of their lives breaking their backs for pennies and never being able to actually enjoy the sweeter parts of life.
But Communism is even worse. Way WAY worse.
If you still think communism so amazing, just move here man, come and partake of the glorious communist haven of venezuela. Enjoy the awesomeness of spending 3 weeks with no toilet paper, the sweetness of eating nothing but cornmeal as breakfast and dinner every day, come and chat with
these
lovely chaps. I'm pretty sure they'll love you, give you a shiny gun, so you can come and kill more anti-revolutionary capitalist traitors. Its all good fun, I promise.
I mean, look how happy they look.
They're even giving an example
to the children.
Because nothing is more patriotic than a kid with a mask and an assault rifle.(##RESPBREAK##)520##DELIM##Rankkor##DELIM##
Post by
Skreeran
The Holocaust only killed about 6 million. As horrific as it was, I say "only" because it a pittance compared to the deaths Stalin caused. Saying that Staking was an evil, and he ended an evil, as rank pointed out, isnt "cconfusing" the two. Death to the jews may have been unacceptable to the communists, but death to the peasants/ruling class and everywhere in between was. Where fascism targets groups of people to kill, the ussr just killed indiscrimately. That doesn't make it better.Can you give me a primary source for those figures? I've heard that Stalin murdered a million, ten million, a hundred million... I've even heard 500 million from one guy. It's really easy to talk about all the people he killed when you're getting your source from
Are you referring to the purges? Are you getting your data from Robert Conquest? Do you know who that is?
Here's an informative document regarding the purges in the '30s:
http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/StS%202005_Purges_individuals_vr2.pdf
At the very least, we can conclude that the Western narrative has been compromised by politics. However many Stalin had purged, whether he was directly responsible or not, whatever the reasoning for the purges, whether or not they were justified, we can conclude that the Western account had a vested interest in writing history to be anti-Communist, because of the Cold War. I simply cannot take the Western account at face value.
Otherwise, if you're talking about deaths from hunger caused by rapid collectivization, then I would conclude that these were unfortunate side-effects of a feudal class society transforming into an industrial powerhouse in less than two decades. Yes, there were some shortages and the civil war itself caused a great deal of destruction that had to be dealt with, but the end result was a society that was much more capable of providing for its population and simultaneously capable of standing up to imperialist intervention (i.e. Nazi Germany).
Ultimately, while its clear that there is blood on Stalin's hand, I must let the results speak for themselves. Under his leadership, the revolution was preserved, Communism obtained nuclear capability, Soviet industrial power was vastly increased, the Red Army was forged into a true powerhouse, the fascist invaders were destroyed utterly, and Capitalism was made to face the greatest threat to its existence that it ever encountered.
Stalin made a Communist revolution in a backwards rural country into a real force to resist Capitalism and provide aid to those who also desired to resist. As an anti-Capitalist, this is a fantastic development.
Anyway, for all your generalities (e.g. break social bonds, redistribute value), you fail to instruct how. As mentioned earlier, the model of communism has always run counter to its ideals. How can you rectify a redistribution system without creating a redistribution ruling class. Someone has to be in power over this process. Everyone can't be, for as well intentioned as purely democratic distribution may be, the majority will invariably rule over the minority. Alternately, if a group of people is, you've just designated a new upper class, only this one controls the military. You are in love with the ideas of communism, and reiterate those ideals beautifully. For decades humanity has attempted those ideals and has run into the same predictable pitfalls. Instead of repeating the ideals, we must address the pitfalls in implementation. So far, when presented with those pitfalls, you just deny their existence and repeat the ideals.
1. The intention is for the majority to rule over the minority, by all means. Those who are in the oppressed majority class, which includes what we now consider ethnic, religious, gender and sexual minorities, will rule over the minority oppressor class. The redistribution class is the proletarian class. It is the goal of the Communist to arm, educate, and ultimately liberate this class so that they can overthrow and subjugate the bourgeois class. The minority parasite will be subordinated to the currently oppressed majority.
2. There can be no doubt that the Soviet Union and all socialist countries since have faced problems in the implementation of socialism. Far from denying these problems, I instead wish first to separate truth from propaganda, and second, to study the truth of these problems to better understand how to avoid them in the future. Most Communists do no want to re-create the Soviet Union, but as Communists, the study of the Soviet Union and the other socialist states is necessary to an understanding of how to implement it in the future. Far from discouraging us from seeking Communism, they only serve to remind us that Communist revolution is still possible, and that we will be able to build new socialism without having to do so blindly, as the Soviets had to. We can avoid their mistakes.
How do you predict market demand with present, not past knowledge. How do you prevent the redistribution class from becoming the ruling class. How are dissenters ensured freedom in a state operated economy, even if the press is free. How are nonconformist organizations re integrated without use of violence. What value are placed on commodity exports to ensure both value of currency(labor, materials, supply, etc) and competitive world pricing, without oversaturation or undersupply. Who determines market R&D benchmarks. How do you prevent corruption of those trend setters. If the revolution must go through a period of initial turbulance, at what point is use of force no longer warranted. Who uses that force. Who decides when that period is over. How is use of force removed from the party using it at the end of that period. What prevents the force itself from becoming defacto dictators ala bonepart.
1. The redistribution class is the proletarian class is the ruling class. The goal of the Communists is not to become the ruling class but to build, reinforce, educate, equip, and ultimately liberate the proletarian class so that it may rule itself.
2. Dissenters should be free to express their opinions, but not to re-consolidate bourgeois power.
3. Going to have to be more specific about noncomformist organizations. For the most part, there should not be too many nonconformist organizations if the proletarian class has formed naturally. Besides this, it's not as if dissenters and non-conformist organizations are exactly encouraged now. Just look at Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Anonymous, and so on.
4. Economic answers will have to be dealt with materialistically. At the very least, the means of production and economic decisions will be controlled by the proletariat, not by the bourgeoisie. This is the biggest difference.
5. Force is no longer needed when force is no longer needed. When the former bourgeoisie stop attempting to resist proletarian control or incite counter-revolution, then they will stop needed to be forced to concede to proletarian rule.
6. Who uses that force? Some aspect of the proletarian class, whether it be through organs such as the Communist party, or worker's unions, or through mass movement. The point is that the positions of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will be reversed, with a majority class dictating policy and controlling the market, rather than a minority class. The bourgeoisie already use force to enforce their will, if you hadn't noticed. It's only natural that force will be needed to counter their force.
7. When the state is no longer necessary, there will be no more reason to keep a state. If the proletarian class has fully stripped the bourgeoisie of their power, and is capable of ruling itself without a centralized state, then the state becomes redundant and naturally withers away. Naturally, though, this means that there must be no threat of Capitalist imperialism. So long as Capitalism continues to exist, Communists will continue to have to fight it.
8. Power is not supposed to be completely centralized. This is my biggest criticism of Stalin. Rather than keeping the power consolidated in the democratic Soviets, power was rather consolidated into the hands of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and the Comintern, giving Stalin inordinate amounts of national and international power. The goal of Communism is to empower the proletarian class, not to empower specific individuals. Moreover, it is plainly obvious how destructive it is to turn proletarian power against the proletariat itself.
There are a million of these questions that cannot be brushed aside with "smash the borgoius, let the peasants rule". I think we should honor the dead by questioning what killed them, not deciding that their deaths were necessary to wealth redistribution.Certainly. However, the question of whether they were intentionally killed by Communists, and whether Communism is necessary to destroy Capitalism are two different questions to me. I don't want any innocent people to be killed, but if some innocent people were killed by Communists in the past, that has nothing to do with my assessment of whether or not I should support the Communist cause. Capitalism has to be stopped, and no other organization has provided as accurate an assessment of class society, the contradictions that cause the very issues we're seeing today, or a plan of action as to how to overthrow bourgeois oppression of the global proletariat.
Now, onto Rankkor's response:
1: Russia's communism fell for a reason. It didn't work out man. It just didn't. And while the Tsarist monarchy was awful, Stalin was hardly an improvement. He's considered a mass murderer for very good reasons. Again, imagine being ruled by Freddy Krueger all your life, and then he's replaced by Jason Vorhees. Sure, he's less scary than Freddy, but he's still a bloody murderer that will gut you with his machete for no damned reason.Maybe the solution then is not replacing Freddy with Jason, but rather replace Freddy for...... gee....... I dunno....... Charles Xavier?Rather than Charles Xavier, I think, we'd really just rather have proletarian workers' councils in charge, rather than any single chief executive.
As for the reason for the fall of the Soviet Union, there are many, but I would lay the blame mainly on Khrushchev and Gorbachov's revisionism, rather than any intrinsic flaw in Communism. Quality of life in the Soviet Union was drastically improved by the Five-Year Plans, and their agricultural sector alone expanded hugely thanks to collectivization (despite some shortages in the transitory period). Cuba also has lower infant mortality rates and higher life expectancy than the US, despite our wealth. Having never lived in Cuba, I can only speak of it in a statistical sense, but people seem to be pretty satisfied there.
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/countries/cuba/
http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_306488/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=ol1OoJWg
"The vote was clean. The people don't want change."
Its hard for me to tell them apart because they're both mass murderers who still butchered lots of innocent people and oppressed their nations with an iron fist. Don't try to paint Stalin like a great hero, because he wasn't. He was a dictator, a murderer, and a monster. And his horrendous legacy still haunts the world this day, in the form of the castros, the kim family, the PSUV movement in venezuela, and several others.If not a great hero, he's a key figure in socialist history, and there is a lot to be learned from him, both positive and negative.
Capitalism is terrible, its a system that encourages and allows a small elite to live a life of luxury and decadence, while the majority spends the rest of their lives breaking their backs for pennies and never being able to actually enjoy the sweeter parts of life.
But Communism is even worse. Way WAY worse.
See, I just cannot believe you there. There's nothing in Communist doctrine that says "Make a totalitarian nightmare and make sure no one is happy and everything is worse than before."
What is so monstrously destructive about the idea that people are born equal, and that class society should be done away with? All we want is a fair society, where people don't have to be afraid of starving to death because they lost their job or because they got sick and can't make enough money to feed their family.
Everyone is always so quick to start laying out spreadsheets of people killed by Communism, but no one but the Communists ever seem interested in how many people Capitalism has killed. Putting profits before people is not an acceptable way to structure a society.
We Communists don't want a totalitarian nightmare society, we want a fair, cooperative society in which the great fruits of modern civilization can be shared by everyone, not just a ruling class.
If you still think communism so amazing, just move here man, come and partake of the glorious communist haven of venezuela. Enjoy the awesomeness of spending 3 weeks with no toilet paper, the sweetness of eating nothing but cornmeal as breakfast and dinner every day, come and chat with these lovely chaps. I'm pretty sure they'll love you, give you a shiny gun, so you can come and kill more anti-revolutionary capitalist traitors. Its all good fun, I promise. I mean, look how happy they look. They're even giving an example to the children. Because nothing is more patriotic than a kid with a mask and an assault rifle.I can't speak for Venezuela, but I think just about everyone in the world (or at least the international proletariat) would benefit if American capitalist society were destroyed. I don't have any desire to replicate Venezuela, but I sure wish that the US would finally just collapse.
Post by
Rankkor
We Communists don't want a totalitarian nightmare society
Sorry to say this dude, but only communists who've never actually experienced and implemented a communist system say that.
Actual communists who DO what they talk about? they totally implement totalitarian nightmarish societies. Just ask the Castros. Or the Kim family. Or the PSUV here.
There's a point where coincidences end, and a pattern begins. By its nature communism requires drastic change, it requires the demolishing of the established social order, which in itself is not bad, as the current social order stinks, the problem is, that once the social order is demolished, human nature causes them to proceed to violate every single form of human decency.
Lemme stop mincing words: Communism would only work if people were actual living saints and purity-driven mary sues straight out of a fairy tale. And while some people like that exist, they're the minority. Human nature in general is to be a self-serving bastard, and this is why every single attempt of instating communism is gonna end the same way.
Like cuba. Like North Korea. Like Venezuela.
Which is why, while I share your dislike of capitalism, I can only frown my head at your view of communism as a harmless thing. It isn't.
And I must ask,
does it has to be one or the other?
Capitalism or Communism? there is no other way? both of these concepts are fairly modern. In the past we had way worse systems in place, like monarchies, slavery, feudalism, etc. We did away with those, we can do away with these now.
Again, I agree that capitalism sucks, but communism has demonstrated, beyond shadow of doubt, that it sucks even harder.
Everyone is always so quick to start laying out spreadsheets of people killed by Communism, but no one but the Communists ever seem interested in how many people Capitalism has killed.
For a good reason: While capitalism has killed a lot of people, at least it has demonstrated that it works. Not in the best ways, it creates a lot of injustices, but at least it doesn't lead to the total collapse of an economy.
Communism on the other hand, has also caused a lot of deaths too, but what does it has to show for it? misery. despotism. dependency on handouts. death. suspension of civil rights.
I don't have any desire to replicate Venezuela
Okay, that's good to hear, got me worried there for a moment.
Sadly, I must state it once more, every attempt of implementing communism, is gonna end like us. Every.single.time. Is that an excuse to just accept the current order of things? of course not. But come on, trying to implement a solution that doesn't work is hardly the best approach to solve a problem. You don't fix a burned out lightbulb with a broken one.(##RESPBREAK##)520##DELIM##Rankkor##DELIM##
Post by
1458157
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skreeran
So I was looking up the 1936 Constitution of the USSR, and I found some fun stuff:
ARTICLE 118. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance With its quantity and quality.
The right to work is ensured by the socialist organization of the national economy, the steady growth of the productive forces of Soviet society, the elimination of the possibility of economic crises, and the abolition of unemployment.
ARTICLE 119. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to rest and leisure. The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the reduction of the working day to seven hours for the overwhelming majority of the workers, the institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people.
ARTICLE 120. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.
ARTICLE 121. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to education. This right is ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the universities and colleges; by instruction in schools being conducted in the native Ianguage, and by the organization in the factories, state farms, machine and tractor stations and collective farms of free vocational, technical and agronomic training for the working people.
ARTICLE 122.
Women in the U.S.S.R. are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life. The possibility of exercising these rights is ensured to women by granting them an equal right with men to work, payment for work, rest and leisure, social insurance and education, and by state protection of the interests of mother and child, prematernity and maternity leave with full pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens.
ARTICLE 123.
Equality of rights of citizens of the U.S.S.R., irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.
ARTICLE 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the state, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of antireligious propaganda is recognized for all citizens.
ARTICLE 125. In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law:
freedom of speech;
freedom of the press;
freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings;
freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.
ARTICLE 126. In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to develop the organizational initiative and political activity of the masses of the people, citizens of the U.S.S.R. are ensured the right to unite in public organizations--trade unions, cooperative associations, youth organizations,' sport and defense organizations, cultural, technical and scientific societies; and the most active and politically most conscious citizens in the ranks of the working class and other sections of the working people unite in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), which is the vanguard of the working people in their struggle to strengthen and develop the socialist system and is the leading core of all organizations of the working people, both public and state.
ARTICLE 127.
Citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed inviolability of the person. No person may be placed under arrest except by decision of a court or with the sanction of a procurator.
ARTICLE 128.
The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.
ARTICLE 129. The U.S.S.R. affords the right of asylum to foreign citizens persecuted for defending the interests of the working people, or for their scientific activities, or for their struggle for national liberation.
ARTICLE 130. It is the duty of every citizen of the U.S.S.R. to abide by the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to observe the laws, to maintain labor discipline, honestly to perform public duties, and to respect the rules of socialist intercourse.
ARTICLE 131. It is the duty of every citizen of the U.S.S.R. to safeguard and strengthen public, socialist property as the sacred and inviolable foundation of the Soviet system, as the source of the wealth and might of the country, as the source of the prosperous and cultured life of all the working people.
Persons committing offenses against public, socialist property are enemies of the people.
ARTICLE 132. Universal military service is law. Military service in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army is an honorable duty of the citizens of the U.S.S.R.
ARTICLE 133. To defend the fatherland is the sacred duty of every citizen of the U.S.S.R. Treason to the country--violation of the oath of allegiance, desertion to the enemy, impairing the military power of the state, espionage is punishable with all the severity of the law as the most heinous of crimes.Looks pretty nice to me. How does this invite terror? How is this inherently oppressive? Looks to me that the US constitution could learn a thing or two from the USSR. The right to work, the right to an education, the right to rest, equal rights for women and minorities, constitutionally guaranteed free speech, right to protest, full separation of church and state while protecting the right to worship...
Sure, you can argue that the leaders of the USSR didn't hold to their constitution (and I would probably disagree about what degree this is true), but you can't blame the system for that.
Here's the democracy part:
THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM
ARTICLE 134. Members of all Soviets of Working People's Deputies--of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics, the Soviets of Working People's Deputies of the Territories and Regions, the Supreme Soviets of the Autonomous Republics, and Soviets of Working People's Deputies of Autonomous Regions, area, district, city and rural (station, village, hamlet, kishlak, aul) Soviets of Working People's Deputies--are chosen by the electors on the basis of universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot.
ARTICLE 135. Elections of deputies are universal: all citizens of the U.S.S.R. who have reached the age of eighteen, irrespective of race or nationality, religion, educational and residential qualifications, social origin, property status or past activities, have the right to vote in the election of deputies and to be elected, with the exception of insane persons and persons who have been convicted by a court of law and whose sentences include deprivation of electoral rights.
ARTICLE 136. Elections of deputies are equal: each citizen has one vote; all citizens participate in elections on an equal footing.
ARTICLE 137. Women have the right to elect and be elected on equal terms with men.
ARTICLE 138. Citizens serving in the Red Army have the right to elect and be elected on equal terms with all other citizens.
ARTICLE 139. Elections of deputies are direct: all Soviets of Working People's Deputies, from rural and city Soviets of Working People's Deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., inclusive, are elected by the citizens by direct vote.
ARTICLE 140. Voting at elections of deputies is secret.
ARTICLE 141. Candidates for election are nominated according to electoral areas. The right to nominate candidates is secured to public organizations and societies of the working people: Communist Party organizations, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organizations and cultural societies.
ARTICLE 142. It is the duty of every deputy to report to his electors on his work and on the work of the Soviet of Working People's Deputies, and he is liable to be recalled at any time in the manner established by law upon decision of a majority of the electors.Bam! Democracy. All deputies are elected by direct vote. No clunky electoral college, no privileged overclass. There's nothing in here about a supreme dear leader and a cult of personality. Blame Stalin for centralizing power all you want (never mind that he helped write this constitution), but you can't tell me that Communism, as it is written, as it is meant to be practiced, is not democratic.
Now, onto your post specifically:
Sorry to say this dude, but only communists who've never actually experienced and implemented a communist system say that.
Actual communists who DO what they talk about? they totally implement totalitarian nightmarish societies. Just ask the Castros. Or the Kim family. Or the PSUV here.Implying that I and the hundreds of comrades I dicuss and debate with and whose works I read aren't real Communists. We may have not overthrown Capitalism yet and established a socialist society, but we're no less Communists than the millions of our comrades who have lived and died with the spirit of Communism in our hearts.
Clearly I cannot convince you that previous attempts to intitute Communism were benign, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that my comrades and I loathe oppression, and hate exploitation. We don't want to build a totalitarian nightmare, quite the opposite. We want to end the nightmare that the victims of colonialism, neocolonialism, and international Capitalist exploitation live every day. We stand for equality, universal brotherhood, and the tearing down of class divides. How could we ever turn our machine against the proletariat, who we work so hard to defend and nurture?
There's a point where coincidences end, and a pattern begins. By its nature communism requires drastic change, it requires the demolishing of the established social order, which in itself is not bad, as the current social order stinks, the problem is, that once the social order is demolished, human nature causes them to proceed to violate every single form of human decency.You've got yourself a little bit of a contradiction there. How can human nature ever cause a human to violate human decency? Either decency is unnatural, or "human nature" isn't quite as universal and set in stone as you imply.
Lemme stop mincing words: Communism would only work if people were actual living saints and purity-driven mary sues straight out of a fairy tale. And while some people like that exist, they're the minority. Human nature in general is to be a self-serving bastard, and this is why every single attempt of instating communism is gonna end the same way.
Argument from human nature so easily lends itself to beating down any philosophy. "Communism can't work because human nature." "Capitalism doesn't work because of human nature." "Democracy doesn't work because human nature."
When you don't define what "human nature" is, it's really easy to use it as an excuse for why X wouldn't work.
That said, I'll respond anyway. I don't think human nature is set in stone. I think that a lot of the selfish, competitive, and destructive behaviors that some consider "human nature" are really just the products of a society in which humans are force to compete and struggle for as much share of the commons as possible. I think that in a society oriented towards cooperation and fulfilling the common need before addressing any individual wants would go a very long way in solving problems of crime, prejudice, cruelty, and scores of other behavioral problems we see that are caused by scarcity, neglect, or desperation.
I believe that a better world is not only possible, but absolutely necessary.
Which is why, while I share your dislike of capitalism, I can only frown my head at your view of communism as a harmless thing. It isn't.Oh, don't be fooled, I don't think it's harmless. Communist revolution is inherently violent, destructive, and dangerous, at least to the bourgeois order. Capitalism uses violence or the threat of violence to enforce itself all the time, and the only way to stop it is to overpower it. Of course there will be blood. We don't wave the red flag for nothing. However, this is a class war, and just like any other war, it would be foolish to attack your own side. Violence should be directed at the bourgeois oppressors for as long as they are capable of oppressing, but never towards the proletariat. This would be fool-hardy, and would only sabotage the progress of socialism.
For a good reason: While capitalism has killed a lot of people, at least it has demonstrated that it works. Not in the best ways, it creates a lot of injustices, but at least it doesn't lead to the total collapse of an economy.I wouldn't be so sure. Greece and Europe in general prove to me that this system is ultimately unsustainable. It's only a matter of time before the contradictions of Capitalism are too great to be borne by any country. Then we will be there.
Sadly, I must state it once more, every attempt of implementing communism, is gonna end like us. Every.single.time. Is that an excuse to just accept the current order of things? of course not. But come on, trying to implement a solution that doesn't work is hardly the best approach to solve a problem. You don't fix a burned out lightbulb with a broken one.I'm focused first on getting the burnt out bulb out of the socket, first. That's what's killing people now. Dialectically, materialistically, the best way to throw out Capitalism is by organizing and empowering those who Capitalism oppresses most greatly.
Oh, and while I was typing this, it looks like Foxwillow made a post. Might as well add a response onto the end.
Are you unsure of historians who tally the Soviet deaths in the tens of millions? Most do. Michael Ellman, Daniel Goldhagen, Stephen Rosefielde, Benjamin Valentino, RJ Rummel. Even the Marxists who committed the murders rarely deny them. They were necessary to the smashing of capitalism. I can name a bunch of authors who content those narratives as well. J Arch Getty, Grover Furr, Austin Murphy, Mark Tauger...
I bet you think the Holodomor was planned, too.
As you said, the intention is for the minority to rule over the majority, by all means. By all means. To a true Marxist, no cost is to great to stop capitalism, no number of mass graves too high.That's not what I said. The
majority
proletariat is to crush the
minority
bourgeoisie. And while I would agree that the precious goal of the final destruction of Capitalism is worth almost any price, I think I've made it clear that no Marxist worth their stripes would ever consider it a good idea to kill the proletariat en masse.
Which brings us to your next point. You said the party organs will operate the use of force as needed, and then when no longer needed will simply "wither away". Presumably this has never happened because capitalism still exists in the world. So, you mean to say, that once communism rules the entire world, the government will simply shrink away to nothing and everyone will live in harmony.If not the whole world, at least the socialist states must be able to progress in security without fear of subversion, invasion, or sabotage by the Capitalist states.
Do I understand that correctly. Of not, please clarify how the revolution leaders will surrender absolute power, since this hasn't happened in communism, ever."Absolute power" is not meant to be given to "the revolution leaders," so they won't have to surrender it. The state will be made up of elected members of the proletarian class, overseen by the proletariat, and will become redundant when the tasks normally overseen by the state can be adopted by society at large. The Communist party is only a tool for building a Proletarian class that can stand on its own feet.
Your last point about dissent simply being allowed, and contrasting that to the western treatment of wiki leaks is a bit absurd. The soviets had death camps full of thousands of people who weren't patriotic enough. That's a far cry from prosecuting government leaks and publishers.I cry bullsh*t. You're accusations of " death camps full of thousands of people who weren't patriotic enough" demonstrates beyond a doubt that you have no knowledge of how the purges were carried out, who they were carried out against, and why. Go look at that constitution up there.
If you want to accuse the USSR of taking illegal action outside its own constitution against threats to its security, then I raise you one Guantanamo Bay.
Post by
Rankkor
Implying that I and the hundreds of comrades I dicuss and debate with and whose works I read aren't real Communists. We may have not overthrown Capitalism yet and established a socialist society, but we're no less Communists than the millions of our comrades who have lived and died with the spirit of Communism in our hearts.
Blah, this is why I wish I had your eloquence bro', my phrasing on that last segment was pretty bad. Lemme try to say it again this time.
I'm not saying that you're not a "real" communist, as that's just the "no true scotsman" fallacy. I'm saying that there's 2 types of communists in the world.
Those who WANT a communist society, but never had one, or actually experienced one, and those who HAVE a communist society, or helped create one.
Those who WANT a communist society, but have never actually lived in one, just read about it, have a very idealistic notion of what it is about, and I don't blame you, it really sounds awesome in paper, its great in the theoretical world, but in the practical world? when one actually tries to make it work? its not as clean and pretty as it looks.
Those who HAVE a communist society (like me) tend to see it for what it is, a failed system that sounds great in paper until its implemented. Why?
I can tell you with absolute certainty that my comrades and I loathe oppression, and hate exploitation. We don't want to build a totalitarian nightmare, quite the opposite. We stand for equality, universal brotherhood, and the tearing down of class divides. How could we ever turn our machine against the proletariat, who we work so hard to defend and nurture?
Because this is just a part of the problem, not the whole thing. You think things started to spiral out of control here out of oppression alone?
No, they didn't. People initially loved Chavez, and fully endorsed his attempt to instate communism, and at first it was great. Then his economic model started to show its flaws, then we were suddenly losing rather than gaining, we were becoming poorer, rather than the promised riches, this flawed and broken economic system started to show WHY its such a failure, and at that point, we no longer wanted anything to do with communism anymore. We gave it a good try, and it didn't work, so we tried to institute the old system back, and THEN is when the communist party started to crack the whip.
Why? because once you give power to a group that never had it before, they'll do anything they can to keep it. Its the exact same story in Cuba, and in North Korea.
Don't go thinking that they became tyrants because communism inherently is tyrannical. Its not. All 3 (The Castros, the Kims, the PSUV) became tyrants because they tried to implement a broken piece of crap system that didn't work, and when the people wanted them to give the power back to how it was, they refused, they had gotten used to giving orders, and refused to be part of the plebe once more.
Can you say with the same absolute certainty that if you and your fellow comrades actually implemented communism in the US, and it failed, and the masses who helped you get there demanded your resignation and the reinstation of the previous order, that you'd actually do it? That you'd let go of the power if you saw it fail? I mean if it succeeds, obviously communism is there to stay, but if it fails? would you adhere to a useless system to retain control and oppress those who no longer want you in power?
Or would you willingly step down from power and let things go back to how they used to be?
That's the question all communists in the past have answered with a firm YES. But when they're actually there, in that situation, they instead say NO. And choose to blame the failures of their crappy system on external factors, and keep the masses firmly under their iron fist.
Clearly I cannot convince you that previous attempts to intitute Communism were benign
Maybe they
were
benign, but that doesn't change anything, or mean anything. "
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
" after all.
You've got yourself a little bit of a contradiction there. How can human nature ever cause a human to violate human decency?
Either decency is unnatural
, or "human nature" isn't quite as universal and set in stone as you imply.
Ohh decency is
totally
unnatural. We behave well because we are taught since little that if we break the rules, we are punished. Go rob a store and the cops will arrest you. Smash your mom's car, and she'll ground you, or kick you out of the house. Punch someone in the face, and that someone will punch you back. Spout profanity in this forum and you'll be banned. The nobler traits like compassion, and selflessness have to be taught to a person, because they're not born naturally.
You can see this perfectly in the internet. In the internet, there are no consequences for acting like an absolute jackass. You can spout profanity, issue death threats, make implications of someone's mom with barn animals, and the worst that could happen is you getting a ban, which doesn't really do much since there are SO many other places where you can go and act like a troll. There's no accountability on the internet, because it grants you anonymity, so A LOT of people choose to act like total jerks. If you gave a man, the authority to act above the law, and be accountable to no other man, and no God, you can believe that man would be the cruelest monster in the history of forever.
Communist revolution is inherently violent, destructive, and dangerous, at least to the bourgeois order.
I'm not part of the bourgeois order
, and you can believe our communist revolution has caused immense pain to
me
and my family. And countless other families on this country, and several others that have attempted to implement communism elsewhere.
That belief that communism is only violent and destructive to the rich and decadent is nothing more than a fantasy.
Its violent and destructive to the lower classes that happen to not believe in it. And if we're all gonna be FORCED to believe in it, at gunpoint, then its not as democratic as you're trying to pass it off.
Quite the opposite, the rich and decadent are barely affected, since they have the power and means to just pack up their marbles and move elsewhere, which is what most of the upper class of venezuela did, once Chavez started to show his true colors.
Meanwhile, the poor saps like me, have to suck it up, and do as Big Brother tells us to do, or else its a bullet between the eyes.
I'm focused first on getting the burnt out bulb out of the socket, first.
And the reason I disagree with you is not because you want to get the burnt out bulb, but because you don't have a spare working one right now. All you have is a broken one that has already proven to be worthless several other times, and this time you're hoping it works.
I don't bank the future of society to "hoping" this time works. It failed before, several times, and its gonna fail again.
Maybe we shouldn't be focusing so hard on wanting to topple the current established order, but rather to try to think what to replace it with, and THEN, when we have a different system, try to implement change. But trying to implement change right now, when there's no other alternative than communism, a system that has irrevocably demonstrated its failures in the last century over and over, is hardly the smartest of ideas.
When you don't define what "human nature" is, it's really easy to use it as an excuse for why X wouldn't work.
I can define you what "human nature" is.
I have a very cynic view of humanity in general. Individuals may be good, but the masses? ohh god, don't get me started on those.
Humans are greedy by nature. Trying to get rid of human greed is like trying to get rid of human violence. We're social creatures, yes, but at the same time, its inherent within every person to want to have
more
.
Just as there's an old saying that goes "As long as there's at least 2 guys on the planet, one will want the other one dead", there's another one that goes "as long as there's 2 guys on the planet, one will want to have more than the other guy".
We want a bigger stick. We want a prettier mate. We want a bigger house. Not just because its prettier, and more luxurious, but also because we want the guy next to us wishing they had it too. You can see this attitude in teenagers today, and they're proto-humans in formation. Give a kid a cellphone, and he wont be sattisified. Why? its a phone, it can make calls, that should be enough. But it isn't. The kid will want the latest model, because everyone else has it, and if he doesn't, then he's the stupid one, the odd one. And in every school there's always that one rich kid who has a super-duper-expensive cellphone that costs the average man 2 years of work to buy, because he wants to brag his epeen to the others and rub it in.
Don't think this attitude is exclusive to the bourgeois rich and decadent elite of the elite. If you miraculously were to put every single human being on the exact same level tomorrow, so that there are no upper classes or lower classes anymore, you can bet your life that LOTS of people would immediately try to rise above the rest. Either former rich men who don't want their power stripped away, or former poor men, who see this as their opportunity to rise above the rest.
Chavez was never a rich man, he was born poor, but he rose to the highest you can get in our society, he was president of the republic of venezuela, but eventually, the very people who supported him into his position, wanted him to give back the power he was granted. And this member of the proletariat that you idealize so much, what did he do? did he give it back? Nope. He kept it, and squashed anyone who tried to pry the power away from him.
THAT is human nature. We will always want a bigger stick than the man next to us, and if by chance we get one, there's no power in heaven, hell or earth that will make us give it up willingly.
You can get individuals to not act like this, spreading positive messages like compassion, nobility, selflessness, and mercy. But to make the ENTIRE human race to act like this? good luck man. Good luck.(##RESPBREAK##)520##DELIM##Rankkor##DELIM##
Post by
1458157
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skreeran
Those who WANT a communist society, but have never actually lived in one, just read about it, have a very idealistic notion of what it is about, and I don't blame you, it really sounds awesome in paper, its great in the theoretical world, but in the practical world? when one actually tries to make it work? its not as clean and pretty as it looks.
Those who HAVE a communist society (like me) tend to see it for what it is, a failed system that sounds great in paper until its implemented. Why?Well, I've known a lot of people, including several who live or lived in the Soviet Union, China, or Cuba. It was good for some people, others didn't think so. After researching each instance, I've come to conclude that in general, conditions at the very least tended to improve in regards to education, public health, food supply, and defense.
I don't know if I'd called Venezuela Communist either. Economically, it still seems pretty Capitalist, and while it was the product of a coup, it didn't really seem to follow any Marxist-Leninist revolution building, proletarian seizure of the means of production, or anything else relating to actual Communism. Seemed more like a leftist-flavored military dictator put in power by a coup, a la Saddam Hussain, Batista, Pinochet, etc.
No, they didn't. People initially loved Chavez, and fully endorsed his attempt to instate communism, and at first it was great. Then his economic model started to show its flaws, then we were suddenly losing rather than gaining, we were becoming poorer, rather than the promised riches, this flawed and broken economic system started to show WHY its such a failureI think this would have had more to do with the fact that the vast, vast majority of the world is Capitalist, making it very hard for a single small country to keep up without itself reverting to Capitalism. Economically, Russia and China both metamorphosized into economic powerhouses in relation to the semi-fuedal societies they used to be. Still not as wealthy as a longstanding rich Capitalist country like the US, but compared to the agricultral peasant countries they were, Communism was actually quite potent for them.
We gave it a good try, and it didn't work, so we tried to institute the old system back, and THEN is when the communist party started to crack the whip.And this is why it seems plainly obvious to me that you cannot institute real socialism based on a coup.
Can you say with the same absolute certainty that if you and your fellow comrades actually implemented communism in the US, and it failed, and the masses who helped you get there demanded your resignation and the reinstation of the previous order, that you'd actually do it? That you'd let go of the power if you saw it fail? I mean if it succeeds, obviously communism is there to stay, but if it fails? would you adhere to a useless system to retain control and oppress those who no longer want you in power?
Or would you willingly step down from power and let things go back to how they used to be?Well, if we actually implemented Communism in the US, then I think things would improve hugely for a ton of people all around the world. I have a hard time imagining how that could fail to make the lives of millions objectively better, if you consider the crippling of American imperialism alone.
However, if the American people massed and protested Communism, I'm totally open to discussion on alternative models for society, as long as they don't revert to globalism, imperialism, and the subjugation of the third world. I'd never allow things to go back to the way they are now, not if I had an ounce of strength left in my body. But I don't think Communism is the end all, be all of anti-imperialism. I'm open to alternative thoughts, as long as they will not restore oppression.
Ohh decency is totally unnatural. We behave well because we are taught since little that if we break the rules, we are punished. Go rob a store and the cops will arrest you. Smash your mom's car, and she'll ground you, or kick you out of the house. Punch someone in the face, and that someone will punch you back. Spout profanity in this forum and you'll be banned. The nobler traits like compassion, and selflessness have to be taught to a person, because they're not born naturally.
You can see this perfectly in the internet. In the internet, there are no consequences for acting like an absolute jackass. You can spout profanity, issue death threats, make implications of someone's mom with barn animals, and the worst that could happen is you getting a ban, which doesn't really do much since there are SO many other places where you can go and act like a troll. There's no accountability on the internet, because it grants you anonymity, so A LOT of people choose to act like total jerks. If you gave a man, the authority to act above the law, and be accountable to no other man, and no God, you can believe that man would be the cruelest monster in the history of forever.And see, this is where you and I simply disagree. Consider me an idealistic fool, but I firmly believe that humans are inherently cooperative. We lived in communal, egalitarian societies for 200,000 years, and a Capitalistic one for 300+ years. Human relations are inherently social, and people are fundamentally equal. Things like racism, nationalism, sexism, homophobia, cruelty, and most other divisions between humans are caused by social conditions, rising out of the class structure of society.
We're not pumas. We don't hunt alone. Humans are cooperative animals, and the only barriers keeping us from having a classless society are man-made structures that we can and will destroy.
I'm not part of the bourgeois order, and you can believe our communist revolution has caused immense pain to me and my family. And countless other families on this country, and several others that have attempted to implement communism elsewhere.Revolution is painful for everyone. This is war we're talking about. People will die. Innocent civilians and children will die, and that is a terrible fact of human armed conflict. However, when oppression can be borne no longer, revolution must still happen.
Its violent and destructive to the lower classes that happen to not believe in it. And if we're all gonna be FORCED to believe in it, at gunpoint, then its not as democratic as you're trying to pass it off.If those among the lower classes who do not understand why revolution is necessary make up the majority, then there cannot be a truly popular revolution.
No one will be forced to believe anything. Education is a priority, though, and no, I don't just means propagandizing. I mean actual education, as in teaching people how to learn (as opposed to teaching them how to memorize a series of facts, as the current educational system tends to do) and giving them access to the resources they need to reach their own conclusion.
Quite the opposite, the rich and decadent are barely affected, since they have the power and means to just pack up their marbles and move elsewhere, which is what most of the upper class of venezuela did, once Chavez started to show his true colors.This is a problem, to be sure. As long as the majority world remains Capitalist, people can always just flee to some other bourgeois nation. However, the static assets of the nation (factories, mines, oil fields, agricultural land, copyrights/patents, shipping lane access, military hardware, etc.) could still be seized and administrated by the proletariat.
I suppose the proletariat might also try seizing ports/airports and denying their bourgeoisie exit, but having some sort of system when proletarians were allowed to emigrate, but bourgeoisie were not would be really hard to administrate in practice, I think. In reality, I think it would be wiser in the long run to allow the bourgeoisie to flee the country, and simply seize their remaining assets. From there, as long as the country does not revert to a haven for the bourgeoisie, then they can be slowly choked out as it gets harder and harder for Capitalist countries to outsource their oppression, and revolution becomes more and more likely in each successive "Labor" country.
The bourgeoisie will get theirs in the end, I think, even if it takes another century of work.
And the reason I disagree with you is not because you want to get the burnt out bulb, but because you don't have a spare working one right now. All you have is a broken one that has already proven to be worthless several other times, and this time you're hoping it works.I see nothing in the theory that does not perfectly fit the reality I perceive.
Maybe we shouldn't be focusing so hard on wanting to topple the current established order, but rather to try to think what to replace it with, and THEN, when we have a different system, try to implement change. But trying to implement change right now, when there's no other alternative than communism, a system that has irrevocably demonstrated its failures in the last century over and over, is hardly the smartest of ideas.I'm a historical materialist. Every society is a product of its cicumstances. Communists do not think in terms of designing an idea and then forcing it upon everyone else. Rather, we understand it to be a material force in society. Capitalism has created the international bourgeois and proletarian classes. Just as Capitalism came about by the processes of Feudalism, Communism is in the process of being born from Capitalism. The emancipation of the worker and the peasant is not an idealized social concept to be implanted into everyone, but a material force, a historical social pressure that is actively building and growing in the world today.
Societies are born from social forces, not by a top-down forcing of ideals from above. This is why I think Poland, Romania, Hungary, the GDR, and Moldova all ceased being Communist, because they weren't really built on a strong materialist foundation of actual popular will, but instead a military hegemony resulting from the Red Army's liberation of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. The USSR had suffered so greatly during the war, and their first instinct was to build a shield of friendly, pro-Russian, socialist states so that no one could ever hurt them like that again. We can see now the error of that attempt, but we should also understand why they did what they did.
*big human nature rant*
Again, this is where you and I simply disagree. I think that just about all of the contradictions between most people arises from man-made social conditions, not from innate human nature. That's not to say that there are no contradictions between individual agents arising simply from the nature of their individualism, but I think that the bulk of contradictions come from artificial constructs. There is no law that we must live in a world of sexism, racism, homophobia, wealth inequality, inequality of opportunity and priviledge, nationalism, hatred, war, or a host other manmade social constructs. These are all made of man's will, and we are capable of destroying them. The pain they cause is too great, and the suffering of the people will not bear it any longer. It is not a matter of creating an idea and distributing it, but a decision not to be ruled by the contrivances of the ruling class and their endless methods of division and distraction. It is in this spirit that I reject any human-issued decree on what human nature is or is not.
Don't tell me what we can't do.
Skreeran, when did you start embracing communism as the solution to the world's ills. Who were your mentors.I came about Communism from two paths. Firstly, I had taken an interest in the Eastern Front of World War 2 in high school, and had done a great deal of research on Vasiliy Zaitsev and Soviet tanks and various battles of the war. That lead me to study the Soviet Union as a nation, and later Marxism, Russian history, and Russian language. Meanwhile, I was also facing the stark contradiction of global poverty: people dying by the thousands of hunger, or war, and seeing how the first world profited from the impoverished conditions of the third world. I eventually received the Communist Manifesto as a kind of gag gift for being a Russophile, but I read it, and found that I agreed with what Marx wrote there. I later purchased a collection of essays by Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou, and agreed with them for the most part. Then I read
The Capitalism Papers
by Jerry Mander (who is not a Marxist) over the summer. Right now I''ve been reading a lot of Lenin, with a little bit of Mao on the side, meanwhile gradually working though Volume 1 of Marx's Capital.
In Communist circles, you might call me a "tankie" because I tend to support the Soviet Union in the period 1924-1953, as opposed to the Troskyites, Dengists, Khrushchevites, Titoists, orthodox Marxists, social democrats, ancoms, and so on who tend to condemn the early Soviet Union on human rights grounds, and the later Soviet Union for selling out to Capitalism. I feel confident in my research, though, and what I've read would suggest the the economy of the Soviet Union grew (overall, in the period 1917-19-53 at least), the population grew, the fascists were destroyed, agricultural production grew, industrial production grew, the monarchy was destroyed, the political power of the church was broken, women's rights were empowered, anti-semitism was suppressed, Capitalism was beaten back, class consciousness was raised, education was prioritized, literacy reached almost 100%...
You claim that millions (how many?) were killed, but everyone has different numbers. I've heard everywhere between 700,000 to 500 million. And everyone always assumes that they were all poor innocent peasants who just happened to disagree with the ruling ideology or held religious beliefs. Why would this be the case? What gain would anyone have in the large scale industrial murder (I mean really, do you remember how much infrastructure it took for the Nazis to murder 6 million Jews in 6 years?) It's simply not worth it to attempt to murder that many innocent people. If they really aren't a threat, then what do they have to gain by spending all that time and effort that goes into murdering 239 billion people. Besides this, we just don't have evidence of the kind of infrasctructure (camps, graves, etc.) that would have been necessary to murder 100 million people in this time period. Sure, there was GULAG, which in practice had flaws that lead to the deaths of some of their inmates, but the intent was not for use as a death camp. Many people finished their terms in GULAG, and returned to normal society.
I don't don't that thousands of people were killed. This seems undeniable. However, I cannot pretend to judge who these people were, why they were deemed fit for death, and whether it was necessary or not. Were they counter-revolutionaries, trying to forcibly take the state back from the workers hands? Were they spies or collaborators with Capitalist enemy governments, as Trotsky was? Were the corrupt party officials, using their power for personal gain? How many were
really
killed, and how can we know if they deserved it or not? It is as easy to say they did as it is to say they did not.
Here's an interesting argument from population data that the purges have been exaggerated:
http://www.stalinsociety.org/2015/04/24/stalins-millions/
Post by
oneforthemoney
Are we counting famine as a result of communist policies or not? Such things tend to be what skews the numbers. Namely: what do you define communists killing people as?
Post by
Rankkor
Well, if we actually implemented Communism in the US, then I think things would improve hugely for a ton of people all around the world.
Fine, but lets pretend that they don't. What then? would you willingly step down? because that's the question asked to almost all commie leaders of the past, and while they all said "yes" when they were powerless nobodies, once they were actually the big honchos and were asked by the very people who put them there to step down, they dug their heels and said NO, SUCK IT UP SUCKERS!!!
I'd never allow things to go back to the way they are now, not if I had an ounce of strength left in my body.
Sorry to say this bro' but this is how dictators and tyrants rationalize their worst crimes.
Understand please that Democracy is not about what
YOU
want, its about what
THE PEOPLE
want. This is what all the so-called "servants of the people" seem to miss. When the will of the people align with theirs, they're perfectly fine with calling themselves the representative of the people's will. But when the people's will reverts from theirs, they suddenly are revealed for what they are.
If communism was instated in the US, and it demonstrably failed, and THE PEOPLE, the vast majority of the people who are not in your power gabinet wanted things to go back to how they used to be, you should never ever EVER dig your heels in and enforce YOUR will upon theirs. If you do, you are nothing more than yet another commie-turned-dictator like every single one of them is in the end.
This is a problem, to be sure. As long as the majority world remains Capitalist, people can always just flee to some other bourgeois nation. However, the static assets of the nation (factories, mines, oil fields, agricultural land, copyrights/patents, shipping lane access, military hardware, etc.) could still be seized and administrated by the proletariat.
That's exactly what happened here. Try and guess how that worked out for us? Try to guess what happened when untrained fanatics were left to administrate these assets.
Boom suddenly we have one of the worst internet services in the world, an electric system that crashes at least 4 times a week, phone lines that are unstable and fickle, oil production going down across the board, food production going down across the board.
Maybe letting a bunch of peasants run a multi-million dollar company is *GASP* A BAD IDEA? O_o who knew?
Don't tell me what we can't do.
That seems like a tall order to ask. I mean a few paragraphs above, you also said that if you were in power, you'd never allow things to go back to the way they used to be.
Not even if the rest of your country wanted them to.
This is what I mean about communism being tyranical and dicatorial in nature. Its always about a bunch of people who do what they want and never want others to tell them otherwise, not even the very people they are
supposed
to serve.
That's enforcing your will on others. Others can't do the same, but you can? =(
Understand that this isn't about what is right or wrong. I believe in human freedom. This includes the freedom to screw up. If I try to implement a change, and it works, that's awesome, but if it doesn't work, and the rest of my subjects, who placed me in power in the first place, ask for things to go back to how they used to be, who am I to deny that?
Maybe reverting things back to how they were is wrong, but if its what the rest wants, who am I to say otherwise? God? I don't think so.(##RESPBREAK##)520##DELIM##Rankkor##DELIM##
Post by
Skreeran
Fine, but lets pretend that they don't. What then? would you willingly step down? because that's the question asked to almost all commie leaders of the past, and while they all said "yes" when they were powerless nobodies, once they were actually the big honchos and were asked by the very people who put them there to step down, they dug their heels and said NO, SUCK IT UP SUCKERS!Seems to me like a bit of a generalization. As far as I can tell, the majority of folks supported Stalin, Mao, etc.
I don't doubt that there have been military dictators in the past, and while I'll totally criticize their praxis or their ideological foundation, they're not going to stop me from fighting for a better future.
Contratulations, you have the makings of a dictator in you after all.
Its not about what YOU want, its about what THE PEOPLE want. This is what all the so-called "servants of the people" seem to miss. When the will of the people align with theirs, they're perfectly fine with calling themselves the representative of the people's will. But when the people's will reverts from theirs, they suddenly are revealed for what they are.
If communism was instated in the US, and it demonstrably failed, and THE PEOPLE, the vast majority of the people who are not in your power gabinet wanted things to go back to how they used to be, you should never ever EVER dig your heels in and enforce YOUR will upon theirs. If you do, you are nothing more than yet another commie-turned-dictator like every single one of them is in the end.Note, if you would, that I said specifically "I'd never allow thing to go back to the way they are now." As in, American military/financial imperialism, skyrocketing inequality, oppression of both the domestic lower classes and of the third world. If a party arose advocating that, say, a fascist organization (you know how they love both Capitalism and Nationalism, after all), then you can be damn sure I'd be fighting them, with whatever I could, even if it was popular.
I'm open to dialogue. I believe in democracy. I know that there are many ways that this system could be improved, and that criticism is an important part of any government.
That said, I could never willingly allow the current order from being reformed. It is too oppressive, too profit-motivated, and too downright evil to allow this order to be restored. I am open to any dialogue along the lines of improving society, though. We go forwards, not backwards.
That's exactly what happened here. Try and guess how that worked out for us? Try to guess what happened when untrained fanatics were left to administrate these assets.
Boom suddenly we have one of the worst internet services in the world, an electric system that crashes at least 4 times a week, phone lines that are unstable and fickle, oil production going down across the board, food production going down across the board.
Maybe letting a bunch of peasants run a multi-million dollar company is *GASP* A BAD IDEA? O_o who knew?This sounds classist to me. Do you not think that former peasants can learn to operate infrastrucure previously operated by the bourgeois or petite bourgeois?
It seems that, assuming the means of production really
did
belong in the hands of the people, then it would still be an overall gain, to lose the qualified administration class, but still collectivize the means of production. Peasants and workers, being human beings, should still be capable of learning when they need to.
That seems like a tall order to ask. I mean a few paragraphs above, you also said that if you were in power, you'd never allow things to go back to the way they used to be. Not even if the rest of your country wanted them to.
This is what I mean about communism being tyranical and dicatorial in nature. Its always about a bunch of people who do what they want and never want others to tell them otherwise, not even the very people they are supposed to serve.
That's enforcing your will on others. Others can't do the same, but you can? =(Please don't take my quote out of context.
I'm referring to WE the humans. You want to define human nature as this unchanging concrete thing, but I won't let you or anyone else tell me what humans can't do or can't be. Human nature is capable of change, of adapting to its circumstances. I and the Communists reject the idea that we have no choice but to accept that things are the way things are, and that that's just human nature. We will improve the world by improving ourselves, and showing the hollow conventions of racism, sexism, nationalism, and all such prejudice for the false divisions that they are.
Post by
Rankkor
Fine, but lets pretend that they don't. What then? would you willingly step down? because that's the question asked to almost all commie leaders of the past, and while they all said "yes" when they were powerless nobodies, once they were actually the big honchos and were asked by the very people who put them there to step down, they dug their heels and said NO, SUCK IT UP SUCKERS!Seems to me like a bit of a generalization. As far as I can tell, the majority of folks supported Stalin, Mao, etc.
Support
ed
. As in, past tense. They did, and then they didn't. And when their support stopped, they wanted them to step down, and they did not, they instead tightened their iron grip on the nation.
As far as you can tell, the overwhelming majority of venezuela supported chavez. He was democratically elected with an absolute landslide of votes. Then people stopped being so happy with him, and wanted him gone, instead he tightened his iron fist and never let go even in his deathbed.
I'm open to dialogue. I believe in democracy. I know that there are many ways that this system could be improved, and that criticism is an important part of any government.
That said, I could never willingly allow the current order from being reformed. It is too oppressive, too profit-motivated, and too downright evil to allow this order to be restored. I am open to any dialogue along the lines of improving society, though. We go forwards, not backwards.
*sighs*
Fine, you
do
sound different than them. I still have to wonder if you can maintain that strong moral integrity once power is in your hands. Because a lot of leader communists in the past were presumably amazing people at one point too. I highly doubt Fidel Castro was born as an evil monster. Or Kim Il-Sung for that matter. Or Chavez himself. But then they got a taste of power, and they went Palpatine on us.
I just have to wonder what would you do, in a hypothetical scenario where your change did more harm than good. If it happened (And you must be realistic to admit that its entirely possible for it to happen) would you be willing to step down and allow others to try a different solution than yours? Not "dialogue" (which seems to be a code word for "I'll listen to what you have to say, and then promptly do jack squat about it" with most communist leaders, including currently Maduro) but actual stepping down, actual dissolution of the communist party and allow others their turn to improve the conditions.
Do you not think that former peasants can learn to operate infrastrucure previously operated by the bourgeois or petite bourgeois?
Its been 12 years bro'. TWELVE YEARS. And despite the endless promises that things will get better, they haven't. They're worse than they've ever been. And continue to plummet year after year. So you'll forgive me for saying that no, former peasants are probably not the best to handle this kind of stuff. Classist or not, you can't argue with results, and our results speak for themselves.
You want to define human nature as this unchanging concrete thing, but I won't let you or anyone else tell me what humans can't do or can't be. Human nature is capable of change, of adapting to its circumstances.
On an individual level? yes it can. On a massive global scale? sorry dude, but that's a fantasy. Do you honestly think you can curb human violence for the entire planet? or human greed? or any of the MANY flawed traits of humanity?
Humans are flawed individuals. By nature we're weak, we're stupid, we're violent, we're greedy, and we're self-serving. We can improve the weakness by exercising and training. We can improve our stupidity by studying and reading. We can improve our violent nature by embracing more nobler traits, we can improve our greed by learning to let go of the things we're too attached to, we can improve our self-serving tendencies by learning to give onto those that don't have anything.
These things are possible to attain them by each individual, and for those who
want
to improve themselves, you're right, its entirely possible to change their flawed imperfect nature.
But the key word here is to
want
to change. An awful lot of people don't want to. And you can't force change. It either happens willingly or it doesn't. Just like you can't force faith on someone, or love (true love anyways, fake love is very easy to buy and sell).
I and the Communists reject the idea that we have no choice but to accept that things are the way things are, and that that's just human nature.
Now you're the one taking my quote out of context. I never said that its okay to accept the crappy way things are due to human nature being what it is.
I said that in order for communism to work, everyone would have to be a frigging saint. And this world isn't made of saints in case you missed it. There's A LOT of evil people on this world, and no, they're not exclusive to the higher-ups who rub themselves with money. The lower classes have plenty of scumbags too. While you can turn a lot of bad people into productive members of society, doing so at a global level is just not possible. Maybe for a God or other higher being, but not for regular joes like you and me.
Right now we don't have any other system to implement to replace the broken capitalism, other than an even more broken one known as communism.
But as I previously told you, it doesn't have to be one or the other, 600 years ago, there was no communism or capitalism, we had even worse systems in place, and we removed them as a specie. Who's to say that a 100 years from now, someone can come up with a newer system that lacks the flaws of both capitalism and communism? THAT would be a system for change that I could get behind. A
NEW
idea that hasn't been done to death before.
I know you hate this quote, but I feel like it applies perfectly to this discussion: I like the variation said by Grom Hellscream on the book "Lord of the Clans"
"
You have seen me when the bloodlust has come upon me. You have seen me wade in blood up to my knees. I have killed the children of the humans ere now. But we gave all we had fighting in that manner, and where has it brought to us? Low and defeated, our kind slouch in camps and lift no hand to free themselves, let alone fight for others. That way of fighting of making war, has brought us to this. Long have I thought that the ancestors would show me a new way, a way to win back what we have lost.
It is a fool who repeats the same actions expecting a different outcome, and whatever I may be, I am not a fool.
"
Several people before you have tried to make communism work. Every single one of them has failed. Every single one of them dude. Every last one. The one arguable exception is China, and their "success" can't really be replicated, because nobody else has a labor force of 2.2 billion people. Nobody is even close to that amount. Unless you suggest we all breed like rabbits and start having 50 kids each to reach that kind of population levels.
To try to implement a system that has demonstrated its failures in the past, hoping,
hoping
that this time it will work, is hardly the best way to change the way things are.
I'm not gonna try to dissuade you from pursuing what you believe. I'm just sharing with you why I believe your cause is doomed to failure. Spoken by someone who has already lived through one Communist Revolution and doesn't wish to see another one in his lifetime.
Post by
Skreeran
Supported. As in, past tense. They did, and then they didn't. And when their support stopped, they wanted them to step down, and they did not, they instead tightened their iron grip on the nation.Who wanted Stalin to step down? I just listed a ton of improvements the USSR made in rural Russia following the revolution. If the October Revolution was a popular revolution, and conditions improved for the bulk of the Russian people, how does it flow logically that the bulk of the Russian people would want him to step down? If Stalin really did kill all the people who did not support him, and assuming those people numbered 20 million, then that still leaves about 120 million Russians who did not want him to step down. Now, I don't think that's the way things went down, but even so, the leadership of the USSR had no obligation to step down because a minority of the population wanted them to.
Mao, on the other hand, does have a pretty significant popular movement against him that he repressed pretty harshly, if the sources I read are correct. I'm referring to the One Hundred Flowers Campaign, which at first sought constructed criticism against the state for the purposes of improving it and as a show of good faith, but reactionaries in the population used it to start building movements to overthrow the government and started carrying out attacks against government buildings.
On the one hand, Mao probably should have conceded to the will of the people. He should have let free speech sort itself out and figure out if it really was the will of the people for the CPC to step down. On the other hand, following Mao's death, Capitalism and sweatshops returned and the workers were oppressed again under Deng Xiaoping's hand. On the other hand, China is wealthier and more developed than ever. Who can say if there will be second revolution to cast off the new Red Bourgeoisie and restore real socialism?
Fine, you do sound different than them. I still have to wonder if you can maintain that strong moral integrity once power is in your hands. Because a lot of leader communists in the past were presumably amazing people at one point too. I highly doubt Fidel Castro was born as an evil monster. Or Kim Il-Sung for that matter. Or Chavez himself. But then they got a taste of power, and they went Palpatine on us.While I do agree that power can corrupt, I am skeptical on the other hand of the idea that people would work so hard, literally working themselves to death in several Communist leaders cases, just to get "power." If power was what they wanted, they could just have easily started a fascist movement or been an abusive spouse or something. I don't think these people wanted "power," I think they wanted change. A better world. Mao marched 6000 miles in the Long March. Ho Chi Minh didn't live out the Vietnam War. Lenin died at 53, after only 5 years of Soviet leadership, and he worked his @$$ off the whole time. The idea that Communist leaders just want power so that they can order people around and sit in their pool drinking martinis just doesn't make sense to me.
I just have to wonder what would you do, in a hypothetical scenario where your change did more harm than good. If it happened (And you must be realistic to admit that its entirely possible for it to happen) would you be willing to step down and allow others to try a different solution than yours? Not "dialogue" (which seems to be a code word for "I'll listen to what you have to say, and then promptly do jack squat about it" with most communist leaders, including currently Maduro)but actual stepping down, actual dissolution of the communist party and allow others their turn to improve the conditions.Step down? Certainly. I don't pretend to have all the answers. If some other organization wants to try an alternate path to the same goal, and that's what the people want, that's fine. I still reserve the right to observe and criticize, but violent suppression of the masses is counter-productive to the Communist cause.
No dissolution of the Communist Party, though. I mean, even if I could, I wouldn't. Consider that if this hypothetical Communist revolution fits the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory of party building, then the Community Party should be very large by the time the people actually take power. If all those people believe that Communism is the best path to a better world, then who am I to dissolve the party? But I'd be willing to host opposition parties as long as they didn't advocate returning to imperialism. If the masses start to throw their support in with fascists or ancaps or something, then there might be a problem, I suppose. Then that's a matter of civil war. I believe your ideology is evil, you believe mine is evil, and neither wants to see the other in power, so there must be a fight. But I don't advocate surpressing the masses.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on human nature though. I'll leave you with this:
Once the guards had ceased regarding him as a novelty, Thrall began to speak softly to those who would listen. He had singled out the few who still seemed to have spirit. In the darkness, Thrall told these orcs of their origins. It took longer than Thrall had hoped to rouse the downtrodden orcs to even think of rebellion, but eventually, he decided the time was right. In the small hours of the morning, when the light snoring of many of the guards could be heard in the dewy hush, Thrall knelt on the good, solid soil. "Can you feel it stirring?" Thrall yelled. "Can you feel your spirits longing to fight, to kill, to be free? Come, my brothers and sisters!" Without looking to see if they followed, Thrall charged into the opening.
Despite all of the Old Horde's crimes, Thrall saw its potential to unite the orcs and emancipate themselves from human oppression. They kept all the old symbols, they named their city Orgrimmar, they celebrate Grommash and Kargath and Kilrogg, and even after Garrosh transformed the Horde into an engine of domination and war, the people of the Horde chose to keep the Horde, because ultimately, the Thrall's Horde represents the Orcs independence and freedom from slavery, and the promise of freedom and equality to all who would stand with them.
Post by
Rankkor
Who wanted Stalin to step down?
Is that a rhetoric question? Dude, there's a reason the city of Stalingrad was renamed after he died. The guy was an incredibly evil fanatic. And had imposed a truly scary Cult of Personality around him. You do realize of course that the book "1984" is based word for word on him and the society he tried to impose?
While I do agree that power can corrupt, I am skeptical on the other hand of the idea that people would work so hard, literally working themselves to death in several Communist leaders cases, just to get "power."
This brings us back to my quote a few posts back. "
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
". Maybe these guys didn't do all the things they did just to get power (if that was the case, there are easier and quicker ways to get it). HOWEVER, once they
did
obtain power, it went straight up to their heads, and to the bitter end, they refused to give it up willingly.
I don't think these people wanted "power," I think they wanted change.
And I think you are right. They wanted change. Wanna know how the rest of that process went down? They obtain power to instate change, and once their changes angered the population, and said population tried to get them to step down, they refused. Because they liked having power. Maybe power wasn't their initial motivation to rise up, but it definitely was their motivation to
stay
on the big chair.
Ask the Kim family. Or the Castro Family. Both of them monarchies in all but name. The Chavez family would've been the same if it wasn't that almost all of them disowned him and refused to have anything to do with him.
I believe your ideology is evil
Why? because I refuse to instate a system that has proven to be a failure multiple times in the past?
you believe mine is evil
I don't think you can blame me for that. I bear figurative and literal marks on my body of what this "revolution" you speak of has done to me. And countless others in many nations across the world.
But I don't advocate surpressing the masses.
You are suggesting I do? Because I don't. I must say again, that I'm not a fan of capitalism either. I just think communism is worse. That doesn't mean I like the former.
To me, the former is Jason Vorhees, and the latter is Freddy Krueger. Just because I think the latter is more evil doesn't mean I don't believe the former is evil too. I'm all for change. So long as its change for a system that hasn't already demonstrated how broken it is. I don't believe in replacing a broken lightbulb with another broken lightbulb.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on human nature though.
Fair enough.
Despite all of the Old Horde's crimes, Thrall saw its potential to unite the orcs and emancipate themselves from human oppression.
Notice however how he DID NOT applied the warmongering nature of the Old Horde. Why not? because that was a road the horde had traveled before, and all it did was break the orc people apart. The moment Garrosh tried to implement once more a broken crappy system that failed to succeed in the past (Warmongering conquest of the Old Horde) in order to combat the injustices that their current system was bringing (famine and starvation by an economical blockade from the alliance) what exactly happened?
You know the answer to that. As do I.
That is the
real
lesson you should take from that. Not trying to repeat the same actions of the past expecting a different outcome.(##RESPBREAK##)520##DELIM##Rankkor##DELIM##
Post by
1458157
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skreeran
Is that a rhetoric question? Dude, there's a reason the city of Stalingrad was renamed after he died. The guy was an incredibly evil fanatic. And had imposed a truly scary Cult of Personality around him. You do realize of course that the book "1984" is based word for word on him and the society he tried to impose?It's also a novel.
And Leningrad was renamed too, despite Lenin being a really cool guy that Russians are still proud of today.
Do you have any actual evidence of popular movements to protest Stalin? You know, that aren't just White Russian fascists or Trotsykite counter-revolutionaries? I'm talking about the masses here, not small scale plots.
This brings us back to my quote a few posts back. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Maybe these guys didn't do all the things they did just to get power (if that was the case, there are easier and quicker ways to get it). HOWEVER, once they did obtain power, it went straight up to their heads, and to the bitter end, they refused to give it up willingly.Eh. I think it's a case against highly centralized states, more than a case against Communism in general.
Why? because I refuse to instate a system that has proven to be a failure multiple times in the past?I'm not talking about
your
ideology, but the hypothetical popularly supported fascists or ancaps or Islamic fundamentalists or whatever. Under those circumstances, I would not willingly surrender society to their will.
I don't think you can blame me for that. I bear figurative and literal marks on my body of what this "revolution" you speak of has done to me. And countless others in many nations across the world.Again, talking in the non-specific "you" here, if I was put into a power struggle with Fascists. Many fascists are drawn to fascism specifically to fight communism, and many communists are drawn to communism specifically to fight fascism. You have to forgive me for not even considering the possibility of conceding any of society to fascists.
Notice however how he DID NOT applied the warmongering nature of the Old Horde. Why not? because that was a road the horde had traveled before, and all it did was break the orc people apart. The moment Garrosh tried to implement once more a broken crappy system that failed to succeed in the past (Warmongering conquest of the Old Horde) in order to combat the injustices that their current system was bringing (famine and starvation by an economical blockade from the alliance) what exactly happened?
You know the answer to that. As do I.
That is the real lesson you should take from that. Not trying to repeat the same actions of the past expecting a different outcome.To follow that metaphor, I don't want to reinstate the USSR in America. We must make a New Communism, inheriting the class struggle from our elders, but committed to finding new methods and new organs that fit the material conditions of our own society.
Just as Thrall will still proudly wear the Horde symbol, which represents genocide to the humans, I will still bear the sickle and hammer and the red star, because of the promise of emancipation and the neverending struggle against oppression that those symbols represent to me, even if others resent it.
You sound quite studied in the topic skreeran. it's obvious no one is going to change your mind, especially if you take such an idyllic view of communist history despite, well, history. I know an endeavor of futility when I see one, endeavors I don't knowingly take, including in debate. so I leave you to your beliefs and wish you wellWell, good luck to you in your endeavors. I doubt any could change my mind, though I believe that has more to do with my commitment to Communist values than closed-mindedness. I'm willing to criticize the praxis of Communism, but it's hard to find fault in the theory.
Post by
Skreeran
Here's a neat essay by Alain Badiou regarding whether or not the communist Idea and terror are intrinsically related.
In the nineteenth century, the communist Idea was linked to violence in four different ways.
First of all, it went hand in hand with the fundamental issue of revolution. Revolution was conceived of - since the French Revolution, at least - as the violent act whereby one social group, one class, overthrows the domination of another group or class. All revolutionary imagery was, and to a great extent still is, focused on the legitimate violence by means of which the people in arms seize the seats of power. The word ‘communism’ thus implied the word ‘revolution’ in the sense of an idealogical and political legitimation of insurrection or people’s war, and therefore of collective violence directed at the exploiters and their police and military apparatuses.
Second, the communist Idea also went hand in hand with the repression deployed by the new popular power against the attempts at counter-revolution led by the former ruling classes. These attempts were based on what remained of the old state apparatus. Marx himself thus considered that a transitional period was necessary during which the new popular, working-classs power would really destroy everything that remained of the apparatuses that constituted the state of the oppressors. He called this period the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. He conceived of it as a short period, of course, but an indubitably violent one, as indicated by the word ‘dictatorship’. Thus, the word ‘communism’ also implied the legitimation of destructive vioelence perpetrated by the new power.
Third, the communist Idea went hand in hand, in this case over a long period of time, with different different types of violence linked to the radical transformation not of the state now, but of society as a whole. The collectivization of land in the domain of agriculture; centralized industrial development; the formation of a new military apparatus; the struggle against religious obscurantism; and the creation of new cultural and artistic forms - in short, the whole transition to a collective ‘new world’ created powerful conflicts at every level. A great deal of violence - in the form of contraints exerted on a mass scale, often resembling real civil wars, particularly in the countryside - had to be accepted. ‘Communism was often the name of something for the construction of which this violence was unavoidable.
Fourth, and last of all, all the conflicts and uncertainties about the birth of an entirely new society without precendent in history were formalized as the ‘struggle between two ways of life’ - the way of life of the proletariat and the way of life of the bourgeoisie, or the communist way of life and the capitalist wat of life. This struggle doubtless cut across every sector of society, but it also raged within the communist parties themselves. There was thus much settling of scores within the new forms of power. The word ‘communism’ therefore implied violence linked to a stable, united group’s hold on power, and thus the chronic liquidation, known as purges, of real or imagined adversaries.
It can therefore be said that the word ‘communism’ has four different meanings related to violence: revolutionary violence, linked to the taking of power; dictatorial violence, linked to the destruction of the old regime; transformative violence, linked to the more or less forced birth of new social relationships; and political violence, linked to conflicts within the party apparatus and the state.
In the real history of revolutions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these four figures of violence are of course completely interwoven, overlapping, and almost indistinguishable from one another - something that has been the case from the French Revolution on. Consider, for example, the grisly episode known as the ‘September Massacre’. A mob, led by radicals, slaughtered half of the Paris prison population. In a sense, this terrifying episode was like an episode in a bloody civil war. However, since the people who were massacred were prisoners, the revolutionary regime, the revolutionary state, was to blame. Furthermore, in order to prevent these ‘spontaneous’ tragic incidents from happening again, the regime itself would assume responsibility for an unprecedented intensification of repressive police and judicial measures. And that intensification would bring about typical, genuinely political violence, such as the execution of Hébert and Danton, and their respective parties. Thus, the September Massacres were no doubt a violent reaction deominated by the fear of treason, but the state was involved in both their causes and consequences. It can therefore be said that, in this case, dictatorial violence and bloody mob violence were interwoven, but that the revolutionary regime, revolutionary politics, attempted to have the last word.
On the other hand, the revolutionary state’s violence may at first be selective, dominated by internal conflicts within the reigning parties and factions, and then later turn into uncontrolled mass violence. This is the impression we get from the history of the great Stalinist Terror that took pla e between 1936 and 1939. In the form of public show trials, this Terror staged the settling of scores between Stalin’s group and well-known Bolshevik leaders such as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and many others. But it eventually became one gigantic purge, throughout the country, involving hundreds of thousands of people who were executed or who died in the camps. This unprecedented purge would ultimately carry off most of those who were responsible for it - in particular Yezhov, the head of the repressive apparatus. In this case, the central state would appear to have launched a preressive process of the fourth type (political violence linked to conflicts within the central apparatus), which developed into a wholesale general purge that ended up resembling savage civil war-type extermination.
The distinction must nevertheless be maintained between, on the one hand, spntaneous mob violence, which was akin to acts of class vengeance, to brutal symbols of the new balance of power in civil society, and, on the other hand, state violence, discussed and deliberately organized by the leaders of the new regime, which affected both the body politic and society as a whole. It should be noted, moreover, that however barbaric the former may have been, it has always been the latter which, from Robespierre to Stalin, has served as a very effective argument to discredit revolutions.
So let us call ‘Terror’ that moment in revolutionary processes when the new regime takes police and judicial measures that are exceptional in terms of both their violence and their scope. And let us face up to the following problem: Is there a necessary relationship, in real history, between the communist Idea and Terror?
As we well know, this is an important issue, on which anti-communist propaganda depends almost entirely. In its usual connotation, the category of ‘totalitarian’ designates Terror, precisely, as the inevitable outcome of revolutions whose manifest principle is communism. The underlying argument is that the construction of an egalitarian society is so unnatrual and enterprise, so contrary to all the human animal’s instincts, that advancing in that direction is impossible without appalling violence. Ultimately, the philosophy underpinning this propaganda goes back to Aristotle. Aristotle made a distinction between violent and naturalmovements in nature. Liberal propaganda extends this distinction to economics, politics, and history. With regard to human society, it makes a distinction between natural and violent movements. The private appropriation of resources and wealth, competition, and ultimately capitalism are considered natural phenomena, the adaptable, resilient products of individual nature. Collective action, the abolition of private property, and the construction of a centralized economy are viewed as purely ideological process, abstractions that can only be imposed on people by the most extreme violence. Abd that violence itself can only exist because a state has been established that is itself somehow distinct from the real nature of society - an absolutely separate state, which can only be maintained by Terror, in fact.
We must give a clear response to this argument. We know that there are four means of refuting it with reference to the communist Idea and the importance of the political processes that subscribe to it. Either the scope and violence of the repression, the very existence of Terror, can be denied, or its existence can be accepted in principle, and both its scope and necessity can be acknowledged. Or Terror can be regarded as having existed only owing to circumstanes that have now disappeared, and as no longer having an organic connection with the communist Idea. Or, finally, we can regard the existence of Terror as a sign of deviation, a practical error, of communist politics, and consider that it could been, or, more to the point, should be, avoided. In short, either Terror is an invention of capitalist propaganda; or it is the price that must be paid for the triumph of the Idea; or it was justified by a sort of revolutionary prematurity, but is no longer relevant; or it has no necessary connection with the political process of the communist Idea, either in principle, or owing to circumstances.
These different refutations of liberal propaganda are all supported by compelling arguments.
During the entire period when the Socialist states, and the USSR in particular, were in existence, the first two of these theories confronted each other. In countries of the Atlantic Alliance, anti-communist propaganda made great use of what was known about repressive Stalinist methods. This propaganda equated Soviet power in the 1930s with the Moscow Trials, which served to liquidate the Bolshevik old guard. In the 1950s, it focused attention on the existence of concentration camps in Siberia. The communist parties, for their part, completely denied everything. And when the death sentences became only too obvious (as was the case with the Moscow Trials) they had no hesitation in insisting that it was only a matter of a handful of traitors and spies in the pay of foreign governments.
A very different process began at the end of the 1950s with Khrushchev’s report to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR. For one thing, to mark the beginning of a break with the Stalinist period, the Soviet leaders admitted that Terror had existed in the 1930s, though without acknowledging its mass scale. For another, democratic propaganda in the West gradually became focused on Terror as an immanent necessity of the Communist worldview - an exobitant price to pay for a utopia with no bsis in reality.
Remarkably, the Western interpretation, promoted by the clique of ‘new philosophers’ in France, actually became the consensus interpretation, especially during the last twenty years of the twentieth century. There was the dissolution of ‘actually existing socialism’, culminating, as we know, in a Russia embarking upon a verion of state capitalism, and a rapidly developing China, under the paradoxical leadership of a party that is still called ‘communist’ - ruthless capitalism very similar to that of the nineteenth century in England. These two countries, which are participating in a sort of global convergence around the most brutal capitalism, have no immediate reason to discuss anti-communist propaganda based on the evidence of Terror. As a result, the so-called ‘anti-totalitarian’ theory, which regards Terror as the inevitable outcome of the communist Idea’s coming to power, has no opponent anymore in any countries, none of which defend the Idea any longer. It is as if the communist Idea, definitively associated with Terror, has very rapidly become no more than a dead planet in the historical universe.
The truth, in my opinion, is not at all that the revelation of Terror (Solzhenitsyn’s books in particular) brought about the death of the communist Idea. On the contrary, it was the continuous weakening of the communist Idea that made possible the anti-totalitarian consensus around the notion that there is a necessary link between the Idea and Terror. The key moment in this temporary deadlock of the communist Idea was the failure of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which has attempted to revive the communist Idea outside the confines of the party and the state through a general mobilization of the student and working-class youth. The restoration of state order under Deng Xiaoping sounded the death knell of a whole sequence of existence of the Idea - what can be called the party-state sequence.
The main task today is not so much to acknowledge the evidence of Terror and its extraordinary violence. There has been much outstanding, incontrovertible work produced about it, in the first rank of which I would put Getty’s great book, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks 1932-1939. Rather, the task is to examine, and possibly to interrogate or destroy, the consensus theory that places full responsibility for Terror on the communist Idea.
As a matter of fact, I propose the following method of thought: replacing the debate between theory 1 and theory 2 with a debate between theories 3 and 4. In other words: after a first historical sequence in which the commnist Idea, on the side of bourgeoise reaction, was said to be a criminal one, and the existence of any Terror whatsoever was, on the communist side, denied; after a second historical sequence in which anti-totalitarianism asserted that there was an organic ling between the communist Idea, utopic and lethal, and state terror, a third sequence shoud now begin in which four things will be asserted simultaneously: 1. The absolute necessity for the communist Idea in opposition to the unbounded barbarism of capitalism; 2. The undeniably terroristic nature of the first effort to embody this Idea in a state; 3. The circumstantial origins of Terror; and 4. The possibility of a political deployment of the communist Idea geared precisely towards a radical limitation of terroristic antagonism.
The heart of the whole matter, in my opinion, is that, although the revolutionary does in fact lie, in a wide variety of forms, at the origin of any political incarnation of the communist Idea, it is nevertheless not its rule or model. I regard Terror as in fact the continuation of insurrection or war by state means. But even if it has had to go through their vicissitudes, the politics of the communist Idea is not and must never be reducible to insurrection or war. For its true essence, the root of the new political time it constructs, has as its guiding principle not the destruction of an enemy, but the positive resolution of contradictions among the people - the political construction of a new collective configuration.
To establish this point more firmly, we must naturally start over again from the last two hypotheses concerning Terror. Even if the figures cited by the now consensual anti-communist propaganda are often absurd, we must fully recognize the violence and scope of Stalinist Terror. We must regard it as linked to the circumstances under which the historically unprecedented implementation of a regime inspired by the communist Idea, the regime of the socialist states, was undertaken. These circumstances were the worldwide slaughter of the inter-imperialistic wars, ferocious civil wars, and the aid given by foreign powers to the counter-revolutionary factions. They were the circumstances of an ongoing shortage of experienced, stoical political cadres, the best of whom were carried off early on in the whirlwind. All of this created a political subjectivity composed of a superego imperative and chronic anxiety. Uncertainty, ignorance, and fear of treason were decisive factors in what we now know about the climate in which the leaders made their decisions. This subjectivity in turn led to the main principle of action being to treat any contradiction as if it were antagonistic, as if it represented a mortal danger. The habit that developed in the civil war of killing anyone who was not with you became entrenched in a socialist state that was constantly amazed at having successfully prevailed.
All of this concerns not the communist Idea in itself, but rather the particular process of the first experiment with it in history. We must now start again from scratch, armed as we are with the knowledge of the potential outcome of that experiment. We must maintain that there is no relationship in principle between the communist Idea and state terror. I would even venture to make an analogy about this for which I will be criticized: Was the Christian Idea linked in principle to the Inquisition? Or was it instead lined in principle to Saint Francis of Assisi’s vision? This issue can only be decided from within a real subjectivization of the Idea. Nevertheless, the only way we can break free from the circumstantial destiny of the communist Idea in its guise as the terrorism of the party-state, an organization whose vision was shaped by the metaphor of war, is by deploying this Idea again in today’s circumstances.
There is nonetheless historical support for this undertaking that I would like to mention - that of the striking differences between the Soviet and Chinese experiments within the same model: the party-state.
The common features of these two experiments are obvious. In both cases, the victory of the revolution took place in an enormous country that was still largely rural, in which industrialization was only just beginning. It occurred under the conditions of a world war that had greatly weakened the reactionary state. In both cases, the responsibility for leading the process was assumed by a disciplines communist party that was linked to large military forces. In both cases the leadership of the party, and therefore the entire process, was composed of intellectuals trained in dialectical materialism and the Marxist tradition.
The differences between them, however, are great. Firstly, the Bolsheviks’ popular base consisted of factory workers and soldiers who had broken away from the official military apparatus. The Chineses Party’s popular base certainly included workers, but it was dominated largely by peasants, especially in the military - the Red Army of which Mao strikingly remarked it was responsible for ‘carrying out the political tasks of the revolution’. Secondly, the victory of the revolution in Russia took the form of a short insurrection focused on the capital and the cities, and was followed by a terrible, anarchic civil war in the provinces, with the intervention of foreign military forces. In China, on the other hand, there was first a bloody defeat of the urban insurrection based on the Soviet model, and later, under the conditions of the Japanese invasion, a very long sequence of people’s war supported by remote provincial bastions in which new forms of power and organization were being tried out. It was only at the end that a short classical war, with hude battles in the open countryside, destroyed the reactionary party’s military and governmental apparatus.
What I am particularly struck by is that the antagonistic confrontation with power and the political experimentation are not at all the same, and that the fundamental criterion of this difference is duration. Basically, the Soviet revolution was characterized by the conviction that all the probles were urgent, and that this urgency made violent, radical decisions necessary in every domain. The insurrection and the atrocities of the civil war controlled political time, even when the revolutionary state was no longer under any immediate threat. The Chinese revolution, on the contrary, was bound up with the concept of ‘protracted war’. It was all about process, not sudden armed takeover. The most important this to discern was long-range trends. And above all, the antagonism had to be calculated as precisely as possible. In the people’s war, the preservation of one’s forces would be preferred to glorious but useless attacks. And this preservation of forces also have to be able to be mobile if enemy pressure was too great. Here, in my opinion, we have a strategic vision: the event creates a new possibility, not a mode for the real becoming of that possibility. There may well have been urgency and violence at the beginning, but the forces that resulted from this shock may have been dictated, on the contrary, by a sort of mobile patience - a long-term progress that could force a change of terrain without, however, reinstating the absolute rule of insurrectional urgency or relentless violence.
But what form, politically, does the preservation of forces opposed to domination take? Terror can certainly not resolve the problem. Of course, it imposes a certain type of unity, but a weak unity, a unity of passivity and fear. To preserve one’s forces, and therefore the unity of those forces, is always in the final analysis to resolve internal problems within the political camp concerned. And what experience shows is that, over the long term, neither antagonistic action, based on the military or police model, directed against enemies, nor Terror within your own camp can resolve the problems created by your own political existence. These problems have to do with the methods linked to what Mao called ‘the correct handling of contradictions among the people’. And throughout his life he insisted on the fact that these methods were absolutely different from those that concern antagonistic contradictions.
It is essential to maintain that communist-type politics seeks solutions to political problems. Communist-type politics is an immanent activity, an activity under the sign of a shared Idea, not an activity determined by external constraints such as the economy or the legal formalism of the state. Ultimately, every political problem boils down to a proble of the unity of orientation on an issue that is collectively defined as being the main issue of the moment or of the situation. Even a victory over the enemy depends on the subjective unity that was the victors’. Over the long run, the key to a victorious treatment of antagonism lies in the correct handling of contradictions among the people - which also happens to be the real definition of democracy.
Terror asserts that only state coercion is equal to the threat to the people’s unity in a revolutionary period. This idea naturally wins the subjective support of many people whenever the danger is enormous and treason widespread. But it should be understood that Terror is never the solution to a problem, because it is the problem’s suppression. Terror is always far removed from the Idea, inasmuch as it replaces the discussion of a political problem, located at the border between the Idea and the situation, with a brutal forcing of the situation that swallows up the collective relation to the Idea along with the problem. Terror considers that, by its ostensibly shifting of what it calls the ‘balance of power’, the parameters of the problem will also be shifted, making a solution possible. Ultimately, however, every problem supressed with force, even the problem of traitors, is bound to return. Accustomed to solutions that are solutions in name only, the state officials themselves will reproduce internally the betrayal of the Idea that they have banished externally. This is because when the Idea, instead of lying in the problems posed by the situation, serves to justify the terrorist abolition of these problems, it is in a sense even more weakened than it would be by frontal attacks on the Idea itself.
It is easy to see, then, that everything hinges on the ability to give the formulation and resolution of problems the time required in order to avoid terrorist short-circuiting as much as possible. The main lesson learned from the last century’s revolutions can be expressed as follows: the political time of the communist Idea must never compete with the established time of domination and its urgencies. Competing with the adversary always leads to the mere semblance, not the real, of force. For the communist Idea is not in competition with capitalism; it is in an absolutely asymmetric relationship with it. As the dramatic conditions that accompanied their implementation clearly showed, the Soviet five-year plans and Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ were forced constructs. Slogans like ‘catch up with England in fifteen years’ implied a forcing, a perversion of the Idea, and ultimately the obligation of implementing Terror. There is a necessary slowness, both democratic and popular in nature, which is particular to the time of the correct handling of contradictions among the people. That is why the fact that people worked slowly, and sometimes not very much, in socialist factories, just as people work slowly and often not very much in Cuba still today, is not in itself such a terrible thing. It was only - it is only - a form of protest in the eyes of the world of Capital. Work time cannot be measured in the same way when it is related to the production of surplus value - namely, the profits of the oligarchy - as when it seeks to accord with a new vision of what people’s lives should be. Nothing is more important for communists than to declare that their time is not Capital’s time.
In conclusion we can say: far from being a consequence of the communist Idea, Terror actually results from a fascination with the enemy, a mimetic rivalry with it. And this effect is twofold.
First, it confuses the conditions of the military confrontaton with the enemy - insurrection or war - which are the conditions of the event of liberation, with the conditions of the affirmative construction of a new collective order under the sign of the power of the Idea. We can say that Terror is the effect of an equation of the event with the event’s consequences, consequences which are the whole real of the process of truth, a real oriented by a subjective body. In short, we will say that Terror is a fusion between event and subject in the state.
Second, the effect of competition with capitalism gradually leads to the Idea itself being purely and simply abandoned in favour of a sort of paradoxical violence that consists in wanting to achieve the same results as capitalism - whereas one actually wanted, and to a certain extent created all the conditions necessary, in order not to achieve the same results. What such violence especially destroys is the time of emancipation, which is on the scale of the life of humanity, not on that of the market’s profit cycle. In the end, we wind up with people like Gorbachev or the current Chinese leaders, whose only aim is to be admitted into the little group that represents the international capitalist oligarchy. People who want more than anything to be recognized by their supposed adveraries. People for whom the Idea has no meaning anymore. People for whom the aim of all difference will have been to conquer power in identity. We can then see that Terror only ended up being renunciation, precisely because it has not allowed for the preservation of forces and their shifting; because it has not devoted most of its time, as any political thought must, to that preservation; because it has not constantly politicized the people in the exercise of wide-ranging local and central power, of efficient deliberation. Only the ‘seize power’ movement, or the ‘occupations’ movement in May ‘68 - as today in Egypt or on Wall Street - represent a first approximation of such politicization, which creates both its own places and its own time.
The renewal of the communist Idea, which is the task of the century now beginning, will be one in which revolutionary urgency will be replaced by what can be called its aesthetics, in the Kantian sense. It is not so much a change, even a violent one, which we will want to create in the status quo; rather, we will want everything existing to be somehow curved in a new space, with new dimensions. We will find for the Idea what it lacked - a lack for which the furious impatience of Terror was both the cause and the price: we will find the absolute independence of both its places and its time.
Post by
Rankkor
Do you have any actual evidence of popular movements to protest Stalin?
No, but then again, "history is written by the winners".
"Officially" everyone here loves chavez, everyone here loves maduro, everyone here loves the glorious revolution. But all it takes is less than a week living here to notice just how "real" that love is. About as real as the love the North Korean people have for their Glorious "Dear Leader". About as real as the Cubans (Whom I'll remind you flee cuba by the thousands) hold for the Castros.
Besides, Stalin was notorious for turning people into "unpersons" if they displeased him.
Why? because I refuse to instate a system that has proven to be a failure multiple times in the past?I'm not talking about
your
ideology, but the hypothetical popularly supported
fascists
or ancaps or Islamic fundamentalists or whatever. Under those circumstances, I would not willingly surrender society to their will.
This is a word that A LOT of communist leaders love to use in their rhetoric. Its becoming as annoying as when I heard George W Bush use the word "Terrorist" to try to excuse every single atrocity he committed.
I will still bear the sickle and hammer and the red star, because of the
promise
of emancipation and the neverending struggle against oppression that those symbols represent to me
That's all those symbols represent. Promises, promises with no intention of being kept. With no realistic way to be kept.
To me, that hammer and that sickle represent oppression, tyranny, starvation, death, fanaticism, zealotry, ultra-nationalism, cults to personalities, and violations of every human right known to man. THAT is what those symbols have brought into my life.
I put them in the same category as the Swastika, The
Borg Insignia
from Star Trek,
The Dominion of Man
from Starcraft and
The Forces of Chaos
from Warhammer 40k.
Post by
Skreeran
No, but then again, "history is written by the winners".You've taken the words right out of my mouth.
How can you expect me to take all of this anti-Communist propaganda at face value, if there are no real sources to base one's argument on?
This is a word that A LOT of communist leaders love to use in their rhetoric. Its becoming as annoying as when I heard George W Bush use the word "Terrorist" to try to excuse every single atrocity he committed.Do you not acknowledge that fascism is a real ideology with real adherents who are really trying to build movements?
I mean, one need only look in the direction of Ukraine, Latvia, Germany, or Spain to see them. Here in America, the fascists who call themselves fascist are not so many, but we have plenty of racist people who want to see a strong bond of corporate economics and strong nationalist government.
That's all those symbols represent. Promises, promises with no intention of being kept. With no realistic way to be kept.
To me, that hammer and that sickle represent oppression, tyranny, starvation, death, fanaticism, zealotry, ultra-nationalism, cults to personalities, and violations of every human right known to man. THAT is what those symbols have brought into my life.
I put them in the same category as the Swastika, The
Borg Insignia
from Star Trek,
The Dominion of Man
from Starcraft and
The Forces of Chaos
from Warhammer 40k.And you are welcome to feel that way, though I'm sorry that you feel so greatly wronged by the movement that I prize so highly.
Nevertheless, I still have every intention of working my hardest to make the promises of Communism into a reality. I cannot stand to sit by and tolerate oppression any longer.
Post by
Monday
I mean, one need only look in the direction of Ukraine, Latvia, Germany, or Spain to see them.
Greece as well. The Golden Dawn has an alarmingly popular following and a lot of the police are in their pocket.
Hell,
their flag
is literally a Nazi flag.
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