What is Communism? What is Fascism?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They are the shadow-side of the development of the industrial age, they are the dark side of the early 20th Century variant of Western civilization.


A Communist was one who accepted first and foremost that the history of the world is class struggle. Everything is economics, there is nothing amaterial, ideas have no compelling factor. The only thing that motivates people is a quest for economic security. Outside this quest, history does not exist. The history of the world thus is a preordained path to a utopia wherein the workers, the true owners of the means of production overthrow parasitical capital and thereby inaugurate utopia. In this sense, however, a society dominated by the Asiatic means of production (i.e. Russia), cannot be Communist because it has no workers. Enter Lenin, who says "Fuck that shit, we're going for fanaticism. If you disagree with me, you get shot." Then comes WWI, which opens the way for Lenin to co-opt the Russian Revolution and the rest was history.

Russia adopted a new variant of Tsarism worse and more blood-stained than the old. In this version, human life was cheap and expendable, and so the Communists, the new great elite, hand-picked to create the path to utopia out of bloodsoaked mud began a sequence of atrocious wholesale reconstructions of Imperial Russia rivaling the worst things done by Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible. From this nightmarish, atrocious foundation arose the concept of Communism as we know it; society can be directed by a few elites with absolute fanaticism a substitute for basic knowledge, with the individual subordinate to the group. The state extends blood-stained hands across the world, and the Revolution's onward march is inevitable, for this is the foretold and imminent path of history.

Against this arose Fascism, out of the post-WWI Freikorps, disgruntled right-wing veterans who found they really liked the firepower-strewn artilleryman's paradise that was WWI and that war was thus good for everybody else. Like their Communist enemies the fascists became obsessed with military-style organization, creating a rival set of one-party states whose chief and sole purpose was war and wholesale massacre. The fascist ethos held that society's problems were resolvable by shooting anyone that pointed them out and orienting society to war against and exterminate the weak.

Both alike held that Western civilization as such was decadent, flawed, worthy of destruction. Both sought different means and visualized that destruction by different ends. A Communist preferred the method of the fifth-column and working to exploit chaos within the existing system. The fascist rejected the system altogether and sought to butcher his way to a new one (and fascists were always he, a good fascist woman was a baby-factory barefoot in the kitchen).

These are the ideologies people reference when they speak of the various totalitarian movements and willfully accuse those they don't like of adhering to them. To put it crudely totalitarianism is not a label to use lightly, and anyone with intellectual honesty or even a basic comprehension of either human decency or respect for human life should not lightly thus abuse those words. Limbaugh being an asshole does not make him Josef Goebbels. A Democrat advocating the kind of UHC that works in Canada and Israel (which by the anti-UHC crowd, being founded by secular socialist atheists who created UHC must be the worst abomination on Earth) is not advocating the Gulag or Terror-Famines as a means of resolving social issues.


We should all agree that when we refer to totalitarianism as it actually exists that referring to these movements as they actually existed is what's required. The problem is that crudely stated we all know none of our contemporaries today advocate machine gunning women and children in the back as a means of social engineering. It is our refusal to accept that new times produce problems of their own that have left Western civilization perpetually trying in a pathetic fashion to recreate the ever-more fossilized WWII era because to put it crudely the West hasn't yet understood that society has moved on from them, while the global South cannot forget it. Too many people want to cling to the fossilized mythology of what their grandfathers did as opposed to accepting that omnia mutantur mutandis illis. But then again, it was warned that there were blind guides who would strain out a gnat to greedily gobble a camel.

Comments

[pofigistiks.livejournal.com]

Delusions. Delusions is based on propaganda agitation.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I see a two-fold thing going on:

1. People assign to their ideological opponants the worst motives and agendas possible. So ANY action with potential unintended consequences (real or imagined) becomes an intentional stepping stone on the way to dictatorship. Hence: UHC (for example) is actually death panels and population control and UN One World Takeover. It works for both parties against both parties, and is unfortunately a bipartisan sport.

2. People lack the language to address these concerns, or rather, I think people in CHARGE are intentionally using certain words exactly BECAUSE of the historical context in which they exist, and people aren't educated enough on what those words actually mean to realize when they're being duped. Hence, anything done by the Republicans is "fascism." Hence, ANY type of governmental oversight, regulation or involvement is "communism." The words are simultanously used ACCURATELY (invoking the horrors of their original usage) and inaccurately (to then apply those horrors to current situations and policies, and undermine them in the eyes of a demographic through guilt by association.) It's the same mentality that allows someone to say, unironically, that putting up signs as part of anti-smoking legislation is the SAME THING as the wholesale German slaughter of Jews. It's the mentality that allows people to react to the word "socalism" as if someone said "let's go put babies on spikes", without ever knowing what the word ACTUALLY means.

Combine this creative word usage with that outright demonization of anyone who dares to budge from the party line, and it's no surprise that you've got people throwing these words around with such abandon. What troubles me the most is how easily dehumanizing effect these labels have: hence you have vocal political constituancies who honestly feel that the members of the "opposite" party are all willing members of (or at least deluded dupes of) a grand conspiracy to MURDER them.

[fornikate.livejournal.com]

yep

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Goodness. Again, I find myself in complete agreement with you.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

allows someone to say, unironically, that putting up signs as part of anti-smoking legislation is the SAME THING as the wholesale German slaughter of Jews

Strawman. Do you have an example of someone doing this? I've never seen any such thing.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The only thing that motivates people is a quest for economic security. Outside this quest, history does not exist. The history of the world thus is a preordained path to a utopia wherein the workers, the true owners of the means of production overthrow parasitical capital and thereby inaugurate utopia.

And this... is a textbook example of misrepresentation in informal logic.

By this point I could only scan the rest of the post with a high degree of disinterest.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's an accurate summary of Marxism as it evolved in an ideological sense. Whether or not it reflects Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto is as relevant as whether or not On the Jews and Their Lies has anything to do with the narrative of the Crucifixion of the Gospels. Marxism evolved into Geld Uber Alles, though it was a *slightly* more nuanced concept in Marx's original writings.

Fascism OTOH was nothing but "Let's go kick ass" as a social-totalitarian policy.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

That line jumped out at me too.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Meh. Strong language is over-used on a daily basis. Just like strong coffee. I've generally decided to ignore the unrelated hyperbole and simply respond to whatever I can in a more measured way. I'm not going to waste time calling people out on their hyperbole. It's just a waste of time. I just look past it now.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

While that may all be true, communism doesn't bear the stigma associated with fascism (although its victims are arguably more numerous). You can wear a shirt with the sickle and hammer or with Che and no one is going to think that you're a psycho, but try wearing a swastika or a Goebels tshirt. Maybe it's because fascism was made impossible politically, or maybe it's because many people still associate communism with an idealistic equality between people, giving it some culturally redeeming values.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Aside from all the people that regularly note that people who wear Che T-shirts are lionizing a murderous terrorist, you mean?

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I'd say that communist iconography doesn't have the same stigma as fascist iconography, because for weird historical reasons using that iconography has a different social meaning.

An American wouldn't wear a swastika if they weren't a neo-Nazi. But an American wearing a hammer & sickle is singularly unlikely to be a Soviet-ist, much less a Marxist in even the broadest sense; they are far more likely to just have a taste for Soviet kitsch. Likewise, an American wearing a Che t-shirt is notoriously likely to be very unclear on who Che Guevara was, what he did, and what he stood for.

A lot of conservatives are critical of the flippancy and historical ignorance which this represents, and I'm actually pretty sympathetic to that. But it's absurd to claim that it means that Americans think that communist totalitarianism is OK.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Where does Jesusism fit in to this whole thing? In Mein Kampf Hitler commented that Jews were an embarrassment to the Lord. With the whole Christian Identity and dominionist movements, do we not see the same kind of horse hooey repeating itself today?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, that would be a Christian equivalent to Velayat-i-faqih. The Fascists didn't like any challenges to their total control of human life, the Commies just wanted to gun down Churches and Temples to cleanse the Masses of their Opiates. The practical results could wind up being indistinguishable to priests and monks on the receiving end.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I always thought of Communism as a decent idea that was handled the wrong way. I don't see anything inherently wrong with trying to eliminate economic classes, some people out there seem to think that poverty is a good thing, like you need it in order for the privileged few to live their privileged lives. As long as a few can enjoy themselves while everyone else suffers all is good in the world right? The failure of Communism in certain societies has created this idea that not only Communism buy socialism is inherently a bad thing. It's like, if the government dares to help out the poor in any way, it is being just like Stalin.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Depends on your definition of poverty (wether we're merely talking about "wealth imbalance" or actual starvation) but I would argue that it is a neccesary thing.

But that's really a topic for it's own post.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

I disagree a priori, we cannot defy nature and individual ability so far as to impose equality externally. It's a different issue if a group of people see each other as equal. But to impose it top-down is to destroy values by totalitarian repression of differences. It's also another case if society is sufficiently developed to help the poor, that is however a social democracy and not communism per se.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except Leninism is not a good idea in any sense of good. It's a very bad idea that produces very bad people who actually accept it. It is nearly impossible to go from What Is To Be Done to anything other than a society which is a Tsarism that actually works.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'I always thought of Communism as a decent idea that was handled the wrong way.'

If an idea is ultimately unworkable, it's a bad idea.

Communism is a bad theory for the simple fact that it's ideas on value, labor, and production, ultimately lead to an authoritarian state.

The paradox of communism is it's predicated on the idea that economic decisions must be morally equal across all people and ends up creating a system that has created the most inhumane conditions. While capitalism is predicated on individuals making economic decisions with their own morality (essentially nebulous to social morality) and the most moralistic societies sprung from it.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"We should all agree that when we refer to totalitarianism as it actually exists that referring to these movements as they actually existed is what's required"

Automobiles have historically had gasoline engines, therefore anything without a gasoline engine is not an automobile
Ships have historically sailed on the ocean, therefore anything which does not fly on the ocean is not a shop
Marriage has historically been between a man and a woman, therefore anything which is not between a man and a woman is not a marriage.
Religions have historically believed in multiple gods, therefore anything which does not believe in multiple gods is not a religion.
Roses are historically red, therefore anything that isn't red may not be a rose



The problem with this approach to definitions is it ignores core concepts for accidents of history, that you have not had a Fascist or Communist State which did not look like historical examples is irrelevant, it does not preclude such states from existing

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually it does for the sole, simple reason that those states were only possible due to the torturous dislocation of outside forces, most infamously the First World War and its four-year nightmare in the West and seven year nightmare in the East. Communism in particular is impossible to explain without the Kaiser, what with him financing it and encouraging it as a means to collapse Russia and all. The Fascists came directly out of the Freikorps and the Fascio de Combattimento. Remove this, you remove them entirely from context for silly little arguments that a hug from a schoolteacher is equivalent to machine-gunning women and children in the back and then wading amidst the corpses to shoot any survivors.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

We should all agree that when we refer to totalitarianism as it actually exists that referring to these movements as they actually existed is what's required.

No, we shouldn't. History informs the present, it doesn't define it or determine it. There is theory and implementation, and implementation doesn't define the theory. Rasilio gave a few excellent examples of your logic error.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

An automobile and a ship is not the same thing as post-WWI phenomena that were the direct product of the kind of situation produced by condemning millions of young men to bleed to death on the Vistula, in the Carpathians, on the Isonzo, and in Flanders.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Fucked if I know what communism is. I was only 11 back then!

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

You'll confess everything!

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

By this logic, no one who aspired to be a fascist could be one without first being a totalitarian. Which would require . . . what? That this person take over a country and invade another? That the would-be fascist try to eradicate another race?

This "logic" ignores the proto-movement in any category. Hitler was a fascist long before he ran for office. Stalin was a communist long before he ran anything. Why? They ascribed to the philosophies of their respective credos.

By your logic, only those Christians who have gone on a crusade and sacked Jerusalem can call themselves Christians. Only those Jews who have shot a few Palestinians deserve the name. You can't be a Turkman if you haven't slaughtered an Armenian lately, and later denied it.

Sorry. The OP—and the entire premise it supports—fails.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

only those Christians who have gone on a crusade and sacked Jerusalem can call themselves Christians!!

I nominate this for DQ.