Commie this, commie that

[luzribeiro]

When a right-winger* brings up Communism, they do so only to make liberals defensive and try to force them to deny they are Communists so they will stop making the valid points for which the conservative has no possible defense. It’s the know-nothing’s safe place, like a child who has no response to a confusing situation but “you’re a doodyhead!” Communism has never been a major player in American politics.

When people say they are against something because it didn't work somewhere else, I'm pretty sure that is fallacious thinking. I've seen it with both communism and capitalism. Perhaps the system in question could work, but they did something wrong. Perhaps the country's failure was due to something entirely different. You can't just make such a claim without giving a compelling argument or reason to back it up.

The United States has used capitalism for a long time, but not without issues. Totally free markets, which was the initially intended framework, has shown to be problematic and the government had to step in and place regulations.

The USSR lasted for a while under communism under many different leaders, but it, too, had issues; much of which stemmed from the leadership itself. A leadership which became totalitarian rather quickly. I think that was the biggest reason for the failure of communism in Russia. Totalitarian states tend to do poorly.

You can't use the USSR or really any other former Communist country as a comparison to hypothetical Communist America. They are not the same situations.

Every attempt at development has reflected the nation it comes from. This should be expected. China, for example, has a 2,800 year old Meritocracy, which is alive and well today. Korean culture has always been insular, distrusting of outsiders, with a divine sun god king looking over them, and what do we find today? Cuba has always had a more community focused democracy and it was rated as a prime example of a participatory democracy just a few years ago. And look to the Russian Empire, and tell us what else would a Communist state look like but the Soviet Union.

* Disclaimer: Of course we shouldn't confuse Conservative with Libertarian. Conservatives, typically in the Lockeian tradition are not opposed to some forms of socialization or central control.

Comments

[asthfghl]

As someone who has actually lived under communism, I can tell you that communism didn't fail so much because it was hijacked by a bunch of autocrats who perverted the idea of a centralized, socially orientated planned economy - it failed because the very idea that all people are equal in terms of skills and capabilities (and thus should be equal socially and economically), is inherently stupid, absurd, and leads to dangerous perversions. Like removing any incentive for self-improvement, development, and ultimately, be useful to society.

It's one thing to strive to level the playing field (social democracy); it's quite another to lump everybody into the same category, regardless of their expertise, personal skills, qualifications, diligence, responsibility and willingness to contribute to society.

That, and the closeness of the society we lived in. That tends to irritate people. And when the window gets even slightly ajar, and you see what's beyond and start comparing, you realize you've been living in a lie. And then the whole house of cards comes down pretty fast.

[merig00]

I love how noone takes seriously "If it wasn't for Hitler, Nazism would have been great!" but every single time an attempt to build communism fails, it's totes cool to go "If it wasn't for bad leadership we would have built an utopia! Let's try again!"

[asthfghl]

Well, having morons for leaders helped a lot too.

[merig00]

well as you know all leaders are morons, "if only i was in charge...". Though in this case, our benevolent dictator of a poster also complaining that leaders were morons, and people were moron. If only we could try communism with right leaders and right people, it would totally work this time!

[luzribeiro]

So you're comparing a system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs - with a hateful oppressive racially supremacist extremist form of fascism? Good to know where you stand.

[merig00]

But if it wasn't for Hitler it wouldn't have been hateful or opressive or racially supremacist. Have to try it again, it will work for sure! Just like with different leadership communism would totally wouldn't end up a hateful oppressive regime. LMAO.

[mikeyxw]

Results wise, yes, they we're similar. However, Communism, or at least the attempt to implement it, killed several times as many people.

[halialkers]

Lenin's Democratic Centralism was never remotely intended to work like that in the first place. Vanguardism isn't about the masses, it's about a narrow clique of murderous fanatics deciding they can arbitrate how many millions die to meet a predetermined historical arc they shoehorn all of existence into fitting. Neglecting this is especially dangerous when Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin, Rykov, Suslov, and the rest never bothered to hide that the real spirit of Sovietism was a revolver in the brain. They never lied about themselves, why do people find it so incomprehensible that when they said 'a revolution without corpses is worthless' or 'there are no fortresses Bolsheviks cannot storm' they were actually literally saying their actual beliefs?

[fridi]

What I like even more is how terms ending with -ism get tossed around with such ease. Most people seem either incapable or unwilling of putting even a minor effort into understanding the difference between communism, socialism and social democracy for example. Hence the labeling of societies like the Nordic ones for example as "commie", etc. If anything, it's a sign of intellectual degradation.

[halialkers]

You quite clearly have never been in the alternate history community where there are plenty of neckbeards fapping to alt-Right style Nazis slaughtering every Jew and Slav in the Soviet Union because better dead than Red.

[abomvubuso]

And yet, some form of communism is what I think humankind is going towards in the very long term future. Why? Because technology has been helping smear out all those differences in terms of capacities and capabilities and knowledge. In addition, if humankind manages to use technology properly to achieve a level of abundance of resources that would move it into a post-scarcity epoch, that would make the notion of sharing the new norm, replacing the current everyone-fend-for-themselves culture that we have. It does sound very idealistic from today's standpoint, but it's a possibility. Unless we blow ourselves to smithereens instead, that is.

It has already started, comrade!

[merig00]

Maybe when we get to Star Trek level of technology when you are not even in post-scarcity of resources but in over-abundance of resources. The "From each according to his ability" is the easy part to do. It's sort of achieved with social democracy. However getting the "to each according to his needs" that's where everything falls apart.

[halialkers]

Totalitarianism wasn't an accident in the Soviet Union it was what Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin wanted. Herzen was entirely accurate when he predicted Communism would be the Tsar's barracks transformed.

The Bolsheviks gloried in murder and slaughter and essentially were a more successful Left-Wing ISIS that took over a sixth of the planet and slaughtered their way through their own countrymen with impunity and no hesitation. American Communism might not be the same, but American Bolshevism would emulate the kleptocratic 'slaughter 6,000 Kulaks or the NVKD will slaughter you' mindset that took Lenin and Stalin to power.

The regime decayed because it lost the stomach to order tens of thousands to millions casually executed. Not because it was intended to represent the interest of anything but the quasi-religious mindset of the people who erected it over the bones of its enemies.

[halialkers]

The Lenin of 1902, a point when the idea that the Lenin of 1918-22 would be the total master of all Russia was at best a pipe dream, wrote this:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1902/sep/01.htm

^A direct endorsement of terrorism as a superior method to the ballot box.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/

^Trotsky was entirely fine with Stalin's methods so long as he was the one benefiting from them. His objections in Mexico City were the whining mewling cry of a political nitwit outmaneuvered by someone much more ruthless and adept than he was and his inability to ever accept this.

Lenin advocated for totalitarian methods of party control well before he took power. He just didn't expect a Georgian bank robber to outlive him and make splendid use of a neatly constructed system to its logical ends:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/may/20c.htm

So tell me with a straight face that Bolshevism was a democratic movement that rejected government by the revolver based on the actual stated words of the Bolsheviks in question.

I mean they only bluntly stated otherwise, who are Lenin and Trotsky to define the meaning of Bolshevism or the Soviet Union? They just built the state and the Red Army.

And Stalin, the Georgian tyrant, wrote this openly in 1930:

" The author of the above-mentioned article forgets that the kulak class, as a class, cannot be ousted by taxation measures or any other restrictions, if this class is allowed to retain instruments of production and the right to free use of land, and if in our practical activity we preserve in the countryside the law on hiring labour, the law on renting land, and the ban on dekulakisation. The of restricting (and ousting) the capitalist elements in the countryside? Its point of departure was that, despite this restricting of the kulaks, they, as a class, nevertheless were bound to remain for the time being. On those grounds, the Fifteenth Congress left in force the law on renting land, although it knew very well that it was mostly kulaks who rented land. On those grounds, the Fifteenth Congress left in force the law on hiring labour in the countryside, and demanded that it should be strictly observed. On those grounds, it was again proclaimed that dekulakisation was impermissible. Do these laws and decisions contradict the policy of restricting (and ousting) the capitalist elements in the countryside? Certainly not. Do these laws and decisions contradict the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class? Certainly, they do! Consequently, these laws and decisions must now be set aside in the areas of complete collectivisation, which is spreading by leaps and bounds. Incidentally, they have already been set aside by the very progress of the collective-farm movement in the areas of complete collectivisation.

Can it, then, be affirmed that the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class is a continuation of the policy of restricting (and ousting) the capitalist elements in the countryside? Obviously, it cannot.

The author of the above-mentioned article forgets that the kulak class, as a class, cannot be ousted by taxation measures or any other restrictions, if this class is allowed to retain instruments of production and the right to free use of land, and if in our practical activity we preserve in the countryside the law on hiring labour, the law on renting land, and the ban on dekulakisation. The author forgets that the policy of restricting the exploiting tendencies of the kulaks enables us to count only on ousting individual sections of the kulaks, which does not contradict, but, on the contrary, presumes the preservation for the time being of the kulaks as a class. As a means of ousting the kulaks as a class, the policy of restricting and ousting individual sections of the kulaks is inadequate. In order to oust the kulaks as a class, the resistance of this class must be smashed in open battle and it must be deprived of the productive sources of its existence and development (free use of land, instruments of production, land-renting, right to hire labour, etc.).

That is a turn towards the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class. Without it, talk about ousting the kulaks as a class is empty prattle, acceptable and profitable only to the Right deviators. Without it, no substantial, let alone complete, collectivisation of the countryside is conceivable. That is well understood by our poor and middle peasants, who are smashing the kulaks and introducing complete collectivisation. That, evidently, is not yet understood by some of our comrades.

Hence, the Party's present policy in the countryside is not a continuation of the old policy, but a turn away from the old policy of restricting (and ousting) the capitalist elements in the countryside towards the new policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class."

Such charming commitment to helping the masses by means other than executing people on spurious grounds.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1930/01/21.htm

With such sterling commitment to the idea of giving people what they need, nobody could ever remotely fathom how this turned into a militarized autocracy reliant on the Gulag slave labor system. Truly that sprang like Athena from the head of Zeus.

[luzribeiro]

Got trigger'd here a bit, didn'tcha. ;)

[halialkers]

Actually no, simply cynical that people will be directly told by people whose idea of change is a sufficiently scaled pile of corpses and yet they'll act like this is some sudden shocking idea that came out of nowhere. The Bolsheviks and Maoists, like fascists, openly and proudly wore their murderousness on their sleeves. The idea that the Soviet Union and PRC tragically became something it was never intended to be was a Western self-delusion from start to finish that was never once shared by the actual Bolsheviks or Maoists themselves.

[mahnmut]

Im'ma just throw this in here...



...retreating slowly.

[merig00]

I'd pay money just to see Leo burr and wave a cap on top of the armored car :)

[mahnmut]

I expect... nay, I demand that there be a bear involved in there somewhere. Otherwise it's not worth my money.

[policraticus]

This is a goof, right?

[mahnmut]

Do you want it to be?

[nairiporter]

Well, no. I don't believe any form of extremist fringe ideology could successfully be implemented without coercion and violence. And even if it is, it wouldn't be sustainable in the long run.

[tcpip]

> Conservatives, typically in the Lockeian tradition are not opposed to some forms of socialization or central control.<

To be fair, there are Libertarian in the Lockean tradition as well.