The Communism Thread

[fleacollerindustry]

Communism, specifically its Marxism-Leninism flavor, is one of the political theories of all time.

The problem however is that, in the US, it's hard to get a good discussion about it because everyone here—however rightfully so—dunks on it. But I don't want to just be "hur dur communism evil" because if someone who actually believes in communism comes along, all they need to do is spout off some crap in a pseudo-intellectial way, and that'll be enough to make me look like a fool. No, I want to learn more about it proper so I'm better prepared to have a legitimate discussion about it.

...

Thankfully ChatGPT has been helpful in answering some of my questions, and so far it seems like the overall conclusion about Communism is: "it'll work as soon as people just magically decide that it'll work". Or, to put it in meme form:

MARX & ENGELS: "Here are the steps to achieving a Communist society:"

1. overthrow the capitalists
2. seize the means of production
3. start up workers councils
4. ????
5. PROFIT! COMMUNISM!

Like, Marx and Engels straight-up didn't cover how it was supposed to happen, they just assumed it would. Lenin had to come along and fill in point #4 as best as he could (stuff like "Communist Party = vanguard of the people", etc) but even then he also left out a lot as well, or some of his ideas didn't work when put in practice but he didn't live long enough to refine those bad ideas further.

...

So yeah, memes and jokes aside, what is Communism supposed to do? How is it supposed to happen? Why do we have psuedo-intellectual democratic socialists who keep telling me "well, true communism has never been done yet" or "well, capitalism is full of flaws too but it's still allowed to exist", and why do they think they're right?

Spoiler: random tl;dr ranting

Speaking of "well true communism hasn't been done right yet"... what gets me are all the different communist theories that exist, and none of them are on friendly terms. It was easier when it was just "Marxism", MAYBE when it was "Marxism-Leninism"... but then Stalin came along and how we have an entire subset of Communists who think his iron fist was justified because it pulled the USSR into the 20th Century, never mind all the people who died (some people need to die, apparently)... which is ironic because that is literally what other authoritarian leaders have done; President Park Chung-hee did that for South Korea, and yet I doubt any Stalinist would be OK with Park and all the people HE killed in order to stabilize South Korea and set it on the path to become the powerhouse it is today.

I swear authoritarian leaders gravitate towards Communism because its very structure is the easiest way to consolidate power. Unlike Western democracies which have inconvienent failsafes like "checks and balanaces", "separation of powers" and "rule of law", basically all Communist governments require is support from the Central Committee and the Politburo, and if you can control who gets elected to those positions, then you can ensure you're always going to be the top dog. That is wholly undemocratic, and yet I can't seem to get a good discussion from anyone on what kind of solutions exist to prevent that from happening in a hypothetical future Communist government that is "done right".

What I'd like to see 21st century European communists do is explain to me how communism can be "done right" for the 21st century, as well as explain to me how they arrived to the conclusion of "because capitalism is evil, communism is the ONLY solution to fix it". I mean, that's like claiming "smoking cigarettes is harmful, therefore barnhall square dancing is the ONLY solution to fixing that"... yeah, I'm being a bit hyperbolic but so many of these modern communists are so obviously wrapped up in idealism that they can't properly explain how it's supposed to actually work, nor can they explain why the failings of capitalism mean that communism is the ONLY/BEST path forward. Even ChatGPT can't dig up a proper explanation of why these solutions will work outside of "it'll work because people want it to work".

 

[minty]

"different communist theories that exist, and none of them are on friendly terms."
were you in the same leftist facebook groups in 2014 that i was?

 

[minty]

also i was gonna respond to the post you left on my profile when i got home from work but you made this post here so hi, i'm probs the closest to being commie here
how much of marx, trotsky, etc have you read?

 

[Call Me Tim]

Equity is evil.

 

[fleacollerindustry]

"different communist theories that exist, and none of them are on friendly terms."
were you in the same leftist facebook groups in 2014 that i was?

No, I lived in San Francisco. All their talk about lefist unity was bullshit because they couldn't agree on shit.

Historically speaking too, try to get Stalinists and Trotskyists to agree on anything. Oh and be sure you never bring up the Posadists.

At least capitalists can agree on many things, like "greed is good". You'll never see capitalist theorists start a capitalism civil war just because they disagree on how to start a new capitalist society from scratch.

 

[minty]

No, I lived in San Francisco. All their talk about lefist unity was bullshit because they couldn't agree on shit.

Historically speaking too, try to get Stalinists and Trotskyists to agree on anything. Oh and be sure you never bring up the Posadists.

it certainly is a problem. everybody n their 5 friends wanna be the next lenin n lead the vanguard. the infighting is ridiculous n childish, meanwhile groups like the wef n shit are capable of working together because wealth hoarders that wanna control everything can at least agree they need more money.

 

[Call Me Tim]

it certainly is a problem. everybody n their 5 friends wanna be the next lenin n lead the vanguard.

Well duh since every single communist, real and neo, thinks they alone can make disastrous policies succeed. It's is apex narcissism. Extremely funny/sad since most can't even manage the simple things in their life without it turning into a catastrophe.

 

[fleacollerindustry]

also i was gonna respond to the post you left on my profile when i got home from work but you made this post here so hi, i'm probs the closest to being commie here
how much of marx, trotsky, etc have you read?

Not much extensively, but I've read the bullet points of a lot of it. It's hard to read a lot of it, however, because I spend half the time yelling at the books for bringing up a point that they can't answer and I spend an hour trying to find a viable answer for. To be fair, I do that with a lot of the stuff I read.

I'm at work right now so I don't have time to ask a lot of big questions... but here's one that I can ask right now which I never could get a straight answer on: why does a communist system need to have everything be so centralized? I feel like the failure of the Soviet Union came because every decision required someone higher up to approve it. Knowing that bureaucracy was one of the major reasons for the Soviet Union's demise, what are modern communists (or democratic socialists) promoting as an alternative solution? Or did Marx, in assuming that socialism was simply a natural progression of society from capitalism to something else, think that central planning was just part of that natural progression?

...

All this said, I'm not interested in gotchas. I want to learn more about Marxism, etc, but ultimately nothing I've read convinces me that Marxist-style communism has any future. I'm open to be proven wrong, but it's gonna take A LOT to override what I already understand.

The thing is, I'm sympathetic to some aspects of communism and socialism. However, I find Marxism itself (as well as all of its offspring theories) to be a dead ends in the grand scheme of things. And if communism/socialism is going to work, it would need to be something that was basically designed from scratch, having some superficial similarities to Marxist theories... or at most cherry picking some of the most useful, less disagreeable stuff from Marxist theory. Kinda like how the US Constitution starts with "We, the people", and Lincoln called the US gov't "of the people, by the people, and for the people", but I doubt anyone would consider the US gov't to be "socialist"/"communist" because of its "politicial power comes from the will of the people" attitude.

 

[Call Me Tim]

I doubt anyone would consider the US gov't to be "socialist"/"communist" because of its "politicial power comes from the will of the people" attitude.

If the majority of the people have the "socialist/communist is good attitude," then those politics will approved by vote. That's the "soft" revolution.
And there are many examples of which, which are currently in practice.

 

[fleacollerindustry]

it certainly is a problem. everybody n their 5 friends wanna be the next lenin n lead the vanguard. the infighting is ridiculous n childish, meanwhile groups like the wef n shit are capable of working together because wealth hoarders that wanna control everything can at least agree they need more money.

I swear maybe 75% of communist and socialist groups (or at least 75% of the members of each) are all CIA agitprops based on the OSS handguide to destroying an organization from within. The problem with that theory, however, is that those socialist groups absolutely 100% believe in the things they do which in turn absolutely negatively affect the long term viability of that group.

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-inadvertently-sabotage-your-organization/

Speaking of which, random thought on the failure of leftists to organize successfully:

First off, I'm royally pissed that ED went down when it did, because I had an AWESOME wiki article about the Democratic Socialists of America and their rather shitty and downright embarrassing 2019 congress.

O SHIT IT SURVIVES:
* https://web.archive.org/web/2019121...dramatica.rs/Democratic_Socialists_of_America

But anyways, if THIS is the best that socialists can organize, then... that's pathetic.

Next, the Occupy Wall Street protests were also a perfect example of how uselessly the left can organize: without a leader, they couldn't agree on anything. The "councils" that were set up where someone could come along and share their great idea with the group was nonsense, because all they were doing was sharing it with individuals who ultimately have no power to influence others. Best of all, when they were rioting, someone smashed a window to a shop, only for someone else to leave a sign saying "I'm sorry that someone else did this; this violence doesn't represent us".... only for someone ELSE to take that sign and write underneath it "speak for yourself".

The Tea Party, on the other hand, was so much better at organizing because even if they didn't have much of a leader either and were also perhaps just as anti-establishment as OWS, they did at least get into politics, run for office, didn't act violently and thus use their more peaceful nature to gain support from "the average American" to then be able to be elected. I'd argue the rise of Trump came because of the Tea Party's ability to organize better than OWS.

 

[fleacollerindustry]

If the majority of the people have the "socialist/communist is good attitude," then those politics will approved by vote. That's the "soft" revolution.
And there are many examples of which, which are currently in practice.

Yeah but IIRC Marx advocated violent overthrow of the capitalist system. Thus one of the many things that separate different communist groups. It's like, the splits are between "Marx is always right, end of story" and "Marx had some good ideas but others are just stupid and unrealistic".

 

[minty]

I spend half the time yelling at the books for bringing up a point that they can't answer and I spend an hour trying to find a viable answer for. To be fair, I do that with a lot of the stuff I read.

I'm at work right now so I don't have time to ask a lot of big questions... but here's one that I can ask right now which I never could get a straight answer on: why does a communist system need to have everything be so centralized? I feel like the failure of the Soviet Union came because every decision required someone higher up to approve it. Knowing that bureaucracy was one of the major reasons for the Soviet Union's demise, what are modern communists (or democratic socialists) promoting as an alternative solution? Or did Marx, in assuming that socialism was simply a natural progression of society from capitalism to something else, think that central planning was just part of that natural progression?

The thing is, I'm sympathetic to some aspects of communism and socialism. However, I find Marxism itself (as well as all of its offspring theories) to be a dead ends in the grand scheme of things.

same

i don't think it does need to be heavily centralized. when i call myself a commie it's always the "classless, stateless society" definition
there were some good policies put into play by the soviets n i defend them but i feel generally if i lived there i would bitch abt as much as i do here.
i lean more an-com or syndicalist. people with authority over others abuse it n that won't be stopped by keeping a massive state around. i never bought the "state will wither away" shit.
i still like the idea of worker's councils tho. n co-ops and single-person ran businesses with less/no worker abuses currently exist so those are my go-to for most purchases i need to make.
there's a chapter in erich fromm's "the sane society" that goes into how a functioning worker council society was ran and it goes into pretty good detail explaining it. even still had a ceo but it was leagues better than the shit amazon pulls aiming cameras at union ballot boxes n firing employees left n right for trying to organize
the book is here
chapter 8 has some interesting ideas you may want to read

 

[minty]

I swear maybe 75% of communist and socialist groups (or at least 75% of the members of each) are all CIA agitprops based on the OSS handguide to destroying an organization from within. The problem with that theory, however, is that those socialist groups absolutely 100% believe in the things they do which in turn absolutely negatively affect the long term viability of that group.

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-inadvertently-sabotage-your-organization/

Speaking of which, random thought on the failure of leftists to organize successfully:

First off, I'm royally pissed that ED went down when it did, because I had an AWESOME wiki article about the Democratic Socialists of America and their rather shitty and downright embarrassing 2019 congress.

O SHIT IT SURVIVES:
* https://web.archive.org/web/2019121...dramatica.rs/Democratic_Socialists_of_America

But anyways, if THIS is the best that socialists can organize, then... that's pathetic.

Next, the Occupy Wall Street protests were also a perfect example of how uselessly the left can organize: without a leader, they couldn't agree on anything. The "councils" that were set up where someone could come along and share their great idea with the group was nonsense, because all they were doing was sharing it with individuals who ultimately have no power to influence others. Best of all, when they were rioting, someone smashed a window to a shop, only for someone else to leave a sign saying "I'm sorry that someone else did this; this violence doesn't represent us".... only for someone ELSE to take that sign and write underneath it "speak for yourself".

cointelpro happened and it won.

there WERE good left organizations. they got dismantled/neutered. so occupy i feel was a good thing even tho it ended retarded. everybody didn't have combat training, everybody wasn't armed, everybody didn't know what they were doing, sure. but they knew we were being fucked over by wall street.
after occupy idpol took over n it's absolutely 100% a distraction from class-based organizing n meant to tear the left apart. n it's working.

"I'm sorry that someone else did this; this violence doesn't represent us"
this person is a liberal joiner n they exist at every protest

 

[finlay patrick duffill]

posadism seems rather farcical from an outsider's perspective and needlessly pessimistic, rather like inventing strange new ways of disappointing yourself due to yr adoption of radical and imaginative rather than pragmatic beliefs. the intersection of communism, ufology and dysgenic>utopic society don't make a lot of sense to me
aside from that i think a sustainable society, one that will continue with some humanitarian longevity aside from an impact on certain luxuries afforded by capitalism to people in developed countries is only achievable if amorphous business interests no longer influence the masses in the way that they do now. the dogmatism about a certain branch of an ideology that will prevent this is a form of hegemony and would need to be flexible, but generally any reimagining of politics to bring about this change would be broadly marxist thought
wait no it wouldn't
cheap way of looking at it
it generally concerns people who support this mode of thinking and credit it, even in a tangential capacity where they believe that marxists/communists have broadly identified that bureaucracy in any large, centralized government has a relation to the ongoing humanitarian crisis

 

[minty]

i think a sustainable society, one that will continue with some humanitarian longevity aside from an impact on certain luxuries afforded by capitalism to people in developed countries is only achievable if amorphous business interests no longer influence the masses in the way that they do now. the dogmatism about a certain branch of an ideology that will prevent this is a form of hegemony

this, i completely agree with this.
i try to buy as much as i can from actual people n not big business, to re-use kitchen scrap n limit food waste as much as possible with my little farm, grow my own food n such, to not be on the receiving end of advertising as much as possible, n to not replace my technology until it is as close to full-on machine death as possible

 

[Call Me Tim]

Yeah but IIRC Marx advocated violent overthrow of the capitalist system. Thus one of the many things that separate different communist groups. It's like, the splits are between "Marx is always right, end of story" and "Marx had some good ideas but others are just stupid and unrealistic".

In my opinion, Marx said that because he knew violence is inevitably baked into the cake.



You misunderstand me.

I just commented on that if the population is groomed to see socialist/communist policy as the best, or inherently good, or at least better for the sole reason it hasn't been tried, then the people will gravitate towards those policies and approve them by voting -- the soft revolution. So the varying degrees of "true" Marxism, in a very real aspect, doesn't really matter. Overall, politically it's moving society in that direction. One step in that direction, requires a step in the opposite to counter it, and a step to counter such momentum. But, before that step is taken to fix that direction, you must enact many campaigns to convince the people that the direction they are going is a wrong one. And as PT Barnum said, "It's far easier to dupe someone, than convince them that they have been duped. " So politically and peacefully to do this is extremely difficult. And of course I'm touching upon political momentum. Which one policy which due to it's popularity may spark interest and support for others. Best examples are the gay/trans mania and now it's attempt to bring in pedos as acceptable or something desirable. Or gun control, is another one.

However, one can't have a "soft revolution," but that's the new selling point. Soviet Revolution, Mao's take over, Pol Pot's baby bashing trees, etc. -- "that's the old way." That's when "they didn't know better." "Now things are done -- civilized." "We vote on approving the policies. We prove Mao wrong, that political power doesn't have to come from a barrel of a warm gun." Political power is populist." Right? Far better brand now, eh? Who wouldn't love the "New Communist?" However, there will come a point where enough people have been stolen from and people now realizing they are to be the state's next victim, and seeing the result, say, "hard no," and the result will be violence. Then you get Marx's hot revolution.

That however, doesn't mean automatically mean that violence will be in the form of battle lines and artillery exchanges. The soft revolution violence, I imagine it will be much more subtitle. Mock trials, and prison sentences and the corresponding personal and social destruction that goes with such a situation. As being done with the J6 people.

 

[Likeicare]

Opens thread about communism

Cmt immediately talking about California and then writing textwalls

Closes thread

 

[minty]

Opens thread about communism

Cmt immediately talking about California and then writing textwalls

Closes thread

the smart choice, tbh
i wanna have a civil discussion with flea tho

 

[Sleepy]

Communism, specifically its Marxism-Leninism flavor, is one of the political theories of all time.

The problem however is that, in the US, it's hard to get a good discussion about it because everyone here—however rightfully so—dunks on it. But I don't want to just be "hur dur communism evil" because if someone who actually believes in communism comes along, all they need to do is spout off some crap in a pseudo-intellectial way, and that'll be enough to make me look like a fool. No, I want to learn more about it proper so I'm better prepared to have a legitimate discussion about it.

...

Thankfully ChatGPT has been helpful in answering some of my questions, and so far it seems like the overall conclusion about Communism is: "it'll work as soon as people just magically decide that it'll work". Or, to put it in meme form:

MARX & ENGELS: "Here are the steps to achieving a Communist society:"

1. overthrow the capitalists
2. seize the means of production
3. start up workers councils
4. ????
5. PROFIT! COMMUNISM!

Like, Marx and Engels straight-up didn't cover how it was supposed to happen, they just assumed it would. Lenin had to come along and fill in point #4 as best as he could (stuff like "Communist Party = vanguard of the people", etc) but even then he also left out a lot as well, or some of his ideas didn't work when put in practice but he didn't live long enough to refine those bad ideas further.

...

So yeah, memes and jokes aside, what is Communism supposed to do? How is it supposed to happen? Why do we have psuedo-intellectual democratic socialists who keep telling me "well, true communism has never been done yet" or "well, capitalism is full of flaws too but it's still allowed to exist", and why do they think they're right?

Spoiler: random tl;dr ranting

Speaking of "well true communism hasn't been done right yet"... what gets me are all the different communist theories that exist, and none of them are on friendly terms. It was easier when it was just "Marxism", MAYBE when it was "Marxism-Leninism"... but then Stalin came along and how we have an entire subset of Communists who think his iron fist was justified because it pulled the USSR into the 20th Century, never mind all the people who died (some people need to die, apparently)... which is ironic because that is literally what other authoritarian leaders have done; President Park Chung-hee did that for South Korea, and yet I doubt any Stalinist would be OK with Park and all the people HE killed in order to stabilize South Korea and set it on the path to become the powerhouse it is today.

I swear authoritarian leaders gravitate towards Communism because its very structure is the easiest way to consolidate power. Unlike Western democracies which have inconvienent failsafes like "checks and balanaces", "separation of powers" and "rule of law", basically all Communist governments require is support from the Central Committee and the Politburo, and if you can control who gets elected to those positions, then you can ensure you're always going to be the top dog. That is wholly undemocratic, and yet I can't seem to get a good discussion from anyone on what kind of solutions exist to prevent that from happening in a hypothetical future Communist government that is "done right".

What I'd like to see 21st century European communists do is explain to me how communism can be "done right" for the 21st century, as well as explain to me how they arrived to the conclusion of "because capitalism is evil, communism is the ONLY solution to fix it". I mean, that's like claiming "smoking cigarettes is harmful, therefore barnhall square dancing is the ONLY solution to fixing that"... yeah, I'm being a bit hyperbolic but so many of these modern communists are so obviously wrapped up in idealism that they can't properly explain how it's supposed to actually work, nor can they explain why the failings of capitalism mean that communism is the ONLY/BEST path forward. Even ChatGPT can't dig up a proper explanation of why these solutions will work outside of "it'll work because people want it to work".

It's hard to have a serious discussion about it because it's been tried dozens of times across multiple countries across many different cultures and hasn't ever worked (without heavily modifying the political theory)

 

[Likeicare]

i wanna have a civil discussion

.....

It's hard to have a serious discussion about it because it's been tried dozens of times across multiple countries across many different cultures and hasn't ever worked

How many of those countries that have failed, were under military or economic pressure from US/Nato

 

[Sleepy]

How many of those countries that have failed, were under military or economic pressure from US/Nato

Why did countries like Yugoslavia or China, who had access to the western market, veer away from traditional communism.

 

[minty]

.....

 

[minty]

Why did countries like Yugoslavia or China, who had access to the western market, veer away from traditional communism.

under mao or nao?
china is... special. a lot of The Commies™ do not consider china communist except in name only, what with the stock market n all

 

[minty]

which is another thing: a lot of people say "that's socialist/communist" but does said gov identify itself as such, does it actually match any theory, etc.
ideological words have lost a lot of meaning the last decade or so...

 

[minty]

anyway i wanna discuss the hypothetical logistics of small retarded decentralized village society that increasingly will never be allowed to exist under tyrannical world government rainbow capitalism

 

[Sleepy]

china is... special. a lot of The Commies™ do not consider china communist except in name only, what with the stock market n all

Well yeah that's what I mean

The few communist success stories are not "real communism". My dad went to Cuba and told me it was an absolute shithole when you go off the resort.

 

[Sleepy]

by absolute shithole I mean people are living in tin wall shacks like fallout

 

[minty]

Well yeah that's what I mean

The few communist success stories are not "real communism". My dad went to Cuba and told me it was an absolute shithole when you go off the resort.

that's also not a surprise. it was under protection of the soviets n now it's increasingly becoming bankrupt because of sanctions.

by absolute shithole I mean people are living in tin wall shacks like fallout

you want me to show you some pics from my route? that also exists in prosperous rich glorious rich country of america

 

[Likeicare]

My dad went to Cuba and told me it was an absolute shithole when you go off the resort.

by absolute shithole I mean people are living in tin wall shacks like fallout

This goes back to what i said about US economic pressure

 

[Sleepy]

you want me to show you some pics from my route? that also exists in prosperous rich glorious rich country of america

Yeah but the US has social mobility. In Cuba all the big money making ventures go straight to the military and one party state.

Mind you it's still technically nationalized but that doesn't mean any of it is going to the common person.