Define communism.

[Kidlicious]

LotM,

Thank you. You might want to identify the quote in post #49. I didn't remember reading it.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kidicious


I disagree. The opposite is true. Lack of attention to the forest has resulted in failure.

I don't doubt that both are true, but IMO the attention to detail is missing quite significantly, particularly in China where they seemed to forget that people need to actually know how to farm in order to do it reasonably well...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by snoopy369


I don't doubt that both are true, but IMO the attention to detail is missing quite significantly, particularly in China where they seemed to forget that people need to actually know how to farm in order to do it reasonably well...

IMO, that was planned. They didn't care as much about developing China economically as they did controlling their people.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Kidicious
LotM,
Thank you. You might want to identify the quote in post #49.

Agreed. If you could be so kind LotM ...

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Which by the way, most internet discussions are not. Of course the word "Communist" has been loosed from its real world moorings since 1991. Its become as loose as fascism. To folks who like it, "Im a communist" means "I am socially idealistic in some fashion, and not like all the greedheads at my high school waiting for the next PS3 pricecut, and, Im against the guys who beat up on gays, and Im an atheist" To the folks on the right "Hillary's a communist" means "Hillary supports something my dad says will make his taxes go up, shes some kind of lesbian, and I dont like her" (of course folks on the right have been playing loosey goosey with left wing terminology for a long time)

Kind of the way fascist has come to mean "Something on the right, that I dont like"

None of which has anything to do with mature political discussion.

Yes. 'Communist' does seem to be adopted by some seeking to portray a radical posture rather than a concrete position based on the history of the underlying philosophy. Whatever that is - hence the value of this discussion.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


Agreed. If you could be so kind LotM ...

Che

[The Vagabond]

Re: Define communism.

"Communism is the power of the Soviets plus electrification of the whole country."
V.I.Lenin



P.S. Sorry, just couldn't resist.

[Elok]

"I'm sorry, Lisa, but if I let you in the performance that would be treating you as equal to the other children. And what do we call it when you treat people as equal, even when they're plainly not equal? Class?"
"COMMUNISM!"
"That's right. And I'll be damned if I tapped out Morse code messages in the Cold War till my shoes filled with blood just so I could roll over for the Reds right here at home."

(from memory, probably wrong in several details)

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious
A system of government in which everyone is treated equally.

What a lovely soundbite. It sounds so nice. If only haven't heard from you so many times that anyone that even spoke out against your royal sounding "we" probably gets the equal treatment of a bullet in the head


Whenever I hear people trumpeting "equality" I wonder what type?

I support equality of opportunity to the extent that any government actor can grant that. The government cannot change that some people have better parents, are simply more intelligent, have a better mentor/teacher, or even that some people give less attractive people a hard time/fewer breaks. So I agree that TOTAL equality of opportunity cannot exist since you cannot " homogenize" people and their experiences.

I actually do not believe "equality of condition" is a desirable goal. While I fully like and believe in government trying to help all people enjoy a quality of life above a certain standard, I also like the idea that people can IMPROVE their individual standard of living through their own inventiveness or hard work.

[Cort Haus]

LotM, your PM inbox is full.

[SpencerH]

Define Communism.

Hmmm?

A typically nasty fantasy of the pathetically mediocre.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Flubber
What a lovely soundbite. It sounds so nice. If only haven't heard from you so many times that anyone that even spoke out against your royal sounding "we" probably gets the equal treatment of a bullet in the head

...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


Which by the way, most internet discussions are not. Of course the word "Communist" has been loosed from its real world moorings since 1991. Its become as loose as fascism. To folks who like it, "Im a communist" means "I am socially idealistic in some fashion, and not like all the greedheads at my high school waiting for the next PS3 pricecut, and, Im against the guys who beat up on gays, and Im an atheist" To the folks on the right "Hillary's a communist" means "Hillary supports something my dad says will make his taxes go up, shes some kind of lesbian, and I dont like her" (of course folks on the right have been playing loosey goosey with left wing terminology for a long time)

Kind of the way fascist has come to mean "Something on the right, that I dont like"

None of which has anything to do with mature political discussion.

ahem. I resemble that remark and I'm 39.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
As an example, I point to the fact that in Marx's own time, the international organization of socialists was the "socialist international" while it was the USSR that organized the Communist International. AFAIK there isnt a single 20th century political party that called itself Communist that didnt consider Lenins works "canonical".

The Socialist International was founded after WWII. You're thinking of the Second International, which was also founded after Marx's death. The SI folded in 1916 because of its betrayal of the workers by supporting WWI. After the war, it was reorganized and later merged with some of the parties who had refused to merge with it in 1920, forming the Socialist and Labour International, which itself folded in 1940.

As for communists, the current of council communism does not consider Lenin's work to be canonical. Nor do many Luxemburgists.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
heterosexism, and all other forms of oppression are abolished, humanity ceases to be alienated from itself and from nature and

Thats only in Communism 3.0. I doubt its in any of the cannonical works. The part about heterosexism, I mean.

Don't get hung up on terminology, LotM. You know damn well that the abolition of sexism was part of the Socialist agenda and that the early Bolshevik government was among, if not the, first to legalize homosexuality in the modern era.

What differentiates Marxist communism from general socialism (communism being a subset of socialism) is that we believe that the working class must smash the organs of repression of the bourgeois state and create their own democratic state which represents their interests and prevents the return of the bourgeoisie. This is known as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

No sir. At least not if you mean to imply that this is Marxism in general. IIUC Marx in his own time allowed for the possibility of success within existing democratic states - dictatorship of the proletariat meant merely the social state when the proletariat ruled (including by bourgeois legal means) but had not abolished property relations. It was a term describing a social state, NOT a statement about political forms. You sir, are giving, AFAICT, a basically Leninist interpretation of Marx, one that, again AFAIK, has not been universally held among Marxists since it was proclaimed. If you mean to say this is what differentiates Communist Marxism, from other views of Marxism, as well as from other views of socialism, that would be more correct.

From the 1872 intro to The Communist Manifesto, Marx notes that "One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.'" The point, which you misunderstand, isn't that Marx thought that democracy made violence unnecessary. Rather, in the particular nations listed by Marx, he felt that the combination of democracy (though the working class couldn't vote in England, and maybe not in Holland either) AND the lack of a institutionalized repressive state apparatus (none of these countries had standing armies or police at the time) meant that the workers could take power peacefully via the ballot without having to worry about a coup d'etat. That period has passed, and in any event, I suspect Marx was being naïve, and had forgotten such events as the Peterloo massacre. Nor had he yet witnessed the government repression in the United States during the Great Labor Uprising.

As for your historical drama, you might consider that the actual numerical position of the working class, as well as its own internal divisions, had a substantial impact on the need of socialists to compromise.

There is a difference between compromise and outright betrayal. Voting for WWI was an outright betrayal of the interests of the working class. Murdering Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and the German revolution was a betrayal. Siding with imperialism against the USSR was a betrayal. Today, carrying out the neoliberal agenda is a betrayal. Frankly, since 1914, all the Social Democrats have done is try and convince the capitalists that they can manage capitalism better than the capitalists can. Not one social democratic party has attempted to move towards socialism except the Social Democratic Party of Finland, and they were slaughtered in 1918 by the bourgeoisie and Junkers.