really TRYING to understand

[jjs]

I see ways that a communist society could benefit everyone and myself of course but there is just somethings that I do not get. Every communist nation from the U.S.S.R. to Viet Nam have oppressed its people. Stalin was not a good man with his Gulags! I look at Communist North Korea and see that the people there have no freedoms and get shot if they try to leave. Communist countries build walls, not to keep people OUT, but to keep people from LEAVING! So where is the benefit? Loss of freedom is not something that I want. I don't want to live in a North Korea or U.S.S.R with crazy dictators like Stalin, who by the way, killed and murdered way more than Hitler did. Please help me to understand why this is such a good thing. Thank You.

[Enragé]

Those countries werent communist. Communism means that people control the workplaces where they work, the neighborhoods they live etc. It is inherently democratic, but in a much more thorough and some would say decentralised way. Representatives are re-callable every second, instead of every 4 years for instance.

The countries you name can best be understood, i think, as being state-capitalist. Just as a regular capitalist company, the state owned the workplaces where the people worked, and had them work there for a wage. Instead of the profit made off of the backs of those people going to shareholders or what not, they went to the bureaucracy/party apparatus. And whereas companies amongst themselves competed however, there was no such competition WITHIN the state-capitalist nation. It competed as a nation with all the other nations/companies in the world.

[Broletariat]

First of all, a Communist society has never been established before. The closest thing to such a society would be Anarchist Spain for that check out this pamphlete http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/pam_intro.html

Communism is a classless society, there would be no government, so do not fear those dictators as they are not existing within a Communist context. The case in which power is consolidated to the State which is what you seem to fear, is called Socialism, that's the transitional phase before we arrive at Communism, from a completely Marxist perspective of course.

Anarchists would advocate skipping the Socialist stage and jumping right into Communism, you can't lead people to a leaderless society and all that.

Any more specific questions do let me know, we're here to help.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Welcome. Please take a look at our learning section where these issues have been addressed in full.

Why would you or any one of us want to live in North Korea or under a dictator? Those are the opposite of socialism or communism by definition. While there are some people who still defend these so-called communist countries, most on this site and on the Left do not. IMO these countries are socialist/communist and democratic in name only.

They are still class societies and the worst of Stalin or North Korea is exactly the same as the worst in other class societies that call themselves capitalist. If you are against socialism because of Stalin's repression (if in your view, the USSR = communism) then you would also have to be equally against capitalism since many market capitalist countries have been equally oppressive. If North Korea means that all attempts at socialism/communism are wrong, then the Shah of Iran, Pinochet, and so on mean that capitalism is equally wrong.

In my view and in my political traddition, socialism is a society where the government and economy are controlled collectively by workers themselves through whatever organizational bodies they want to set up. Communism is a society without states or classes which would result as the organizational structures originally set up by workers after the revolution are no longer needed (because the working class doesn't need to oppress people to force them to work as in class societies of capitalist countries, the USSR, or feudal regimes).

[jjs]

Wow! Thanks for the replies. I have never had it presented that way. Would the "laws" be more tribal then? I mean, whats good for my community may not be good for yours and vice versa?

[Broletariat]

Wow! Thanks for the replies. I have never had it presented that way. Would the "laws" be more tribal then? I mean, whats good for my community may not be good for yours and vice versa?
"Laws" would probably be very simplistic and based upon the principle of "do not infringe on another person's liberty" Liberty being defined here as the ability to act on your own free-will in such a way that does not infringe on another's ability to act on their free-will. Defined this way so as not to allow an interpretation that includes the "freedom" to exploit people.

I'm sort of confused by the principle you have proposed. What do you mean precisely?

[GreenCommunism]

stalin did not kill more than hitler. but none of us want the same thing you just described either.

[Proletarian Ultra]

Bourgeois capitalist rule was pretty much an all-round clusterfuck the first couple times they tried it, too. Just for example, off the top of my head,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland

And of course,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Cruikshank_-_The_Radical's_Arms.png/240px-Cruikshank_-_The_Radical's_Arms.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_terror

Good ol' stable middle class society. Oh and BTW: if it wasn't for Stalin you'd be speaking German right now, so let's not get into the Stalin vs. Hitler game.

[Homo Songun]

OP with all due respect, you are highly misinformed about Soviet Union and Stalin. Life for ordinary people in the Soviet Union, which was Socialist, was vastly superior in every way than life under comparable capitalist states of the time, to say nothing of Imperial Russia. For the first time in history, the toiling classes achieved literacy, health care, leisure time, and education and all the other basic indicators of well being. For example, under Stalin, the life expectancy in the Soviet Union was higher than the United States (unless you were a counterrevolutionary, lol.)

A lot of "leftists" will tell you that Stalin was a mean horrible man and the Soviet Union was "State Capitalist" etc. but that is because a lot of "leftists" are petit-bourgeois, which is a class that, in general, fears Socialism. They can't help it really -- being determines consciousness. So they invent specious theories to justify the vacillating interests of their class.

Inb4 10,000 trotskyists venting spleen

[Jimmie Higgins]

There should be no laws on personal behavior or conduct that does not impact other people. In the initial time after the Russian Revolution, homosexuality and abortion were decriminalized.

Laws around morality and behavior are designed in class societies to make sure that people fall in line since a minority of the population needs the majority to follow the rules of society. Since workers are the majority of modern society, they do not need to force other groups to labor for them, and therefore would not need to construct a code of behavior like class societies have done. In addition, I don't think workers would want or need to set up a permanent police force - so trying to pass laws on behavior in a broad way would be moot anyway, because how would you enforce them?

I don't see how "tribes" come into play because we are talking about modern urban societies. So it's all about working together in a small-d democratic way. If you worked someplace and someone wasn't carrying their weight or they were coming to work drunk or high, I think that the co-workers would just get together and call the drunk worker on it and say: do what you want, but not here at work where you are making it difficult on us.

Cops have only existed for about 150 years, so humans are pretty good at policing themselves in social groups (assuming that everyone in the group is equal in terms of status).

[Jimmie Higgins]

No, people who agree that the USSR and the nationalists that followed that model are afraid of STALINISM - you know, since that system ended up purging and murdering most of the revolutionaries like us who fought for the Russian Revolution in the first place. Socialism is the goal... Stalinism proved to be a wrong turn if the destination is workers power and eventually a classless society.

[jjs]

"Laws" would probably be very simplistic and based upon the principle of "do not infringe on another person's liberty" Liberty being defined here as the ability to act on your own free-will in such a way that does not infringe on another's ability to act on their free-will. Defined this way so as not to allow an interpretation that includes the "freedom" to exploit people.

I'm sort of confused by the principle you have proposed. What do you mean precisely?


I kind of mean something like .... Why should some fat cats in Washington D.C. be allowed to pass laws that affect Eskimos in Alaska or People in Hawaii? You see, Laws should me more localized is what I am saying.

[jjs]

stalin did not kill more than hitler. but none of us want the same thing you just described either.

Stalin's Gulags killed something like 40 or 50 million. Hitler was no where near that. I am not defending either one but all that I ever hear about is how evil Hitler was. Stalin was pretty freekin evil too! Anyway like I said, I really do like the answers that I got here. I have learned something new.! :)

[Broletariat]

I kind of mean something like .... Why should some fat cats in Washington D.C. be allowed to pass laws that affect Eskimos in Alaska or People in Hawaii? You see, Laws should me more localized is what I am saying.
Human society is inextricably connected. To make a long rant short, The Butterfly Effect. But I agree that one community should not be able to purposefully harm another community in order to enrich itself.

[Proletarian Ultra]

It's a shame we suck so bad at dialectics, alleged Marxists that we are.

Dealing with the Stalinist and forging a new model of building a socialist economy require a thorough critique (in the Hegelian sense; not a simple negation or affirmation) of Stalin. He did after all preside over the building of the first self-described socialist economy in the world. Disowning that accomplishment wholesale and entire is either dishonest or counterproductive.

We need - not Ludo Martens, not "he wasn't a real socialist" - and certainly not a compromise between those two positions, which is by far the worst of the three options. We need a thorough analysis that uses the critique of Stalin to build something positive that goes beyond Stalin, like Marx did with Hegel and Ricardo and Proudhon.

So far I don't think we have that. Mao probably came closest, but it's an ongoing task now 57 years after his death.

[Broletariat]

It's a shame we suck so bad at dialectics, alleged Marxists that we are.

Dealing with the Stalinist and forging a new model of building a socialist economy require a thorough critique (in the Hegelian sense; not a simple negation or affirmation) of Stalin. He did after all preside over the building of the first self-described socialist economy in the world. Disowning that accomplishment wholesale and entire is either dishonest or counterproductive.

We need - not Ludo Martens, not "he wasn't a real socialist" - and certainly not a compromise between those two positions, which is by far the worst of the three options. We need a thorough analysis that uses the critique of Stalin to build something positive that goes beyond Stalin, like Marx did with Hegel and Ricardo and Proudhon.

So far I don't think we have that. Mao probably came closest, but it's an ongoing task now 57 years after his death.
I'd say anyone using dialectics sucks at using them tbqh.

[GPDP]

Stalin's Gulags killed something like 40 or 50 million. Hitler was no where near that.

I am no fan of Stalin myself, but that figure is beyond ridiculous. The highest number I've ever heard claimed from anti-communists was like 20 million, and even that is stupidly inflated.

[RedAnarchist]

Pretty interesting email address you have there, and your Facebook page is even more enlightening.

OP banned and thread closed.