Books to support my arguments?

[comrade_cyanide444]

Hey everyone, I haven't been posting here for a while.

So I have this teacher in AP US History. He's really far right and always rips on me for being the resident Marxist-Leninist (in a joking manner). At the end of the year, we have to write a 10 page or more term paper, and I want to write mine on the advantages, myths and possible application of Communism to an American-style economy (it IS AP US history). This teacher has mentioned a few points against Communism (as well as a bunch of bullshit stories about Vietcong frying babies and Che ordering execution of mentally disabled children): a) Communism allows the rise of a single autocratic dictator b) All the lower class in America moved on to the middle class environment with time throughout American history, with emphasis on the early 1900's and the massive immigrant wave then c) Communism has failed in countries across the world, and their economies are in complete ruin, China has improved by repealing Communist policy d) Communists kill babies e) Communism does not allow individual ability to fluorish

EDIT: He also mentioned (sarcastically) that no one immigrated to East Germany/The USSR, but droves emigrated out of there, some being killed in the process

Can anyone recommend good books to read in order to defend against such arguments? What about atrocities committed by clear capitalism? I have ordered "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" by Lenin and have already read the Manifesto many times as well as portions of Gramsci's selected works. Does anyone have recommendations?

[Die Rote Fahne]

Approach it from a non leninist p.o.v. That's my opinion.

Use examples like the paris commune and anarchist catalonia.

Be sure to explain WHY the USSR and Cuba had become state capitalist/bureaucratic collectivist.

Some Trotsky may help.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Seems to me, since this is a course in American History, that you have three options:

1) History of Marxism-Leninism in America (i.e., "Communism.") Check out "Secrecy and Power. The Life of J. Edgar Hoover" by Richard Gid Powers, which has a good chapter on how Hoover invented those myths about baby-chomping Bolshies. That way next time your teacher throws this stuff at you he'll know where it comes from.

2) History of Communism in America. There's a nice body of literature pointing out how America was far more of a socialist society than most would admit - actually, the Teabaggers are kind of onto that. I would start with William Appleman Williams' "The Contours of American History," because it had a huge influence on SDS and the 'sixties generation, but there's a lot of other historians who talk about this, like Alexander Saxton and Daniel Walker Howe. And here's a promising article:
Joyce Appleby, “The Vexed Story of Capitalism Told by American Historians, “ Journal of the Early Republic 21 (2001), 1-18.
You could also look into the history of various "Communist" communes like the Icarians, the Shakers, etc. Shakers would be fun, especially if you live close enough to a Shaker community.

3) America is Capitalist and capitalists eat babies, too. Howard Zinn's People's History of America. Easiest by far, but I wouldn't go there.

Hope this helps.

[comrade_cyanide444]

Ok, so I have some reading for American History set for sure.

Now are there any books written from a non-biased or semi-biased position that might demonstrate how capitalism might not work or how capitalism has its own flaws as does communism? Right now, the general opinion is that communism absolutely does not work. It supposedly cannot exist without autocracy.

[MarxSchmarx]

Now are there any books written from a non-biased or semi-biased position that might demonstrate how capitalism might not work or how capitalism has its own flaws as does communism?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "communism" but people liek Michael Albert and Irving Howe in an American context have derided both capitalism and Soviet-style communism.

Also, since this is for an american history class, read this article:

Katz, Claudio J. Thomas Jefferson's Liberal Anticapitalism.American Journal of Political Science 47(1) pages 1–17, January 2003

[Kowalsky]

if you want to rebat on china being a capitalist state, you can rely on Giovanni Arrighi's Adam Smith in Beijing

About the general performance of "real socialism" states, you have to remember that anytime a country turned to red, that country was attacked by the imperialist forces and that you cannot have a good economy when you are under embargo.

About capitalism, you can focus your attention on the history of african colonization

[Dave B]

on imperialism why not mention that all American hero, Mark twain?

Mark Twain Attacks American Imperialism Again: 100 Years After His Death!!


http://last-lost-empire.com/blog/?p=503


.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I don't really have the time, energy or motivation to address all this nonsense; but one point: Thousands upon thousands of people went (and in the case of Cuba still go) to the "Communist Countries" for free or low cost education, training, etc. A Google search should bring up info on this.

[Gorilla]

At the end of the year, we have to write a 10 page or more term paper, and I want to write mine on the advantages, myths and possible application of Communism to an American-style economy (it IS AP US history).

That's very ambitious. I wouldn't reccomend doing it, not in 10 pages. Really in order to prove a hypothetical like that you will have to discuss dozens of comparative historical examples and refute a million possible counterarguments, you'd have to not only reach outside American history, but outside of history generally into economics etc. You'd be setting yourself up for "Good Effort! (Nice try, son)"

One way you might come out ahead is pick an example from American history where Communists were way ahead of their time, and anti-communism - even "liberal" anticommunism very clearly fucked over not only commies but the working class and the historical progress as a whole. Examples might include:

The labor movement (e.g. the founding of the CIO, Trot-led strikes during WWII)
The civil rights movement
Draft resistance in WWI (of course, CPUSA wasn't founded yet, so you'd be dealing with Socialists and Wobblies)

Another angle might be to pick a specific area where the US is totally deficient and compare a historical Communist country where even if everything else wasn't awesome, that was really good. E.g. public daycare for children, US vs. East Germany 1950-89.

Another thing you could do is ask, if communism is so terrible and it was eevul Stalin in charge at the time, why did so many smart New Dealers like Henry Wallace think it was pretty cool and worth learning from. There's the Obvious Conservative Answer, which is that they were dopes who were hoodwinked, but that's too simplistic to stand on its own so you can show that they found some genuinely awesome things the found about the Soviet system especially compared to glaring deficiencies in America.

Those are a couple approaches I can think of to keep the subject in a smaller range that's more in your favor. Sorry I don't have specific reading recommendations.

[Return to the Source]

Three years ago, I'd have told you to familiarize yourself with the basic fundamental workings of capitalism. If you understand how the system works, you can easily identify and explain the contradictions off-the-cuff (Marx's Wage Labor and Capital is as succinct and complete an explanation as any).

tbh, It's pretty easy to just make the argument that capitalism sucks right now, because we're still in the middle of the biggest collapse of global capital since the Great Depression. I've found that most people just accept this as a given, and if they don't in this economic climate, they're probably not the kind of people you want to recruit/convince.

The hang-up for most people is what to replace the system with. You should familiarize yourself with the incredible achievements of socialism in practice. Cuba's a good place to start. If you're running into problems proving that socialism guarantees greater democracy for workers, check out University of Oregon Professor of Sociology Linda Fuller's 1992 book, Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba. It's a bit pricey on Amazon, but it's an invaluable resource that you can probably find at a nearby university library.

[Olentzero]

As far as point B is concerned, you might try checking out a recently re-released two-volume work: The Lean Years (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Lean-Years) and The Turbulent Years (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Turbulent-Years) by Irving Bernstein, about working-class unrest and fightback in the decades surrounding the Great Depression. Even middle-class dreams were beyond the reach of most American workers then, and they turned to more radical conclusions as a response. Lenin's Imperialism might not be too much help in this particular area; it's more a theoretical work aimed at understanding imperialism as a whole than an examination of the atrocities of capitalism. Good on you for ordering it, though!

[ar734]

You need to rip him for being the resident Hitler-Fascist. Find a picture of the girl running down the road naked after being napalmed in Vietnam. Our esteemed Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote an opinion upholding the forced sterilization of the mentally retarded: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Failed communists states? Two third world dirt poor states, Vietnam and Cuba have 1) defeated the world's military superpower, and 2) withstood a 70 year blockade by the world's military superpower. China, the world's leading communist state is about to overtake the U.S. as the leading economy. China not communist? Tell the Chinese that. Socialism? Go to Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands; these countries have the highest standard of living in the world. Lower classes don't exist in the U.S.? What dreamland is that guy living in?

The best book on this, is still, I think, Capital, Vol I. You should bring it to class. I wish I had had the guts to bring it to class when I was in school. Don't let the bastards get you down!

Oh, and about East Germany. The Nazis in WWII murdered over20 million Russians. If the Nazis had done that to the U.S. Germany would not exist as a country anymore, and it would be punishable by death for anyone to say they were German citizens.

It's socialism or barbarism. You're the socialist, he is the barbarian.

By the way, if you attend a public school, how does the capitalist-cheerleader justify his job? Isn't he taking public money (aka socialism)? Who pays for the upkeep of the buildings? Who pays for his insurance? Who pays for his parents' Social Security and Medicare? Who pays for the enforcement of civil rights laws? Or may he is a Rand Paul type who doesnt believe government should tell restaurant owners they can't serve "the" blacks or state governments can't keep black kids out of public schools. Maybe he believes civil rights is really a capitalist idea? If he can say that with a straight face he deserves to be teacher of the year for Drama class.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Howard Zinn A People's History of the United States

Edit:

Yeh, the Vietcong were the ones frying babies....
http://talk.onevietnam.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Agent-orange-deformities-vietnam.jpg

[Apoi_Viitor]

Also, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this for a rebuttal of the 'economic failure' argument.

[comrade_cyanide444]

Hmm well I'm sure that after these logical arguments, he will tell me that Communists butchered people ad all Communist states eventually become autocratic shitholes.

How should I counter that? Mentioning how capitalism promotes the dominance of large firms that stunt the growth of the economy? This guy is one of those old-time lassaiz-faire economy people calling Obama a Socialist.

[Apoi_Viitor]

he will tell me that Communists butchered people ad all Communist states eventually become autocratic shitholes.

Here is an example of those murderous tyrants at work...

A quote from Noam Chomsky (http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm):

He (Amartya Sen) estimates the excess of mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame," 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen).

In a google search I found this (http://www.historum.com/asian-history/20376-peoples-opinion-mao-zeodong-5.html):

In fact the GLF excess deaths are calculated relative to the low levels of mortality that the communists had achieved in the first decade of the PRC. The actual mortality rates during the GLF were not much different from the mortality rates prevailing over the first half of the 20th Century. And not too much different from the mortality rates of India at the same time. In fact anti-communists unwittingly give huge credit to the communists for reducing mortality up to the GLF, in order to max out the excess deaths calculations. So they use this to label Mao a mass murderer. It’s ridiculous.
Look at the mortality rate trend here:

http://www.bikealpine.com/p_10.gif

Great Leap Forward
The maximum death rate is abotu 25/1000 in 1960. This compares to 21/1000 in 1949, not that much of a difference.
But here is the kicker. Look at the death rates in India over the same time (1951 to 1960). They averaged at 22.8/1000 over the entire decade.
So India was more or less at GLF conditions for the entire 1950s. Whereas China for one year only had death rates slightly exceeding the Indian average for the decade.
It can be said that the century leading up to 1949, the Chinese people suffered more or less GLF conditions continually. I repeat the GLF tragic as it was, was more or less the norm for China before the revolution. And the Indians underwent continual GLF conditions over the entire 1950s.
Look at these horrific pictures of a typical Chinese scenes in Nationalist China 1946 (and this period was never even described as a famine period).
LIFE - Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=81QEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=1946,+china,+famine,+child&source=bl&ots=PipWY2aPx-&sig=EaQQV01IVdN85DLlZ2yLdbGYQc0&hl=en&ei=HiyhTPq-BcvFswaM6p3wAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=1946%2C%20china%2C%20famine%2C%20child&f=false)
Note the children dying of hunger in the streets while people walk around them, the dying child in front of a fat well fed smiling rice merchant. This was the norm in pre-revolutionary China!
(by the way you will also note there is a picture of a starving boy with a begging bowl at the same link. Dated 1946. Yet Dikotter incredibly dishonestly misrepresents this image as from ‘Mao’s’ Great famine on his book cover).
The huge tragedy of the GLF is it bucked the trend in post 1949 China, and the millions of ‘excess’ deaths arise from calculating against the low mortality that the communists had achieved in the decade leading up to the GLF, and brought New China back, for a while, to pre-revolutionary conditions.

[Franz Fanonipants]

As Gorilla said, he'll probably totally crush you for your paper not being a history paper. History needs to be based on certain principles, writing a paper on "what if" conjecture is shitty history.

Instead, as Gorilla said again, focus on a situation where the CP or other leftists were ahead of the curve. I'd recommend looking at the Panthers free breakfast programs and how they impacted the implementation of free breakfast programs nationally.

[Franz Fanonipants]

Hmm well I'm sure that after these logical arguments, he will tell me that Communists butchered people ad all Communist states eventually become autocratic shitholes.

How should I counter that? Mentioning how capitalism promotes the dominance of large firms that stunt the growth of the economy? This guy is one of those old-time lassaiz-faire economy people calling Obama a Socialist.

Don't tell him shit, he's beyond the pale.

[Tim Finnegan]

Dig up some statistics on the Irish Potato Famine. They lost a higher proportion of their population than North Korea did during its famine, and that with the legality of emigration acting to lessen population pressure. And you know the kicker, the real beauty of that whole deal? Ireland produced more than enough population to feed itself for the entire duration of the famine, it was just all being shipped over to England. I mean, when a market economy acting efficiently causes more death and suffering than a centralised command economy acting hideously inefficiently, you know that's something's up.

[ar734]

Practically every country in Western Europe butchered, raped and enslaved millions of people in Africa, South and North America and Asia for 400-450 years after 1492. This includes England, Holland, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy, all capitalist at the time. England used deliberation starvation as political policy in India; it used deliberate opium addiction in China (the Opium Wars); the U.S. used slavery, murder and genocide as part of its political policy; it even made slavery part of its constitution.

Western Europe started WWI to settle its imperial claims around the world. This war killed about 10M, the war resumed in WWII, killing about 80M.

The U.S., France and Britain resumed their slaughter in Indonesia and Vietnam, killing about 3-4 M.

What is it about capitalist slaughter that your prof enjoys but communist slaughter he finds so unpleasant? It would take socialist and communist governments another 300 years to catch up with the barbarity of capitalism.

And he doesn't like autocracy? Every country in the world (except, maybe, for Greece, except for the slaves) was autocratic until the 17th century. Does he especially approve the autocracy of QEI, Louis XVI, Friedrich the Great, Tsar Nicholas, Hitler (who is probably his favorite), Franco, Mussolini, Ceasar, Napolean, etc., etc.

GIVE HIM YOUR BEST SHOT, KID!!! Lets us know how it goes.

[Tim Finnegan]

And he doesn't like autocracy? Every country in the world (except, maybe, for Greece, except for the slaves) was autocratic until the 17th century. Does he especially approve the autocracy of QEI, Louis XVI, Friedrich the Great, Tsar Nicholas, Hitler (who is probably his favorite), Franco, Mussolini, Ceasar, Napolean, etc., etc.
I'm not sure if you know what "autocratic" means. It refers to the condensation of limitless power into one individual, which was not formally true of many regimes- the English monarchy, for example, was bound by feudal obligations even before the introduction of the Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, etc.- and practically true of even less. Effective autocracy is a product of certain material conditions, and ones which are very rare indeed in a capitalist society. In fact, from your list, only Louis XVI, Friedrich II and Nicholas II could be substantially described as "autocrats", and they all emerge from a specific ideological tradition.

Which, incidentally, would be true if the list happened to include Stalin, Mao, and probably any other "communist" dictator other than maybe Kim Il-sung. Because Western caricatures of these figures are quite usually bullshit.

[Olentzero]

Which, incidentally, would be true if the list happened to include Stalin, Mao, and probably any other "communist" dictator other than maybe Kim Il-sung. Because Western caricatures of these figures are quite usually bullshit.Wait, what? I'm a little confused here. Are you saying everyone except the Glorious Sun of Korea is an autocrat, or that everyone except the Colossus of Juche/Songun Makeouts and High Fives isn't an autocrat? I've read your post a couple times over and I still can't parse it.

Incidentally, here's the coffee (http://www.autocrat.com/) autocrats drink.

[Tim Finnegan]

Wait, what? I'm a little confused here. Are you saying everyone except the Glorious Sun of Korea is an autocrat, or that everyone except the Colossus of Juche/Songun Makeouts and High Fives isn't an autocrat? I've read your post a couple times over and I still can't parse it.
My apologies; I meant that only the Eternal President could potentially be considered an "autocrat" in the proper sense. All other Marxist-Leninist dictators, however powerful, had some structural or practical limits to their authority. Even Stalin, despite being characterised as the "Last Tsar" by Westerners, still had to work within party structures as much as the 14th century King of England had to work within the terms of feudal vassalage.

[comrade_cyanide444]

As Gorilla said, he'll probably totally crush you for your paper not being a history paper. History needs to be based on certain principles, writing a paper on "what if" conjecture is shitty history. I don't care if I get an "F", but I will try to use historical examples. I will try to get a 5 on the actual AP Exam. It's not really the class grade that matters much anyways. And he doesn't hate me, he just thinks I'm really dull for being a socialist. Should I order a book on the Paris Commune to study?

I want to shy away from colonialism. He will try to prove that American Capitalism is more superior than that "colonialistic bullshit". Any way to prove that American-style Capitalism (modern) is no different from mercantilism and merchant-based capitalism back in the 17th and 16th century? Would you people consider Kim Jong-Il (not Kim-Il Sung) Communist?