My view on communism, happy for it to be debunked.

[valdek]

Marx was wrong. No seriously. He said that Communist Revolutions would occur in heavily industrialised countries with a large proleteriat, like Britain and Germany. He even went so far to say (if I recall correctly) that no communist revolution would occur in Russia. And look at where the only places it's happened: the opposite of the model of Marx's.

Communism is an inherently flawed idea, ironically only driven by the "Detested" Bourgeois. No communist revolutionary figure has actually been from the working class which the Communists supposedly admire! Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.

Adding to this, the system's implementation is inherently flawed by the despotic step of the Socialist Phase. Supposedly, the government was to just "Fade Away" but as people are people, this doesn't actually ever happen and you get totalitarianism, the same end result as that of the extreme right wing, so they're just as bad as each other. Communism looks greta on Paper, but it needs everyone to co-operate and that will never ever happen.

[Jimmie Higgins]

As I said the first time this was posted: If you had a specific disagreement or question or something it might be worth discussing, but the trite and misinformed anti-communist arguments above basically sound like this...

"I aint never seen no monkey evolve into a person!:drool:"

[Tommy4ever]

No communist revolutionary leader has ever been from the working class have they? Are you sure?

Rosa Luxemburg (:wub:), Mao (peasant), John Maclean, James Connolly, Bill Haywood, Buenavatura Durruti, Stalin, Gramsci, Alexei Rykov, Sverdlov, Eugene Debs, Togliatti, Tito, Ernst Thallmann, Maurice Thorez ........


This list goes on into eternity silly billy. :rolleyes:

[Savage]

Communism is an inherently flawed idea, ironically only driven by the "Detested" Bourgeois. No communist revolutionary figure has actually been from the working class which the Communists supposedly admire! Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.

There have been communist theoreticians who are not from the working class yes, but in a scenario of class struggle, all participating workers are communist revolutionary figures. Communism is the program towards the abolition of the current social order, not a lifestyle. Communist theoreticians may admire events in the working class struggle, but communists don't admire the proletarian condition or try to glorify it, the only 'glory' to be seized by the proletariat will be in the self destruction of it's class nature.

What are the inherent flaws you are talking about?

[Thirsty Crow]

Marx was wrong. No seriously. He said that Communist Revolutions would occur in heavily industrialised countries with a large proleteriat, like Britain and Germany. He even went so far to say (if I recall correctly) that no communist revolution would occur in Russia. And look at where the only places it's happened: the opposite of the model of Marx's.That's not the whole picture, and you basically miss the basis upon which Marx stated that the developed industrial countries will experience social revolution against capital.
Firstly, towards the end of his life, Marx entertained the possibility of a revolution in Russia which would take the village commune, obschina, as a form of social organization, a basis for the revolution. You may try to google his letters to Vera Zasulich, if I'm not mistaken (don't have the time right now to search for it).
Secondly, the existence of the proletariat, which means full blown capitalism, is crucial for the development of the revolutionary movement. Britain and Germany were such countries, and they did witness a revolutionary situation, especially prominent in the case of Germany and the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 (I'm not that familiar with the situation in Britain at the time, maybe someone could fill in the gaps).
Finally, Marx did not base his writings and political action on a notion of an illuminated prophet that will predict historical events which will undoubtedly happen. His analysis of capital, and also his historical and political texts, do not fall because of the historical outcome of class struggle.


Communism is an inherently flawed idea, ironically only driven by the "Detested" Bourgeois. No communist revolutionary figure has actually been from the working class which the Communists supposedly admire! Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.Others have covered this, but I'd like to add that you bring up here, implicitly, two problems: the class composition of revolutionary and workers' organizations, on one hand, and on the other the very methodology with which Marxists determine the category of social class. The first one desereves its own thread, but the second one is telling: it seems that you're not familiar, or that you are rejecting (without explanation), the Marxist notion of class, which rests upon a group's relation to the means of production (thus Ernesto Guevara was by no means socially "determined" by his exploitation of workers as means to the accumulation of privately owned capital and aggrandizment of personal wealth by such means; in other words, he was not bourgeois).


Adding to this, the system's implementation is inherently flawed by the despotic step of the Socialist Phase. Supposedly, the government was to just "Fade Away" but as people are people, this doesn't actually ever happen and you get totalitarianism, the same end result as that of the extreme right wing, so they're just as bad as each other. Communism looks greta on Paper, but it needs everyone to co-operate and that will never ever happen.
There is not thing such as a "socialist phase", if by this you're referring to the Leninist insistence on the historical necessity of still existing commodity production, the existence of classes and party-state rule within socialism as a distinc mode of production, different from both communism and capitalism.
Also, you should be careful not to misunderstand the "despotic" dictatorship of the proletariat for a dictatorship of the party intertwined with the apparatus of repression (the state) separate from the society as a whole, in the form of a specific institution.
In other words, the phase of revolutionary transformation of society should witness the rule of the working class as a class, with every worker enjoying the ability to enagage directly in the decision making proces, both at the level of the workplace and the political level (worker's and territorial councils). Historically, the despotism of the party was a result of a concrete historical conditions, and it shouldn't be taken as an ahistorical phenomenon, as you claim it always will happen just like that or some other bullshit.
Also: people are people, humans are humans, and we can never get along. C'mon, you really believe that myths, which cannot be proven simply because they function as myths and ideological mystifications of the real processes which we experience as members of a particular society?
Another thing, you do know that accepting uncritically the (inherently flawed) notion of "totalitarianism" will get you nowhere when examining the, for instance, the former USSR and nazi Germany since there is a whole host of important differences which render any kind of a synthetic term, at best, unusable?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Ok, maybe my snarky answer was hasty, but I thought you were being a troll.

First off, I think your criticisms are invalid because Marxism is not Marx just as "Origin of the Species" is not the end-all-be-all of evolutionary theory. Marx could not have predicted how history would develop after his time, the predictions he made need to be seen in this context and he generally expressed things as a tendency not a mechanical formula - he was very clear about that in Capital.

Marx was wrong. No seriously. He said that Communist Revolutions would occur in heavily industrialised countries with a large proleteriat, like Britain and Germany. He even went so far to say (if I recall correctly) that no communist revolution would occur in Russia. And look at where the only places it's happened: the opposite of the model of Marx's.Half right. I don't think we can blame Marx for not taking into account developments that occurred after his death. This is what my snarky response was meant to highlight because anti-evolutionists often use the fact that our knowledge of the fossil record is thin to suggest that since some evolutionary theorist from 100 years ago was wrong about X fossils, that the whole concept of evolution in thrown into doubt. Saying that things developed in a way that Marx could not predict is doing the same thing.

First look at the historical context: Russia did not have much industry (though large and centralized) by the time of the Revolution and it certainty did not have anything to speak of in Marx's time. But there had been much activity in England and France and the German states, so Marx is totally correct in his observation. And there were large movements of workers in these countries - the German Social-Democrat party was the largest in the world, there were massive rebellions of workers in all these countries in 1848 and the Paris Commune!

Second, what was his argument as to why it would happen in advanced countries? Was it because he thought those workers were just bad-ass and awesome? No it was because for communism to happen, there needed to be a developed working class that could express its interests and there needed to be surplus. By the time of the Russian Revolution there was the largest factory in the world in Russia and a small but concentrated working class. Additional Marxist theories developed by the Bolsheviks argued against more deterministic arguments that each country has to go through stages of development to reach the point where socialism was possible: they pointed out that an under-developed country that was in the process of industrializing doesn't start from zero, they actually have the advantage of advanced techniques and machinery developed in older industrial countries.

At any rate, the experience of the Russian Revolution is easily placed into the framework developed by Marx and Engels and others even if Marx himself felt, based on the evidence of his day, that revolution would happen in England or France first. And even if Marxist theory went no further than the Communist Manifesto, these observations and the general theory would still have held up better and been more insightful about the modern world than Weber or Capitalist economists (who have a much worse track-record of predicting future developments than Marx).

Shit I can't believe you are using an example of a working class revolution in Russia to DISPROVE the theory that workers can and would attempt to take power in society.:rolleyes:


Communism is an inherently flawed idea, ironically only driven by the "Detested" Bourgeois. Aside from Engels, I can't think of any notable communist radicals who were from really capitalist backgrounds. If you mean bureaucrats and intellectuals, yes many of the notable writers from an era with low working class literacy were from the ranks of the petty-bourgeois academics or professionals. Who gives a fuck - ever radical I know is either a worker or a student (who will then become a worker most likely). The here in the US, the CP, the IWW, the Black Panthers did not have followings of capitalists or even mostly intellectuals or whatnot.


No communist revolutionary figure has actually been from the working class which the Communists supposedly admire! Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.First I'll say that EASILY most communists and anarchists have been workers. If most of the earlier figures were from educated backgrounds, well that has more to do with the times they lived in than some "inherent flaw" of the theory. Additionally it hs nothing to do with some "moral" admiration for real Marxists who understand the theory. You are conflating some romantic version of Maoism or Guevaraism for Marxism. Ironically Che and Mao did not look to the working class to lead the revolution - I'd argue that their politics are an offshoot of Marxism that actually rejects some of the basic ideas of the theory.


Adding to this, the system's implementation is inherently flawed by the despotic step of the Socialist Phase.How is socialism despotic? Do you mean Russia and so-called Socialist countries today, or do you mean the Marxist theory that workers need to take power in society in order to shape society around their collective interests and democratic decisions? Socialism is about achieving true democracy and real power over our own lives and the labor we put in to make society function. It failed in Russia, the biggest example of a successful revolution led by workers, but capitalist revolutions failed for hundreds of years before capitalism really became dominant, so it is as impossible to judge the validity of Marxist theory based on what even the original Bolsheviks realized was not working. It would be like looking at the early rocket launches, seeing the first few crash and then discounting the theory of aerodynamics.


Supposedly, the government was to just "Fade Away" but as people are people, this doesn't actually ever happen and you get totalitarianism,[quote]Again you are generalizing a failed example to say there is something inherently wrong with the theory. Totalitarianism has nothing to do with socialism and Marxism, what came out of the failures of the Russian Revolution and then emulated by or influenced anti-colonial movements in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America had nothing to do with worker's power.

[quote]the same end result as that of the extreme right wing, so they're just as bad as each other.The USSR was certainty terrible - at least as bad as the US or UK, but with a shorter and more intense development. But is it the same? Even Stalin recognized that his policies were a "different route" than traditional Marxist thought and he had to come up with all sorts of justifications for it and when that didn't work he tried to re-write official communist theory. He made a dogma out of Marxism and these ideas have little to do with working-class self-emancipation (as Marx defined Communism). Compare that to the right-wing... did Hitler promise working class power only to deliver something else... or did he accomplish basically what he claimed he wanted to - making Germany strong, getting rid of worker and communist resistance and protecting German "blood". Did Pinochet offer a bunch of popular reforms and for more democracy only to then deliver repression or bloodshed or did he do exactly what he promised - restore "order" (i.e. destroy the worker's movement) and create a business-friendly environment.

Communism and right-wing capitalism or right-wing nationalism or plain ol' fascism are not the same. Even with the USSR, the horrors were a deviation from, not a fulfillment of the theory.


Communism looks greta on Paper, but it needs everyone to co-operate and that will never ever happen.It requires that people take power into their own hands and decide thing cooperatively - it's democracy and it works well when there isn't a ruling class trying to subvert popular power. Besides what's the alternative to people cooperating in a society where we all must work together anyway. People cooperate in capitalism all the time, every job is a cooperative effort, exept compensation is individual and decisions are dictated from above. If it's not us cooperating democratically, the alternative is someone dictating to us the terms under which we work together. I'll take democracy and worker's power over capitalism and powerlessness thank you.

[Ocean Seal]

Marx was wrong. No seriously. He said that Communist Revolutions would occur in heavily industrialised countries with a large proleteriat, like Britain and Germany. He even went so far to say (if I recall correctly) that no communist revolution would occur in Russia. And look at where the only places it's happened: the opposite of the model of Marx's.
I don't think that he ever said that a revolution would never occur in Russia.


Communism is an inherently flawed idea, ironically only driven by the "Detested" Bourgeois. No communist revolutionary figure has actually been from the working class which the Communists supposedly admire! Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.

I guess Che Guevara is the only communist figure to ever exist. BTW, doctor's are technically part of the working class, and Che spent most of his life in military conflicts without the privileges of becoming a doctor.



Adding to this, the system's implementation is inherently flawed by the despotic step of the Socialist Phase. Supposedly, the government was to just "Fade Away" but as people are people, this doesn't actually ever happen and you get totalitarianism, the same end result as that of the extreme right wing, so they're just as bad as each other. Communism looks greta on Paper, but it needs everyone to co-operate and that will never ever happen.
I'm not even going to waste my time addressing this human nature banter here.

[RedMarxist]

WOW. This is the kind of shit i get at High School all the time. 'Communism works great on paper, but humanz naturez makes it impossible. durrr I stupid anti-communist!'

Read this: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/refugee-literature/ch05.htm

and if your too lazy to read all that then, here is a quote: "Russia undoubtedly is on the eve of a revolution."

Marx did talk about revolution in Russia. The more you read the more you know

Have you even read Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Che? I'm guessing no and you just went by the arguments you've been told all your life by friends and family.

anti-communism breeds laziness.

[W1N5T0N]

Makhno was a farmer, mate.

[Cork Socialist]

Communism is an inherently flawed idea, ironically only driven by the "Detested" Bourgeois. No communist revolutionary figure has actually been from the working class which the Communists supposedly admire! Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.


Your view of Working class people is wrong. Just because you are not poor does not mean you are not working class. As long as you do not own the means of production and employ people to use labour to produce for you, you are working class. Wealth has little to do with working class in my opinion it is production that matters.

[Queercommie Girl]

Marx was wrong. No seriously. He said that Communist Revolutions would occur in heavily industrialised countries with a large proleteriat, like Britain and Germany. He even went so far to say (if I recall correctly) that no communist revolution would occur in Russia. And look at where the only places it's happened: the opposite of the model of Marx's.


Marxism is not Christian fundamentalism and Marx was not a god or prophet. Yes, Marx was an imperfect human being, and for sure he made some mistakes. Lenin built on Marx's ideas which is why Leninism is a more developed and up-to-date version of "original Marxism".

Maybe you fail to realise this, but as with many other things in life, the "original" is often NOT the best.



Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.


A medical doctor is technically a worker, not a bourgeois.



Adding to this, the system's implementation is inherently flawed by the despotic step of the Socialist Phase. Supposedly, the government was to just "Fade Away" but as people are people, this doesn't actually ever happen and you get totalitarianism, the same end result as that of the extreme right wing, so they're just as bad as each other. Communism looks greta on Paper, but it needs everyone to co-operate and that will never ever happen.

Socialist government doesn't necessarily equate with totalitarianism. I support Lenin's idea of a socialist transitional phase, but the Leninist state is supposed to be based on worker's democracy, and it was only the later bureaucratic degeneration under Stalin that took away most of this democracy.

Also, communism does not require anyone to be completely altruistic and selfless to actually function, that is a ridiculous moralisation of basic Marxist ideas, something you are more likely to hear from religious socialists than Marxists.

Communism is just a society where:

1) There is no private ownership and control over the means of production, which are commonly and collectively owned;

2) There is no oppressive state structure associated with an exploiting class that controls the means of production;

3) There is general material abundance and advanced technology, enabling a high standard of living for everyone.

[RedMarxist]

I found something better to say: Get out of revleft anti communist. Or go to the opposing ideologies section!

[Queercommie Girl]

Or is Leninism DOOMED to authoritarianism?


I don't see how any anti-Leninists can really justify this claim, apart from either 1) the empirical evidence that every Leninist state in real history has failed in the end - but then so has every anarchist revolution in real history, so it doesn't "prove" anything; 2) It goes against "original orthodox Marxism" - beside the point that I don't think it actually contradicts "original Marxism" anyway, who says "original Marxism" must always be correct? It's a problem when people start treating Marxism like a fundamentalist religion.

[RedMarxist]

i am a Leninist. I'm only in HS though and was asking a question to better gauge my understanding of it. :D

[Lucretia]

Marx was wrong. No seriously. He said that Communist Revolutions would occur in heavily industrialised countries with a large proleteriat, like Britain and Germany. He even went so far to say (if I recall correctly) that no communist revolution would occur in Russia. And look at where the only places it's happened: the opposite of the model of Marx's.

Communism is an inherently flawed idea, ironically only driven by the "Detested" Bourgeois. No communist revolutionary figure has actually been from the working class which the Communists supposedly admire! Ernesto "Che" Guevara for example went to medical school in a time where that was reserved for the educated elite.

Adding to this, the system's implementation is inherently flawed by the despotic step of the Socialist Phase. Supposedly, the government was to just "Fade Away" but as people are people, this doesn't actually ever happen and you get totalitarianism, the same end result as that of the extreme right wing, so they're just as bad as each other. Communism looks greta on Paper, but it needs everyone to co-operate and that will never ever happen.

The very simple but significant problem with the basis of your question is that it assumes that there have been revolutions that have in fact established communism. There have been workers' revolutions, but those have occurred mostly in less developed areas of the world as a result of unique circumstances emerging from uneven and combined development. As a result, they never resulted in communism and never even had a chance without workers' revolutions in the more developed parts of the world -- which of course would have had the possibility to become communist revolutions as a result of the more developed forces of production and larger proletarian classes.

So your assessment of communism is invalid due to your flawed definition of communism, which seems to be that communism is equivalent to state control over the economy.

[Manic Impressive]

Marx was wrong. No seriously. He said that Communist Revolutions would occur in heavily industrialised countries with a large proleteriat, like Britain and Germany. He even went so far to say (if I recall correctly) that no communist revolution would occur in Russia. And look at where the only places it's happened: the opposite of the model of Marx's.
No Marx was right. He said that in order for a revolution to be successful it would need to occur in an advanced capitalist society. England, France and Germany were the most advanced at the time. A revolution happened in places like Russia and China who then implemented a capitalist stage of transition, in order to industrialize. As I'm sure you know those revolutions were not successful, they both embraced capitalism from the start. capitalism =/= socialism


Adding to this, the system's implementation is inherently flawed by the despotic step of the Socialist Phase. Supposedly, the government was to just "Fade Away" but as people are people, this doesn't actually ever happen and you get totalitarianism, the same end result as that of the extreme right wing, so they're just as bad as each other. Communism looks greta on Paper, but it needs everyone to co-operate and that will never ever happen.
I agree, although you have a narrow definition of communism. Communism is not just Leninism and it's various vanguardist offshoots. It's not what Marx proposed, it was a system created due to the conditions for revolution not being right and due to their attempts to create socialism in one state.

[RedMarxist]

I believe the Paris Commune was Marx's ideal society according to The Civil War In France. Read that and you will understand a lot more then you learned in high school and from reactionary professors.