"Communists"

[thriller]

I have been pondering this lately, and maybe someone can give me some journal/diaries/biographies to let me know but...
Do you think that people such as Brezhnev, Andropov, Xiaoping, and such believed they were whole-heartedly advancing the goals of communism and the working class? Or we're they lying through out and just deceiving people? I'm not asking if YOU think they were communists, but if THEY thought THEY were communists? Because it seems that most capitalists are quite truthful in the honesty about capitalism an how "great" it is. They believe in capitalism and believe they themselves are capitalists (and most of us would probably agree with them).
Is their problem lying to themselves or lying to the masses?

(I put this in Philosophy since it is sorta 'existential' and a guessing game, feel free to move if need be.)

[helot]

They probably did think they were communists. Hell, there are landlords and employers who see themselves as communists. People can be incredibly contradictory.

[hetz]

Brezhnev was a cynic, Andropov, dunno, he tried something but died before he could do anything. Xiaoping headed the full-scale restoration of capitalism in China.
Most of the nomenklatura wasn't communist in the least, most politicians in today's ex-socialist countries are former "communists".

[GoddessCleoLover]

Agree with hetz about Brezhnev, although IMO Brezhnev was sincere about avoiding nuclear war, he was either burned out or cynical ideologically.

Andropov was ideological, but his ideology was bad, a form of Marxism-Leninism with large doses of his "beloved" KGB to crack skulls and crack the whip.

Deng Xiaoping too was ideological but his ideology favored the restoration of capitalism under the supervision of the Chinese Communist Party.

[Ocean Seal]

I'm pretty sure its not worth it to be a national leader if you don't believe in some cause or another. That being said, maybe they thought that they were protecting the people by lying to them. Anything is possible.

[Blake's Baby]

Andropv was a 'reformer', he was Gorbachev's mentor if I recall correctly.

[Jack]

I've been reading up on the modern Vietnamese Communist party and asking myself the same questions, it seems like in 1986 they got a completely new Politburo full of reformists and even the "left" faction of the party wanted "Market Socialism".

It always makes me wonder if these people actually even read Marx.

[l'Enfermé]

Of course not. If they were real communists they would have been forced to shoot themselves for their crimes.

[Ostrinski]

The general conception we have of Communist statesmen is of cynical, pragmatic bureaucrats and dictators that merely exploited the ideology to legitimize their own power but I'm inclined to think that ideology played a bigger part than some think. Deng Xiaoping said something along the lines of "we'll do what works and call it socialism." That is cynical, i.e. consciously exploiting ideology to pursue more pragmatic goals.

However I do think the more "Stalinist" leaders saw themselves as the guardians of the revolution. It's the only way to explain their pursuance of an inefficient system.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I don't know much about any of them other than maybe Deng, on that subject and bureaucrat I'll give my two cents.

Generally, it's important to note that in all of these states, capitalistic relations remained and the bourgeois countuined to exist as a class. Many bureaucrats might call themselves "socialists" and genuinely mean it, however their conception of socialism is as a means to an end. They want a socialism that can "out compete capitalism", not a socialism that provides people with a happier way of life. This is why I am critical of the Theory of Productive Forces, because it boils down the entire socialist experience down to a method of producing economic growth. But growth for the sake of growth is not socialism, it's capitalism, and these bureaucrats simply represent the bourgeois ideology that is a natural product of their class.

[prolcon]

I don't really understand how a thought experiment like this is at all useful. I very much doubt men like Brezhnev were so self-aware that they were being deliberately deceptive, but what does that matter? What does parsing individual ambition from history actually teach us about the way society behaves? Let's say we determined Brezhnev to be the lyin'-est motherfucker in Soviet Town. Now what? Exactly what have we accomplished?

[GoddessCleoLover]

Point well made, but it seems to me that a society's leadership is at least somewhat emblematic of that society in general.

[prolcon]

Point well made, but it seems to me that a society's leadership is at least somewhat emblematic of that society in general.

This is more or less what I'm saying. Dwelling on the individual character of historical personalities doesn't teach us about what human society is doing at large. I'm sure we can learn things about social development through individual attitudes some of the time, but I don't understand threads like this and others dedicated to determining the moral character of individuals.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I would agree that in discussing leaders the issue of political or philosophical character is more important than that of moral character.

[prolcon]

I would agree that in discussing leaders the issue of political or philosophical character is more important than that of moral character.

I would disagree that individual character of any kind is all that important. If it's emblematic of social trends, an individual's character is only a starting point at best. One individual can't tell you everything about society, although I'd be willing to concede it might be able to tell you a decent amount.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I get the feeling that no bourgeois career politician has genuinely believed in anything for at least 60 years.

[prolcon]

I get the feeling that no bourgeois career politician has genuinely believed in anything for at least 60 years.

I know I'm all about analyzing history and shit, but this is on the nose.

[GoddessCleoLover]

At the risk of being disputatious the ones who "believed in something" like Reagan and Thatcher were even worse than ones who were cynical.

[prolcon]

At the risk of being disputatious the ones who "believed in something" like Reagan and Thatcher were even worse than ones who were cynical.

Not even Reagan bought for one second that anything was gonna "trickle down." That's the kind of thing Mises Institute scholars have to make themselves choke down.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Reagan was a little more cynical than Thatcher. Thatcher seemed to really believe her own bullshit. I stand by my point that among bourgeois politicians, ideologues are often even worse than cynics. In the USA, I would point to Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan as examples of Tea Party-oriented ideologues who are extremely dangerous.

[Yuppie Grinder]

At the risk of being disputatious the ones who "believed in something" like Reagan and Thatcher were even worse than ones who were cynical.

They're actually exactly the sort of people I'm talking about. They're the sort of politicians that were built by marketing firms. The last American politician who actually believed in things was probably Nixon and he was a huge dookie head so yea.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Nixon actually reinvented himself as "The New Nixon" using Madison Avenue principles.

[prolcon]

I'm gonna put the last honest American president at Andrew Jackson. Arbitrarily.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Give me Honest Abe over the Indian-hater every day and twice on Sundays.

[prolcon]

Actually, I'm going to nominate a Republican: I kind of like Ike.

Anyway, I don't think Dwight Eisenhower was a communist.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Ike let the Rosenbergs die in the electric chair and gave John Foster Dulles total foreign policy control. This lead to right-wings coups, first and foremost in Iran and Guatemala. FDR and Truman were better than Ike IMO.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Reagan was a little more cynical than Thatcher. Thatcher seemed to really believe her own bullshit. I stand by my point that among bourgeois politicians, ideologues are often even worse than cynics. In the USA, I would point to Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan as examples of Tea Party-oriented ideologues who are extremely dangerous.

Any human being who could say that Bobby Sands deserved his fate with honesty is nothing more than scum whose life shouldn't be viewed as equally valuable as the lives of all of those brave men and woman who were slaughtered under her tyrannical rule.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Very well put. Raging ideologues like Thatcher are even worse than the run-of-the-mill bourgeois pols.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Very well put. Raging ideologues like Thatcher are even worse than the run-of-the-mill bourgeois pols.

Yea, sorry for losing my cool there for a moment. I know a guy who served in the PIRA who was crippled in a loyalist shooting, so the troubles are a bit of a touchy subject for me.

[GoddessCleoLover]

No prob. Thatcher is reviled around here. Even the Third World Caesarian Social Proletcrats AFAIK don't support Thatcher.

[prolcon]

Ike let the Rosenbergs die in the electric chair and gave John Foster Dulles total foreign policy control. This lead to right-wings coups, first and foremost in Iran and Guatemala. FDR and Truman were better than Ike IMO.

I do like how he taxed the motherfuck out of the rich, though. At least relatively.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Ike continued tax policies that were implemented by FDR.

[prolcon]

FDR rocks, man.

[GoddessCleoLover]

FDR rocks, man.

He was progressive for his time and considering that at the end of the day he was a bourgeois politician. IMO Obama has been timid in comparison to FDR.

[thriller]

I don't really understand how a thought experiment like this is at all useful. I very much doubt men like Brezhnev were so self-aware that they were being deliberately deceptive, but what does that matter? What does parsing individual ambition from history actually teach us about the way society behaves? Let's say we determined Brezhnev to be the lyin'-est motherfucker in Soviet Town. Now what? Exactly what have we accomplished?

That is sort of the reason I put it in Philosophy, since it is not exactly able to be proven, especially scientifically. When I read about such rulers of alleged "communist states" I often ask myself this question because I find it interesting. It's also interesting because people on revleft, myself included, often talk about Obama as being full of shit and lying to the American people in order to get elected and advance the interests of full-fledged capitalism. So isn't it worth taking a look at other leaders who claim to advance the interests of communism?