Promoting Communism

[consuming negativity]

These are several problems I have identified with current methodologies. I have attempted to include analyses of their efficacy, and provide alternatives where necessary.

This doesn't really apply to individualist (non-communist) anarchism, but in practice, any organization could benefit from the application of this post to their practice.

...

Marx and Engels predicted that revolution would happen because it was in the interest the proletarians to overthrow the bourgeoisie, and that revolution would become the only way the complete overthrow of the current ruling class could happen.

Why? Take a look at the transition into capitalism. The states where there was no physical revolution, there are vestiges of the old feudal system. Because the ruling classes simply merged over time. The United Kingdom is indeed a modern capitalist state... and yet it is also still a Kingdom. The old ruling class never really went anywhere; they were just joined in power by the upper echelons of the merchant class.

But the point here is that the theory behind it is meaningless to the majority of people who will never see beyond the surface. When someone is working all the time it makes them less capable of spending energy thinking about things. They become unable to think higher than their own immediate self interest. Theory itself is not and will never be a realistic means by which to usher in a new economic age. The masses will never rise until they are aware that their genetic continuation through their offspring is put into Jeopardy. Or, in other words, the only way people are ever going to put their lives on the line in a revolution is if they know that the alternative to doing so would mean the extinction of their unique genetic code, passed down through living offspring.

Promotion should therefore be simple and easy for us. No longer will we point to a book and say "read". We can point it out, simply: "if we don't rise up and kill them, our lineage is extinct". Global climate change is most likely the answer as to what will expose the reality of our situation. It is possible for all of their lives to be saved, but not for everyone's lives to be saved. Our children will die if we don't stop CO2 from being pumped into the atmosphere. If this is made apparent, the masses will rise and the vast majority of humanity will be saved.

A classless, stateless society will only develop from this because it will result in the complete destruction of the ruling class. All of the means of production will have to change, in every country. It will not be an option to respect regional sovereignty - therefore, the revolution will be global. Not because it should be global, but because in the situation coming up, borders and governments can not be respected if we are to be victorious. Simply because of the nature of the problem. Every single member of the bourgeoisie will be forced to surrender their position of power, which will destroy all of the ruling classes as an entity. CO2 goes up in the atmosphere no matter where or whom is pumping it.

And there is indeed an internal contradiction in our future situation. We have risen out of our own self-interest for our genetic code, and yet in doing so we have destroyed all private ownership or concept of sovereignty. We have been molded into a single class, both producing and consuming. We will function as a species.

Our analyses are useful for us, but not to the un-thinking. We will never have to point to a prediction and say "let us make it like this". We are merely trying to figure out what will happen next... but we can never know what will happen next. But we can and do know what is in our own self-interest... that is how we can be sure that we are correct.

[StreetsRunRed]

Whenever I try to promote communism people always throw the gigantic (and false) death tolls of Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Che, Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Ho Chi Minh etc. at me.

How do we argue against this to people who are brainwashed to believe attempts at communism leads to this sort of thing?

[motion denied]

I completely disagree.

While it is true that the workers lose a great quantity of time working/commuting/etc, it is not true that they're 'unthinking' or incapable of doing so. Your proposal seems to amount to sloganeering and agitating, which was, has been and will be proven useless by hundreds of attempts and failures. Regardless of the elitist tone, it ignores that consciousness develops in very intricate ways and that the struggle (economical and political, which cannot be separated) is the predominant moment of such development. Also, I find very dangerous that 'we' separate ourselves so rigidly from the workers ('them').

The 'masses', history shows, have indeed risen against its conditions of life. After all, from where does theory come from if not the movement of the proletariat against capital, from class struggle?

I'd like to use a recent example. Couple of months ago street-sweepers, bus drivers and bus conductors (in several states) went on strike against the bosses and the unions. The former, in special, were the spark.

What I'm trying to say is: the task of the vanguard, if I may, is to synthesize and make sense of the struggles, not to scream revolution and hope someone hears it.

[consuming negativity]

I completely disagree.

While it is true that the workers lose a great quantity of time working/commuting/etc, it is not true that they're 'unthinking' or incapable of doing so. Your proposal seems to amount to sloganeering and agitating, which was, has been and will be proven useless by hundreds of attempts and failures. Regardless of the elitist tone, it ignores that consciousness develops in very intricate ways and that the struggle (economical and political, which cannot be separated) is the predominant moment of such development. Also, I find very dangerous that 'we' separate ourselves so rigidly from the workers ('them').

The 'masses', history shows, have indeed risen against its conditions of life. After all, from where does theory come from if not the movement of the proletariat against capital, from class struggle?

I'd like to use a recent example. Couple of months ago street-sweepers, bus drivers and bus conductors (in several states) went on strike against the bosses and the unions. The former, in special, were the spark.

What I'm trying to say is: the task of the vanguard, if I may, is to synthesize and make sense of the struggles, not to scream revolution and hope someone hears it.

I thought of many of these problems with the theory myself, but I believe I have successfully solved all of them.

1. When I speak of "we", I speak of the section of the proletariat which has partaken in a serious examination of capitalism and come to the conclusion that the Communists are correct in their assertion that the tension between the bourgeoisie and proletariat will end in a proletarian revolution. No more does my separation of communists by designating them as such separate the communists from reality, does my separating of us from the rest of the proletariat imply any other fundamental difference, or that they are not part of that whole. Indeed, to recognize someone as a grouping is to analyze them in the context of the out group.

2. Correct - the masses will and do rise. But they do not do so for theoretical reasons; they do so because it is in their interests. You will never convince everybody, or even most people, that communism is a solid theory, before a revolution has happened. Most people aren't interested in theories... capitalism came about not as the result of theories but as the result of the capitalists pursuing their interests. I do not intend to denigrate anyone - neither the capitalists or proletarians are dumb, it's just that nobody can sit there and predict exactly what is going to happen while they're doing it. We can only analyze things properly after they have happened, when we have the whole story and can see the context surrounding those events. Only a small portion of either class partake in analyzing things on such a fundamental level.

... to elaborate ... It is fine for most people not to bother partaking in analysis because there is no role for us in the class struggle outside of our being proletarians ourselves. It's just that we're wasting our time trying to make people into communists or whatever. Communism is a prediction. It is the knowledge we have that it is possible for us to take control. To speak of a vanguard as a leader is to misunderstand the way I see a vanguard - pointing out reality to someone doesn't mean you're creating it. And how many people really need to have it pointed out to them that there are leaders who have it way better than they do?

[consuming negativity]

Also supporting my theory here is the realization that the United States, the capitalist emperor of the earth right now, is also extremely individualized. It is through the realization of our true individual needs that we realize that we are all the same... the revolution will begin in America because Americans are always focused on their own self-interest above all us - we are individuals. And we have the head of the beast in our nation - this is by design - it is one of the infinite contradictions within capitalism. We, the proles who benefit most, will destroy the most individualist society, because it is in our own self interest to destroy private property for individuals, which will bring about a global collectivist nation through the realization of individual needs.

[Slavic]

Also supporting my theory here is the realization that the United States, the capitalist emperor of the earth right now, is also extremely individualized. It is through the realization of our true individual needs that we realize that we are all the same... the revolution will begin in America because Americans are always focused on their own self-interest above all us - we are individuals. And we have the head of the beast in our nation - this is by design - it is one of the infinite contradictions within capitalism. We, the proles who benefit most, will destroy the most individualist society, because it is in our own self interest to destroy private property for individuals, which will bring about a global collectivist nation through the realization of individual needs.


20th century Feudal Russia was extremely individualized???

[consuming negativity]

20th century Feudal Russia was extremely individualized???

What? How the hell did you get that from what I said? "20th century Feudal Russia" is ... not relevant? Maybe? fuck if i know

[ckaihatsu]

When someone is working all the time it makes them less capable of spending energy thinking about things. They become unable to think higher than their own immediate self interest.


This is too facile -- it's not that workers have to "reflect" or "philosophize" -- rather, the very conditions of work under capitalism's commodity regime give workers the *experience* of thwarted collective self-interest, due to capitalism's alienation.





In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1927), Marx identified four types of alienation (Entfremdung) that occur to the worker labouring under a capitalist system of industrial production.[2]




(I) Alienation of the worker from the worker — from the product of his labour




(II) Alienation of the worker from working — from the act of producing




(III) Alienation of the worker from himself, as a producer — from his Gattungswesen (species-essence)




(IV) Alienation of the worker from other workers




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation





Whenever I try to promote communism people always throw the gigantic (and false) death tolls of Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Che, Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Ho Chi Minh etc. at me.

How do we argue against this to people who are brainwashed to believe attempts at communism leads to this sort of thing?


Let them know that objectively the world has changed since that period of history, and that there's no way for people to benefit from being revolutionary quitters.

[consuming negativity]

This is too facile -- it's not that workers have to "reflect" or "philosophize" -- rather, the very conditions of work under capitalism's commodity regime give workers the *experience* of thwarted collective self-interest, due to capitalism's alienation.

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what you mean by "thwarted collective self-interest", and I don't understand how it is the result of alienation.

[ckaihatsu]

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what you mean by "thwarted collective self-interest", and I don't understand how it is the result of alienation.


Sure -- I mean to say that alienation systematically disempowers workers from control over what they produce, so they / we are 'thwarted' from realizing our true collective self-interest.

The term 'self-interest' connotes the sense of an intrepid, fierce individualism, but in fact each and every person's *best* interests -- at least as far as material production and distribution goes -- rest with a broad-based *cooperation* in the work context, one that can't be realized within the scope of capitalism and its commodification / alienation of working life and material production.

[MarxSchmarx]

What if capitalism more or less successfully manages environmental problems, the way it has managed to avoid depressions and bankruns at least in the global north like they had in the 1930s? and if the climate change nightmares don't come to pass?

The left should not under estimate the ingenuity of capital. The environmental crisis is systemic, but only to a point - like the business cycle, there are near to medium term technical fixes quite compatible with capitalism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

2. Correct - the masses will and do rise. But they do not do so for theoretical reasons; they do so because it is in their interests. You will never convince everybody, or even most people, that communism is a solid theory, before a revolution has happened. Most people aren't interested in theories... capitalism came about not as the result of theories but as the result of the capitalists pursuing their interests. I do not intend to denigrate anyone - neither the capitalists or proletarians are dumb, it's just that nobody can sit there and predict exactly what is going to happen while they're doing it. We can only analyze things properly after they have happened, when we have the whole story and can see the context surrounding those events. Only a small portion of either class partake in analyzing things on such a fundamental level.?

I would like to really focus on this point; this elitist idea that only a smaller number of people will ever engage theory at an intellectual level.

The logic implicit in this argument is that theory, at an intellectual level, is too difficult for most people to comprehend. This is a rather academic and elitist view of theory; I would posit that it renders theory not fit for purpose. The whole point of theory, and intellectualism, is to render and more importantly communicate an understanding of the world (potentially with solutions!) to others.

If we cannot communicate our ideas to others, then our theory is essentially pointless. So it is not that people are not able to adapt themselves to suit theory, but that theory, in its current academic, jargonistic, elitist epoch, is un-suitable for communication on the scale necessary to truly ferment social change.

I have recently read bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress, and what I absolutely love is that she has forgone academic conventions, and written from the heart. When I read her work, I felt as though she was talking to me, the reader, as though I am a human being. I could feel the immediacy of her theory to her practical experiences.

When I have read many other academic texts, I do not hear a voice. The language they choose to use, the conventions and norms they follow, and the types of papers they write (increasingly empirical, quantitative and abstracted from situations of personal experience), are very much elitist and designed not to be accessible to any but the most pedantic of readers and, even then, there is not much of personal experience conveyed as to peak personal, emotional interest.

[ReindeerThistle]

Avoid the rhetorical language and the hackneyed formula, and Communism looks good to most workers. The terms "socialism," "communism," et al, have been sullied by the lying bourgeoisie media. Define the concepts before you say the term.

The first task, however, is to negate capitalism. No small task, but when you lay out the facts, seems like a crappy way to run an economy. It throws away tons of usable items, destroys lives and wrecks the planet. We, the proletariat, could do no worse.

[ckaihatsu]

Avoid the rhetorical language and the hackneyed formula, and Communism looks good to most workers. The terms "socialism," "communism," et al, have been sullied by the lying bourgeoisie media. Define the concepts before you say the term.

The first task, however, is to negate capitalism. No small task, but when you lay out the facts, seems like a crappy way to run an economy. It throws away tons of usable items, destroys lives and wrecks the planet. We, the proletariat, could do no worse.


[10] Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

http://s6.postimg.org/q2scney29/10_Supply_prioritization_in_a_socialist_transi.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/9rs8r3lkd/full/)