Debating with people who lived in 'actually existing socialist' countries

[Left Voice]

I was relaxing by the river today and a guy came over and started talking to me. Not uncommon here in Japan where foreigners are so uncommon, you tend to speak to other foreigners when you happen to bump into them. This specific guy was Czech and he was really nice, we started talking about a whole bunch of stuff.

Eventually, we started talking about politics. It turns out that he was no lover of Communism. Not that he was is a capitalist - quite the opposite, dislikes bankers, businessmen etc. He self-describes as a 'spiritual' person who works in order to pay for his means to travel around the world, mostly by hitch hiking. Certainly not pro-establishment.

But his basic opposition to Communists is that they were only interested in the workers, Himself being a poet and an artist, he claimed that poets, artists, scientists and other people of talent and intelligence were discriminated against by the Communist government.

None of this is new, we know that the old Eastern European Communists governments were authoritarian who clung to power using fear. But it left me in an awkward situation - I, a Communist, felt unable to dictate the positives of Communism to somebody had lived through the worst of nominally-'Communist' dictatorships. Describing such societies as 'deformed workers states' or whatever just doesn't wash with people who actually had to live under oppression. I found treading on eggshells, talking about less authoritarian forms of Communism, even reverting to using the term 'socialism' instead, and talking about anti-capitalism in general, just because I had no explanation for the experience that this person had suffered under the 'Communist' government. Most shocking for me was how it supposedly turned people against the working class. The guy was also a proud farmer, thus a member of the peasant class.

How do others here square this circle and debate with people who lived under previous Communist governments and hated it? Especially aimed towards other Eastern Europeans here.

[Loony Le Fist]

Although someone has personally experienced something they consider communism, it doesn't actually mean they experienced what communism is really about. Most people, understandably, are apathetic about politics. Therefore, they tend to be uninformed or misinformed about the terms, economic systems, and political systems. It is not about arrogant snobbery either. I know it is not an easy task to cut through the bullshit. When you are trying to put food on the table and keep your utilities on, understanding the political system tends to get back-burnered.

Part of this is intentional--it is not in the interests of the minority who control the levers of power for the larger masses to understand the nature and source of that power. Also consider if it is in their interests for those same masses to understand their own collective power.

This individual's argument sounds more like he is arguing against a straw man. Anti-intellectualism/science/art propaganda and attitudes are more associated with fascism in my mind. There are governments that have referred to themselves as communist who have identified with those ideas unfortunately.

The only advice I can give is to have an open mind on this you know you don't understand, but stick to your guns on issues where you know the facts are on your side. There is good empirical evidence that capitalism is a failure, though the way that evidence is framed and presented by the media and especially financial news is what makes it difficult to see. Additionally, there is good evidence that more egalitarian societal organizations have both real economic and psychological benefits. The best part is that you can use the bourgeoisie's own scientific research against them.

[John Nada]

You could always use the "It was state capitalist" card. True, but maybe a bit of a cop out.

I'd ask why he thinks socialism is totally bad. What was it like living under "actual existing 'socialism". It'd be interesting to learn first hand. AFAIK repressing art and science isn't from the ideas of Marx, Engels, or even Lenin. If anything not having to work for profit would liberate art and science.

How old was he? Could his shitty experience have to due with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia This means his country was literally ruled by tankies. No one likes Brezhnev today except nostalgic Russians(compared to what followed him, can't blame them) and tankies.

[Ritzy Cat]

It would be hard to convince him of the reality of the situation that existed in Russia / Eastern Europe.

Censorship was very prevalent and artists under Stalin but not quite as much so had their art / poetry / music supressed if it's purpose was not to "Contribute to the revolutionary fervor" or something of that sort. I'll find exactly what its proclaimed purpose was in the Russian history book I read a few months ago.

Although I think he should realize that the censorship of the art was not a result of communism, it was a result of the dictator's desire to control every part of the culture in the country, often through suppression or "revising" of art. It was completely irrelevant to real socialism or communism in even the faintest tense.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I would tell him to stop whining because hey, he could have been Romani. Additionally, I don't think just because someone was there inherently mean their an expert or whatever. I mean, in theory, I could be talking to a blind and deaf drunk in the middle of Siberia unaware of WWII or Stalin but should I listen to him when he says none of that existed or that sky is in fact black all the time? Of course not. Personal accounts are subjective and it has been demonstrated by numerous studies that eye witness accounts are pretty faulty and subject to mass manipulation. Plus you always need to factor in assholes. Like for example, in America, you have people like That Westboro baptist. If you had the same specific sort of idiots, places them in the fSU and allow them to defect, I'm confident Americans would fully believe their bullshit and they'd probably be experts on FOX or CNN. Do people in the West not think of this or believe in the East similar assholes exist? Hence all of the off the wall anti-Communist shit you here?

[RedWorker]

Maybe the fact that these states had very little to do with communism and were only the result of Stalinist revisionism being expanded through imperialism, with the only difference from western states being state ownership? I honestly don't see how people think that this is some sort of "Scotman fallacy". Many enterprises around the world now are under state ownership and just because in, say, Finland, they constitute 10% or whatever we don't say it's 10% communist. But people really are influenced by that fake red flags and propaganda bullshit...

[Rafiq]

The belief is that these were "totalitarian" states whereby there was no variation in ideas. You either were brainwashed by the state, or you saw the light of freedom and liberal democracy, the "truth". So all defectors and opponents of the state, were honest individuals with absolutely no reason to oppose the state other than their honest sentiments and experiences.

[tuwix]

I was relaxing by the river today and a guy came over and started talking to me. Not uncommon here in Japan where foreigners are so uncommon, you tend to speak to other foreigners when you happen to bump into them. This specific guy was Czech and he was really nice, we started talking about a whole bunch of stuff.

Eventually, we started talking about politics. It turns out that he was no lover of Communism. Not that he was is a capitalist - quite the opposite, dislikes bankers, businessmen etc. He self-describes as a 'spiritual' person who works in order to pay for his means to travel around the world, mostly by hitch hiking. Certainly not pro-establishment.

But his basic opposition to Communists is that they were only interested in the workers, Himself being a poet and an artist, he claimed that poets, artists, scientists and other people of talent and intelligence were discriminated against by the Communist government.

None of this is new, we know that the old Eastern European Communists governments were authoritarian who clung to power using fear. But it left me in an awkward situation - I, a Communist, felt unable to dictate the positives of Communism to somebody had lived through the worst of nominally-'Communist' dictatorships. Describing such societies as 'deformed workers states' or whatever just doesn't wash with people who actually had to live under oppression. I found treading on eggshells, talking about less authoritarian forms of Communism, even reverting to using the term 'socialism' instead, and talking about anti-capitalism in general, just because I had no explanation for the experience that this person had suffered under the 'Communist' government. Most shocking for me was how it supposedly turned people against the working class. The guy was also a proud farmer, thus a member of the peasant class.

How do others here square this circle and debate with people who lived under previous Communist governments and hated it? Especially aimed towards other Eastern Europeans here.

You can ask those who debate with me because I'm from Poland. :)

And I confirm that there are such problems in communication. In Poland, there are expected social changes that are left-wing normally from right-wing parties because left-wing is associated with "communism" is something very bad.

But in start of such discussion there is need to clarify some concept. "Communism" has nothing to do with real communism. "Democracy" isn't democracy at all. "Socialism" isn't socialism too. And then there is room for real discussion, unless an opponent is an idiot who is sticking to mainstream lies. Then there you can do nothing.

[Red Economist]

I haven't been in this situation, but my advice is to recognize that this is not simply a rational thing, but very emotional on both sides. So all I can suggest is an effort to mutual respect and a willingness to learn from each other; the idea of person supporting communism in the west/japan from the USSR may well be as alien as someone from the west/japan meeting someone from the USSR.

Whilst we may well find socialist theory empowering relative to the dis-empowerment of our respective capitalist societies, someone who lived in a self-proclaimed socialist/communist state will have a different view. the discussions over whether self-proclaimed 'communists' were indeed communist is probably going to sound really strange given that this would have been a 'fact of life' for people there and all the abuses would have been wrapped up and rationalized in Marxist ideological clothing, in much the same way a non-Marxist will hear Marxists talk about free markets as corporate dictatorships or democracies as class based. It is amazing how much we can take for granted- and it is important to recognize that many of the things we've grown up with in the west (and I'm pretty sure Japan too) simply didn't exist in the USSR etc. .e.g I'm currently wearing a pair of Jeans and it's not a big deal- but that would be a form of western decadence to the Soviet government, or else would have been bought off the black market at considerable expense if I'd been in the USSR in the 70's.

I've heard that a lot people who defected from north korea to the south just never 'adjusted' to it and really struggled because of how marked the differences are; so ex-north koreans have formed there own support groups to navigate the problems of integrating. They came from a country where a dead person is the head of state, the leader claims supernatural powers, you can't trust friends or family members in case there informers and haircuts are government regulated ["let's trim our hair according to the socialist lifestyle"] to something 'else'. My point is, is that the differences represent an emotional 'gulf' based on what we think are normal experiences and therefore how we react to things; perhaps something akin to a form of 'culture shock'.

If I had a communist friend who tried to talk someone from the ex-USSR about communism, I'd feel 'uncomfortable' as the boundary between ideological sincerity and zealotry is a very thin one and depends heavily on personality rather than convictions. I think you'd need to think about why you feel defensive; from personal experience, my own belief in communism has concealed a lot of aggression and personal problems and often it's a question of 'working through it' so that I'm comfortable with my own beliefs without feeling the need to attack someone else for holding a contrary view. This is not easy, especially if the attraction of communism is deep rooted, the extent to which it represents an sub-cultural and personal 'identity' and how far it is driven by painful personal experiences (e.g. the confusing mixture of rejection and self-exclusion that comes from wanting to be an individual in a relatively conformist society).
Perhaps it might be a question of putting a label on to someone and thinking "your from the USSR" when actually- they are as much an individual as everyone else. So it might be that impersonal gap of 'otherness' that might be the issue in relating to them and their experiences. We assume things about strangers all the time- as this is how we recognize and relate to each other and it is not always a good thing (racism/sexism etc.) and can stop us seeing the person for who they really are. So being open to the idea that I/you could be wrong about somethings- and that this does not diminish myself/you in some way is probably advisable. The desire to convert someone usually runs contrary to the desire to be friends and wanting to understand and relate to them, so wanting someone to agree with you is not always the best thing in any relationship- especially as other people know thing you don't, such as what it was like to live in the USSR, PRC, DPRK etc. learning the time and place for politics is a skill that takes time, so again- just be respectful as we don't have all the answers.

[Red Economist]

Apologies: Double post.

[Hatshepsut]

This specific guy was Czech and he was really nice, we started talking about a whole bunch of stuff. Eventually, we started talking about politics. It turns out that he was no lover of Communism....

I'm assuming he is not old enough to remember the Prague Spring of 1968, but lots of Czechs do still remember it and he will have had earlier discussions with such people and heard the stories about it circulating around his country. It's a very emotional issue there.

While the CPUSA for example has remodeled itself on much softer lines--not that it was very hard by standards of world Communism even back in the 1930s--revolutionary Communism, in terms of historical forces, is inherently authoritarian, not democratic, despite the many nods to democratic process in the formal CP constitutions. This doesn't mean modern Communists advocate brutality of the sort we saw in the 20th century, but they certainly can't be hoping to win anywhere if unwilling to be forceful in the political arena.

Your Czech friend may understand these facts at some level. I can't prescribe what you should say. Maybe the best thing to say is that Communists learn from history--they shouldn't be tarred today with the brushes used on Stalin 60 years ago.

[Futility Personified]

As arrogant and vicious as it sounds... for the daily, day to day life stuff, we can't really argue without being there. In a conversation that is headed towards debate, you should take notes on the differences between lifestyles.

However, say English capitalism failed overnight and your average English citizen wandered around the globe, talking to strangers by riverbanks, well....

I'd have absolutely no faith in them explaining the nature of the economic system that they resided in. Sweet Mary, Batman and Mike Myers, the average individual is remarkably misinformed on the typical machinations of the dominant ideology. Take notes on the daily life, you wouldn't know it as you wouldn't have lived there, but don't take everything that is said by someone who happened to live there as gospel.