Working under communism

[Hiero]

In the OI forum i have noticed many people saying about the idea that no one is going to work for the good of the society and the will only be motivated by there greed for money. I have also noticed that alot of communist groups in australia believe that when given the new societyt that people will work for the greater of the society.

I beleive this to be very foolish, idealistic and dangours for these people to get power. What are you thoughts about this, mine are that it will take many years and many genrations of workers to want to better the society. Most of todays workers dont really care about politics and believe the idea of working hard will get them loads of money so they can buy crap they see on tv. Only through years of education during the socialism era of a new country rule will the workers attuides change.

The tactics of many of these groups also have to be put to question as how they plan to get the workers active and to support the revolution. They try to win them over with the "think of another world" media. I dont see how this is going to work by telling people of the final stages of communism, to them living in todays world of sterotyping they see these peoples ideas as very hippy and childish. I think many groups need to cut the crap and tell the workers what the want to hear ' more rights, more privalages and more free services'. We live in a capitalist society that works on greed so we need to use that greed of the workers by saying more for you.

[STI]

Well, we can all agree that the creation of a true communist society won't be easy. It might take 20, 200, or 2000 years. The important thing is that we're working toward it. Telling workers about the end result is the way to go, I think, because, if we're not telling people about or true intentions, we're just decieving them. That's not the way to go about building a successful revolution. Educating people regarding the steps which must be taken would be a good idea, especially if they ask.

If I answered something other than your actual question, sorry. My mind is a bit elsewhere right now.

[Hiero]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2004, 08:48 PM
. Telling workers about the end result is the way to go, I think, because, if we're not telling people about or true intentions, we're just decieving them. .
But i dont think we should use that as a base argument for communism but it can be added in as saying eventually to this type of society.

[Retro]

It can't happen immediately i know that for sure. People are too content right now to even pay any attention, plus the fact that capitalist propoganda has brain-washed them.

All we can do is help educate. It's up to the people to believe.

[redstar2000]

I think many groups need to cut the crap and tell the workers what the want to hear 'more rights, more privileges and more free services'. We live in a capitalist society that works on greed so we need to use that greed of the workers by saying more for you.

There are many problems with that approach...some of which I think are insurmountable.

"More stuff" is a contest that the capitalists have already "won". If a worker is primarily motivated by the desire for "more stuff", why should s/he believe some lefty's promises when, by doing nothing but what s/he's doing now, "more stuff" comes down the pipeline?

Of course, if and when there is another "great depression", the left argument of "more stuff" would gain in appeal. Right now, I don't see it.

Secondly, such an appeal "feeds into" and strengthens the bourgeois idea that "more stuff" is "the" purpose of life itself. We know this is not true...and even some people who "have a lot of stuff" know it's not true.

So why go along with the lie?

And thirdly, it misses the point of communism altogether. The reason that communism is egalitarian is not because economic egalitarianism is some "holy virtue" in and of itself.

The purpose of egalitarian economics is to make it possible to put concerns for "stuff" behind us. What we want is a society in which people can really develop their potential...free of the compulsions of wage-slavery and the ever-pressing "need" to accumulate "more stuff".

If some people see what we say as "hippy" and "childish", that can't be helped. We are trying to construct a vision of freedom...not simply a world where "everyone owns a 20-room SUV"--as if the planet could support such obscene indulgence.

I have no problem with making it clear to people that communism will be an affluent, high-tech society--and not some monkish ordeal of deprivation and self-immolation.

But many of the grotesque extravagances of present-day bourgeois society will be eliminated...and that will be a "good thing" for both people and the planet they live on.

Telling people the truth is always "the right thing to do".

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.vze.com)
A site about communist ideas

[Hiero]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2004, 05:42 AM
Telling people the truth is always "the right thing to do".


Yeah and alot of these groups dont tell the truth and linger on the idea of the end communist society not of the socialism dictator period.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Originally posted by comrade [email protected] 12 2004, 03:28 AM
In the OI forum i have noticed many people saying about the idea that no one is going to work for the good of the society and the will only be motivated by there greed for money. I have also noticed that alot of communist groups in australia believe that when given the new societyt that people will work for the greater of the society.

I beleive this to be very foolish, idealistic and dangours for these people to get power. What are you thoughts about this, mine are that it will take many years and many genrations of workers to want to better the society. Most of todays workers dont really care about politics and believe the idea of working hard will get them loads of money so they can buy crap they see on tv. Only through years of education during the socialism era of a new country rule will the workers attuides change.

The tactics of many of these groups also have to be put to question as how they plan to get the workers active and to support the revolution. They try to win them over with the "think of another world" media. I dont see how this is going to work by telling people of the final stages of communism, to them living in todays world of sterotyping they see these peoples ideas as very hippy and childish. I think many groups need to cut the crap and tell the workers what the want to hear ' more rights, more privalages and more free services'. We live in a capitalist society that works on greed so we need to use that greed of the workers by saying more for you.
As far as workers being "fit" to run society, I don't belive it is far fetched at all. There are many examples of workers ruiniing their own complex organizations from the non-political (like European and Latin AMerican football-clubs) to neighborhood and community organizations to groups based on certain recreations such as motercycles or cars and so on. Additionally, history has shown that workers often take matters into their own hands in revolutionary situations (communist or not) when the old government is falling appart: there's the paris commune and workers councils that appeared in the Russian revolution and other near revolutions like in Iran or Portugal or Spain or Chile or Poland and so on. Recently in Argentina, neiborhood councils formed in working class and petty-bourgois neiborhoods during the political upheavals there.

As for not being interested in politics, well mainstream bourgoise politics generally (at least in the US) has little real impact on the concerns of regular people. American politicians talk about balanced budgets (code for cutting social programs) and during elections they talk about issues that do matter but only on a surface level such as crime and joblessness and healthcare, but these issues are quickly dropped by politicians once they are elected.

It is no wonder why most people are not interested in politics because it has no real impact on their daily lives, but this can change very quickly. During the russian revolution, peasants and poor urban people and soldiers began teaching themselves to read or would get people to read the papers to them for the first time because they saw that their actions and ideas could make an impact on their lives and the events around them. Today, most workers in the west are much better educated than the russian workers and peasants were in the revolution or the Parisian peasants who ran Paris during the Commune were, so I think that conditions are very good if there were to be a revolution.

Revolutions are a process and in that process people who were greedy or apolitical before will change just as events in my life such as the Seattle protests and the anti-globalization movement changed me and the people around me.

To me communism is no trick or nothing that people can be bribed into. I do think it is foolish to try and describe a society in detail which does not yet exist but it is not foolish to say that the problems that the working class face would be handled much better if handled by the working class rather than by some group of people who make money from the labor working class and profit from keeping the working class divided and keeping wealth out of the hands of the working class.

[Jimmie Higgins]

About argueing for more benifits and better working conditions or living standards, I think, is really a no brainer. Socialists and communists should be fighting for these things as well as argueing that the only way to really ensure a better future is by getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with a worker-run society.

For one, bourgoise reforms make an immediate impact on peoples lives so that is a good thing to win a strike or pressure the government into passing some reform. Secondly, the process of fighting for these things will radicalize people and help to show them that there can be no compromise within capitalism. If you are involved with a strike and are beat by cops or harassed by the bosses, then you will instantly see the class line and realize how other strikes are connceted to yours. Also struggles build confidence and more resistance as, in the US, the civil rights movment lead to the Vietnam movement and both of these movements lead to the womans movements and gay-rights movements of the 70s and environmentalism which lead to the global-justic movements which may have an influence in rebuilding a real and revived labor-movement and so on. Finally, fighting for these things exposes the cracks in capitalism's armor so that people see how flawed the crimanal justice sytsem is or how uncareing the schools are or how racist the cops are.

If you look at the impact made by the anti-war movement, it is huge. Before the big protests in the US, if you had talked about modern imperialism people would have thought you were a nut, but now even right-wing news shows have to adress the US's role as an imperialist nation (though they still downplay it or make apologies for it or try to spin it as if imperialism could ever be a good or noble thing).