Communism: what stopped its spread?

[My Camel Hogs The Blankets]

The concept of communism is so simple; the benefits to the masses so obvious. But not only is it not catching on, it's in serious decline. What when wrong? Is it possible that the idea is simply not capable of scaling up to a national size? Give me your thoughts.

[komsomol]

Lack of crisis's in large area's (like the majority of Europe). Effective propaganda and propaganda methods from the Bourgeoisie. Sectarianism in the Labour movement. Dogmatism and revisionism. Division of Labour.

[Don't Change Your Name]

Both Communism (real communism I mean) and Anarchism are discredited through this arguments and propaganda:
- "It doesn't work" (sic)
- "Human nature makes it impossible" (???)
- "It's a utopia"
- "It opposes individual freedoms" :lol: :lol:
- "Communists are stupid rebel teenagers who wear Che t-shirts and listen punk music"
- "Communism is totalitarianism and opposes freedom and democracy"
- "I prefer liberal democracy"
- "Marx was crazy"
- "It opposes the American way of life" (propaganda)
- "It opposes hard work"
- "Communists and Anarchists are savage insane terrorists who go around with long hair and beard throwing bombs, burning churches, promoting disorder and chaos because they love to do so and kill people like el Che Guevara, and they never took a bath in their life" :rolleyes:
- "They are nazis"
- "They are mass murderers"
- "They are tree-hugging pot-smoking liberal hippies"
- "It is a Jewish conspiracy to kill the Aryan race"
- "It opposes thy Lord and Jesus and they are a bunch of evil heretics that should be hanged"
- "They are devil worshippers"
- "They are paranoid idiots that think capitalists and the state and governments are after them "
- "They are subversives" (it worked around here by killing thousands)
- "They are insane"
- "They are junkies"
- "They are extremists"
- "They are armchair revolutionaries who know nothing about real life"
- "They are losers" (prove it)
- "They are Pol Pot and Mao worshippers"
- "They want to bring us to Anarchy by destroying the whole world because they are evil crazy terrorists"
- "They hate liberty" (yeah sure)
- "It just won't work"
- "Communism should be used with moderation" (moderate extremists)
- "They bring poverty" (no proof of how but it's cool to be a cappie accusing communists of impoverishing countries which had been impoverished for a long time before)
- "They are lazy idiots who want other people to give them everything for free while they do nothing"
- "They speak a lot about social justice but they drive a BMW and have notebooks"
- "They oppose order"
- "They have been brainwashed by the liberal press"
- "They are unamerican/anti-patriotic"
- "They are fascists"
- "They lie and lie and lie all the time and only CNN is right"
- "They are brainwashed and want to brainwash everyone"
- "They are stupid collectivist altruist do gooders"
- "They are racists because they hate Israel" (wow, what a good use of logic!)
- "They are ultra-statists"
- "Those anarchists aren't real anarchist and are fascists"
- "Doesn't apply to reality"

and more. Add to that:

- Fear of change
- Egoism and selfishness
- Ultra-individualism
- Propaganda through fear and misunderstading the real meaning of words and hidden meaning (such as speaking about China's economical problems saying "the Communist China")
- Advertising selling capitalism as the only way to have a nice car/watch/TV/computer/house/body/couple/sex/job/cell phone/technological devices/sleep
- Racism and such attitutes

Well, that was long but it seems I wrote all the most popular arguments against change.

[bubbrubb]

and it seems like whenever a leftist leader is voted into office the CIA always helps unhappy exiled people to overthrow them even though the population is behind them

[Rasta Sapian]

the people of the world are being suppressed! Living in the free world, this is bull shit!
Capitalism has inprisoned them, trapped by fear, manipulated by facism, beleiving that they are free, free of un biased education, free to hate like words like: communism and the "red scare" and ideals of poverty and dictatorship with a lack of individualistic liberation and all of the greed and vanity that it encompasses!

In a sence wouldn't socialism liberate the masses? Establishing equality and social justice?

Does power to the people really mean, power to the fortunate people?

[synthesis]

Originally posted by My Camel Hogs The Blankets+Feb 29 2004, 11:30 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (My Camel Hogs The Blankets @ Feb 29 2004, 11:30 PM)
[email protected] 29 2004, 11:10 PM
and it seems like whenever a leftist leader is voted into office the CIA always helps unhappy exiled people to overthrow them even though the population is behind them
But what happened in the former USSR? Or the PRC? [/b]
The U.S. sent troops to intervene in the Whites&#39; favor in the Russian Civil War. The U.S. also funded Kai-Shek&#39;s army in China. Both times, America&#39;s side was defeated.

[redstar2000]

Your question is actually extremely complicated and there&#39;s no "simple answer".

Was Leninism and its variants (Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc.) really "communism"?

What was the real class nature of the USSR and "People&#39;s" China?

What has been the historical role of U.S. imperialism in the face of any progressive change?

Are communist ideas actually "declining" in influence? As measured how?

There have actually been many threads on these topics here...and will certainly be many more.

If you put all the serious posts on these subjects in one place, you&#39;d probably have a pretty substantial book length manuscript.

Which no bourgeois publisher would even consider for a second, of course.

:redstar2000:

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

[Monty Cantsin]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2004, 12:30 AM

But what happened in the former USSR? Or the PRC?


No real answer yet? Why am I not suprised?
cos its only an hour after he posted It you philistine.

[SittingBull47]

If everybody else is capitalist, then it communism can&#39;t survive. People probably thought it&#39;s useless and damaging in such a world.

[redstar2000]

On a large scale, what else comes close[r] to true communism than what we saw in the USSR and the PRC? Can you think of a better example and, if so, how is it different than communism under the USSR and especially the PRC?

Probably the best example of something close to "true" communism was the rule of the workers in parts of Spain 1936-39...especially Barcelona.

Much has been written about this period, so I would recommend a google search on it...you could easily spend a couple of years on the subject without exhausting the material.

The people in Spain did not call themselves "communists", of course...their word for themselves was "anarcho-syndicalists".

Therein lies much of the confusion about "words" on the "left". People have, since the time of Marx and Engels, grabbed certain words and applied them to themselves without regard for their real meanings.

Lenin, for example, called himself a "communist"...but made no attempt in his own lifetime to establish "communism". In fact, the last years of his life were devoted to his "New Economic Policy" -- restoring capitalism -- and an unsuccessful campaign to secure foreign investments from western capitalists&#33;

Mao&#39;s "communism" was very different -- a peasant-based "barracks communism" (as Marx called it). There was probably more economic equality in China than in the USSR -- but Mao was "emperor" in the old Chinese tradition. There was never any question of the working class actually having any real say in matters...except for 18 days in Shanghai, when an attempt was made to actually give the working class there real power. Mao put a stop to that...he said it "went too far".

Ever since the "Stalin era", westerners are accustomed to identifying "communism" with nasty dictatorships, corrupt party elites, bloated and arrogant bureaucracies, etc. Indeed, most of the people who call themselves "communists" today still endorse that sort of thing...though naturally they "water it down" a good deal.

But were you to actually examine Marx and Engels themselves, you&#39;d quickly learn that this identification is "all fucked up".

Communism is about the working class actually running the show...that was its original and real meaning.

Lenin and all his heirs claim that the working class is "too backward" to do that -- that an elite or "vanguard" is "required" to run things for the "benefit" of the working class.

Essentially, he hijacked communism to "justify" his own ambitions...and his heirs have carried on that little racket ever since.

Well, every scam finally gets exposed and falls apart...and Leninism is no different. There are probably not very many real communists in the world today...but there are more than there were yesterday and there will be even more tomorrow.

Fewer and fewer people are even interested in Leninism any more, much less inclined to join one of their shrinking cargo-cults.

Meanwhile, you might want to look into the "platformist anarchists"...though they use the word "anarchist", they give every appearance of being real communists.

Keep in mind as you look into this stuff that communism is about liberation from wage-slavery...it&#39;s not a "mega-charity" or a "Robin Hood" scheme. Material equality is a happy by-product of communism...not its purpose.

:redstar2000:

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

[mia wallace]

it&#39;s because people think it woldn&#39;t work. they think that because, it didn&#39;t work yet and won&#39;t until there wouldn&#39;t be states.
the soialist countrys are ok, but poor and most of people don&#39;t want to live that way.
the people who rule a country are people with a lot of money and it is obvious they (the most of them) don&#39;t want to lose it. some of them don&#39;t have to work at all cause the money they have or they know some people who ensure them good jobs and they don&#39;t have o be talented or hard working or whatever at all. they don&#39;t want to go to a system where everyone would be equal. since they have the power, they use it on keeping the current system (capitalism).
the question is why don&#39;t the workers unite and start a revolution for their own sake??
i think the main problem here is education. :ph34r:

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

I believe that communism has not caught on because it has or is percieved to have failed. Ideas are spread by intellectuals and most are either moderates, liberals or slightly left leaning.

Plus it is considered outdated by all contemporary political philosophers, left and right has been replaced by libertarianism, liberalism and communitarianism.

[Retro]

As was said by Comrade Red Star, can you even call such things communism when you describe the USSR and China. You start reaching more and more into totalatarianism when you think of them.

There are many things that are working against any spread of Communisistic ideas. Every Capitalist&#39;s fear it, and rightfully so. When you fear something, and you have power, don&#39;t you wish to squash it before it becomes any form of a real threat to your power?

For an idea that has only been around for 200 years and only been in effect for 100, people put too much analysis on things not working. Surely when you are developing a program, or write a paper...you always have "kinks" that need to be worked out. All comes in time.

[cubist]

why has it stopped,

i believe that the world has been made too class conscious to care for the proleteriat even the proleteriats want to be above themselves, be it through education system or just working life or the media, people are being built to live and understand and survive in, and serve capitalism.

in brief a young human being isn&#39;t being shown the other roads, to choose which way to walk. they are being told whats right whats wrong, what they need to do to be accepted, that people will respect them if they hold material things higher than human values.