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Why isn't communism rising in the economic crisis?
Communism traditionally rises in situations like today. Some workers being extremely underpaid while other enjoying a life of luxury.
When people saw the capitalist financial system crumble why didn't they give communism another try? Communism has always risen in situations like this and yet if anything people are preferring to join far right movements. No significant rise in people joining the communist and far left movements and organisations have been recorded in the last few years as far as I know.
So that's my question. Why isn't communism, anarchism or socialism taking over the word like they once used to in situations like this?
I'm new to RevLeft so forgive me if I missed an obvious answer.
No one except for communists believes communism is possible nowadays. Cynicism and defeatism are the leading ideologies of today's masses. Just take a look at a modern popular film like The Dark Knight Rises for example. It's message is clear: The world is bad but revolution won't change anything, only the virtuous rich man can save us. A real life correspondent of this phenomenon is very much present in my country, Italy. After several years of socio-economic decline, desperate people not only still vote for someone like Berlusconi, they believe in him and his neoliberal myths more than ever.
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. - V.I. Lenin
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I think there has been a rise in "left" parties because many people realise that capitalism is a problem, the reason there is not as much support for communist parties etc is because people have been brought up with the lie that communism will never work but only in theory.
"People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves".- Mao Tse-Tung
There has been only a small growth in communist and socialist thought amongst the people of Europe, South-America and parts of Asia. Sadly not so much in my home-country on Britain and neither in North-America (minus Mexico) and Oceania.
If it doesn't start to rise and we don't use this to further the goals of the left, things may get so bad in Europe, for example, that some guy with a square moustache may show up again...
Hasta la victoria, siempre!
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the reason, for me at least, is that the workers are extremly demoralized, the partys/unions they turn to help them sell them out, when they do something on their own it gets supressed and hardly ever reported by the media(and if only in a negative light). and with so many defeats, a lot of workers retreat to things that gives them somewhat of a hold and safty, like family, friends and so on.
All i want is a Marxist Hunk.
It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Re: Why isn't communism rising in the economic crisis?
Because the Left as it is today has proven to be incapable of formatting political consciousness among the proletariat, and has ceased to represent their interests directly. Because at every chance, when arises trade union consciousness, the left fails to swoop in and seize the opportunity to develop class consciousness. What we need is a strong political base, and an effective political strategy.
[FONT="Courier New"] “We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Revolution and of the new order of life. ”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky [/FONT]
لا شيء يمكن وقف محاكم التفتيش للثورة
I think we are missing out the social economic conditions. Back at the start of the 1900s people in the wealthiest west were for the most part very very poor. Yes there is poverty in developed countries nowadays, but it isn't anything on what they had to deal with then. As for the rest of the world, well i think they have all but given up (money has so much power + life is cheap). Apathy reigns, sad to say. The spark is quite ignited yet i guess.
I like that you brought up the Dark Knight Rises, you're right about its message
Also, I should add that people literally cannot grasp the fact that communism does not mean a totalitarian government. People are all "ahh ussr, no, no, bad". It's an automatic response, and it shuts off their willingness to even research the subject in the first place.
"If you consider that the things that we are doing in the people's interest represent manifestations of communism, then call us communists" -Che Guevara
In 10th century Burma, King Theinhko ate a farmer's cucumbers without permission. The farmer killed the king and took the throne.
As bad as it would be, that would play to the advantage of communism.
"The USA is the most suitable country for socialism. Communism will come there sooner than in other countries." - Vyacheslav Molotov, 3 June 1981
Well there are lots of reasons as the guys above mentioned and I agree with them. The most common reasons are fetishes (I believe communism is bad because someone taught me it was bad, there can't be another system just capitalism, people MUST have a leader because they can't decide on their own and so on) with no scientific thought/proof, the anti-revolutionary behavior of people (they are used being screwed so they can't see why it's bad), the media propaganda and generally the fear of changing the traditional 'values' in life (the 'great' nations, religion, money, over-consumerism and some other stuff capitalism brought up as values).
Don't worry we are all trying to learn here1
The working class has no leadership- the unions sell them out and the left has split up into sects.
Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.
Socialism resides entirely in the revolutionary negation of the capitalist ENTERPRISE, not in granting the enterprise to the factory workers.
- Bordiga
I would blame inadequate education among the people as to what Communism really is/what it can be. They continue to view it as a failed experiment. I may catch flak for this statement, but states like North Korea and the horror stories that make it to the states about China don't help either. North Korea is still referred to as a Communist country by the media as well. While whether or not it is could be debated, the popular view point of North Korea is it's bad and should be stamped out. To say it is communist only makes us look worse.
Even if one is somewhat educated in Communism they, as Nevsky said, refuse to believe it will work when implicated. They seem to be content to just give up. Which I resent, but there isn't much I can do about their opinions no matter how much I speak.
What Communism desperately needs is a party that tries purely to spread Communist ideals and opinions. We have no influence in the media, at least in America which is the country I am speaking for. The ideal of Communism is spat on in the classroom. Teachers seem to love throwing in their own opinions when they teach, even though they should keep their mouths shut. We need spokespeople and a way we can spread our views and ideas to the world. We simply don't have that and until we organize and pull our own weight as revolutionaries we will just have to deal with the steady decline of our parties and increasing public ignorance on our beliefs.
how? the fascists in germany destroyed the the workers movement, communists, the unions and much more. the german workers movement never recoverd from that.
All i want is a Marxist Hunk.
It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
If crises don’t always produce widespread struggle, is it fair to say that widespread struggle nonetheless requires some sort of precipitating crisis in order to get underway? For instance the most progressive period in US labour history was in the 1930s during the Great Depression.
Clearly social unrest doesn’t appear out of thin air. And I’m certainly not suggesting that social struggles can’t emerge during times of economic crisis—they obviously can. But often such crises only appear to be the catalyst for struggles. There are many crises, economic or political, that could, and perhaps should, ignite upheaval and do not—countless police murders that don't start riots, austerity programs that don't trigger uprisings, and so on—which are then forgotten.
Pinpointing the ingredients that spark protest is always tricky since so many factors tend to be at work. Contrary to received wisdom on the left, however, many struggles come not out of worsening economic conditions, but rather periods of expansion. The Great Depression, as you mentioned, is often held up as the prime example of an economic crisis providing fertile ground for radical social movements. But it should be noted, even there, that perhaps the most militant episodes in that struggle—the iconic factory occupations and sit down strikes of 1936-37—took place not during a worsening economic crisis, but a recovery, when the employment rate had increased by thirty percent from the depths of the depression. And that’s telling: often social movements get the most traction when people’s expectations rise and they have a sense of their own collective power, not weakness. The movements of the Sixties in the US, similarly, arose from a time of economic expansion and relatively high wages. It was the backdrop for tremendous rank and file militancy, which fell off after the severe economic crisis of the early 1970s.
Hoping For The Worst | New Left Project
Because there needs to be a vanguard communist party for using the social dissent and unrest to bring about revolution. In western countries now, there is no such party which is experienced in revolutionary war and can transform the political situation into a powerful and organized class war within a short period of time.
Gravely unfortunate, that. In the end, though, socialism spread.
I don't advocate warfare as the first resort---that's just plain horrifying---but the war that resulted from the first rise of fascism was rather cathartic. Far-rightwingery in Europe was blasted into rubble, and is only now on its way to fully recovering.
Last edited by Zutroy; 31st July 2013 at 02:31. Reason: adding quote
"The USA is the most suitable country for socialism. Communism will come there sooner than in other countries." - Vyacheslav Molotov, 3 June 1981
I'd say times are changing, and changing quickly. Traditional paradigms of "left" and "right" don't really fit a 21st century world, as these themselves are products of a 19th century mindset.
This doesn't mean that Marx's historical analytic are wrong; Just that the current approach to problems needs to change.
Sometimes I think that it would require another situation like the Spanish Civil War to bring the whole of the left back into focus.
It'll take some new fascist, supported by other reactionary governments, who attempts to overthrow a democratically elected government somewhere, and threatens to unleash the beast of fascism one again in the world.
"I've never read Marx's Capital, but I've got the marks of capital all over my body." -Big Bill Haywood
"...Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor."- Thomas Jefferson
-=UTOPIA IS THE MORAL RIGHT OF HUMANITY=-
You seem like you almost want this to happen. Why would you want this to happen?
Tell us more of this twenty-first century socialism of which you speak. What is it that has to change? I'm not saying you have to explain everything, but a link to a programme with which you agree or somesuch would be great. However, I suspect the standard critique will apply...
Marx's propositions for action were drawn directly from analysis of the most basic elements of capitalist society. Unless we have somehow strayed from capitalism, I find it hard to believe that the methods of fighting it would have changed for much. Marx and Engels weren't archaic writers - they based their tactics on the condition that modern industry and automation would take over in the realm of production, and now that this has happened (and is happening) their tactics are no longer futuristic, but modern. It is misguided to think the opposite, that they were once modern, and are now archaic. I won't be too harsh on you since you sound like a bit of a newbie (that's alright) but one cannot simply "modernize" that which is day by day growing more into modernity. That is, those conditions that qualify a plan of action as 'modern', are, as capitalism advances, applying more and more to the work of those formative socialists of some 150 years ago. I have yet to see a plan for "modernized" socialism that is not merely a co-option of radical thought to the influences of social-democracy and reformism.
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