Today I Just Learned that Communism and Anarchism are Pointless Dreams

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think "greed" is no more or less human nature than empathy or selflessness. But why wouldn't people have a "get mine" attitude in a society that restricts things for workers and the poor and actively promotes selfishness and individual competition.

That there is any empathy or kindness in a society like this where we are alienated and pitted against each-other in all sorts of social competition, says more for the resiliency of human kindness as being central to our being than it does for selfishness being inherent and unchanging in all situations.

There's a famous study where rats were given a choice between food or endorphins and the rats would just take the happy pills until they starved to death. In the 80s and 90s this study was ideologically used to prove "selfishness" and also to justify war on drugs repression. Recently the test was repeated and the scientists found that only mistreated rats who were kept in cramped isolated conditions drugged themselves to death. Rats who had large cages shared with other rats they socialized with In a more natural setting also took the drug, but they also ate their food and survived. Humans are a little more socially complex than rats, but you get the idea... People act differently in healthy and unhealthy situations.

[Patrice O'neal]

I think "greed" is no more or less human nature than empathy or selflessness. But why wouldn't people have a "get mine" attitude in a society that restricts things for workers and the poor and actively promotes selfishness and individual competition.

That there is any empathy or kindness in a society like this where we are alienated and pitted against each-other in all sorts of social competition, says more for the resiliency of human kindness as being central to our being than it does for selfishness being inherent and unchanging in all situations.

There's a famous study where rats were given a choice between food or endorphins and the rats would just take the happy pills until they starved to death. In the 80s and 90s this study was ideologically used to prove "selfishness" and also to justify war on drugs repression. Recently the test was repeated and the scientists found that only mistreated rats who were kept in cramped isolated conditions drugged themselves to death. Rats who had large cages shared with other rats they socialized with In a more natural setting also took the drug, but they also ate their food and survived. Humans are a little more socially complex than rats, but you get the idea... People act differently in healthy and unhealthy situations.

I think that's where despair like the OP'S comes from, because under capitalism greed is part of a conditioned nature. Many people confuse this for an intrinsic human nature.

My point would be, greed could very well be a problem for everyone embarking on a new communally ownded and operated means of production, even after smashing capitalism and instating a new society, the greed and reactionary conditioning workers and all people have adopted through nescessity under capitalism might throw up problems under the new social order.

Just because a revoltuion happens, characterisitcs and deeply ropoted beliefs and learned instincts won't just dissapear nescissarily, though of course, they could too. I don't know, point being.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

Well, that settles that. Human nature and the fall of the Soviet Union etc all mean communism is bullshit and not worth thinking about. Thanks mate, appreciate it. **Rests on laurels and forgets about these silly dreams**

[NoOneIsIllegal]

Doing my once-every-5-months post check-in to say anyone remember Azula? Good times. Best troll ever. Step ya game up. I'll gladly take a warning for this post. Azula 4 lyfe.

[bcbm]

why is everyone so hostile to laziness? i should hope in a communist society we should all look like the laziest of the lazy compared to work ethics today.

[Lord Testicles]

why is everyone so hostile to laziness? i should hope in a communist society we should all look like the laziest of the lazy compared to work ethics today.

This.

"I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

[Zoroaster]

why is everyone so hostile to laziness? i should hope in a communist society we should all look like the laziest of the lazy compared to work ethics today.

Exactly. Read Paul Lafargue's "The Right to be Lazy". Excellent article, I'll put the link here.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/

[bcbm]

^yeah, its an old favorite of mine

If, uprooting from its heart the vice which dominates it and degrades its nature, the working class were to arise in its terrible strength, not to demand the Rights of Man, which are but the rights of capitalist exploitation, not to demand the Right to Work which is but the right to misery, but to forge a brazen law forbidding any man to work more than three hours a day, the earth, the old earth, trembling with joy would feel a new universe leaping within her. But how should we ask a proletariat corrupted by capitalist ethics, to take a manly resolution ...

Like Christ, the doleful personification of ancient slavery, the men, the women and the children of the proletariat have been climbing painfully for a century up the hard Calvary of pain; for a century compulsory toil has broken their bones, bruised their flesh, tortured their nerves; for a century hunger has torn their entrails and their brains. 0 Laziness, have pity on our long misery! O Laziness, mother of the arts and noble virtues, be thou the balm of human anguish!

[Zoroaster]

^yeah, its an old favorite of mine

I've got another one, my personal favorite quote from that article.

“Work, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in order that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become miserable. Such is the inexorable law of capitalist production.”

[kevin09x]

I really think that there are many factors, many different causes, that are really impediments for socialism and for the more advance type of socialism which is anarcho-communism in the far future. A very powerful impediment is fear, another impediment is lazyness in the great majority of poor people, low will power (lots of will power is required to overthrow capitalist states) and another impediment for socialist states and the more advanced anarchist communism is conformism. Most poor people of this world are too conformist, and there are many many many more factors like low reading skills, low reading habits in the masses.

Another great impediment and great enemy of socialist workers states and anarchist communist societies is the rise of social-democratic parties. Social Democratic parties which are in favor of reformist capitalism have more economic power, to do propaganda and win the hearts and souls of the masses, than ultra-leftist radical parties. Most ultra-leftist radicalized marxist parties in favor of authentic socialism are very weak, very poor, literally unable to become loved and supported by poor people.

Poor people hate capitalism and would prefer socialist parties. But we have to bre realists. The only socialist workers parties visible in this world are the social-democratic parties. The authentic ultra-leftist socialist parties are hidden and too underground, and that's why in USA poor americans are still supporting The Democratic Party, in France The Socialist Party and in many other countries social-democratic parties

But I think you are wrong in blaming human nature. Because I think that the great impediment for the existance of pure workers states and the existance of the more advanced phase (anarcho-communism) is all the things I've said here and many many more.

But a very powerful real cause of why there are no authentic leftist governments in this world like the Paris Commune is that authentic leftist parties in favor of a Paris Commune system (radical true socialism) is the existance of social-democratic parties with lots of propaganda power, lots of economic power and that authentic ultra-leftist parties in favor of paris commune systems are very very weak, totally underground and very unknown to the majority of people of this world.

That's like if you are very hungry and you travel to any city in America, the first thing you will think about is eating at a Mcdonalds and a place that is known. Because most people are scared of the unknown and radical leftist parties in favor of true socialism like the paris commune are totally unknown in America

But the egocentric human nature of most people, is not really an impediment for socialism


.

As you know, I used to be an anarchist-communist, but the last time since I posted on here, I learned communism and anarchism are just impossible attempts that will only result in deluded people ruining everything for the workers, funny enough with the fact that they always claim to care about them "suffering" under capitalism, since I've been going to non-indoctrinated forums.

All your "theories" are problematic, like the communist "Dictatorship of the Proletariat". The theory that any government whatsoever could abolish all it's power, NO ONE has even heard of a government giving up their authority and abolishing the state BECAUSE it's not part of human nature to, AS WHAT HAS BEEN PROVEN UNDER WHAT HAPPENED UNDER THE SOVIET UNION, CUBA, CAMBODIA, NORTH KOREA, CHINA, POLAND, YUGOSLAVIA, ETC ETC ETC ETC.

Another problematic feature of human nature that both of you communists and anarchists ignore is people being too lazy to work. What do your communist, Marxist, anarchist, "left communists" or "Hoxhaists" like what do those even mean to people who don't have an obsession with obscure "theoritical errors" in failed projects that are the errors themselves, whatever you want to call them, ist-theorists even do when they are confronted with that fact? Hope that us non-communist people would forget about their flawed-from-the-ground plans that would only result in disaster? Even past the "transition" or "socialism stage", what would keep ALL people "happily working for the betterment of mankind" as I have heard from communists so many times? The people in many Marxist countries couldn't do it even with force and torture and terror in many cases! And even if some of you respond like "We don't force labor people" then WHAT is stopping a majority of people to not work at all? How is it any encouraging that lazy people benefit from the non lazy people's labor?

The countless nations that I have listed couldn't even achieve communism for one second. The thing that I notice from many communists and anarchists is their annoying usage of terms like "ruling class" to the so-evil "bourgeoisie" when they can't even deal with the fact that they were the LITERAL ruling class too, and that THEY FAILED BIG, only to do worse than the capitalism that preceded them, and they were even more powerful than the corporations!

Leftism in practice, theory, whatever you want to say, it just has never been possible, at all, so how do you people still praise any movement that you think will lead to your own utopia with the faults that are painfully obvious to countless workers who have lived under nations with this utopia in agenda? HOW?

[Rafiq]

why is everyone so hostile to laziness? i should hope in a communist society we should all look like the laziest of the lazy compared to work ethics today.

Even if that is true, following any revolution work is going to be of dire importance. The point is not work itself as something that we ought to oppose, rather what we presently work for, why we work.

I agree that aversion towards laziness within the modern workplace is irritating. It's pathetic - who am I benefiting here by giving so much of a shit?

[#FF0000]

I actually did critical thinking about it instead of repeating to myself obscure and silly little theories about "GERMANY PROLETARIAT" or whatever else trotsky or bordiga or someone on this forum said

I'm pretty sure I've told you before that you weren't actually thinking and were just learning to repeat things other people said. I think a lot of people here told you that. You aren't "thinking critically" now. You're just swinging your cognitive biases in another direction.

You had no idea what you were talking about when you were a "communist" and you have no idea what you're talking about now.

[RedMaterialist]

Taking a crap whenever and where ever you want is also part of human nature. Generally, however, we try to teach children not to do that.

[Raskolnikov]

The better question is - why has this thread lasted so long.

[Delusional Kid]

The better question is - why has this thread lasted so long.

I have no idea, so it must be human nature. :P

[bcbm]

Even if that is true, following any revolution work is going to be of dire importance. The point is not work itself as something that we ought to oppose, rather what we presently work for, why we work.

nah, work sucks.

[LiaSofia]

Taking a crap whenever and where ever you want is also part of human nature. Generally, however, we try to teach children not to do that.

But...I thought we were teaching children to poo on the heads of the bourgeoisie.

[motion denied]

But...I thought we were teaching children to poo on the heads of the bourgeoisie.

There will be no bourgeoisie by the time my children are born.

[RedMaterialist]

But...I thought we were teaching children to poo on the heads of the bourgeoisie.

No. That requires discipline, determining where and when you crap. Just doing it whenever is like greed, something you're taught not to do.

[JudasMaiden]

Final reply: Comrades, this has been a very critical and embarrassing moment in my political life. You have finally save myself from becoming even shittier and dumber than I currently am, and I'm back to being an Anarchist again instead of becoming a lolbertarian, conservative, or even a fucking fascist.