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communism confuses me ????
ok so i understand that its about creating a stateless, classless society. however, when i get some communists say they admire people like stalin, it contradicts the whole basis of communism. he killed tons of people with no sense of the slighest empathy towards anyone. under his orders the NKVD was involved in arresting aprox 1/9 of the population (this could be wrong, but it was something like that) and shipping them off to the cold and brutal conditions of the siberian gulags. to me it seems communism mimicks anarchism in the sense that there will be no leader, everyone works together for a prospering society, etc, however stalin was a leader who was unwilling to give up his power. he didnt care about communism, instead he was an oppertunist like mussolini, he did whatever would give him the maximum amount of power. during stalin's rule, the USSR was imperalist as he took over former nazi occupied countries and instead of liberating them took them as control as soviet sattelites. explain any similarities between stalin's rule of the soviet union and communism. why didnt he just give up his power? or why didnt lenin? or why didnt any communist leader do that???
I was wondering this also. I suppose it is because they got caught up with WW2, the Arms Race, and the Cold War o.O?
They should of have focused on reaching communism.
Hell they let a whole revolution go to waste and gave a bad name to communism :-$ Kinda sad how most people think communism is a dictatorship.
"America is ready for another revolution" - Sarah Palin
The answers to your questions comrade resides on the hisotorical conditions they lived an the decisions they made to front those conditions.ok so i understand that its about creating a stateless, classless society. however, when i get some communists say they admire people like stalin, it contradicts the whole basis of communism. he killed tons of people with no sense of the slighest empathy towards anyone. under his orders the NKVD was involved in arresting aprox 1/9 of the population (this could be wrong, but it was something like that) and shipping them off to the cold and brutal conditions of the siberian gulags. to me it seems communism mimicks anarchism in the sense that there will be no leader, everyone works together for a prospering society, etc, however stalin was a leader who was unwilling to give up his power. he didnt care about communism, instead he was an oppertunist like mussolini, he did whatever would give him the maximum amount of power. during stalin's rule, the USSR was imperalist as he took over former nazi occupied countries and instead of liberating them took them as control as soviet sattelites. explain any similarities between stalin's rule of the soviet union and communism. why didnt he just give up his power? or why didnt lenin? or why didnt any communist leader do that???
In first place Stalin as you mentioned was not a communist, this is because any communist that argue to be one doesn't look only for the individual good (as Stalin did), a communist know that the dualism between individual and community is based on the historical conditions of capitalism that in socialism that supposedly duality will dissapear because is pointless. Also respatables comrades as Lenin or Trotsky fallen in that trap (saying that a "vanguard" was a primary need for the communist movement), but again they decided to do what they did, that is not something we can change, but what we can do today is to assure that those errors won't be repeated again. Two main directions have to be taken:
1st.- To never underestimate the "philosophical" part of Marxism (dialectics) just as a remain of the idealistic thought. The main aspect that makes Marxism different from any other capitalist conception of reality is the fact that is based on the opposition to reality and knows the basis of the historical change not lineal but antagonic.
2.- To understand that communism doesn't mean to hide, to form sects, to be like a guru only for one or two people, communism means to get together with other people to create the human world that in the capitalist state of development is only reduced to the "interaction" of social atoms but not humans not only in the biological aspect but also in the totality of existance of humans.
El Marxismo es todopoderoso por que es cierto.
This may not belong here, but I don't want to make a new thread for it.
If the communist state is reached, how can it be ensured that no one takes power? That no one comes up with a new idea and creates a business?
Would there be something which we may call a weakened state?
"America is ready for another revolution" - Sarah Palin
That's why I describe myself as an anarcho-communist. Communism, at least according to The Communist Manifesto, is classless and stateless. Classlessness requires that there can be no ruling class, or privileged elites, and statelessness requires there can be no state for them to rule over. The problem is that so many people confuse communism with Stalinism. I find it easier to just say that I'm an anarcho-communist, even though I think that's redundant.
So what is the difference between anarcho-communism and communism?
"America is ready for another revolution" - Sarah Palin
If the population is predominantly communist, then people should generally refuse to cooperate with tyrants and capitalists. If people want to be exploited and oppressed, I don't think there's anything you can do about that. But, if people generally do not recognize the authority of the state, and refuse wage slavery, and violently defend their rights as necessary, then there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. Communism fundamentally requires cultural change. A communist culture would be very resistant to any attempts to exploit and oppress it.
Oh thats why I prefer a socialist stage. A transition from capitalism to communism is too dangerous.
"America is ready for another revolution" - Sarah Palin
That happened because of the material conditions of the USSR.
Russia was a backwards country, isolated and with a 3 year bloody civil war and also an imperialist invasion of 21 armies against it after 1917.
It was only natural that the workers state set up by the Russian proletariat in 1917 under the leadership of Lenin , Trotsky and the Bolsheviks would degenerate, creating a stalinist state or a degenerated workers state.
Russia after the first half of the 20's had a bureaucratic caste controlling the political side . But the base of the economy was socialist , that is why it was a degenereted workers state.
Also don't listen too much to the western media about Stalin. Although I am a Trotskyist I don't I dont believe all the anti-Stalinist propaganda I hear .
Also not all communists support Stalin. The Trotskyists and left-communists certainly don't.
But we Trotskyists support the USSR, Cuba etc while we advocate political revolution so the proletariat can take power and we can have a real workers democracy......
We don't support Stalin.
There was no workers democracy during the Stalin era so he obviously did not want to give his power voluntarily
Why there was no democracy I explained above.
Also don't confuse communism and socialism. Communism does not come after the revolution.
That is socialism which is a transitional period from the revolution to communism , which is caracterized by a greater productive level that capitalism , with a state that fades away and workers democracy and a nationalized planned economy.
The USSR had some characteristics of socialism and it had a socialist economic base.
But the political side was a "dictatorship" .
That's why we characterize it as a degenerated workers state.
There isn't a big difference. The Communist Manifesto touches on nearly all issues that important to anarcho-communism, and lays out instructions for what communists should do in order to accomplish that. Anarcho-communism specifically rejects republican democracy, but accepts direct democracy. It supports expropriation to prevent exploitatation; i.e. if all of the local factories, farms, shops and homes are owned by capitalists, it supports directly taking at least enough capital or necessities so that you don't have to work for capitalists to survive and maintain basic necessities of life. It goes a little bit further than communism in terms of private property; whereas communists would insist that capital should be public property, anarcho-communists would insist that capital, and any property which is not being used should be public property. i.e. if I have a drill, or a radio, and my seven neighbors don't, then my neighbors should be able to use the drill or radio whenever I'm not using it. Likewise, I should be able to use their tools when they aren't using them. Things that can be efficiently shared should be shared so that everyone has the greatest amount of property available to them with the least possible amount of labor required to get that property.
My god. Yet another anti-Stalin thread!
Seem to be popular these days.
And how come China too is a dictatorship...along with Cuba, North Korea
"America is ready for another revolution" - Sarah Palin
You can come up with all the new ideas you want (in fact you'd be encourage to do so), but starting a business requires private property over the means of production, which is something that will not exist under communism.
There is no need to have a state-like entity actively preventing people from starting a business. On the contrary, it's only due to the capitalist state that you can have private property and start a business in the first place. Think about it: What does it mean to say "this thing is my property"? It means "the state will send policemen to arrest you if you try to use this thing without my approval." Your property is yours only because the state says so.
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
- Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian archbishop
"Definition of a conservative: a person who believes that nothing should be done for the first time." - mikelepore
After the degeneration of the USSR the comintern (the communist international) until its dissolution in 1942 by stalin was controlled by the bureaucrats of the USSR.And how come China too is a dictatorship...along with Cuba, North Korea
So every revolution by the proletariat if not boycotted by the Stalinists (click on the link for more info on that topic), was ensured to be created on the image of the degenerated USSR.
That's how China, Cuba and the Eastern Block along with North Korea were all lacking workers democracy.
It is because they were created on the image of the USSR. They were deformed workers states and not degenerated because they had never had workers democracy in order to degenerate from it.
They were controlled by bureaucrats from the get-go.
Does this make it clear to you or do you want further explanation.
Also I think you should start reading some books .
Wouldn't have it any other way.My god. Yet another anti-Stalin thread!
Seem to be popular these days.
“Left wing, chicken wing, it don't make no difference to me.” - Woody Guthrie
I agree completely. I'm with you; i don't understand why people continue to believe that an egalitarian, classless society can be achieved by means that directly contradict those principles.
This doesn't necessarily mean Stalin, Lenin, etc., weren't communists, it just means that they were wrong (in my opinion) as to how to go about creating a communist society. They just couldn't achieve communism through authoritarian means.to me it seems communism mimicks anarchism in the sense that there will be no leader, everyone works together for a prospering society, etc, however stalin was a leader who was unwilling to give up his power. he didnt care about communism, instead he was an oppertunist like mussolini, he did whatever would give him the maximum amount of power. during stalin's rule, the USSR was imperalist as he took over former nazi occupied countries and instead of liberating them took them as control as soviet sattelites. explain any similarities between stalin's rule of the soviet union and communism. why didnt he just give up his power? or why didnt lenin? or why didnt any communist leader do that???
So why does communism confuse you? It's still defined as a classless, stateless society, and that doesn't change just because it was represented by a few poor leaders in the past century.
"I will smack your face off of your face"
-Charlie Day
because Communism was NEVER achieved, those countries calling themselves communists, were at best in the transitional stage towards communism. You can call it the socialist stage.
Revolutions are not an easy thing, especially when you consider the backwardness of Russia and China. China already being raped by Western imperialism and war of agression from Japan. Aside from their backwardness, you have to understand the hostiliy towards these revolutions by the powerful western capitalists. You think they will sit idly by and let Russia and China build their revolutions? Just look at Venezuela, Chavez is going out of his way, even bending backwards to not upset the beorgeiousie. Yet Washington and the Venezuelan beorgiousie have shown nothing but hostitility towards Venezuela.
So it's easy to say how bad Russia and China were, and write off Stalin and Mao as "evil", but when you consider the situations they were in, the progress they brought to Russia and China in a VERY short time, you'll have to give them credit. It's always easy to believe in safe illusions that anarchism or trotsky would've saved the revolutions.
why do anarchists put Stalin next to Lenin?
Stalinism just paid lip service to Marxism-Leninism . But as some dialectician said( i forget who) small accumulated changes can turn something great to its opposite.
Leaders are not compatible with communism, nether are forms of organisation which operate from the top down.Originally Posted by jaiden
Communism needs to be created by the workers, abolishing top down institutions and creating there own federated organisations to co-ordinate the running of society.
I don't think Leninists are communists, there methods of organisation remove workers power and are destructive to revolution.
not sure about lenin, but didn't trotsky say "control your leaders"?
and, when asked why he didn't use the red army to overthrow stalin replied along the lines of "we didn'y have a revolution and fight a civil war in order to impose the old order."
and, before you "anarchists" jump on me, i am well aware of "trotskys crimes" during the civil war, but would suggest those "crimes" were driven by circumstance rather than desire or even ideology.
just a thought or two.
btw, i agree totally that any attempt at socialism/commmunism has to driven from a politicised working class, however, there are those, that are better at putting our desires into words than we are, their are those that are better at organising than we are, doesn't make them better than us, just means they have different talents, but it does mean we should keep them on a tight leash imo.
