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Is Communism good? This poll is closed. |
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| Yes |
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375 | 66.25% |
| No |
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191 | 33.75% |
| Total: | 523 votes | ||
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If a socialist party is in control of a western country (I.e Labour government in the UK) is that country a socialist state or communist state or whatever? Or are the only 'real' communist/socialist states the ones that are dictatorships? Or at least the ones that are slavic/hispanic/asian? Because it may be an American thing but just what 'communism' means seems to be a very slippery concept in every discussion about it. The distinction that I was always told was that Communist states are dictatorships following the old 'dictatorship of the proletariat' thing, whereas socialist states were social democracies based on socialist goals/principles, but still based on the current capitalist economy (with an eye to creating the conditions for socialism to be brought about without a militant vanguard party) I mean hell the word 'communist' was used before the communist manifesto or Capital or any of those crucial communist/socialist texts were written wasn't it? The term has always been an almost meaningless blanket term for anything left of the current status quo. cosmically_cosmic fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jan 22, 2017 |
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Jan 22, 2017 12:04
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 05:45 |
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Hal_2005 posted:The problem with communism is that everyone lies about where the money flows. Find me a method of socialism, community property or otherwise and I'll show you how the system rapidly devolves into a fedudalism/oligarch setup within 1 generation. This is also the problem with current capitalism though, insider trading is essentially impossible to stop despite technically not being a part of the system. The idea of land inheritance (and to an extent capital) is feudalistic (at least to me). In essance, both systems devolve into oligarchy. Communist revolutions just break down much faster than a liberal state. HOWEVER, I would still say that it seems unfair to me to call a country ran by a democratically elected self-declared socialist party, with the explicit consitutional goal of moving the means of production into common ownership through a gradual process via capitalism itself, 'not a real socialist state'. I do seem to recall some stuff in Marx's writing about how it is necessary for a civilisation to pass through a capitalist phase in order to be able to advance to a 'true' socialist state, and that attempting to skip this step just leads to disaster (see: Russia and China). Much like many democratic revolutions before the 1790s, socialist revolutions have failed time and time again. However, to make a flowery comparison, the principles of the french revolution were not called off after Napoleon made himself an emperor. Even after the 1848 revolutions, democracy in europe failed again and again, until after the first world war the last remnants of feudalism were essentially wiped out in Europe. Essentially my problem is that declaring any socialist government or party that operates within capitalism forefeit by virtue of not instantly transforming the world into a socialist paradise seems unfair. It almost traps you in the past, if you didn't jump from feudalism to socialism you're already out of the race. Steps towards socialism, like universal healthcare, the welfare state, etc are valid examples of functional socialist policy, despite existing in the current capitalist framework. I don't know if someone has mentioned it yet, but even the idea of a socialist 'state' as in, socialism that exists in one country and not as part of a global revolution is not the default form of socialism. The whole field is so vague that I feel the only way you can really argue socialist policy, is with reference to real socialist parties. Because otherwise the langauge breaks down because of so many vagaries in marxist theory and variation in the various forms of socialism and marxism etc. The problem to me, always seems to come down capability. A socialist state is essentially life on Star Trek, where you have a magic replicator that can make anything in infinite numbers for anyone so nobody really has a reason to be an rear end in a top hat to each other in order to survive. I might be misremembering the quote, but there's some maoist term or something about how socialist policy should be based on the idea that 'It does not matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice'. So as long as the world wants to stay capitalist, we have to kind of just ride the wave and do the best we can instead of trying to force socialism onto people with military revolutions. IN SHORT: Until we have magical robots we have to settle for patchwork socialism on top of capitalism until the nerds finally finish working out science. cosmically_cosmic fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 08:21
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gobbagool posted:so, communism is the perfect ideal that cannot be criticized because it's never actually been tried to your satisfaction. seems like a good thing to spend your life breathlessly defending on a dead gay comedy forum Of course you can criticize an ideal, but you have to do it on theoretical grounds and not by referencing anecdotes of states that were aiming for that ideal that failed. And the post also clearly then goes on to say that socialism is the practical application of communist ideals, and so then clearly the thing that can be cirtisized by reference to failed states that implement it, which the post then does. If you're gonna make fun of someone for breathlessly posting on a dead gay comedy forum, you have to at least read the breathless posts on the dead gay forum first. cosmically_cosmic fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 00:04
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One point I like from Slavoj Zizek is when he talks about how with Stalin, there was actual backlash of 'Stalin betrayed the cause of communism and the revolution etc' whereas no-body ever claimed Hitler was betraying the cause of fascism when he did his horrific acts. And again, Britain under the socialist labour party (Which is to me logically then a socialist state) did things like the NHS and the welfare state, and didn't genocide anyone.
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Jan 24, 2017 11:12
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Bob le Moche posted:turns out anticommunists just secretly hate democracy, wow shocking i know Power shouldn't come from a democratic institution, it should flow from capital. I think we can all agree that wealthy individuals who own businesses should be in charge. Frankly anything that tries to fix that is exactly the same as North Korea.
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Jan 27, 2017 01:25
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 05:45 |
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Bob le Moche posted:democracy standing up to capitalist power is what we marxists call "the revolution" Frankly if your state ideology doesn't magically protect you from the CIA and/or military intervention from every liberal world power then it's clearly a lost cause and we should surrender to whatever system effectively dominates my life currently.
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Jan 27, 2017 01:31
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