Over the course of the last two weeks i have seen a lot of references to communism, unanimously either dismissive of it's possibility or simply against it because of the whole Soviet experiment in the 20th century.

This thread is one for educating the mass of metalstormers just what communism is about, why communists believe it is a viable economic model, and the history of communism, and hopefully there are some commies here apart from me who can contribute to discussion about the finer and undecided points (what form should the revolution take, where/when, etc).

Here's a few starting points that i want to make quite clear:

1) There has never been a communist society existing on a national level. None have ever claimed to be communist. Of the very few that call themselves socialist, hardly any are truly socialist in the actual literal definition of the word. Referring to china, north korea or russia in this thread is pointless, as none of those are connected in any meaningful manner to Communism.

2) Communism is the STATELESS society achieved after an international proletarian revolution, which abolishes the oppressive capitalist system in all it's forms, and to it's deepest roots. I'm talking total and complete wiping of the board and remaking it all. No more money, no more companies, no more countries, no more employment, no more religion (negotiable according to some communists), an entire life change. This comes to be after a lengthy and natural transition period known as socialism, where an organization of workers coordinates the activities the proletariat for it's own benefit.

3) Communism means revolution, and not some wussy social revolution. It cannot be achieved through the political system, the political system must be overthrown and destroyed, as it (like all institutions of our society) exists solely to concentrate power (and therefore money) in the hands of a few. The scale and conduct of the revolution is a matter of debate amongst communists.

4) Anarchism (in it's pure form) is exactly as above, except that anarchists believe that we will be able to, and must, slip straight into communism after the revolution, so i count anarchists as communists. Henceforth then people adhering to the principles stated above will be referred to as marxists.



Question, comment, challenge or even flame, but please oh please at least have read this post before writing "COMMIES FVKK3D UP RUSSKIELAND!!11", or even a coherent and valid post raging against the PRK, PRC or (former)USSR. And any other MS commies lend a hand please!

It's interesting, Communism always has so much appeal on paper. However, it's impossible to achieve, because SOCIALISM will always come into play. Why? Because people will take advantage of such a naive idea.

socialism is an integral part of communism, but i think we are referring to different things as socialism. Socialism is defined by marx as the transition period from capitalism to communism.

To prevent the revolution from being taken advantage of, the system of organization (government is such a dirty word) post-revolution must be built along new lines. If the current structure and concept of politics is kept then yes, advantage will be taken, which is why the revolution must be on such a deep level that the entire political system AND SYSTEM OF THINKING is destroyed. There cannot be a communist party, as the very concept of a party is alien to the goal of a communist society. A party exists to concentrate power in the hands of it's members, and through that power impose the views of it's members on the rest. This is one of the key stumbling blocks of the 20th Century experiments. Without failure a "Communist Party" or equivalent was formed. A party requires a leader, or at least a small council (politburo) of leaders to function. This is anathemic to the spirit of a socialist revolution.

your "SOCIALISM" will always come into play as long as the revolutions are the false revolutions such as those we have seen throughout the last century. Lenin, Mao, Castro, all of them attained power at the HEAD of a force of arms. A true proletarian-socialist revolution would NOT be led by a leninist vanguard of hardcore revolutionaries, but the organic formation of a self-emancipated proletariat.

The question would then be, "Is it possible"? Especially in countries like ours...

Any government that requires a dictator is just bad, unless tr00 communism doesn't require one...

So as an Anarchist, I'm a Communist?
I have to agree though, I've seen Anarchism pretty much the way you described Communism there...

Edit: Aha, after looking it up, I see what "Anarchist communism" is about. Not sure if I agree with all of it. Simply, I don't know how well would removal of money work.

Communism is the perfect [bi]idea[/b], but it can not be achieved. And this is because of the people. Someone will always take advantage of his givven power, and he'll try to gain more, at any cost.

Draklar: There's soooo many variations on anarchism, from -syndicalism to -capitalism, so i just decided to use the most common and "raw" anarchist ideology, which tails very well indeed with communism.

Damnated: I'm not really sure if i agree with you there, but the point is irrelevant: After the revolution, nobody will be ABLE to wield power on their own account, and nobody will be able to increase what powers they have. There will be no Great Leaders, no political careerists, no election campaigns or anything like that. Participative democracy will come into being, and even if we elect others to represent our views, it will be on a delegative basis, and not the representative basis under which we work these days. The delegates would represent the views of their constituents, not their own ideas.

The only way your objection could be valid is if (as above), the revolution was a fake one that did not truly and completely change the political systems.

The revolution will always be fake, because people are fake...

Written by [user id=3152] on 28.08.2006 at 15:05

Damnated: I'm not really sure if i agree with you there, but the point is irrelevant: After the revolution, nobody will be ABLE to wield power on their own account, and nobody will be able to increase what powers they have. There will be no Great Leaders, no political careerists, no election campaigns or anything like that. Participative democracy will come into being, and even if we elect others to represent our views, it will be on a delegative basis, and not the representative basis under which we work these days. The delegates would represent the views of their constituents, not their own ideas.

What kind of revolution would be able to withstand forming of new leaders, same way it did in early ages of humanity?

@Comrade Frosty Again, this revolution sounds perfect, but if it will happen someday, wich I doubt, it wont be like you've just described. The perfect example, is waht happened in my country, in 1989, when the communist regime fell. We, well, not me, as I was 3 months old, but the people, thought, that some changes will come, the country will be a better place. Changes did occur, but the 'new faces' who become the leaders were ex comies, spies etc. Same thing happened in Hungary, were ex commies formed the government, this year, and 4 years ago to.

My point is this: there will always be people who have a 'criminal' past, wolfs in sheeps skin, and there's no way that you can stop that. Corruption, also, will always be present at these places, and then how the hell could a revolution change this.

Well i'll say again: the effects you describe damnated are the results of an incomplete or "fake" revolution.

Draklar: The revolution will be a popular mass movement. Lenin and mao formed small "vanguard" parties that overthrew their government in the name of the people. The true proletarian-socialist revolution will not be an organized or ordered one, but just the result of the people losing the illusions that keep them bound now. There may be figureheads, but they will not have any official power beyond the respect that people have for them. There will be no "people's revolutionary army". There won't be a Great Leader of the revolution because most people won't realize there's a revolution going on until the system is destroyed.

@ comrade frosty: the way u describe communism makes good for the ideology. but i mean, whatever u describe, if u describe it in the right way, it will sound good.
i will take the nazis as an example (and dont get me wrong, im no nazi at all, i hate those bastards)
imagine a world where there would be no oppression whatsoever. why would there be no oppression? coz there will only exist arian heterosexual people without mental challenges and other disabilities. racism wouldnt exist. a united "great germany" would easily become as powerful as today's usa.

*sarcasm* so there u have it. doesnt it sound absolutely great? *sarcasm*

Sarcasm works better when it's related to topic at hand
Or in other words, you didn't support your statement with any real arguments.

communism in its pure is not a good idea. It would be...for robots..I mean as long as you have human choice, consciousness and human will it will be impossible to achieve. Such a society requires where nothing is being stolen, misinterpreted, and near no accidental. It almost reminds me of that John Lennon song "imagine"

human race without any form of religion is also unattainable. Humans always follow something with complete belief, passion and so forth, wether their god is science, themselves/mentality, or a male/female controlling all power in the universe. people who do not follow one of the 3 (or many) are usually depressed individual who do not apply themselves to their potential. human success is always due to "because god said so" and/or "because I strongly believe so" or "I must prove them wrong" and if you don't have someone to inspire someone else in such a manner then you have next to no human development in anything unless something hits crisis (i.e.: running out of food to develop new way of harvesting it)

The only way IMO that you can achieve a complete and pure state of communism if the society is stabilized in its population (no increases no decreases) and is big and small enough to sustain only itself.

Well, I don't think stealing is even possible, when there's no personal property

And passion isn't synonym to religion...

Has anyone ever seen Enemy at the Gates? It's a great movie with Jude Law and Ed Harris. It is interesting how two men are fighting against the Nazi's have such a Naive belief that communism will work. They are fighting Germany because they think all people can truly be equal, but one gets jealous over the other because the woman he likes, isn't interested in him. None of us will ever be equal, we should appreciate our differences and all get along.

@Draklar

communism isn't automatically signifying that you will be poor it was originally targeted on more richer states like Britain.

as for religion, religion is not a synonym to passion but simply a derivative of

Written by [user id=5846] on 28.08.2006 at 20:09

communism isn't automatically signifying that you will be poor it was originally targeted on more richer states like Britain.

Yeah, I meant that apparently in this form of communism, everything is a mass property, rather than personal/individual one.
But like Konrad said, not everyone are equal. Therefore I don't think everyone should have equal property. Much rather they should have what they deserve. That's a natural motivation for improvement. Both on personal and grand scale (when talking about humanity).

Written by [user id=5846] on 28.08.2006 at 20:09
as for religion, religion is not a synonym to passion but simply a derivative of

Perhaps, but I'm not sure if Frosty meant it as such in his post

Written by akatana on 28.08.2006 at 21:40

Modern capitalism is based on meritocracy but it does not work either , not everybody has what he deserves, some have less and some have more than they deserve

Yeah, I thought about adding that, but then I thought it would overlap the main point I tried to make

As for further part of your post. I'm not sure if damage that won't allow such a switch was made (or rather whether it's permanent), but either way I'd agree that our mentality (or social progress) isn't developed enough for this sort of world order. Not yet, anyway. To turn it into an example, even though I'm an Anarchist, in modern world I would rather strive for Technocracy than Anarchism, or this form of Communism.

Achor: The difference being that i gave a full account of the process, and not just described the effects of communism.

Skattle: I think you are taking communism and applying it to a capitalist society to which you are accustomed. You mentioned stealing: Stealing is impossible under communism because everything you want is free. People are free to cling to their spirituality, but organized religion will be removed. After a generation you won't notice that it's missing.

People will not be turned into "robots", and i'd very much like to know where you got that idea from?


Konrad: People will still be jealous of each other, yes. People will quite probably still kill and rape each other. I don't present communism as a way of solving EVERY problem around, but it goes a hell of a long way towards doing so. Also, Sovietism is no applicable as a comparison here.


Taka: we had this debate before, on how much of human greed is innate, and how much is caused by the system in which we live. You also provide the answer for me in you mention of the "noble savage". Such communities were not greedy, neither did they always strive to outdo their neighbours. The fact that they were destroyed by feudal societies means only that they were long before their time. The "human nature" argument which us long-suffering marxists always come up against is void for those precise reasons.

It is not human nature to be greedy, it's the nature of capitalism to make us greedy.


Draklar: I used to believe in meritocracy, but then i realized that that was simply because i was lucky to have a higher intellect and more home-taught erudition than the majority of my peers. Meritocracy is simply a way of justifying the perpetuation of the class system. Middle class kids do better than working class kids at school, and then go on to be the middle class of the future. Our school system is geared towards rewarding the outcomes of a middle-class background, not intelligence.

Even if we were to have a meritocratic revolution, Do you truly believe you are better than those who are less intelligent than you? Does that give you a right to a better life? Or even let's take it one step further. Do you believe you should have more rights than those who were unlucky in the gene-pool dip?

Written by [user id=3152] on 28.08.2006 at 22:07

Draklar: I used to believe in meritocracy, but then i realized that that was simply because i was lucky to have a higher intellect and more home-taught erudition than the majority of my peers. Meritocracy is simply a way of justifying the perpetuation of the class system. Middle class kids do better than working class kids at school, and then go on to be the middle class of the future. Our school system is geared towards rewarding the outcomes of a middle-class background, not intelligence.

That's one of reasons why I support Anarchy, where working class is put into charge, or rather there's no charge over it. They get full outcome of what they produce and in case of companies (which should be rather small), all decissions are made by the community of workers. Efficiency decreases, but resources allocation improves (or at least I think so, feel free to correct me, should I be wrong).

Written by [user id=3152] on 28.08.2006 at 22:07

Even if we were to have a meritocratic revolution, Do you truly believe you are better than those who are less intelligent than you? Does that give you a right to a better life? Or even let's take it one step further. Do you believe you should have more rights than those who were unlucky in the gene-pool dip?

Well, the thing is I'm a narcist so I naturally consider myself better than most people xD
But should I have more rights? That's another case. I think rights to have a better life should be earned by hard work, but if it's done by intelligence (like in sciences), then yeah, person of superior intelligence might have more rights than someone, who would never be able to make such achievements. The other person might just as well try his best in another field anyway.

But the question I'd ask in return is:
Should someone who works 16 hours a day have same rights and same access to property as someone who does absolutely nothing all day? Forced equality seems awfully unfair to me.

Draklar: To answer your question: No, i don't think a person who doesn't work should benefit as much as one who does. But never have i said so, and communism cannot be reconciled with that. Indeed that is exactly what communism was designed to destroy, the idea of the inheriting (whether direct wealth inheritance or education and privelige inheritance) elite, who do not work as hard to get to equal positions as members of the working classes. It is far harder to become a barrister/advocate for a poor working class person in an inner-city state school than it is for a priveliged aristocrat who went to a private school with a good reputation. In a communist society, those who worked the most would be given highest priority for goods and services.

taka: i get your point, but i wanted it to be aired in public, along with my refutation of it, to contribute to the discussion. Another counter-argument however, is that exactly the same argument as you put above could easily have been used during the transition from feudal serfdom to capitalist wage-slavery. People could, with the same justifaction, have said that the serf classes could never remove the mentality of inferiority that had been indoctrinated into them without a bloody revolution.

And as for bloodshed in revolution: Is it better for a few thousand to be killed in a short armed struggle, or is it better for billions of people to live in misery and poverty, dieing needlessly young of painful diseases for hundreds of years in the future, as well as being exterminated by opressive governments and needless wars and conflicts? Is it better to chop off a finger that develops gangrene, or allow it to spread and eventually infect the entire hand, arm and body?

Written by [user id=5846] on 28.08.2006 at 18:54

communism in its pure is not a good idea. It would be...for robots..I mean as long as you have human choice, consciousness and human will it will be impossible to achieve. Such a society requires where nothing is being stolen, misinterpreted, and near no accidental. It almost reminds me of that John Lennon song "imagine"

human race without any form of religion is also unattainable. Humans always follow something with complete belief, passion and so forth, wether their god is science, themselves/mentality, or a male/female controlling all power in the universe. people who do not follow one of the 3 (or many) are usually depressed individual who do not apply themselves to their potential. human success is always due to "because god said so" and/or "because I strongly believe so" or "I must prove them wrong" and if you don't have someone to inspire someone else in such a manner then you have next to no human development in anything unless something hits crisis (i.e.: running out of food to develop new way of harvesting it)

The only way IMO that you can achieve a complete and pure state of communism if the society is stabilized in its population (no increases no decreases) and is big and small enough to sustain only itself.

john lennon is god!

on the topic now
a combination of anarchism and communism would be real nice, but it would never work just as u said. as long as we have greed and envy something that requires a vast group effort could not possibly work although lenin did give it a good shot

well it's not so much a big group effort as an organic progression from an inferior system of ordering the means of production, finance and distribution to a superior one. It has been done in the past, the moves from tribal communism to feudalism, and then to capitalism. These were not the results of a political party winning power, but simply the unstoppable movement of human progress. Lenin has harmed the communist cause more than any othe figure in history, due to his setting up of a dictatorship which later became synonymous with communism and which has prejudiced so many people against an ideal long before they know anything about it.

@rebel4life

im sorry but lennon was a dolt. his ideas were nice, but not thought through.

as far as communism goes, i agree with you on that point. any challange/ problem that requiers higher intervention by force automaticly crosses communism out.

@Draklar

then who is to decide who gets what and deserves what and how do you monitor that?

Dont know much about it..
I know that the 'Kibuzim' is Israel were totally communist, most of them today arnt.
Israel is a capitlistic state with a social base.

I personnally Dont like capitalism because its so materialistic and it makes people egoistic.
But I think its more of a culture thing.
Money isnt bad as long as people dont make it the main purpose in life.
One of the reasons I really dont like america...is that they import there culture to my country, no offence, but I dont like american culture at all...

The problem I think with communism is that it kills personnal growth, and its utopian.

Written by [user id=5846] on 29.08.2006 at 07:25

then who is to decide who gets what and deserves what and how do you monitor that?

And how do you do that today? You get what you produce, it's simple as that. The main difference would be that there would be no one who can legally "steal" results of your hard work.
You'd be still free to trade your wares and services, which means there would be a free market. And why shouldn't there be? Anarchism is higher (true) form of Democracy, after all.

but then there's nothing stopping the super-corporations from creating their own armies and enslaving millions of people by force. Anarcho-capitalism is the dream of the bourgeios elite. The nearest we've ever been to it was in the 1800s, a time notorious for obscenely inhumane conditions for workers, before the Trades Unions movement. The only difference is that under full anarcho-capitalism there's nothing stopping the Bourgeiosie from smashing strikes by force, assasinating the leaders, taking family members hostage and cruelly punishing workers for being slow. It's about equal to fascism in my big book of bad.


Ridden Disease: How does it kill personal growth?


Skattle: but that's exactly the point: It does not need any interventon from above. the revolution grows from below, so it needs no leaders pulling it in their own direction.

Written by [user id=3152] on 29.08.2006 at 13:39

but then there's nothing stopping the super-corporations from creating their own armies and enslaving millions of people by force. Anarcho-capitalism is the dream of the bourgeios elite. The nearest we've ever been to it was in the 1800s, a time notorious for obscenely inhumane conditions for workers, before the Trades Unions movement. The only difference is that under full anarcho-capitalism there's nothing stopping the Bourgeiosie from smashing strikes by force, assasinating the leaders, taking family members hostage and cruelly punishing workers for being slow. It's about equal to fascism in my big book of bad.

1) With there being no charge over working class, creation of super-corporations wouldn't even be possible. Such system just isn't efficient enought for large structures to be created.
2) Assassinations of leaders wouldn't be possible either, since there would be no real leaders.
3) No one would punish workers, as the main point is, there would be no charge over workers.

And no, the closest real example of what I'm supporting would be rather pre-government Africa:
"Because in traditional African societies the economy was largely horticultural and subsistence based, as Horton notes, "often small villages farmed, hunted, fished, etc., and looked after themselves independently with little reference to the rest of the continent." Various communities produced surpluses of given commodities which they exchanged, through barter, for those items that they lacked. The situation was such that no one starved while others stuffed themselves and threw away the excess.

According to Walter Rodney, "in that way, the salt industry of one locality would be stimulated, while the iron industry would be encouraged in another. In a coastal, lake or riverine area, dried fish could become profitable, while yams and millet would be grown in abundance elsewhere to provide a basis of exchange...." Thus, in many parts of Africa a symbiosis arose between groups earning their living in different manners-they exchanged goods and coexisted to their mutual advantage."