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I believe Putin : Ukraine Started The War

#82
Calling me "your majesty" sarcastically is not moving on. Or is that not what you intended? I'm genuinely uncertain.

Do you mean, can you have the last word?

Sure. If you respond to this, I will not answer it.
#84
@Noflaps said in #75:
>
>Fiddlesticks. "nothing at all?" Hardly.
>
>But let's assume, arguendo, that Soviet communism wasn't remotely inspired by Marx.
>
>So what? I was writing about Soviet Communism, and it wasn't great. Indeed, it was eventually abandoned.

My point was that the October Revolution of 1917 was very much inspired by the ideas of Marx, but because the revolution remained isolated in Russia (German capitalism had stabilised by the end of 1924), it eventually succumbed to Stalinist counter-revolution. By that I mean that the Stalinist faction within the Russian Communist Party abandoned Marxism (an internationalist doctrine) and pursued a policy of "socialism in one country". The key person to understanding the power struggle in the Soviet Union in the 1920s is Leon Trotsky, who remained loyal to Bolshevism and its Marxist ideology.
#85
@Noflaps said in #75:

>Today young "intellectuals" tell themselves that somehow "real" communism is just swell and ignore the effects of communism as it has ACTUALLY manifested in the real world.
>
>But communism in the real world seems to be accompanied by a big strong government with bureaucrats and behaviors that sometime leave us wondering how people get into such a condition voluntarily.

First off, i am 70 years old and have been a Marxist for half a century.

There has never been a communist society (in a Marxist sense) anywhere in the world. Russia was a worker's state for a short period after the October revolution, but that was destroyed by the Stalinists certainly by 1929. All the other societies that have called themselves "communist" are actually variations of Stalinist and Maoist societies.

Take China today. It is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. But it clearly is a capitalist society with an exploited working class. The workers are not the ruling class in China; they are not administering a workers' state in preparation for the creation of a truly communist society where all social classes (including privileged ruling bureaucrats) no longer exist. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1920 along Bolshevik lines, but only survived as a workers' party until 1927 when most of its members were massacred by Chiang Kai-Shek. The survivors fled into the countryside and it eventually became a peasant-based party. It ceased to be a Marxist party.
#86
So, communism "in one country" is a problem? It is only "real" if it spreads to ALL countries? That seems to be the implication of what you just wrote, @stockwellpete .

If so, God help us.

Many of us don't wish to live under communism. We wish to make our own life choices and to have some prospect of individual success without the need to make government connections to do so.

I understand that you have studied history and you truly seem to be intelligent. But please notice that communism, as it has really developed, has never adhered to any idealized formulation of it for long.

Trotsky DIDN'T triumph. And China itself now tolerates free enterprise to an extent. And, reportedly, many Uyghurs might be able to offer a disquieting look into communism as it is ACTUALLY practiced, as well.

Even the socialist kibbutzim in Israel seem, on the whole, to be in decline.

Societies INEVITABLY have some form of government. It doesn't just go away when some predicted enlightenment arrives.

And government provides individuals in its leadership with an opportunity for personal power. Which attracts many, inevitably. And some of those whom it attracts are not saintly.

Sooner or later, a Utopian government will turn into somebody's power base. And individuals will have less freedom as government gets ever larger and more in control of daily living. This is what we ACTUALLY see happen, in the real world, do we not?

The government tail tries to wag the societal dog. And that doesn't necessarily benefit the "masses." But it surely benefits those who control the reins.

I prefer a freer society, where men don't have to ask some apparatchik where they may live, work or travel. And where nobody has to fear being sent to a "reeducation camp."

Communism has been started more than once. I wouldn't wish to live under ANY of its resulting real-world manifestations. So, needless to say, I surely hope the entire world doesn't fall under any of them, either. Human nature simply can't be dismissed, even in theory.
#87
@Noflaps said in #86:
>So, communism "in one country" is a problem? It is only "real" if it spreads to ALL countries? That seems to be the implication of what you just wrote, @stockwellpete .
>

Yes. Marxism is an internationalist doctrine. If you look at "The Communist Manifesto" (1848) its main slogan is "workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains". Lots of people may not like this idea, but at least they should be honest about what Marxism stands for.

>If so, God help us.
>
>Many of us don't wish to live under communism. We wish to make our own life choices and to have some prospect of individual success without the need to make government connections to do so.
>
>I understand that you have studied history and you truly seem to be intelligent. But please notice that communism, as it has really developed, has never adhered to any idealized formulation of it for long.
>
>Trotsky DIDN'T triumph. And China itself now tolerates free enterprise to an extent. And, reportedly, many Uyghurs might be able to offer a disquieting look into communism as it is ACTUALLY practiced, as well.
>
>Even the socialist kibbutzim in Israel seem, on the whole, to be in decline.
>
>Societies INEVITABLY have some form of government. It doesn't just go away when some predicted enlightenment arrives.
>
>And government provides individuals in its leadership with an opportunity for personal power. Which attracts many, inevitably. And some of those whom it attracts are not saintly.
>
>Sooner or later, a Utopian government will turn into somebody's power base. And individuals will have less freedom as government gets ever larger and more in control of daily living. This is what we ACTUALLY see happen, in the real world, do we not?
>
>The government tail tries to wag the societal dog. And that doesn't necessarily benefit the "masses." But it surely benefits those who control the reins.
>
>I prefer a freer society, where men don't have to ask some apparatchik where they may live, work or travel. And where nobody has to fear being sent to a "reeducation camp."
>
>Communism has been started more than once. I wouldn't wish to live under ANY of its resulting real-world manifestations. So, needless to say, I surely hope the entire world doesn't fall under any of them, either. Human nature simply can't be dismissed, even in theory.

This is all very muddled from my point of view. You seem to be mixing up communism and Stalinism as if they are the same. Whereas in reality they are polar opposites. The Bolsheviks intended that the working class should rule Russian society and that it should eventually be transformed into a communist society along with other societies in Europe. The Stalinists absolutely did not want this to happen and after 1929 the Russian working class was an exploited class again. The revolution was destroyed from within. see the writings of Leon Trotsky in the 1930s.

So what you are calling communist societies are actually Stalinist societies which, apart from Russia, have never had working class revolutions, which is a pre-requisite of creating a socialist society first and subsequently transforming it into communism (again from The Communist Manifesto).

Regarding some of the examples you have given . . . China is now a fully-fledged capitalist society run by the Chinese Communist Party, which has no communists in it! There has never been a working class led revolution in China. The workers are exploited there in the same way that workers are exploited in the USA, Britain, Germany, Russia, North Korea or wherever you care to mention. The Zionist kibbuzim in Palestine before WW2 were racist and colonial enterprises that excluded Arab workers and peasants.
#88
@stockwellpete , what I'm trying to point out is that communism in the college classroom is NOT communism as it ACTUALLY comes to be in the real world.

How many examples, with no lasting counterexamples, do we need to see before we begin to worry about how communism ACTUALLY develops again and again? We all leave college eventually, and have to live in the real world, after all.

Furthermore, even "pure" communism is not at all something I would wish to live under. And I am hardly alone in that feeling. So, notions that communism must somehow cover the world, or that anybody might wish to insist upon that, are frankly unsettling -- even chilling.

We don't need to be told how to live. We don't need to be forced into a government we don't wish. I do not undervalue personal freedom and personal achievement. And I wish others would not, as well. Yet I'd never force them to do so. If they wish to live under communism, I have no objection if they move to a communist domain.

Admittedly, as I've pointed out, they'll have a hard time finding one. Because communism in the real world doesn't seem to last. Why? That cannot simply be brushed aside. It's not because humans are horrid. I believe most people DO value personal freedom and personal achievement.

Of course, AI may eventually turn us all into streamers, hoping to charm, leaving us nothing else to do. Unfortunately, not all have the talent or the looks for that.

Perhaps we're all being carried along in a handbasket toward a sadder future. I hope not. But communism hardly seems to provide a cheery beacon.
#89
The capitalism-communism duality cannot coexist for long, in theory or in practice.

Communism, as present in Marxist ideas, and especially later, is centered on a class struggle in which workers succeed in overthrowing the system favoring the merchant and bourgeois classes, resulting in a classless, collectivized world.

If communism succeeds in taking over a single state or a handful of states, this can already be considered a failure, because the presence of more capitalist states will cause the corruption of the communist regime by a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy that is necessary to allow the state to survive in the global geopolitical game dominated by capitalism. Therefore, Soviet communism, frankly, from Stalin, or Maoism onward, is nothing more than a revisitation of communism, renewing the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat by setting aside the philosophy and rights of workers in favor of dubious economic methods with deadly consequences, while assuming this dictatorship of the proletariat over time. This results in an imperialism that has nothing to do with philosophical communism.

For communism to work, there would have to be a massive communist movement in a short time in a multitude of different places with positive results that cause the disappearance or marginalization of capitalist states. Then, there would be a kind of anarchist-communism with the disappearance of the notions of borders and an unforced collectivization, while guaranteeing a certain stability by a dictatorship of the proletariat in permanent rotation.
#90
@Noflaps said in #88:
>What I'm trying to point out is that communism in the college classroom is NOT communism as it ACTUALLY comes to be in the real world.
>
>How many examples, with no lasting counterexamples, do we need to see before we begin to worry about that? We all leave college eventually, and have to live in the real world, after all.

And what I am trying to point out is that there has never been any communism in the real world, just a very short-lived attempts to create a socialist society in Russia after 1917 (abortive attempt also in Hungary and Bavaria). Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks were not school students. They made a revolution that put the Russian working class in power and then all the major capitalist powers invaded Russia, smashed up the economy and created the social conditions that enabled counter-revolutionary Stalinism to prevail. Stalinism is the unintended love-child of global capitalism.
>

>Furthermore, even "pure" communism not at all something I wish to live under. And I am hardly alone in that feeling. So notions that communism must somehow cover the world, or that anybody might wish to insist upon that, are frankly unsettling.

I don't know what you mean by "pure communism". I am talking about participatory working class democracy, which should replace bourgeois representative democracy.


>We don't need to be told how to live. We don't need to be forced into a government we don't wish. I do not undervalue personal freedom and personal achievement. And I wish others would not, as well. Yet I'd never force them to do so. If they wish to live under communism, I have no objection if they move to a communist domain.
>> Admittedly, as I've pointed out, they'll have a hard time finding one. Because communism in the real world doesn't seem to last. Why? That cannot simply be brushed aside. It's not because humans are horrid. I believe most people DO value personal freedom and personal achievement.

Again you are muddling up totalitarian Stalinism with working class democracy. The two things have nothing in common. Under working class democracy nearly everyone would actually have much more control over their lives than they do now.

>
>Of course, AI may eventually turn us all into streamers, hoping to charm, leaving us nothing else to do. Unfortunately, not all have the talent or the looks for that.
>
>Perhaps we're all being carried along in a handbasket toward a sadder future. I hope not. But communism hardly seems to provide a cheery beacon.

We are heading for environmental catastrophe and most likely WW3. Isn't capitalism great?