Communism

waterfield wrote:

Interesting article about the eroding-or changing face of communism over the years/

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gitlin-communism-anniversary-20180504-story.html

I think we need a different word for it, for what happened in the USSR, Cuba, China, etc. Cuz it definitely wasn’t “communism” in any meaningful or theoretical sense. It couldn’t possibly be. Communism meant no “state.” The absence of the state. You literally can’t have a communist state if you’re even remotely close to the theory.

The theory, with a lot of variations, of course, depending upon the era and the thinker — modern communism goes back to the 18th century, at least — the theory is basically that we implement real socialism first, and after we’ve internalized that long enough for it to become second nature, we can kick off the training wheels of the state entirely, and just do self-rule. Full self-rule, with democracy fully realized, no ruling class, no class of any kind.

And real socialism meant, again, going back to the 18th century, democratic self-rule too, with a very small “state,” almost no class divisions, decentralized back to the community level, egalitarian, the people owning the means of production, directly, not via political parties.

So, in both cases, socialism and communism, you couldn’t have what they had in Soviet Russia or Maoist China or Castro’s Cuba . . . because the theory doesn’t allow it. Direct democracy doesn’t allow it. And there’s a huge difference between “nationalized” and “socialized,” as Emma Goldman shows here:

There is no communism in Russia.

Americans need to also remember that communists and socialists contributed mightily to all campaigns for social justice in our history, and if you took them out of the picture, we might still be in a Dickensian hell when it comes to workers and the workplace. Their contributions to human rights, consumer rights, minority rights and women’s rights was incalculable as well.

We need better words.

wv wrote:

waterfield wrote:

Interesting article about the eroding-or changing face of communism over the years/

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gitlin-communism-anniversary-20180504-story.html

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“…During the preceding half-century, despite all of Communism’s recorded crimes, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries had remained committed to the absolute rule of a single party as the only viable remedy for capitalism. Around the world, Soviet-style governments enjoyed a reputation as the best imaginable route to social progress….”
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Thank goodness we have something so much better than a SINGLE party here in America.

I mean we have TWO whole parties that rule everyone. 🙂

w
v
“I will say is that there are particular features of the American constitutional system that renders a third party futile – at best.” Todd Gitlin

I’ve been having that argument with Dems on another forum. They were trashing Jill Stein, as usual, and calling the Green party reprehensible, and “spoilers” and so on.

I made the point that in an actual democracy, you can’t have “spoilers,” cuz everyone would be welcome to run for office, try to win hearts and minds, try to win the ability to represent us. None of our votes are owed to the duopoly. They don’t own them. No one who votes for another party is “stealing” votes from the Dems. Those votes were never the Dems’ property in the first place.

They never get it.

And when I point out that, no, Nader didn’t cost Gore the 2000 election, Gore did that himself, they scream. And then I ask them which number if higher:

The 350,000 Dems who voted for Bush directly in Florida, or the 23,000 Nader voters who might have voted for Gore if the Greens had not run?

350,000 versus 23,000. And beyond that, half of the Dems stayed home.

A two-party system is waaaay too close to a one-party system. They don’t get that one, either.