Ask a Red III

[Mouthwash]

Pardon me, but what would you like to offer in the way of data? Statistics tell one story, but actual on-the-ground work tells quite another. I have met thousands of farm workers in 21 years, as well as people who do all kinds of work, and I do know what they make and I do know how long they live -- and I have saved lives by just being there, getting them donated medical care, getting them meetings with volunteer attorneys and distributing food and clothing to those who needed it.

I have forsaken personal fortune to better the lives of others, something my grandmother (a life-long Republican Party inner circle member and whose family founded the Republican Party branch in Oklahoma) said I should do, since that seemed to be a famiiy tradition.
So, I am a but of an expert on what kinds of "rewards" are offered in a capitalist system in return to hard work.

Ah, I see. Anecdotal experiences trump statistics and facts. You don't have to prove anything. I believe you with all my heart.

 

[Old Hippy]

Ah, I see. Anecdotal experiences trump statistics and facts. You don't have to prove anything. I believe you with all my heart.

unless one should have the links to statistics and facts,that are counter to the point, don't see any reason not too...

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Ah, I see. Anecdotal experiences trump statistics and facts. You don't have to prove anything. I believe you with all my heart.

The difference between experience and statistics in my case is this: how many workers' lives were saved with statistics? If your goal is to make a difference, then all the charts and graphs in the world will not put a dollar in any poor person's pocket. It will not get them to the doctor, it will not convince them, either, that capitalism is doing them any good.

Are you saying that my experiences are worthless compared to worthless pieces of paper. Are you saying what I do with my own two hands is not "fact."

You have proven my point -- there are no rewards for hard work under capitalism. No good deed goes unpunished.

Stay in your ivory tower with your "statistics and facts." They serve those who promulgate them. I, on the other hqnd, am proving the superiority of socialism where it counts -- with the people.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Emphases added. These assertions seem to express something of a penchant for universal quantification. It really is a quite remarkable claim that humanity is fully malleable; that we have absolutely no nature but a socially constructed one. It also seems quite unnecessary for the conclusions you want to adumbrate. They are consistent with much weaker assertions about human nature (Rousseauian assertions, for instance).

Is there any reason you make the stronger -as far I know quite unevidenced- claims when the weaker would suffice?

As Inno has correctly deduced, I am speaking of man's social behavior. If you go back and look, I did say "in society." And yes, I maintain its near-complete malleability. I'm sure that perhaps there's some remote or insignificant part that isn't, or isn't believed to be, but I'm not going to get tied up in legalese over useless pedantry.

Possibly. But, for one, it has been some time since we have been living in a purely capitalist society. This may have been true at the times Marx was working on his Capital, but, as I mentioned, most modern economies are mixed. (My question as to the How? was in part rhetorical, as I seriously doubt good will be enough to educate people into the Marxist mold, so to speak.)

Actually, society today is far more capitalistic than it was in Marx's day. The capitalist society described in Capital is one where the capitalist mode of production permeates all levels of society; where every sector of the economy, and indeed society, is governed by the logic and application of capitalism. In his lifetime, even the most advanced economy in the world, Great Britain's, which he observed first-hand, capitalism was only sector of the economy. There was still a strong cottage industry, artisan manufacturers, and colonial plantations. Any of those things that remain are relics or fill novel niches within the larger capitalist economy.

I'm not familiar with Sankara, but if massmurderers write poetry, don't expect me to be impressed (Mao, who was responsible for probably dozens of millions of Chinese deaths, also wrote poetry).

Thomas Sankara was the President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. He oversaw a massive modernization of his country, which was until then a post-colonial wasteland of a place. Using the rallying power of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, his administration engaged in a nation-building campaign that wiped out both French imperial influence as well as ancient traditions and superstitions, like the famed blood debt. He instituted modern schools and universal education, mass-vaccination for meningitis, yellow fever, and measles, and liberal rights including protection for women from genital mutilation, forced marriages, and polygamy. But on the personal side, before the revolution he was a popular guitar player in a rock band, who rode a bicycle to work at his government post every day.

I suggest reading his wikipedia page. His whole life is epic, and his administration and service to his country is admirable. It's quite understandable why the French government bribed his second in command, a person still in power today 25 years later, to assassinate him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara

 

[innonimatu]

I don't know who Sankara is, either, but Mao is a hero to more people than Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson combined. Stalin is too. Stalin's defense of the city of Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd)during the Russian Civil War (1919 to 1921) is legendary. If by mass murder, you mean the 20+ million Soviet citizens the NAZIS killed while invading the Soviet Union, you are truly mistaken. The so-called "purge trials" in the 1930s were witnessed by a prominent American anti-Communist, anti-Stalinist named Joseph Davies, who wrote in Mission to Moscow that these trials were the fairest he had ever seen. Even those found guilty thought they got a fair deal.

Not-so-minor nitpick: they did not get a fair deal. Many were communists murdered because Stalin wanted to make sure that his personal vision of communism would be the one implemented. And beyond the infighting among old bolsheviks (which caught many more among his young collaborators deemed guilty by association) his undiscriminating ruthlessness probably killed millions of people also who were not in any way obstacles to a change towards communism. Some of those deaths were arguably unavoidable as part of the ongoing political fight (it had turned deadly during the russian civil war and it would remain deadly until one faction won decisively) but even the CPSU later denounced his excesses! Stalin did dismantle the old structures of pre-communist Russia, but at what cost? Mao did the same in China, and like Stalin also went to to exaggerate "internal enemies" just for the sake of keeping personal control over the country. They won but theirs were pyrric victories: they tainted communism for the future even when it seemed like people in those countries that mattered the most in the world then, the more advanced western countries, might embrace it. And now their ruthless victories still stand like a huge shadow over the whole idea of communism.

You see, this is why I am too cynical to be a communist: Stalin and Mao went about murdering people "for the good of the people". It was forced modernization and the way they imposed it was in essence no different from the way the colonial powers of Europe imposed modernity upon the native populations of Africa: at the point of a gun, or under threat off starvation if they did not collaborated. Modernity is usually an improvement, traditional societies suck in any number of ways and I'm sure that there was lots of room for improvement within Russia or China at the time. But dragging an entire people kicking and screaming to some "better future" is just something deeply hypocritical. Stalin did that and will rightly be vilified for his methods even if he was from some points of view a smart man with good intentions. The logic he applied in the USSR during those times was the same kind of logic that capitalist owners employ to demand that their workers produce more surplus so as to increase the amount of capital in the hands of management/the owners: work more for less so as to improve the business/the country/whatever. In the end workers were screwed within communist USSR as they were in the capitalist west, the product of their labour replaced with promises of some better future. The development strategy applied within the USSR was the same kind of strategy used in every other place: accumulate capital at the expense of distributing it for the workers to consume. In the USSR they were consoled with the promise that all the capital was state-owned and therefore "theirs", in the west they were consoled with the promise of the "american dream" or, later, the "ownership society". Poor consolation in either side, thus both sides resorted to compelling people to work: educating them to work within the desired system, and withdrawing (as much as possible without major political troubles) their means of survival if they resisted.

The USSR later went on to fulfil the promise of distribution, worker control, and equality to a greater degree that what the west offered (nevermind the accusations levelled against the nomenklatura, their privileges were insignificant compared to those of the wealthy in the capitalist world), but what good was that for all those killed during the process?

In short: methods are important, not just the end result. Past ruthless methods used by communists stand as the major obstacle to the appeal of communist ideas worldwide. The show trials and purges of Stalin lost a number of influential supporters in western Europe who became instead dedicated enemies working on the "right wing"; the invasion of Hungary sealed the fate of western communist parties to irrelevance through another wave of defections which went on to swell the numbers of the social-democrats and the "new left" which became no left at all. Win a revolution and lose the war... This mistake was even recognized within the USSR at several points: they hesitated about Hungary, and about Afghanistan, and would probably have done better not to do anything both times. But they were too caught up in the international,l power politics of the day to consider the full future impact of their actions.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Not-so-minor nitpick: they did not get a fair deal. Many were communists murdered because Stalin wanted to make sure that his personal vision of communism would be the one implemented. ... but even the CPSU later denounced his excesses! Stalin did dismantle the old structures of pre-communist Russia, but at what cost?

innonimatu, if you were so quick to defend Chavez against the lies told about him, perhaps you would like to take a minute and find out a bit more about Stalin.

The vilification of Stalin is fast becoming a historical fairytale; that view of history especially among other socialist nations is not accurate. Within Russia there has been a movement to "rehabilitate" him. At his boyhood home in Georgia there exists to this day a memorial to him and some want to change Volgograd back to Stalingrad.

It is very easy to sit and accept the monstrous characterizations of Stalin. I myself have been falsely arrested and jailed for my beliefs in the US, held at gunpoint by police, burned out of my office -- not to mentioned libeled in the press and attacked on the internet. But even I cannot say that I was staring at first the possibility (in Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his plans for attacking the USSR and Bolshevism) then the reality of 7 million Axis troops marching across my country in a 1500 mile front. I did not face the indiffeence of two world powers who, ONLY after the USSR started pushing the Nazis back into Europe, waited until 1943 to attack the continent and "Fortress Europe."

You and I were not facing internal attacks within the USSR by the Bukharin faction, who, BTW. did not dispute their sentences, though they could have. As a result, unlike the fifth columns in Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia and France that allowed the Nazis to take over, there was NO such fifth columnin the USSR.

Did the Nazis kill fewer? They even counted the ones they slaughtered.

I recommend:
The Stalin Era, by Anna Louis Strong
http://www.amazon.com/The-Stalin-Anna-Louise-Strong/dp/B0006D8S0A

Introduction to The Essential Stalin by Bruce Franklin.

The Unknown War, hosted by Burt Lancaster (fellow traveller that he was)

Mao did the same in China, ....And now their ruthless victories still stand like a huge shadow over the whole idea of communism.

From 1934 on, Mao was trying to break the encirclement of the KMT to head north and fight the Japanese -- you must remember that the Japanese invaded China! Ever hear of the Nanjing Massacre? Hear that 20 million Chinese starved to death during the Japanese occupatio and n? The whole "internal enemies" thing is real -- but not in the paranoid way the bourgeois historians describe it. Lenin said it is essential to fight all elements detrimentral to the cause -- within and without. Even US presidents swear to uphold and defend the US from enemies "foreign and domestic"

Don't be so dramatic that "their ruthless victories stand like a huge shadow over the whole idea of communism." There are more PLA soldiers who have sworn to defend the Communist Manifesto than there are US soldiers who have even read our Consitution. Chavez quoted Mao, the Panthers read Mao and China, who by your accounts would be the most against him, continues to evoke his name. (FYI, Mao quoted Stalin a lot, too)

Read Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China. and Han Suyin's The Morning Deluge You will have from these two readings a much different oicture of Mao than what you have been led to believe.

I am not trying to change your mind, but trying to show you what these leaders were really about. Why is it that Chavez quoted Mao all the time "The army is to the people like a fish is to the sea." See Marta Harnecker's interview.

The development strategy applied within the USSR was the same kind of strategy used in every other place: accumulate capital at the expense of distributing it for the workers to consume. In the USSR they were consoled with the promise that all the capital was state-owned and therefore "theirs", in the west they were consoled with the promise of the "american dream" or, later, the "ownership society". Poor consolation in either side, thus both sides resorted to compelling people to work: educating them to work within the desired system, and withdrawing (as much as possible without major political troubles) their means of survival if they resisted.

Can't say I agree with this, Read Fidel Castro's "Speech to the Fourth Conference of Non-Alinged Nations, 1973" In it, he asks where are the Soviet "colonies," from whom did the USSR rob resources and extract surplus value? None.

The USSR later went on to fulfil the promise of distribution, worker control, and equality to a greater degree that what the west offered (nevermind the accusations levelled against the nomenklatura, their privileges were insignificant compared to those of the wealthy in the capitalist world), but what good was that for all those killed during the process?

Given my above argument, you prove my point. The bible says "thou shalt not kill," but who was doing the killing is what I am disputing.

....The show trials and purges of Stalin lost a number of influential supporters in western Europe

And this was a bad thing? Western Europe, which launched not ONE revolution, and whose largest socialist party (Italy) produced Mussolini. Those trials cost the USSR the kind of suport that could not afford to keep.

... This mistake was even recognized within the USSR at several points: they hesitated about Hungary, and about Afghanistan, and would probably have done better not to do anything both times. But they were too caught up in the international,l power politics of the day to consider the full future impact of their actions.

What source are you citing for this?

 

[red_elk]

Many were communists murdered because Stalin wanted to make sure that his personal vision of communism would be the one implemented. And beyond the infighting among old bolsheviks (which caught many more among his young collaborators deemed guilty by association) his undiscriminating ruthlessness probably killed millions of people also who were not in any way obstacles to a change towards communism. Some of those deaths were arguably unavoidable as part of the ongoing political fight (it had turned deadly during the russian civil war and it would remain deadly until one faction won decisively) but even the CPSU later denounced his excesses! Stalin did dismantle the old structures of pre-communist Russia, but at what cost? Mao did the same in China, and like Stalin also went to to exaggerate "internal enemies" just for the sake of keeping personal control over the country. They won but theirs were pyrric victories: they tainted communism for the future even when it seemed like people in those countries that mattered the most in the world then, the more advanced western countries, might embrace it. And now their ruthless victories still stand like a huge shadow over the whole idea of communism.

You are right in one thing - Stalin is indeed remaining a very controversial historical figure and his brutal methods will continue to cause lots of arguments. This person was to a large extent a product of Russian Civil War and ruled the country in the most dramatic period of its history.

I recommend:
The Stalin Era, by Anna Louis Strong

You might be interested to read this ongoing thread, in the World History subforum (if you haven't already)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=490423

 

[Masada]

It's nowadays rather accepted that both nature and nurture play their part and your example was rather a clear example of that.

So then, how does the example I gave confirm both nature and nurture? I'm also going to quote this in full because I think you need to reread it:

[The example] doesn't prove that 'human nature' doesn't exist; but it does suggest that [nature is] a rather weaker force than environmental [that is nurture] factors.

Hint: I implied something strongly here.

Ah, I see. Anecdotal experiences trump statistics and facts. You don't have to prove anything. I believe you with all my heart.

What statistics and facts? You've cited nothing and don't seem to get how statistics work. For one thing, statistics are not factual or objective measures of the world. For example, the US Census Bureau says that in 2010 that 15.1% of people lived in poverty. How does it measure poverty? Well it estimates the pre-tax income below which people can't afford to meet basic food and other needs, the so-called poverty threshold. Now, I could argue that the US Census Bureau's poverty threshold might not capture some cost that I think people need to survive. It could be that I'd like to see the food component increased, to better capture the externalities associated with poor diet or something. Who knows, who cares. But if I did that I'd raise the threshold and in doing so increase the number of people who are poor. If I thought that poor people included those who have to forgo something like health care or university because they couldn't afford it then I could dramatically expand the scope of poverty again! Because I understand how statistics works, I'm more than willing to believe that ReindeerThistle's point is a true one and that someone somewhere has come up with a statistical measure of poverty that agrees with what he said. I'm also sure there's a statistical measure that claims no-one in US is suffering in real (absolute) poverty because of welfare.

EDIT: I just realized that I typed this while wearing an ABS shirt.

 

[aelf]

I really don't have anything to say about the value of wild speculation.

I can say that Marx didn't know what he was talking about in his speculations about the roles of nurture and nature in man's development.

That's because you're stuck in empiricism, thinking that you know all there is to know about the acquisition of knowledge. Popperists can exhibit as much blind faith as the people they criticise.

 

[luiz]

That's because you're stuck in empiricism, thinking that you know all there is to know about the acquisition of knowledge. Popperists can exhibit as much blind faith as the people they criticise.

It's the opposite of blind faith. We believe people have the burden to prove their predictions and assertions.

This is nothing more and nothing less than scientific mentality. It's what has lead us to the moon and cured many forms of cancer.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

And this was a bad thing? Western Europe, which launched not ONE revolution, and whose largest socialist party (Italy) produced Mussolini. Those trials cost the USSR the kind of suport that could not afford to keep.

I can think of uprisings in nearly every country in Western and Central Europe between 1917 and 1923.

The idea that Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Tukhachevsky, or any of the other number of brilliant people in the USSR who was killed during those years was forming some sort of imperialist front within the country that they had played a large part in creating against all odds and all enemies, is quite simply insulting to the intelligence of humanity.

This is my chief criticism of Marxism-Leninism, and of Marxist-Leninists. I deal with this crap from them on an almost daily basis. They are completely unable to separate state ideology from philosophy. Marxism-Leninism is not Marxism + Leninism, it is the state ideology codified by Stalin to justify the existence of the Soviet Union such as it had become, while consolidating its own power, and while Stalin consolidated power within it. This is why reading unedited texts by either of those people, or by Stalin which happened to disagree with either of them, was banned. It immediately became, and still is often used, as a bludgeon against everyone who is not a Marxist-Leninist. Good communists have been kicked out of parties, isolated, and executed, because they disagreed with this state ideology which claimed to represent the one true way to socialism, against which anyone who disagreed was a revisionist, or a counter-revolutionary, or a Fascist, or otherwise an enemy. On its face, it's very existence shows a lack of knowledge of Marxism, which itself stated that each country and people would find unique ways to socialism, and that their socialism would itself be unique, because each country and each people find themselves in historically unique situations, such as exist in no other country and at no other time. This was even Lenin's defense against criticism by Kautsky and Luxemburg, during the time of the Russian Revolution: he said they did not understand or appreciate the historically unique situation that the Russians found themselves in, and so should refrain from criticizing Russian methods of destroying capitalism within their country. Lenin never suggested that Luxemburg or Kautsky weren't communists, or that they were the enemy in any way, or that they didn't understand how to get to socialism, or any of the things which M-Ls have thrown at everyone else since the 1930s. He simply said they were wrong about the situation, and that he disagreed with them. This is precisely the type of One-Dimensional Thinking that Marcuse warned us about.

This is why I identify myself as a Marxist and as a Leninist, but not a Marxist-Leninist. Because I understand these ideas, I know that if I lived there during that time, even if I had proven my worth to the country, to the revolution, and to the idea of socialism, that I would still most likely have been shot in the basement of the Lubyanka, simply because I refused to fall in line with someone else's idea who had come to power and was intent on making sure that only people who agreed with him were in power, or indeed even existed. That's not democracy, that's not solidarity, that's not socialism.

 

[luiz]

Great post, Cheezy.

But considering similar things, albeit on varying intensities, also happened in China, Cuba, Revolutionary Catalonia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and basically all places that tried "real" socialism, wouldn't you agree there is something in Marxism that pushes for this sort of outcome?

I think this is crux of the matter:

The idea that Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Tukhachevsky, or any of the other number of brilliant people in the USSR who was killed during those years was forming some sort of imperialist front within the country that they had played a large part in creating against all odds and all enemies, is quite simply insulting to the intelligence of humanity.

Indeed, it is a tremendous insult. But back then many prominent intellectuals repeated this obvious and blatant lie in the West. To this day we can see people repeating it, even though the Soviet Union itself later acknowledged that those people were innocent. I do not for a second think that ReindeerThistle actually believes in what he wrote (because there is overwhelming published evidence that it is wrong); he is lying because he thinks that's his duty. This poisons the whole ideology IMO.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

EDIT: I just realized that I typed this while wearing an ABS shirt.

Cranky, Masada, yuo from Australia?

You are right in one thing - Stalin is indeed remaining a very controversial historical figure ... You might be interested to read this ongoing thread, in the World History subforum (if you haven't already)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=490423

Thanks for the referral to the thread, Red, I put in my 2 cents not too long ago.

 

[Agent327]

I too would like to believe this, but I am sure you have seen the blue eyed experiment or the one where they had to stop the prisoner/guard experiment or the one where someone keeps giving electrical shocks to somebody experiment past the point where they would die?

human nature is really far too malleable, so whats so bad about shifting it, nudging it, towards sharing

Those experiments (particularly the latter), instead of showing how 'malleable' human nature is, rather confirm that human nature, in its essence, isn't particularly good.

Marxism does not deny nature. Nature and its relationship to humans is at the core: we came out of the seas, down from the trees, etc. We have material needs that do not depend on our upbringing: we need to eat, sleep, have bowel movements. Drop this point. You are not a Marxist, Leninist, etc, yet you have these same needs. Marx's point is that we are both products of our environment, and we have the ability to change it.

Change the environment, yes. Change human nature? I seriously doubt that.

I have not read Kershaw's biography, and I am not arguing the point on Hitler the man, just his system. Shirer was IN Nazi Germany and reporting on the events as they happened. Kershaw was not. Not a criticism, just a fact. Shirer's details of the tactics of Nazi Germany were first-hand, while Kershaw had access to other first hand accounts and perhaps came up with a different view.

Since Kerhsaw wrote after WW II, he has had access to plenty of sources Shirer may not have had access to. But, that apart, both books are rather different in approach. I merely mentioned that when it comes to details on Hitler, Kershaw has written a rather authoritative and thorough biography.

Hitler may have been thoroughly "anti-socialist," but are you aware that NAZI is an abbreviation for National Socialist Party? Their rhetoric was socialist, but for Germany.

Actually, Nazi is an abbreviation of National-Socialist. It is true that the NSDAP employed rhetoric that might be mistaken for being Socialist, if not their paramilitary beat up those very Socialists (and Communists, and Jews).

The result of Hitler's rise was that the German ruling class, who had been making money all along during the depression (and keeping it off shore) and needed a tactic to stave off a socialist revolution, put their money behind Hitler and they did very well for themselves. Hitler courted the junkers, industrialists and bankers by explaining that he would get the country rolling again and they would be the beneficiaries.

There was no danger of a Socialist (or Communist) revolution since the revolutionary year 1917-18, when it failed in Germany. What did occur was a tendency of the voters to turn to the (extreme) right and left. Germany's Social-Democratic Party was one of the few that fervently supported the Weimar Republic.

Au contraire! Fascism, derived from the "fascisti" symbol of old Rome, was, according to Mussolini himself, a tactic to save capitalism -- by joining together the big labor unions, the large corporations and the government under one "corporative state," in opposition to the Socialists and Communists who were vying for power.

Let's not confuse Fascism with Nazism, shall we?

Hitler and the Nazis were doing the same tactic in Germany, but in a differnet form: National Socialism.

If you want to know who benefits from Fascism, look at the balance sheets of the companies who supplied the Wehrmacht with their war machinery. Look at the average German wage under Naziism -- Shirer's book has an accounts of all of that, including the "Volkwagen" scheme of working class people owning their cars through payment plans. Those workers never saw those cars and millions of Reichmarks were extracted from the people.

What you are talking about are the Fascist/Nazi policies after they seized power: it then became perfectly clear they had little regard for worker interests.

I hold no prejudices. Chiang Kai Shek and Juan Peron were also fascists -- though Peron did not exterminate the communists, socialists and Jews in Argentina, like Chiang did or Hitler.

I'm not sure if Chiang Kai Check can be counted as a Fascist; his movement was a Nationalist one. (Fascism also only started to prosecute Jews at the behest of their bigger brother in Germany; prior to that Fascism showed little signs of antijudaism.)

FYI: The Axis of Germany, Japan and Italy (for starters) was short for "Anti-Comintern Axis." Commintern was the Communist International, headquartered in Moscow, so if you are thinking that Stalin was a fascist, think again.

Having read plenty of books on the subject, you're not telling me anything new.

No, not lumping you with the ruling class. I said you were doing their work.

From where I'm standing I can't spot the difference. My point is, when arguing focus on argument, not rhetoric.

If you do not want to understand socialism and communism, you won't, and if it is not in your interest to understand it, you won't. Mostly, if you are not engaged in revolutionary activity, you will never understand it. It is totally intellectual. I have been working with low-income working people for 21 years, organizing to both meet their needs and to empower them to work together to solve their problems and build strong organizations to fight for common solutions to the causes of poverty.

FYI I have been a member of the Communist Party, the Labour Party and a few others. I'm also well acquainted with having a low income.

In fact, I work all day surround by people who are not communists, who have a much better understanding and agreement with communism than you have demonstrated in your posts. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy these discourses and I do not want to degrade them by personal attack and I did not mean to attack you personally. We live -- and under socialism we will continue to live -- in a society that tolerates differences of opinion.

I'm glad to hear that - although I don't quite see how my 'understanding of Communism' would be less than the people you are acquainted with.

I don't know who Sankara is, either, but Mao is a hero to more people than Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson combined. Stalin is too. Stalin's defense of the city of Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd)during the Russian Civil War (1919 to 1921) is legendary. If by mass murder, you mean the 20+ million Soviet citizens the NAZIS killed while invading the Soviet Union, you are truly mistaken. The so-called "purge trials" in the 1930s were witnessed by a prominent American anti-Communist, anti-Stalinist named Joseph Davies, who wrote in Mission to Moscow that these trials were the fairest he had ever seen. Even those found guilty thought they got a fair deal.

... I was referring to Stalin's victims in the 1930s prior to the war. persecution was halted during the war, but quickly resumed after. Notably the millions of Red Army soldiers who had fallen into German hands, after having been subjected to starvation and forced labour, were then faced by a government that considered them traitors for not having fought to the death. Your glorification of Stalin's many crimes, however, could use some hard data to confront... (As for eye witnesses, those that survived Stalin's purges have provided ample material - as did Soviet sources once they were open to public scrutiny.)

So no, I'm not really impressed by Stalin's poetry or his love for children or some such equivalent.

If by Mao responsible for dozens of millions of Chinese death you mean the millions the Japanese killed during the occupation, or the millions Chiang Kai Shek killed while trying to exterminate the communists, then you are also mistaken.

Not quite. I was referring to the estimated deaths following the 'Great Leap Forward', a catastrophic campaign to imitate Stalin's ruthless industrialization plans. It directly resulted in a huge famine, which may have cost at least 20 million Chinese farmers their lives (accurate numbers obviously aren't available).

Pardon me, but what would you like to offer in the way of data? Statistics tell one story, but actual on-the-ground work tells quite another. I have met thousands of farm workers in 21 years, as well as people who do all kinds of work, and I do know what they make and I do know how long they live -- and I have saved lives by just being there, getting them donated medical care, getting them meetings with volunteer attorneys and distributing food and clothing to those who needed it.

I have forsaken personal fortune to better the lives of others, something my grandmother (a life-long Republican Party inner circle member and whose family founded the Republican Party branch in Oklahoma) said I should do, since that seemed to be a famiiy tradition.
So, I am a but of an expert on what kinds of "rewards" are offered in a capitalist system in return to hard work.

I admire your dedication. But when it comes to statistics: if read correctly, they provide a host of information that may not be available through mere personal experience.

I stand corrected. However, Peron was still a Fascist.

No, sir, he was not. Although peronismo showed certain similarities with Fascism, a key difference is the reliance on labour movements by Peron.

Actually, society today is far more capitalistic than it was in Marx's day. The capitalist society described in Capital is one where the capitalist mode of production permeates all levels of society; where every sector of the economy, and indeed society, is governed by the logic and application of capitalism. In his lifetime, even the most advanced economy in the world, Great Britain's, which he observed first-hand, capitalism was only sector of the economy. There was still a strong cottage industry, artisan manufacturers, and colonial plantations. Any of those things that remain are relics or fill novel niches within the larger capitalist economy.

I think we may be confusing terms here. If capitalism equals industrialization, then yes, it is still an ongoing process. But as I said, most modern economies are of a mixed nature: there was only a relatively short period in the 19th century when the economy was fully 'capitalist'. Since then the government sector has played an increasing part, as have the various Social-Democrativ governments (two trends that are most likely related, although increased government interference with the economy actually started before any labour party gained government power. In fact, the only societies that have a weak government sector are societies with relatively weak government structure.

(I was wondering why Sankara was mentioned, and now I know.)

So then, how does the example I gave confirm both nature and nurture?

Isn't it obvious? You suggested the one force was stronger than the other. While I suggest that that is debatable, it certainly confirms both.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Great post, Cheezy.

But considering similar things, albeit on varying intensities, also happened in China, Cuba, Revolutionary Catalonia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and basically all places that tried "real" socialism, wouldn't you agree there is something in Marxism that pushes for this sort of outcome?

I think this is crux of the matter:


Indeed, it is a tremendous insult. But back then many prominent intellectuals repeated this obvious and blatant lie in the West. To this day we can see people repeating it, even though the Soviet Union itself later acknowledged that those people were innocent. I do not for a second think that ReindeerThistle actually believes in what he wrote (because there is overwhelming published evidence that it is wrong); he is lying because he thinks that's his duty. This poisons the whole ideology IMO.

Well. Let me also say that there was a definite need and purpose to purging the party, and the government, of many people during the 1930s. The necessities of the Civil War era had put a lot of people into positions of power because they were useful at the time. They were not necessarily people who believed in socialism, or the cause of the communists, or bore any real allegiance to the Soviet Union as a socialist state. There was indeed a need to remove these people, once socialist power had been consolidated. But I don't think it needed to happen quite the way that it did, or that any of the other people who got wrapped up in those purgings, such as many of the victims of the Show Trials and other trials, were also guilty of those things. A legitimate cause was used to legitimize the removal of far more people than were necessary, including as I said, many brilliant people whose contributions greatly strengthened the Soviet Union, they merely objected to Stalin - and not even all of what Stalin was doing! Bukharin and Trotsky were the Godfathers of the Five-Year Plans, and the Zinoviev-Kamenev plan was integral to the collectivization campaign as well as the shape of the first Five-Year Plan. The purges went the way they did, because the people put in charge of finding out those who needed to be purged functioned in a political environment which rewarded the discovery of "counter-revolutionaries," and now that a political ideology existed which could be used to rather strictly define what a counter-revolutionary wasn't, anyone against whom it was desired the charge could be levied, and like our media today which is always hunting for the next Watergate, these commissars were always looking for the next big take-down of a high-profile party or government member.

But not all of it went down precisely like that. Lunacharsky and Kollontai, for example, were forced from their government posts because of personal disagreements with Stalin, which he used to remove them in a time before he could really bring to bear the capital punishment power that he used a few years later with equally prominent CC or ex-CC members. Bukharin was murdered for daring to criticize Stalin in a public forum, because any show trial of him would look extremely bad due to his immense popularity.

To answer the second part of your question: no, I don't think this is something endemic to Marxism or to communism or communist thought. I think its chief danger is that the ideology which brought this attitude to fruition, Marxism-Leninism, is still regarded as a functionally useful tool. It's not. It had a very specific use, to provide a creation-myth for the USSR, to serve as a "Bolshevik Aeneid." M-L is not a program for revolution, nor should it serve as a blueprint for any revolutionary anywhere. There are plenty of texts which can help guide communists toward their goal, which is communism, but there is no universal program for revolution, apart from mobilization of the working class. The CPUSA's motto is educate, agitate, organize, which is about as useful and universal as a political program can be. So if there is or was a problem, it was people in Vietnam, or Cambodia, or China, looking to how things happened in the USSR, and concluding, as Marxism-Leninism tells them, to copy them, as that is how things are supposed to go.

But then, most Marxist-Leninist states haven't been truly pursuing socialism, have they? It's typically, almost universally, been used as an anti-imperialist rhetorical tool to rally ex-colonial states around nation-building programs that don't involve Western powers. Such places and people are certainly the allies of communists, as they struggle against imperialism, but we know because of Diamat that these states cannot achieve socialism in their present social-economic positions. But then, Russia was in a similar position in 1917, when its revolution took place. So maybe it is appropriate that the ideology which came out of that is primarily used for anti-imperial nation-building, because that's essentially what the Soviet Union did! Socialism in One Country didn't start out so much about creating true socialism as it was about creating a bulwark against imperialism, and moving Russia as forward as possible, so that when the next big revolution came within those Western imperial nations, there would be friends to help them succeed, and Russia would not require nearly as much help from them as it had initially expected from the assumed-to-be-successful German revolution in 1918, to create the brotherhood of man. Where the Soviets lost their track was when they deluded themselves enough into thinking they were actually creating socialism by their efforts, instead of merely nation-building until the big international revolution occurred.

 

[aelf]

It's the opposite of blind faith. We believe people have the burden to prove their predictions and assertions.

This is nothing more and nothing less than scientific mentality. It's what has lead us to the moon and cured many forms of cancer.

Knowledge acquired by the scientific method does not constitute the sum total of human knowledge. You appear to be completely ignorant of other traditions such as rationalism, and as such, by your own standards, you shouldn't be commenting on matters of epistemology.

 

[lovett]

As Inno has correctly deduced, I am speaking of man's social behavior. If you go back and look, I did say "in society." And yes, I maintain its near-complete malleability. I'm sure that perhaps there's some remote or insignificant part that isn't, or isn't believed to be, but I'm not going to get tied up in legalese over useless pedantry.

I am inclined to think that the point of talking about human nature in political philosophy is to ground what sort of society we could hope for. It is to express the fact that we do political philosophy 'taking men as they are, and laws as they could be.' Now, I take it by social behaviour you mean, roughly, any behaviour which involves interaction with other people. On this point, I see no support for the claim that man's nature is fully malleable. Here's a toy example; I doubt we could construct a successful, complex and stable society in which everyone was simultaneously told they should avoid being slapped and yet slaps to the face were the only form of currency. Here's a more serious example: I also doubt that we could form a successful, complex and stable society in which people were required to work for -in the very broadest sense of the term- no compensation.

None of these doubts, crucially, are inconsistent with many reformatory political theories, including socialism and communism. One can rightly point out that, in many cases, work itself can be a form of compensation (here I am thinking of the creative process of production). One can also point out that being an integral of a wider community can be a form of compensation. So this constraint - a constraint on the malleability of human nature- is not a constraint that damages the theory to which you ascribe.

I suppose there are at least two ways you might respond to this. You can stick to your guns, and say that even in the toy case such a society could be formed. But I can see no reason why you would do that. You don't need to do that for your political philosophy and you have no evidence that that is the case. Alternatively, you might decide to count this type of constraint as a type of 'legalese'. You might think it is uselessly pedantic. Your statement might not be strictly true but it the sense that counts.

This is a better tactic, but it is hardly satisfactory. We both agree your statement is true 'where it counts'. But I, and I imagine I share this preference with most people, prefer my theory to have as few a falsehoods in as possible. If this means one occasionally has to step back from one's soaring rhetoric then so be it. This is especially so for a much maligned theory like communism. Make enough unnecessarily strong claims -especially if they turn out false- and you end up unduly discrediting the theory. Better, it seems to me, to only make the claims you need for you philosophy. 'Man's nature is malleable enough for communism to work' works just as well as 'Man's nature is fully malleable'.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Actually, Nazi is an abbreviation of National-Socialist. It is true that the NSDAP employed rhetoric that might be mistaken for being Socialist, if not their paramilitary beat up those very Socialists (and Communists, and Jews).

Not debating that one. That is exactly what happened.

There was no danger of a Socialist (or Communist) revolution since the revolutionary year 1917-18, when it failed in Germany. What did occur was a tendency of the voters to turn to the (extreme) right and left. Germany's Social-Democratic Party was one of the few that fervently supported the Weimar Republic.

Yes, and, point of fact, Communists in the Reichtag voted for Hitler. I agree there, but in the eyes of the German Bourgoisie, there was the danger of a socialist revolution.

Let's not confuse Fascism with Nazism, shall we?

Not confusing at then at all. Nazism was fascism. Where's the argument here?

What you are talking about are the Fascist/Nazi policies after they seized power: it then became perfectly clear they had little regard for worker interests.

Exactly.

I'm not sure if Chiang Kai Check can be counted as a Fascist; his movement was a Nationalist one. (Fascism also only started to prosecute Jews at the behest of their bigger brother in Germany; prior to that Fascism showed little signs of antijudaism.)

Good point, but fascists (Pilsudski was a fascist) in Poland were persecuting Jews before the Nazis came, Hungarians after they left.

Having read plenty of books on the subject, you're not telling me anything new.

Point noted.

From where I'm standing I can't spot the difference. My point is, when arguing focus on argument, not rhetoric.

Okay, I won't bring it up again.

FYI I have been a member of the Communist Party, the Labour Party and a few others. I'm also well acquainted with having a low income.

Ex-Communist is the #1 occupation in the United States' Left, where are you from? Which Communist Party and how long have you been, or were a member. If you quit, why.

I'm glad to hear that - although I don't quite see how my 'understanding of Communism' would be less than the people you are acquainted with.

I only know by what they DO for proletarian class struggle. I would like to know your organizing history. Not to debate, but to know whence your arguments come.

... I was referring to Stalin's victims in the 1930s prior to the war.

Well, that being the case, I made my point. If you are a communist, a member of the communist party, you submit to the rules, discipline and structure of the party. If you violate those knowingly, you submit to the procedures for prosecution. I am only stating what I know and read.

...persecution was halted during the war, but quickly resumed after. Notably the millions of Red Army soldiers who had fallen into German hands, after having been subjected to starvation and forced labour, were then faced by a government that considered them traitors for not having fought to the death. Your glorification of Stalin's many crimes, however, could use some hard data to confront... (As for eye witnesses, those that survived Stalin's purges have provided ample material - as did Soviet sources once they were open to public scrutiny.)

Not debating the statistics, but the perspective. I am not glorifying Stalin, just pointing out the circumstances of the "purges." Lenin admonished Parties to purge themsleves of the reformist elements that invariably attach themselves to the party,
though he did not say execute them. Those accused during th epurge trials had adequate preparations for their defense, and the ability to appeal, and many did not take this route. They were politicians, and the end of a politician's POLITICAL life means the end of their life, so they accepted the verdicts. Killing is terrible. I do not advocate killing as a solution to problems. I advocate inner party struggle.

As for the post-war persecution, I do not know. Tell me where I can find the data, I'd be happy to look it up.

Not quite. I was referring to the estimated deaths following the 'Great Leap Forward', a catastrophic campaign to imitate Stalin's ruthless industrialization plans. It directly resulted in a huge famine, which may have cost at least 20 million Chinese farmers their lives (accurate numbers obviously aren't available).

Fair enough. I will not debate this -- however, Dr. Joshua Horn's Away with All Pests documents these mistakes and the medical breakthroughs that resulted from dealing with the many industrial problems and accidents. There are are no finished communists, no finished communist parties. Compare that to the millions who also died needlessly in India, at the hands of British rule and in the years after, and there is no comparison.

You and I are not faced with the US army on our terrain, agitiating for war in China, just after we defeated the KMT and the Chiang Kai Shek. I am just not in a position to JUDGE -- just point out the facts. MORE people died at the hands of the Japanese and during Japanese occupation than because of the Chinese government.

Additionally, the Chines post-revolutionary government was not Mao and Mao alone, he invited members of the KMT revolutionary committee and the China Democratic League, as well as many other non-communists to join the government.

It is also of note that the year that the USSR "split up" and Yeltsin took power, was the first year the USSR did not have a five-year plan.

I admire your dedication. But when it comes to statistics: if read correctly, they provide a host of information that may not be available through mere personal experience.

I agree, but no one provided alternative stats, and I do use statistics, but they are no substitute for DOING something about the problems you see. That was my point. What do you DO with the info. Stats can serve those who use them, but the person in front of you facing a heat shut-off in the middle of winter is not deniable.

No, sir, he was not. Although peronismo showed certain similarities with Fascism, a key difference is the reliance on labour movements by Peron.

Reliance on labour movements does not make one NOT a fascist. Hitler brought in and subjugated the trade unions in Germany, ditto for Italy. When you unite the lements most hostile to the working class and the organized elements working class is in rout, you have fascism. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck it's a duck. This was not to loosely categorize, just define the criteria for "fascism."

 

[luiz]

Knowledge acquired by the scientific method does not constitute the sum total of human knowledge. You appear to be completely ignorant of other traditions such as rationalism, and as such, by your own standards, you shouldn't be commenting on matters of epistemology.

Knowledge can be obtained without empirical methods, eg, pure mathematics (though probably without empirical observation even pure mathematics would be impossible), which is on the rationalist camp.

But in the natural sciences, and biology is one of them, knowledge can only be obtained through scientific, empirical methods. The alternative is charlatanism.

 

[tokala]

Those experiments (particularly the latter), instead of showing how 'malleable' human nature is, rather confirm that human nature, in its essence, isn't particularly good.

I would rather suggest that the compliance of most test subjects in Milgram experiment type situations is a consequence of the way a "civilized" society works, not of "human nature".
We are conditioned to delegate power and responsibility to various forms of "authoritiy", and that conditioning can be exploited.
Somehow it's hard to imagine that something like that would work in a small, egalitarian tribal group, where personal responsibility is writ large and no one has much authority to order others around.