Ask a Red, Second Edition

[aelf]

Is communism despostic or democratic?

By definition, democratic.

There are some countries like India or Libya (perhaps former Libya) declares that they are implementing socialism in their country, how can we define them they are socialistic government or not?

You're asking for some kind of objective indicators for Marxist-ness. There are some, but I'm not sure you can find many of them in essentially centralised nation states still ruled by governments, some of whom are interested in centralisation at that. The most communist organisation I can think of is a factory run by its workers. As for what that means in practice, there could be variations. However, essentially, the workers function as shareholders, but the management would be bound democratically to serve their will, and the profits are of course shared equally. How can that model be reconciled with a traditional centralised nation state? That's a difficult question to answer. I don't have a comprehensive Marxist political programme in mind, so personally I can't answer it.

If you want to differentiate between socialism and communism, then the former is by definition a dictatorship of the proletariat. It essentially means that all political decisions are made for the benefit of the proletariat and aimed at creating a communist society. But, again, in practice it's difficult to say if any state, now and in the past, meets those criteria. For one, it's often difficult to say whether certain political decisions will really benefit the proletariat in the longer term. And, on that note, what does it mean to be working towards a communist society? I think most nominally communist countries have focused on industrialisation, but those have been pretty centralised affairs. If we look at the model of the worker-run factory, it seems antithetical to centralisation. So how do you negotiate between short to medium term demands for centralisation and the long term need to decentralise? Again, I have no answer.

That's why I think it's a mistake to expect Marxism to provide some kind of development plan. Marxism was primarily a critique of capitalist relations of production. The comprehensive political programmes were devised by his followers later, and how effective or realistic they are has limited bearing on the validity of the critique.

 

[Skwink]

Do you often feel the need to wear bland clothing?

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Technically communism and government are contradictory.

Right social organization then. But that still doesn't answer my question. Do you think it's practical or not.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Oops.

 

[aelf]

Right social organization then. But that still doesn't answer my question. Do you think it's practical or not.

Practical or not is mostly an empirical question. Right now there isn't much evidence of it being practical on a large scale. But little evidence doesn't mean there is evidence of its impracticality.

 

[Dean.]

That's a strange view. How do you command 18 million soldiers, defeat or almost defeat the strongest powers at the time, build the autobahns, and engage in a massive, secretive conspiracy that murdered 17 million people, without organisation, order, and hierarchy?

For starters, by possessing the single largest steel manufacturing capability in Europe. Coupled with an unstable, but potentially powerful state, and the rapid accumulation of capital into the coffers of increasingly elite corporate structures, there were plenty of incentives to grasp a hold of the state function and expand the resources at your corporate disposal - by means of military occupation and corporate-state collusion.

 

[Traitorfish]

What do you make of this statement?

In order for communism/socialism to survive, there must be a state to guide it.

Well, I'd ask what exactly is meant by "state"? If it refers to a centralised, heirachical form of organisation as in the contemporary state, then I'd say that it isn't at all true, and if anything is exactly false, that such an entity is fatally detrimental to a nascent communist society. But "state" is one of the slipperiest bits of political terminolgoy, so it's possible that in some sense it maybe less incorrect.

Fellow Reds, what do you make of Slavoj Zizek? In particular, his In Defense of Lost Causes.

He's pretty decent as a critic of ideology- I haven't read Lost Causes yet, but I plan to, and First As Tragedy, Then As Farce is well worth a read if you get the chance- but I tend to disagree with him on issues of praxis, because a lot of his solutions seem to amount to "social democracy, but, like, angrier". That said, he has himself said that the role of the philosopher is not to offer direction but to illuminate through questioning, so I suppose you can only fault him so much on that point.

Do Marxists (or "Reds") believe that racism is misdirected class tension?

I don't think that racism is a simple enough phenomenon- or even a single, cohesive phenomenon- to allow that kind of explanation. It's a factor in some occurences, most likely, but I wouldn't generalise.

 

[jojorah]

do You think that the best kind of socialist state would be one that takes away all differences in culures and religions, and becomes entirely secularist?

 

[Traitorfish]

do You think that the best kind of socialist state would be one that takes away all differences in culures and religions, and becomes entirely secularist?

No. If political-economic autonomy begins at a grass-roots level, then so must cultural autonomy. Secularism would obviously be an important value, though, and perhaps that suggests some complications.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Wouldn't political and potentially religious autonomy reduce the need for secularism drastically however? In fact, isn't secularism without a state nonsensical?

 

[Traitorfish]

Wouldn't political and potentially religious autonomy reduce the need for secularism drastically however? In fact, isn't secularism without a state nonsensical?

Fair point. I suppose that I may be using "secularism" in an inaccurately broad sense in my last post. What I meant was basically the idea that adminstrative bodies (soviets, factory councils, whatever) would not impose religious measures, but I can see that "secularism" may not be the proper way to describe that. It's honestly not an issue that I'd given much thought to, so I'm not really expressing myself very well; a lot of this stuff is just assumed, really, which I suppose could be a flaw in the existing Marxist discussion of post-capitalist society.

 

[Algeroth]

Could this thread work as an substibtitute for "Ask an Anarchist" thread? I assume that some of you could be knowledgable in this area.

If i was right, i have two questions:
1) I have often heard that Taoism is anarchistic. Why?
2) Do you know anyone that actually wrote that taoism is anarchistic? The only man I found so far is Marshall in Demanding the impossible.

 

[W|M]

Taoism has incorporated some Buddhist elements during the Chinese Tang dynasty, with monasteries, vegetarianism, and the prohibition of alcohol being added to Tao beliefs - The incorporation of monasteries, vegetarianism and prohibition of alcohol are not looked well upon by anarchists.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Could this thread work as an substibtitute for "Ask an Anarchist" thread? I assume that some of you could be knowledgable in this area.

If i was right, i have two questions:
1) I have often heard that Taoism is anarchistic. Why?
2) Do you know anyone that actually wrote that taoism is anarchistic? The only man I found so far is Marshall in Demanding the impossible.

No, there is an "ask an anarchist" thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=399764&highlight=anarchist

 

[Ajidica]

More of a historical question, rather then a theory question, but here it goes.
Why did Socialist/Communist movements become very strong in Europe, but remained very weak in America outside of some very limited areas (such as the Finns in northern Minnesota)?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

More of a historical question, rather then a theory question, but here it goes.
Why did Socialist/Communist movements become very strong in Europe, but remained very weak in America outside of some very limited areas (such as the Finns in northern Minnesota)?

I'm not sure that Mr. Debs would agree that 6% of the vote, and the driving force behind much of the Progressive Era, is a very weak political force. It's true that Americans were historically much more interested in unionism than in socialism, though. At the time that Debs' socialist ticket won 900,000 votes, the AFL alone had a membership of more than 5 million. However, if you look at the stated objectives of many of the large unions: the AFL, IWW, WFM, you will find a stated manifesto of demands rather similar to the socialist ones; and yet the unions and socialists often fought amongst each other! It should be no surprise that the government expended much effort, even before the Red Scare, in emasculating unions, the Wobblies in particular, on the grounds that they were anarchists and anti-American.

As for why it was so much more popular in Europe, I have no definite answer. As you have hinted at, radical leftism was most popular in turn-of-the-century America with the immigrant populations, among whom the working men were often organized into unions led and created by communists. Why not the rank and file American WASP? I don't know. I know that many of the industrial and trade unions tried to obtain injunctions against the influx of foreign labor (particularly Chinese), for many of the same reasons Nativists fear Mexican immigration today (takin arr jerbs), so perhaps they were more concerned with protecting their own than with joining an international brotherhood of man?

 

[Crezth]

Hello Reds, I have two questions:

1. The state of Labor Unions today does not look good - in my youth, I worked for the International Chemical Workers Union, which was plagued with bureaucracy and a pervasive culture of pessimism. It was utterly ineffective and dramatically underfunded. Does this sound like a good example of organized labor today? How is this different from labor unions of the past, what contributed to this change in the status and power of labor unions, and how important are labor unions to creating true, workable change in the current system?

2. I suspect this has been answered before, but what is the next big step the United States must take towards advancing, together, as a society? What is at stake, and what is to blame? Are reports of the unbridled power of corporations at all exaggerated? What do you, personally, think is a likely outcome?

I am an aspiring red, deeply disillusioned with the "trickle-down" theories that I used to find attractive, and I wish to hear from those whose views are probably better sculpted than my own.

 

[Traitorfish]

More of a historical question, rather then a theory question, but here it goes.
Why did Socialist/Communist movements become very strong in Europe, but remained very weak in America outside of some very limited areas (such as the Finns in northern Minnesota)?

In addition to what Cheezy said, I'd add that labour radicalism in the US was to a large extent dominated, as in some parts of Europe, by syndicalists who tended to be wary of affiliation with mainstream social democrats (as the DeLeonists), or of political organisation altogether (as the anarcho-syndicalists), which meant that the programmatic divide in the US between far-left and centre-left often found itself insurmountable. This contrasted with Europe, particularly Central and Eastern Europe, where labour radicals accepted social democratic forms of organisation, which in turn influenced the ideological and programmatic form of mainstream parties.

Hello Reds, I have two questions:

1. The state of Labor Unions today does not look good - in my youth, I worked for the International Chemical Workers Union, which was plagued with bureaucracy and a pervasive culture of pessimism. It was utterly ineffective and dramatically underfunded. Does this sound like a good example of organized labor today? How is this different from labor unions of the past, what contributed to this change in the status and power of labor unions, and how important are labor unions to creating true, workable change in the current system?

Anglo-American labour organisation is often a particularly depressing field, so I wouldn't want to tar too widely with the same brush, but I'd say that the fundamental points are fairly true of most labour organisation in the developed world. (The developing world is, of course, another story altogether.) Most of the unions crystallised into their present form in the post-war era when corporatism was king, and so devote themselves largely to defending that position; the high point of their ambition is an early '60s benefit package. This, with the relentless advances made by international capital in the last few decades, will not cut it. Labour struggles through these organisations are still important, and worth supprting and defending, but they have entirely limited potential.
However, labour organisation in itself is vital to any lasting change, because it's really the only way of organising on both a class basis and a grassroots basis- class-based campaigns without vibrant grassroots organisation (like the current unions) tend towards corporatism and class-collaboration, while those organised on a classless-but-grassroots basis tend towards middle class left-liberalism (like the Green Parties, hwoever generally preferable to the alternatives they may be). There are some fairly well-tread theoretical debates about exactly what form this organisation should take and how much it should resemble traditional unionism, particularly in light of the changing experience of the workplace throughout much of the developed world, but in the broadest sense, yes, it is very important.

The second question is better left for someone more properly aquainted with American society than maself, so I'll leave that one to others.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Practical or not is mostly an empirical question. Right now there isn't much evidence of it being practical on a large scale. But little evidence doesn't mean there is evidence of its impracticality.

So what what your saying is you don't know?

 

[ParkCungHee]

So where can I read more about this Marxist Alienation stuff? Because that Idea has got legs.

Fair point. I suppose that I may be using "secularism" in an inaccurately broad sense in my last post. What I meant was basically the idea that adminstrative bodies (soviets, factory councils, whatever) would not impose religious measures, but I can see that "secularism" may not be the proper way to describe that. It's honestly not an issue that I'd given much thought to, so I'm not really expressing myself very well; a lot of this stuff is just assumed, really, which I suppose could be a flaw in the existing Marxist discussion of post-capitalist society.

No problem. I assume that means I asked a good question.
Also, anyone have any experience with commune living? Thinking of joining one.