Ask a Red, Second Edition

[Cheezy the Wiz]

How viable is CPUSA or the Socialist Party in the USA anyway? Would the Greens be a better alternative for leftist folk?

They hold no political offices, if that's what you're asking.

The Greens are generally too narrow in their platform to be a real political threat to either major party. Their positions -and thus votes - are nearly always co-opted by the other parties. Which makes them somewhat useful, but only in the sense that an auto company that buys out an alternative-fuel car a local schmuck made could theoretically use it to make said cars.

Also, what do you think of the Monthly Review if anything?

I've never read it.

EDIT: I wish to dissociate myself from Kara's "vote democrat" position. If we must vote strategically, then it should be for Republicans, so that Americans can experience more of those failures rather than the sugar-coated liberal enforcement of incredibly similar policies. That is what will push them Left.

 

[Karalysia]

The Republicans if they really had their way, could and would defund health-care, abolish Medicaid, Medicare, EPA, Department of Education and Social Security, and end government support of a number of vital programs.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

All that could be a good thing, you know. Remember it took a World War to bring Russia to revolution!

 

[Traitorfish]

How viable is CPUSA or the Socialist Party in the USA anyway? Would the Greens be a better alternative for leftist folk?

That depends on how ones understands "viability". Effective socialism can only be achieved through mass, grass-roots political action, so participation of bourgeois political institutions is necessary only as far as it allows one to further such action. Of course, how far this is necessary, if it is at all, is a debate which goes back to the First International...

 

[Karalysia]

Moscow flunkies.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

All that could be a good thing, you know. Remember it took a World War to bring Russia to revolution!

How close do you think the US is to a revolution? How badly would the current economic/political system have to fail before a revolution would be possible?

I only ask because we seem to be a long way from embracing communism and yet the system seems pretty broken already.

 

[Karalysia]

Intelligencia.

 

[Bill3000]

How exactly is a state with a command economy (or other form of socialism with heavy state intervention) supposed to wither away in order to form a communist state?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

How close do you think the US is to a revolution?

Not.

How badly would the current economic/political system have to fail before a revolution would be possible?

As bad as the Great Depression, in terms of its long-term, pan-social impact.

How exactly is a state with a command economy (or other form of socialism with heavy state intervention) supposed to wither away in order to form a communist state?

I don't know.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

In fact, aren't Cheezy and Civver both Christians? I'm sure they have a few thoughts on this subject.

Somehow I missed this before.

My original attraction to socialism came from a religious standpoint. In a way, it is still the stronger moral argument for me than Marxism, so you could almost consider Marxism to be a kind of special pleading to me. Even if every facet of Marx were refuted, I would believe no less in the moral duty to help the poor and downtrodden, nor in the corruptive capacity of wealth and affluence.

It obviously goes without saying that I greatly disapprove of militant atheism. I agree with Marx's comments about religion being the "opiate of the masses," but I see that as an argument against dogma and organized religion that defends the status quo, not as an indictment of all religious belief, period.

For more in-depth explanations of my religious ideals, see this book: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

 

[Traitorfish]

It obviously goes without saying that I greatly disapprove of militant atheism. I agree with Marx's comments about religion being the "opiate of the masses," but I see that as an argument against dogma and organized religion that defends the status quo, not as an indictment of all religious belief, period.

Quite so. In fact if read in context, and with the awareness that opiates were, at that time, generally considered a medicinal pain-killers rather than a recreational drug, it takes on a positively sympathetic air in regards to believers.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

At the very least, it doesn't read as the trite dismissal of "bread and circuses" that it is so frequently presented as.

 

[countrygrl]

Reds: Do you guys genuinely believe that socialism is for everyone?

 

[Ajidica]

Cheezy, given all of the changes in economic/political structure since the time of Marx, what do you believe are the greatest issues Communism fails to address in the modern world?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Reds: Do you guys genuinely believe that socialism is for everyone?

Anyone for whom it isn't is free to leave.

But yes, I believe that everyone can be happy, or learn to be happy, in a socialist society. However, I am certain there are a selfish few who will lament their loss of privilege and wealth, but to be quite frank, I could hardly care.

Cheezy, given all of the changes in economic/political structure since the time of Marx, what do you believe are the greatest issues Communism fails to address in the modern world?

The rise of the publicly-traded corporation and the growing unimportance of the CEO.

 

[Ajidica]

The rise of the publicly-traded corporation and the growing unimportance of the CEO.

How can they be better integrated into Communism?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

How can they be better integrated into Communism?

Socialists should play up the collective-functioning nature of corporations and portray them as the gateway to socialism. The argument for them is no longer to take power from the capitalist, because that has already been done. There it is the problem of the board of trustees and upper level management who make decisions for everyone. It is, in a way, socialism for the top and middle, and capitalism for the bottom [of the corporate food chain]. Socialists should make their arguments about extending the committee structure, or something similar, all the way to the bottom, and play up the fact that if the only stock holders in a company were the employees, and the Board actually listened to said stockholders, then we would be fairly close to a cooperative firm.

Further damage can be done by drawing the comparison between the technostructure and a planned economy. If one can work, so can the other.

However, many Marxists, dare I say most, remain in the 19th century mindset, along with many, again, I dare to say most, neoliberals and proprietarians*, who together believe that the economy consists of capitalists running private companies by their own intuition and will power, guiding their ship through the turbulent economic seas, whilst exercising his personal prerogative to distribute and keep profits as he sees fit. Both are wrong, except when speaking of small businesses, but they make up a sharp minority of economic traffic.

*In case you don't keep up on my pet names for things, this is what I and some others refer to Right libertarians as.

 

[Traitorfish]

Oddly enough, this was something which the Fascists, in their dim way, recognised as early as 1930, describing the now-outdated personal Capitalism of the 19th century as "Productive Capitalism", indulging in an ultra-nationalistic version of Rand's "Galt" mythology- Mussolini once declared that Fascism "affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men"- while condemning the impersonal "Jewish Finance Capitalism", which was in essence the modern, quasi-collectivist form of capitalism.

 

[Gangor]

What are the specific differences between Communism and Fascism?

 

[amadeus]

Anyone for whom it isn't is free to leave.

To where?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

To where?

A cave in the mountains, perhaps. I hear your ilk don't believe a thing called "society" exists at all, so you're free to be an individual by yourself, away form that burdensome thing we call "responsibility."