Ask A Red V: The Five-Year Plan
- Thread starter Cheezy the Wiz
- Start date
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Jewel Runner
I'm actually curious now if my great-grandfather, an organizer for the United Mine Workers, was a communist, now that you've mentioned it. He died when my grandmother was eight, so I doubt she'd know herself. Survived getting shot in the gut by Progressive Mine Workers in Harlan County, but couldn't handle his liquor. Interesting guy.
But yeah, do you know if there'd be any way to check up on membership rolls from the 30s and 40s? He worked throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, and I'm not sure if there was much communist presence in that region to begin with or if there are good archives, but if you happen to have any tips to help me in my weird genealogy hobby, especially pertaining to my coolest ancestor I'm aware of, I'd appreciate them.
Also, do you have any opinion on the workplace democracy enacted by Tito? It's the sort of thing that more readily comes to mind when I think of worker control of the means of production, and it sounds like a good idea, but I assume there was some reason for its rejection outside of Yugoslavia.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
It shouldn't, it was revisionist as hell. "Market socialism" is not socialism.
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Jewel Runner
Could you expound on why it isn't? It seems more intuitive to me, maybe because the entirety of my personal experience has been in the context of market economies. But why shouldn't it be considered another form of socialism, if perhaps an inferior one?
Also, why is "revisionist" such a common pejorative in ML circles? It sounds oddly dogmatic, especially given the ostensibly scientific nature of Marxist thought. Am I misunderstanding what's meant by it?
Also, why is "revisionist" such a common pejorative in ML circles? It sounds oddly dogmatic, especially given the ostensibly scientific nature of Marxist thought. Am I misunderstanding what's meant by it?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Revisionism specifically means that a given policy or line is one that does not lead to communism. The term originates with reference to Eduard Bernstein and his efforts to "water down" Marxism into a democratic initiative and eject Marxism's revolutionary underpinnings. In the 20th century it expanded to include tendencies that inhibited the development of or otherwise did not lead to communism, including democratic socialists but also tendencies like Trotskyism that opposed Actually Existing Socialism in the USSR, China, et al. It also describes political lines like those of Khrushchev, Tito, and Deng, which fundamentally weakened the basis of the socialist economy in those countries by introducing capitalist elements which created a new core of bourgeoisie and bourgeois ideology within socialism. In the USSR this trend, in the form of the Second Economy, burst onto center-stage and destroyed socialism in that country in the 1989-1993 time period.
Market socialism is revisionist because it preserves a central element of capitalism: market exchanges. Markets are inherently unequalizing forces because the production of profit is one that robs the buyer of value and delivers it to the seller. This is speculation (in the same sense that it occurs in stock markets). Further, the principle of "worker-owned cooperatives" as a staple of the socialist economy is a false conception, because it preserves private property just in the form of a group-owned private property instead of a singularly-owned one. Broken down to its essential properties, there is no functional difference between a worker's cooperative and a joint-stock company in which every employee owns an equal amount of shares. That means that either the bulk of the capitalist economy for the last 150 years has been covertly a distorted socialism, or that this formula is not socialist at all. The latter is quite obviously the case.
Socialism is the control over the collective surplus value of society by society. That can only come about by destroying the essential parts of capitalist economics: markets and private property. In their place we have a planned economy and public property, both operating for the benefit of society to meet needs of consumers rather than satisfy the desires of producers. Within that planning process of course exists workers democracy in the workplace, but these shops and businesses are not faux-autonomous entities as in capitalism, but integral parts of a whole.
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Could you explain to me how there's a difference between group owned private property and public property?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Public property is owned by no one/everyone. Group-owned private property is owned by a group of people, but otherwise still functions as a holding of wealth within that group - it can gain and lose value, they can sell it for profit, and its use is necessarily denied to other people. Group-owned private property [for which I'm sure there is a more precise and technical term] would be like a cooperatively-owned company, whereas public property would be a nationalized company.
Do you as well work with the youth or it is like the Baptists' approach who think that one's coming to faith must be conscious, so the person has to be adult or it doesn't count?
If you work with the nonage, how early do you start? Is it the parents initiative or it might be against parents will or without parents knowing you teach their kids your "heresy"?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Even joking remarks about "communism is a religion" aren't going to be well-received in these parts.
I apologize, I didn't mean that and, perhaps, wasn't clear enough. Let me try to phase it differently.
Communism is an idea (or a system of ideas). As any idea it can be transmitted to other people, and actually is supposed to be. Those people can be either adults or nonage (if the term is right).
You can expect an adult to hear about it somewhere and then get interested and come to you to learn more, but that's a passive distribution.
Active distribution requires you to actively tell people about the idea and make them interested in learning more. That can be done with both adults and nonage. With adults you go through logic, but the younger the person is the harder it is. On the other hand any idea roots better when a person grows up with it. On the third
huh hand, nonage people are usually/supposedly supervised by their parents/caretakers who might feel uneasy about some ideas they didn't get used to.So, working with either group has its pros and cons, and some may be preferred over the other, and my question was about that actually.
Sorry for being awkward, again.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
We concentrate on the people who are on the front lines of the class struggle, who already have an implicit understanding of the array of forces in capitalism. It is not our job to convince them that capitalism is bad, they already know that. They live that every day. We explain what to do with that anger.
There is no communist knocking on doors "spreading the word to them's that need it heard." Well that's not true, there's probably some Trot somewhere selling his newspapers door to door, but those people are a joke.
As you might have guessed from one of the many awful threads in OT about Those Damn Reds, we don't place high value in "convincing" people. There's little to be gained in such exchanges, people have already made up their minds. Most people who want to debate don't want to potentially be convinced of the opposing viewpoint, they just want to hear themselves talk or to yell at some commies, so it's not a real conversation anyway. We have better things to do, our time and energy is precious. Even this thread is not here to convince people of anything, merely to serve as a repository of inquiry where we can explain our point of view on things without having to worry about thirty people coming along to derail the discussion with Why Stalin Was Evil for the 3 billionth time.
There is no communist knocking on doors "spreading the word to them's that need it heard." Well that's not true, there's probably some Trot somewhere selling his newspapers door to door, but those people are a joke.
As you might have guessed from one of the many awful threads in OT about Those Damn Reds, we don't place high value in "convincing" people. There's little to be gained in such exchanges, people have already made up their minds. Most people who want to debate don't want to potentially be convinced of the opposing viewpoint, they just want to hear themselves talk or to yell at some commies, so it's not a real conversation anyway. We have better things to do, our time and energy is precious. Even this thread is not here to convince people of anything, merely to serve as a repository of inquiry where we can explain our point of view on things without having to worry about thirty people coming along to derail the discussion with Why Stalin Was Evil for the 3 billionth time.
So I keep hearing that there never was a real Communism yet. Could someone kindly explain me what went wrong or where the commrades have made a mistake?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
There was no mistake, it just hasn't had a chance to happen yet. Socialism only existed in a relatively small part of the world, and at that the most backwards parts, which required the most development and were the most vulnerable to foreign intervention.
The first successful overthrow of a capitalist government was in 1917. It hasn't even been a hundred years yet, and that specific society was itself destroyed in only 76 years. Anyone who expects that the dissolution of class society as such can happen in that time, all the more in a place besieged by powerful forces seeking to destroy it, is being unrealistic or disingenuous.
The first successful overthrow of a capitalist government was in 1917. It hasn't even been a hundred years yet, and that specific society was itself destroyed in only 76 years. Anyone who expects that the dissolution of class society as such can happen in that time, all the more in a place besieged by powerful forces seeking to destroy it, is being unrealistic or disingenuous.
There was no mistake?
Czechoslovakia was pre-war one of the most developed countries and after the 40 years of trying being a Communist fell significantly behind.
Why the need of dissolution of class society as opposed to recognising the need of such bodies of society on some selflessly working model? After all you need to organise and on what lines you think you are going to do that?
What are the prerequisities for communism then?
A relatively small part of the world? I wouldn't call China 'a small part of the world'. That apart, Communism has never tried to eliminate classes: it tried to create new classes and did this so successfully, that even after the collapse of the Soviet bloc certain cliques hung on to their positions of power while quickly discarding any semblance of Communism.
It is interesting to note that while the USSR simply collapsed on its own accord, the CCP still remains in power - 'powerful forces seeking to destroy' it nonewithstanding. So there seems to be some sort of flaw in your... analysis. Perhaps we should update this continuous quoting from the 1915 Leninist-Marxist catechism.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
If you're here to twist my words then don't bother responding.
Because class society is oppressive. We are literally forced to work, and then robbed for it.
I have no idea what you mean by "the prerequisites for communism." If you mean what is the checklist for communism or not-communism, well, just read the thread. We've answered that dozens of times.
Go away.
If all you can give is joke answers I will not bother anymore.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Is this saying that "it won't get done unless someone does it; if someone does it they're entitled to its fruits".
aelf
Ashen One
By the way, AFAIK, in modern historical scholarship, the collapse of the USSR is considered far from inevitable. That really puts a dent in narratives that claim the collapse of the USSR proves something about communism, which makes as much sense as claiming that Athens' loss to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War shows that Athenian democracy is inferior to the Spartan dual kingship.
