I'm not a Communist Anymore!

Laika said:

When I joined RF at the start of 2015, I said that: "I am not an apologist for communist atrocities and I realise that many people, particularly religious, have good reason to be hostile towards communists." Whilst I have often openly contemplated what such apologetics may look like as an intellectual and moral exercise, I have stuck by that position as consistently as I was able.

I have come to realise however that this is not a sustainable position and I cannot sincerely advocate either "social revolution", "class struggle", the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or "state atheism" without also implicitly advocating serious violence against members of this forum based on their beliefs. The abstract nature of Marxism makes this at first very difficult to see and it was not obvious but it has become clearer the greater my understanding that this is the political reality of communist ideology whether I like it or not or approve of it or not. After a great deal of thought and turmoil, I have not found a sustainable alternative to that conclusion and this is not a position I am willing to entertain even in principle. I am therefore effectively no longer a Communist and I am no longer willing to carry the burden of trying to reconcile my views with my conscience. my views must change as my conscience will not. Nor would it be fair for me to misrepresent Marxism to accommodate my own reservations as that kind of hypocrisy is not a truly "communist" thing to do.

I still think like a Communist as it has left such a mark on my personality and thinking and have an interest in the history, theory and philosophy, but I can no longer say there is anything "meaningful" behind it. This is sort of like being a "cultural" Communist in the way people can be "culturally" Buddhist, Muslim or Christian without accepting the theology. I will probably keep posting in the Communist sub-forum for a while on a number of communist related subjects until I know what best to do. This is not an easy thing to let go of even with the best of intentions as any one who has had deep convictions will understand. If I am not quick to respond to various questions on the forum or become uneasy in replying, it is because I don't have the luxury of certainty that I once had and will have to search more deeply and widely for the answers than I have up till now.

I gave ten years of my life to this idea and I was wrong. I want to do good, but I no longer believe that Communism can foreseeably be part of that even if I can draw inspiration from it. I feel gutted and hurt about that and these beliefs have been valuable in many unforeseen ways, but its time to move on and turn the page.

Thank you for being part of the journey and being there for me when I needed you.

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congratulations, comrade! Communism sounds just fine, but does not work in practice. It is too altruistic and does not account for human nature.

Pendulums swing -- for all of us. If you'll forgive me for saying so, it's the nature of the dialectic.

Revoltingest said:

Congrats!
But this should mean you can no longer post in the commie forum.
Would that create an itch you cannot scratch? There's always bacon.

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Baconism isn't compatible with communism, since it is by all reckoning a religious experience.

Good for you Laika! Always thought you were too nice to be a real commie.

PureX said:

As far as I am aware, "communism" has only ever been attempted on a very small scale (a single village) and even then it has failed nearly every time in less than a decade or so. So I have no idea what you are referring to as "communism" on a rand scale or as a practical ideology. Nor do I understand why you would assume that violence would be required to achieve it, unless you assumed it would fail under it's own lack of buoyancy to begin with. Which in fact would seem to be the case, historically. So why use violence to establish a social system that couldn't establish, or even maintain itself, on it's own merits?

I guess what I'm asking is, why did you support it in the first place?

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The short version is that you had a kid who was neglected by his parents as a child wanting to feel loved and in control. So he chose a belief system which projected a sense of being threatened by an "uncaring world", where he would do things to help people (to be loved) and promised a degree of control (to feel safe).

The long version probably doesn't belong on the internet. But it should give you an idea that "all was not well" and it has been a symptom of deeper personal problems even if there are intellectual reasons why I could have legitimately believed it. Trying to separate them out has been very difficult.

Sartre said:

That being said, I would be interested in hearing what broke the camels back.

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Communists would kill you, not because you had done anything wrong but for the purpose of intimidation to protect the dictatorship of the proletariat. The class struggle is "scientifically" true, so it is not necessary to prove that enemies exist because the party knows enemies exist based on using a "scientific prediction" as a basis for their paranoia. The death of wholly innocent people becomes entirely acceptable to set an example. You get paranoia and no willingness to find evidence to see if its justified because innocence or guilt is irrelevant. They didn't care about proving people's guilt because they just needed people who they could kill to intimidate so they manufactured reasons to do it and manufactured enemies. The executioners who filled mass graves didn't need a reason to kill people other than to stay alive. 100 million people died and they didn't need a reason to kill them.

That's terrifying.

Good journey for your future Laika .. may all run well and Smooth ...

as you infer the problems are not entirely with the ethos of communism but perhaps more with the self aggrandizing leaderships that arises.

I was always more impressed with the Kibbutz version, but it a much smaller scale of course..
perhaps it may have more chance of working when with our modern instant communication
all citizens can contribute and vote on every decision .. (oh gosh, that sounds a little democratic)

Milton Platt said:

Baconism isn't compatible with communism, since it is by all reckoning a religious experience.

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Contrary to popular belief, religion & communism can go well together.....like bacon & chocolate.

oldbadger said:

OK, you're not a Communist any more.
Fair enough.
So from now on your 'open' and 'inclusive' threads will be supported by many more members?

The idea of initiating closed communist threads excluding all but only a few members just never seemed to be a communist tenet to me.

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We'll see. I'll take this one step at a time.

if life were ideal, communism wouldn't hurt anyone, but with human nature, and the potentiality of evil in it, I'd say democracy is the best navigator through the storms of life. I think by now America has proven to be one of the most civil countries on earth even with all its corruptions. utopia is purely fantasy. that will never be.

communism always eventually breeds contempt in human nature, nationalistic superiority, and dissatisfaction from what I've seen of it. violence is always going to be it's undoing.

power without checks and balances and term limits is dangerous.

of course I'm American through and through, and I'd die to preserve it, gladly, and without hesitation. individual rights and freedoms and powers are the most precious endowments you could possibly have.

osgart said:

if life were ideal, communism wouldn't hurt anyone, but with human nature, and the potentiality of evil in it, I'd say democracy is the best navigator through the storms of life. I think by now America has proven to be one of the most civil countries on earth even with all its corruptions. utopia is purely fantasy. that will never be.

communism always eventually breeds contempt in human nature, nationalistic superiority, and dissatisfaction from what I've seen of it. violence is always going to be it's undoing.

power without checks and balances and term limits is dangerous.

of course I'm American through and through, and I'd die to preserve it, gladly, and without hesitation. individual rights and freedoms and powers are the most precious endowments you could possibly have.

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I appreciate the sentiment, but you should be wary of thinking "I'd die to preserve it". Its one of those things that is often repeated in our culture without much deeper reflection.

In reality, its not whether you'd die to defend freedom and democracy, its whether you'd kill the enemies of those institutions. it raises an entirely different set of moral issues no different from whether it is just to kill for another cause like communism, fascism, etc. How much difference is there beyond a uniform and a flag? Is there really any idea created by man that is more valuable than a man themselves? It is not the same and conflating the decision to die for a cause and kill for a cause does not take the difference between your right to chose your own fate and your power to chose the fate of others. It is a massive difference.

Its the chill I get thinking about if I could kill for the Communist cause that really put me off. Its only got stronger as time goes on and I'd really like to get the **** away from it. I just see myself in a uniform loading cattle trains of innocent people who the state has decided are "enemies" to be "liquidated". People not very different from me did exactly the same thing and there is no solid line between right and wrong, especially when I share the same system of beliefs as executioners and torturers. Maybe if I was born in a different time in history thats what would have happened, as I was naive, stupid and arrogant enough to believe I might have been "right" in doing so, but I never want to find out. I haven't found any argument that has made that pang of conscience go away and I cannot imagine anything worse or further from my original intentions.

Its far from unique to Communism but they did it on a much larger scale (along with the Nazis) and it would appear to be an unavoidable aspect of the dictatorial character of the system. If you are going to plan society to the point where it takes precedence over individual rights, eventually you are going to plan who lives and who dies. natural selection gives way to domestic selection as a kind of eugenics by the state based on what personal traits they want to "survive". I have not seen any evidence that that power was ever considered by communists in a "thoughtful" way, let alone a "just" one. Liberal, free societies at least has the advantage of being able to ask those kind of questions, even if the answers are very difficult to find or deal with.

in defense of America, I would die. I do not condone going on the offensive without just cause. if violence is initiated to me, than I am forced to take arms. I do not initiate violence.

Other then that, I find your statement agreeable. Your conscience serves you well. I hold that conscience as well.

I am very wary of power and it's usage with regards to human nature.

Laika said:

The short version is that you had a kid who was neglected by his parents as a child wanting to feel loved and in control. So he chose a belief system which projected a sense of being threatened by an "uncaring world", where he would do things to help people (to be loved) and promised a degree of control (to feel safe).

The long version probably doesn't belong on the internet. But it should give you an idea that "all was not well" and it has been a symptom of deeper personal problems even if there are intellectual reasons why I could have legitimately believed it. Trying to separate them out has been very difficult.

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Never a good idea to mix politics with emotionalism.

Laika said:

Communists would kill you, not because you had done anything wrong but for the purpose of intimidation to protect the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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That's not communism, that totalitarianism masquerading as communism.

PureX said:

That's not communism, that totalitarianism masquerading as communism.

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If the means of production become state property and labour is a means of production- in effect people become the property of the state. There is a question of "degrees" to which the state owns and controls the people, but I haven't seen an a way to explicit avoid this in practice. Much of the totalitarian nature of communism comes from the state asserting the right to "control" people and to change them to suit the interests of the state.

If "freedom" relies on independence from the state, it relies on private property. It would appear that you cannot have independent institutions without them being based on private ownership (to one degree or another).

Laika said:

If the means of production become state property and labour is a means of production- in effect people become the property of the state.

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Yes, that's called totalitarianism. The state has total control. Communism is when everything is owned and controlled by everyone. Which is basically impossible to do on a large scale, and fails even when it's done on a small scale.

Laika said:

There is a question of "degrees" to which the state owns and controls the people, but I haven't seen an a way to explicit avoid this in practice. Much of the totalitarian nature of communism comes from the state asserting the right to "control" people and to change them to suit the interests of the state.

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That's not communism. That's totalitarianism calling itself "communism", falsely. Communist China is not a communist state. It's a totalitarian state.

Laika said:

If "freedom" relies on independence from the state, it relies on private property.

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Freedom requires a government to establish it and enforce it. Otherwise all human societies fall into 'Darwinian' totalitarianism: ruled by the men with the most effective weapons and the most vicious will to use them. To establish and maintain equality and liberty we need to set up governments charged with the task and the ability to protect us from each other, and to do so equitably. Real communism is basically just anarchy by another name, and that's why it doesn't work. It denies human (Darwinian) nature, and the innate human desire to dominate and exploit our fellow humans, our environment, and anything else that it's possible to dominate and exploit.

Laika said:

It would appear that you cannot have independent institutions without them being based on private ownership (to one degree or another).

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Private ownership is an irrelevant issue without the rule of law to establish and protect it. And even then, it will not be an equitable rule of law unless the government can establish it as such and protect it.

Here in the U.S. we have lost control of our own government, and as a result it is sliding inexorably into a "Darwinian dictatorship"; based so far on the power of wealth and corruption, rather than the power of deadly weaponry and propensity for violence. But if we continue to follow this path, it will end up in viciousness and violence as all societies do when they lack the organized and unified protection of government.

Only the morons among us think that government is the problem. Government is the solution. And it's the ONLY solution. The problem is that our current government has been corrupted, and has become an agent for Darwinian totalitarianism in the form of greed. Which will eventually become violent if it's not corrected.

PureX said:

Yes, that's called totalitarianism. The state has total control. Communism is when everything is owned and controlled by everyone. Which is basically impossible to do on a large scale, and fails even when it's done on a small scale.

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That's not communism. That's totalitarianism calling itself "communism", falsely. Communist China is not a communist state. It's a totalitarian state.

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In a very crude Marxist sense, communism is the economic basis in which "totalitarianism" is the political and ideological superstructure. Common Ownership produces a "monopoly" and eliminates competition within the economic basis. This then leads to a "monopolisation" of power in a single-party state, and a "monopolisation" of intellectual life by a single ideology (in the Soviet Union, "Marxism-Leninism").

Outside of the marxist conception of base and superstructure, it is not fair to treat all "communism" as "totalitarian", or all "totalitarianism" as inherently "communist". But I think the relationship is unmistakable.

PureX said:

Freedom requires a government to establish it and enforce it. Otherwise all human societies fall into 'Darwinian' totalitarianism: ruled by the men with the most effective weapons and the most vicious will to use them. To establish and maintain equality and liberty we need to set up governments charged with the task and the ability to protect us from each other, and to do so equitably. Real communism is basically just anarchy by another name, and that's why it doesn't work. It denies human (Darwinian) nature, and the innate human desire to dominate and exploit our fellow humans, our environment, and anything else that it's possible to dominate and exploit.

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Marxism does not deny a Darwinian nature at all, because it is intellectually derivative of Social Darwinism. The survival of the fittest is replaced by the "class struggle" in which the "fittest" and "most progressive" class triumphs over the "unfit" or "reactionary" class. This is why the Soviets tried to "liquidate" entire classes because they believed that by doing so there were accelerating a pre-existing trend in social evolution. There is a very strong element of "might is right" in Marxist thought in that the ruling class is the "strong" and the exploited class is the "weak" until the exploited class is strong enough to overthrow the ruling class.

Marxism has typically argued for the "withering away of the state" based on the assumption that as Communism will eliminate class differences and class conflict, so it will eliminate the economic basis for the state as a special apparatus of coercion. There is a theoretical overlap between Marxism and Anarchism, but under Stalin the idea of the "withering away of the state" went into reverse.

Stalin asserted that the state becomes so big and so all pervasive that it swallows up society and therefore "withers away". If the state is identical with the people, the power of the state is the power of the people. the "highest development of the state" into a totalitarian system is therefore the highest development of the power of the people. If society had to be planned (economically) it has to be controlled (politically) and engineered (ideologically). In his view, Freedom and the state were not opposed- they were identical. The more powerful the state, the "freer"/more powerful the individual and society.

i.e. The most totalitarian society is the "freest" society.

PureX said:

Private ownership is an irrelevant issue without the rule of law to establish and protect it. And even then, it will not be an equitable rule of law unless the government can establish it as such and protect it.

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The rule of law doesn't exist in isolation from private property as its economic base. Under Communism, law becomes the instrument of the state to plan the economy and society and consequently the "rule of law" greatly expands to cover all spheres of social activity. Under Capitalism, typically law is restricted by private property, the autonomy of individual to engage in free buying and selling within the market place and to freely make contracts with government interference. i.e. the rule of law is different under Capitalism and Communism because it is dependent on how it is used to consolidate the economic base.

PureX said:

Here in the U.S. we have lost control of our own government, and as a result it is sliding inexorably into a "Darwinian dictatorship"; based so far on the power of wealth and corruption, rather than the power of deadly weaponry and propensity for violence. But if we continue to follow this path, it will end up in viciousness and violence as all societies do when they lack the organized and unified protection of government.

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America is on a very dangerous path away from a free society and it is not a good thing. So I'm in full agreement here.

PureX said:

Only the morons among us think that government is the problem. Government is the solution. And it's the ONLY solution. The problem is that our current government has been corrupted, and has become an agent for Darwinian totalitarianism in the form of greed. Which will eventually become violent if it's not corrected.

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That depends on whether the "government" was ever really independent from "capitalism". If the government is directly shaped by capitalism (as I said in the paragraph on the rule of law) it necessarily serves "capitalist" class interests. The corruption of the state in the US is that the capitalist nature of the state is becoming more open and more naked as a weapon of one class to suppress another in a "Darwinian totalitarianism" driven by greed. I don't have an answer for that one and my lack of an answer is partly why I can't really be a proper Communist. Its not clear to what extent the idea of "freedom" under Capitalism is simply a "Capitalist" class based understanding of freedom (as in free trade in economics, free exchange of ideas as commodities ideologically) and is a "human" freedom reflecting the realities of self-interest arising from our biological need for self-preservation.

Laika said:

If the means of production become state property and labour is a means of production- in effect people become the property of the state. There is a question of "degrees" to which the state owns and controls the people, but I haven't seen an a way to explicit avoid this in practice. Much of the totalitarian nature of communism comes from the state asserting the right to "control" people and to change them to suit the interests of the state.

If "freedom" relies on independence from the state, it relies on private property. It would appear that you cannot have independent institutions without them being based on private ownership (to one degree or another).

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If I didn't know better, I'd swear this is pillow talk, & that you're making advances towards this capitalist!

Revoltingest said:

If I didn't know better, I'd swear this is pillow talk, & that you're making advances towards this capitalist!

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I can read The Road to Serfdom as a bed time story if that's the kind of pillow talk your in to

Laika said:

I can read The Road to Serfdom as a bed time story if that's the kind of pillow talk your in to

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I prefer the stories you compose.

Laika said:

In a very crude Marxist sense, communism is the economic basis in which "totalitarianism" is the political and ideological superstructure. Common Ownership produces a "monopoly" and eliminates competition within the economic basis. This then leads to a "monopolisation" of power in a single-party state, and a "monopolisation" of intellectual life by a single ideology (in the Soviet Union, "Marxism-Leninism").

Outside of the marxist conception of base and superstructure, it is not fair to treat all "communism" as "totalitarian", or all "totalitarianism" as inherently "communist". But I think the relationship is unmistakable.

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I understand, but you're confusing government with an economic system. Communism is a social ideology wherein everyone owns and controls everything. To achieve this some sort of governing system has to be imposed, which on a small scale, tends to be democratic. On a larger scale could possibly be a representational democracy, but seems to almost always end up being fascist/totalitarian in actual implementation, which then disqualifies it as being communism. It may employ some communal ideology, and place people in controlled collectives called "communes", but the people don't really own nor control much of anything.

Laika said:

Marxism has typically argued for the "withering away of the state" based on the assumption that as Communism will eliminate class differences and class conflict, so it will eliminate the economic basis for the state as a special apparatus of coercion. There is a theoretical overlap between Marxism and Anarchism, but under Stalin the idea of the "withering away of the state" went into reverse.

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And it is MIGHTILY theoretical, too, as it has never actually occurred in any of these bogus "communist states" anywhere on planet Earth. And I doubt it's ever occurred anywhere else in the universe, either. Because it's just the propagandizing drivel of the despots and dictators that own and control everything and everyone in their phony "communist" states.

Laika said:

Stalin asserted that the state becomes so big and so all pervasive that it swallows up society and therefore "withers away". If the state is identical with the people, the power of the state is the power of the people. the "highest development of the state" into a totalitarian system is therefore the highest development of the power of the people. If society had to be planned (economically) it has to be controlled (politically) and engineered (ideologically). In his view, Freedom and the state were not opposed- they were identical. The more powerful the state, the "freer"/more powerful the individual and society.

i.e. The most totalitarian society is the "freest" society.

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Exactly, just propagandizing drivel from the mouth of a vicious despot. "Socio-economic Darwinism" at it's best and bloodiest. And we need to be very careful in our own countries of this Darwinian "free market" BS that claims that economic anarchy is somehow the magical salvation of humanity. Because it's really just a doorway to economic totalitarianism.

Laika said:

The rule of law doesn't exist in isolation from private property as its economic base.

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It could. There is no particular reason that a society could not make laws giving ownership of all essential resources, production, and services to the society as a whole, and then govern it through a democratically elected representational form of government. Which I believe would be an example of a strong democratic socialist state. And in fact, I think the future of humanity will be found in exactly this kind of strong, socially responsible, representational/constitutional democracy, wherein the people own and control all the essential enterprises, while leaving the rest to the remaining free markets. Our big problem right now is that we are treating all markets as though they're 'free markets' when in fact they are 'captive markets', which is creating a whole slew of monopolies controlled by unelected, and socially irresponsible people who are using these monopolies to gain ever greater wealth and power, and are then using that great wealth and power to corrupt the government and further skew the economic system in their favor. This is not a sustainable course, and it will inevitably result in both social and economic collapse if we don't make some changes, and make them soon.

PureX said:

It could. There is no particular reason that a society could not make laws giving ownership of all essential resources, production, and services to the society as a whole, and then govern it through a democratically elected representational form of government. Which I believe would be an example of a strong democratic socialist state. And in fact, I think the future of humanity will be found in exactly this kind of strong, socially responsible, representational/constitutional democracy, wherein the people own and control all the essential enterprises, while leaving the rest to the remaining free markets. Our big problem right now is that we are treating all markets as though they're 'free markets' when in fact they are 'captive markets', which is creating a whole slew of monopolies controlled by unelected, and socially irresponsible people who are using these monopolies to gain ever greater wealth and power, and are then using that great wealth and power to corrupt the government and further skew the economic system in their favor. This is not a sustainable course, and it will inevitably result in both social and economic collapse if we don't make some changes, and make them soon.

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I sincerely hope you are right on that one. We could use a breakthrough so that we have some kind of future that is worth having. I'm perhaps more pessimistic, but I essentially agree with you.