Welcome to the Communist Only Subforum!

[Laika]

Definition

“Communism is the ideology and movement advocating for a socio-economic system characterised by the common ownership of the means of production. All Communists therefore ultimately agree that private property, the division of society into classes and the existence of states as a mechanism of class rule are not the “natural” condition of mankind.

In order to recognise diversity of opinion within the sub-forum the definition of Communism is used broadly to refer to an economic system, without entailing specific commitment to political organisation or religious beliefs. Communism has long historical associations with the Atheistic Dictatorships of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc over the 20th Century and this greatly shapes people’s perceptions of it. Historically, this is not representative of Communism which can encompass a range of diverse viewpoints. Members should therefore not feel that this prohibits them from participating in the Communist Only sub-forum if they are agnostic or religious, or support political systems that are democratic, libertarian and anarchist as long as they accept Communism as an economic system.

What is Common Ownership?

The “Common Ownership of the Means of Production” does not necessarily means that society or the state comes to own everything in society. The means of production are those instruments and raw materials used directly in the process of production, such as factories, office buildings, farms, machinery, tractors, etc. Individuals can still own “personal property” under Communism which are objects that they consume and use. The Means of Production are generally owned in two ways; by the state as “public” property, and by voluntary associations of producers and consumers known as “co-operatives” in co-operative property.

There has been considerable debate amongst Communists on the mechanism of distribution and exchange in a Communist economic system. The most radical views assert that Communism should eliminate Markets and Money as a medium of exchange, and instead distribute goods and services by a system of rationing, as was attempted in the period of War Communism in the early USSR. More conservative views, argued that markets and the use of money were necessary until such time as society have achieved an abundance of goods and services in conditions of post scarcity. Such views were expressed by Nikholi Bakharin during the New Economic Policy (1921-9) in the USSR, and also by Deng Xio Peng who introduced Market reforms in the Chinese economy in the late 1970’s and 80’s.

A common myth is that Communism necessarily entails a “levelling” of incomes based on “equality of outcome”. The ownership of the personal property, particularly in conjunction with more market based communist models, often leads to considerable economic inequality as a way of incentivising and rewarding members of society for their work. Unlike Capitalism however, it is assumed that the moral incentives of working for the benefit of society and using labour as a way to express our creativity and realise the individuality of our achievements will become the primary incentive over time.

Why Common Ownership?

It is often hard for people to understand why Communism as an economic system may be an alternative to Capitalism because they have always assumed and been told that Capitalism incentivises people to be more efficient and productive based on their self-interest, and that private property give people the freedom to chose what job they have, what goods or services they buy, down to the clothes they wear. Communists ultimately believe that this sort of freedom is an illusion for two reasons; Exploitation and Alienation.

In establishing Private Ownership of the means of Production, Capitalism must necessarily exclude people from ownership by enforcing property rights. Overtime, this leads to the division of society into two major classes: the Capitalists and the Workers. The Capitalists own the means of production as private property and live off the profits, whereas the workers live by selling their labour to the Capitalists in return for a wage.

Based on the Labour Theory of Value it is the workers who give commodities their value by making them useful. It is by workers applying their labour-time to an object that they make it useful and therefore something which can be sold in a market. Farm workers grow the crops, factory workers produce tractors to cultivate the land, and office workers organise the economic enterprise. Yet, the workers are not paid the entirety of the value of the product that is sold as some of it goes in profit. This is the Marxist conception of exploitation but was widely used by communists in the 19th century to demonstrate the moral rights of workers to own the means of production as they produced them. The term “exploitation” does not simply a moral problem but describes the fundamental economic relationship between capitalists and workers in which the working class is made dependent on their employers in order to earn them a profit irrespective of how much a worker is paid.

The second reason is “alienation”. In selling their labour to the Capitalist, the working class has lost control of a huge portion of their everyday activities and of their own lives. They live based on the condition of their dependency to their employers and are governed by timetables and machines as they themselves as treated as part of production. Workers lose control over their productive and creative activity, and therefore are not “free” to decide what they accomplish in life. Instead, it is decided for them by the laws of supply and demand in the market.

Even though Capitalists may live off the profits as the ruling class, they also suffer a form of “alienation” as control of their own lives is dependent on their business. They don’t run the business- the business runs them. The power of Capitalist Class is an illusion as they cannot escape the anarchy of competition in the market. In the end the “beneficiaries” of Capitalism may appear to get the wealth and the power, but it is only to the extent that they are enslaved by it. This state of alienation reveals the illusionary nature of power in Capitalist society and why Capitalist morality is often both hypocritical and subject to “corruption” by power and wealth because they were never truly free as moral agents to begin with.

The case for Communism can be summed up in eliminating exploitation of man by man, and in restoring to human being the full control of their productive and creative capacities as an expression of their own lifetime and individuality. Based not on the anarchic character of market competition, but through systems of economic planning, society is able to consciously self-regulate and achieve a level of “freedom”. This freedom consist in securing its most basic needs for its members and also in laying the foundations for creating great cultural and intellectual works or make scientific discoveries for the pleasure of doing so to the degree which is able to escape from economic necessity of producing to satisfy its own needs.

 

[Laika]

The Political, Philosophical and Religious views of Communists

For most people, Communism is closely associated with the Marxist-Leninist Dictatorships in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere that developed in the 20th century. This is however only a very small sample of the diversity of opinion within the Communist movement and its impact on political and intellectual history. To a great extent the diversity and scope of even Marxism-Leninism as the most familiar form of Communism is also under-estimated due to the effectiveness of propaganda of the Cold War as well as more legitimate concerns regarding the revolutionary break with moral and political norms in Capitalist societies.

Many earliest Communist ideas took on forms of Religious Communism in using moral justification for common ownership derived from religious and spiritual traditions. Often deeply heretical and unorthodox, these Communist views would often challenge established interpretations of their religions as a corruption of the original and truth teaching and the spiritual truth was accessible to all men rather than exclusively to the priesthood. Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism each have “socialist” and “communist” interpretations though the usage of “communism” to describe them has fallen out of favour due to the fervent anti-religious atheism of 20th century Communism.

Socialism and Communism bear strong similarities because they are very closely related. In continental Europe, Socialism and Communism were both products of 19th century Marxist philosophy but diverged on several key questions. These are often presented as the conflict between democracy and dictatorship, and between violence and non-violence, but it is somewhat more complex. The debate focused on if Capitalism could be reformed by using democratic states by “evolutionary” Socialism, or whether democracies served capitalist interests and so had to be overthrown and replaced by a class motivated “dictatorship of the proletariat” under Communism. The division of Socialism and Communism developed from the start of the 20th century over debates over “reform or revolution” but the break was essentially completed by 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Communism and Anarchist Communism are also very closely related, but split in the aftermath of the Paris Commune (1871). This was because of a fundamental difference on whether the state should be abolished in the immediate aftermath of a revolution (as in anarchism) or whether the economic basis of the state in the division of society into classes had to be overcome by technological changes in order for the state to “wither away”. Divisions between Anarchists and Communists hardened over time, particularly as Communists took on more aggressively dictatorial positions, but Anarchists had notable successes in establishing short-lived societies in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War and in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.

The popular association of Communism with violence, revolution, dictatorship and terrorism is not universally accepted amongst Communists. In fact many strongly rejected violence based on ethical concerns. This is particuarly true amongst anarchist and religious communists who object to violence as incompatable with personal freedom and religious values to preserve life and peacful relations between people. Consequently, there are communists who seek to bring about the end of capitalism and associated social transformation through changes at a grassroots level, or through seceding from mainstream society to form communes, rather than through massed armed revolution.

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia produced a great volume of controversy both within and outside of the Communist movement. Wildly differing interpretations on the “true” nature of the Soviet State, on the sources of its decline and collapse have produced competing theories as to the political application of Communist principles. Some have represented the rebellion of the workers without the need of parties or participation in parties as in the case of Left Communism often as champions of democratic forms of working class rule and opposed to Leninist one-party states and to parliamentary or “bourgeois” democracies. Many variants of Marxism have adapted to intellectual trends of their time such as Marxist interpretations of Existentialism or Freudian Psychoanalysis and the “Critical Theory” of the Frankfurt School that proved influential in the New Left of the 1960’s and 70’s. Finally, those “Marxist-Leninist” forms of Communism which draw inspiration from the October Revolution in Russia and the Soviet Union as the first Marxist state, have been adapted to a variety of national and historical conditions, under-going a great deal of evolution. A peculiar feature of these forms of Communism was the tendency to treat Communism as a “dialectical materialist” worldview, which meant that Marxist philosophy became a total philosophy to be applied to every aspect of social life in the Communist bloc ranging from discoveries in physics, psychology and biology, to standards of art and architecture in “Socialist Realism”. These philosophical journeys were further realised in the utopian dreams of human enhancement in forging the “new man” and “new woman” of Socialist society, of automation and material abundance or post-scarcity, world government and universal disarmament, the elimination of crime and system of punishment by re-education and in Space exploration and colonisation as Communists tried to imagine the long term implications of their revolution on nature and society.

Whilst Communism is most commonly associated with the historical figures of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot as its most murderous and dictatorial adherents, this is not necessarily representative of Communism as a whole. Nor does it do a service to the “villains” of the 20th century by trying to deny the human aspirations- even if arguably warped or corrupted- that motivated them to want to build a better world at such terrible cost.

Communism is perhaps best understood not simply as an ideology but as a destination in the future of mankind, and it’s diversity represents the many roads that people have come from and use to get to in order to achieve a better world. In seeking to ennoble human beings as masters of their own destiny, it has given them great power based on the guiding belief in the goodness in man, to go beyond the security of moral understanding of good and evil, to redefine society and discover what it means to be human. The road to Communism may be long and hard, but here at RF at least, you are not alone in wanting to get there.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Whilst Communism is most commonly associated with the historical figures of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot as its most murderous and dictatorial adherents, this is not necessarily representative of Communism as a whole. Nor does it do a service to the “villains” of the 20th century by trying to deny the human aspirations- even if arguably warped or corrupted- that motivated them to want to build a better world at such terrible cost.

The first casualty of war - ideological or otherwise - is truth, and to apply such apologetics to Stalin - the Grave-Digger of the Revolution - strikes me as repugnant in the extreme. Far more deserving of such consideration are Lenin and Trotsky.

I am reminded of the following ...

He knew that if in March 1921 the Bolsheviks had allowed free elections, that would have probably lost power. The Marxist theory, which he and Lenin used to validate all of their decisions, had never considered the circumstance that once the Communists were in power, they could lose the support of the workers. For the first time since the October victory, they should have asked themselves (did we ever ask ourselves? he would confess to Natalia Sedova) if it was fair to establish socialism against or at the margin of majority will. The proletarian dictatorship was meant to eliminate the exploiting classes, but should it also repress the workers? The dilemma had ended up being dramatic and Manichaean: it was not possible to allow the expression of the people's will, since this could reverse the process itself. But the abolition of that will would deprive the Bolshevik government of its basic legitimacy: once the moment arrived in which the masses ceased to believe, the need arose to make them believe by force. And so it applied force. In Kronshtadt -- as Lev Davidovich knew so well -- the revolution had begun to devour its own children and he had been bestowed the sad honor of giving the order that started the banquet.

- The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura​

Trotsky would eventually be murdered by one of Stalin's NKVD agents in August, 1940, nearly 77 years ago.

 

[Laika]

The first casualty of war - ideological or otherwise - is truth, and to apply such apologetics to Stalin - the Grave-Digger of the Revolution - strikes me as repugnant in the extreme. Far more deserving of such consideration are Lenin and Trotsky.

I am reminded of the following ...

He knew that if in March 1921 the Bolsheviks had allowed free elections, that would have probably lost power. The Marxist theory, which he and Lenin used to validate all of their decisions, had never considered the circumstance that once the Communists were in power, they could lose the support of the workers. For the first time since the October victory, they should have asked themselves (did we ever ask ourselves? he would confess to Natalia Sedova) if it was fair to establish socialism against or at the margin of majority will. The proletarian dictatorship was meant to eliminate the exploiting classes, but should it also repress the workers? The dilemma had ended up being dramatic and Manichaean: it was not possible to allow the expression of the people's will, since this could reverse the process itself. But the abolition of that will would deprive the Bolshevik government of its basic legitimacy: once the moment arrived in which the masses ceased to believe, the need arose to make them believe by force. And so it applied force. In Kronshtadt -- as Lev Davidovich knew so well -- the revolution had begun to devour its own children and he had been bestowed the sad honor of giving the order that started the banquet.

- The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura​

Trotsky would eventually be murdered by one of Stalin's NKVD agents in August, 1940, nearly 77 years ago.

There are alternative views which defend Stalin and his rule in the USSR such as Ludu Martens "Another View of Stalin" (1994) and also represented by the Stalin Society in the UK and in North America. In the case of the UK Stalin Society, they argue that:

"Stalin’s name is synonymous with communism, the October revolution, and the overthrow of capitalist exploitation and imperialist tyranny. For this reason, the international bourgeoisie have spearheaded their attacks on working and oppressed peoples by slandering Stalin and the Soviet Union."

Consequently, given Stalin's position in consolidating world communism in the mid twentieth century, attacking Stalin is synonymous with attacking Marxism-Leninism, including its successor states and ideologies such as Mao's China, Hoxha's Albania, North Korea, etc. The criticisms of Stalin and then repeated in these other instances. defences of Stalin therefore offer an opportunity for more nuanced views that respond to the moral complexities of a totalitarian state.

The defenders of Stalin however, much like holocaust deniers and Nazi apologists, are often inaccurate, distorted or false and therefore not part of mainstream historical scholarship. Moreover, defending the "dictatorship of the proletariat" under Stalin by concealing the abuses as "fascist-imperialist propaganda" is the means to repeat the same denials to defend current human rights abuses in the remaining Communist states in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and Laos.

It is inaccurate to treat Lenin and Trotsky as separate from Stalin, given that they were responsible for creating the state apparatus and legal, political and ideological norms of the Soviet Dictatorship. There is a combination of both continuity and change in the organisation and methods of that dictatorship. During the 1920's and 30's Stalin moved the official view away from the Withering away of the State after the revolution, towards the view that the state becomes most highly developed under Socialism. This included the "aggravation of class struggle under Socialism" which provided the rationale for the purges within the party and the state apparatus to prevent infiltration. In this Stalin was responsible for a new legal theory and a new constitution (1936) which emphasised the need for an explicitly socialist law as opposed to previous views that law was inherently repressive and would wither away with the rest of the state as an apparatus of class oppression.

This did represent a significant change in theory, but it is more debatable as to how far this changed the moral complicity of Communists in a terrorist state and whether this evolution was a necessary progression or not. In response to arguments with Karl Kautsky (the leading German Marxist theorist of his time) Both Lenin and Trotsky defended revolutionary and dictatorial violence, in Lenin's case with "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (1918) and in Trotsky's "Terrorism and Communism"(1920), the latter is arguably one of the most detailed and coherent expositions of communist terror so far written. I believe that Trotsky's book was also a direct influence on Stalin, who read and annotated a copy. Arguably the Bolsheviks took drew lessons from the French Revolution and some of the ideas that underpinned Communist state Terrorism are echoed in Robespierre's speech "Virtue and Terror" (1794) in which democratic governments may exercise a tyranny of the majority against counter-revolutionaries. In evidence is the paradoxical and dialectical ability to combine cruelty and cynicism in the pursuit of a Utopian political ideal.

The difficulty in discussing Stalin's reign is in the extent to which Anti-Communist propaganda directly associates Communism with death. The emotional weight of the problem can obscure just how complex and many-sided the problem is. This is not to say whether the use of terror was right or wrong, but that even if such a judgement is made- the power to act on it requires violence of its own. Simply saying North Korea's concentration camps are morally wrong doesn't close them. it doesn't bring back people from the dead, nor does it undo the physical and psychological damage of the survivors.

The perverse irony, is that the demand to judge communism necessarily insists on a totalitarian power to decide the fate of individuals, nations and ideologies and typically results in using the very same methods against the Communists that are judged to be wrong. it then becomes much harder to distinguish whether the uniforms people wear, flags and symbols we wave or myths that people believe really have a fundamental influence on the moral outcome. It is conventional to believe that wars and violence are justified for noble causes but the inhumanity of these methods is at least capable of defeating the humane ends that communists wished to pursue. a mass grave is still a mass grave, mass murder remains mass murder and the dead stay dead even if we believe they did not die in vain. Dead people can't appreciate any silver lining in a person's good intentions- whether they are communists or not. whether it is just is a problem the living have to decide and, even the best of us exercising such an absolute power to decide whether people live or die, could well be wrong. it is the nature of mankind's revolt against religion and morality as limits to earthly power that we become our own masters and have to accept responsibility for the consequences of exercising it.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

There are alternative views which defend Stalin and his rule in the USSR such as Ludu Martens "Another View of Stalin" (1994) and also represented by the Stalin Society in the UK and in North America. In the case of the UK Stalin Society, they argue that:....

They also claim ...

Our analyses and reflections on this subject are published in this work, Another view of Stalin. The view of Stalin that is imposed on us daily is that of the class that wants to maintain the existing system of exploitation and oppression. Adopting another view of Stalin means looking at the historic Stalin through the eyes of the oppressed class, through the eyes of the exploited and oppressed. [ibid]

... a claim that rings every bit as true as Kellyanne Conway warning against Fake News. So yes, I agree: Stalinist apologists are alive and well.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The perverse irony, is that the demand to judge communism necessarily insists on a totalitarian power to decide the fate of individuals, nations and ideologies ...

I do not understand what this means.

From whence does this demand arise, and demanded of whom?

Further, are you saying that that those insisting on such a judgment are insisting that the principle object of judgment be the dictatorial regimes of the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the successive "Supreme Leaders" of the DPRK?

 

[Laika]

I do not understand what this means.

From whence does this demand arise, and demanded of whom?

Further, are you saying that that those insisting on such a judgment are insisting that the principle object of judgment be the dictatorial regimes of the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the successive "Supreme Leaders" of the DPRK?

Many of the critics of Communism take up moral positions that are on paper very noble. But these are framed in terms of "good intentions" and making people feel good about themselves by being the "good guys". Simply saying "Communism is wrong" is not sufficient to stop it. If you look at it from the perspective of governments, rather than of individual conscience, violence has to be used. Rarely, will you have a critic of Communism openly state that the only way to defeat Communism is to meet violence with violence, whereas Communists are often much more explicit about using violence against capitalism (although it is obscured by political language of "class struggle" what that violence really entails).

Assuming you can say the West won the Cold War at all given the USSR collapsed on its own, it was fought by the west talking about the value of freedom and democracy whilst supporting fascist dictatorships (e.g. Franco's Spain), Military Dictatorships (e.g. Pinochet's Chile) or Religious Fundamentalists (E.g. the Taliban in Afghanistan).

Whether it is by the overthrow of a communist government, suppressing a communist revolution or guerrilla movements, or winning a civil war, or banning a communist party, introducing censorship and restrictions on the ability to express communist ideas- the practice of anti-communism is often barely indistinguishable from the very methods that communists use that makes us believe them to be so evil. This makes it much harder to know exactly who the "good guys" are given they seem to be doing roughly the same thing for different reasons. they end up killing people and the only visible difference is the uniforms they wear whilst they are doing it.

In so far as governments decide who lives and who dies, it is a totalitarian method that negates the freedom and dignity of the individual. whether it is used by communists or anti-communists makes little difference as the outcome is the same.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

^ never mind ...