Ask the Commie Bastard!

I’d been mulling this one over for a while. Seeing all the other ones on Great Debates popping up, I figured I’d take a shot at it.

By way of introduction, this is the organization I’ve belonged to since 1990. Should explain the basics of what I stand for, I hope. Ask away, then - I’ll do what I can to answer unless it really looks to me like you’re being a troll.

Dear Commie Bastard,

Was there a particular event that more than, anything else, led you to espouse socialism? How old were you when this event occurred? For how long have you successfully defended your ideas from your own scrutiny?

Do you believe that nature of capitalism is the cause of social ills such as child labor, racism and inequality, or do you believe that capitalism is simply a structure under which the less admirable elements of human nature can easily rear their ugly heads? What is it about socialism that would prevent the dark underbelly of human nature from corrupting the intended social order?

Dear Commie Bastard,

Do you think a provisional government under Karensky and the Duma would have worked in Russia, rather than the Trotsky Revolution which ended in so much disaster?

Please ignore this portion of my inquiry, Commie Bastard. I’ve just realized ho offensive that question might seem.

No, for a number of reasons. The Provisional Government came to power in February 1917 (old style) on a number of promises, one of which was that it would end Russia’s involvement in the First World War. As soon as it was in power, however, it turned around and renewed efforts to prosecute the war. Seeing as how it was becoming less and less of a popular thing at this time, the Provisional Government wasn’t too well-liked for this.

There were a number of other promises the PG made, including action on a progressive agrarian program which would put more land in the hand of the poorer peasants, that they either ignored or refused to act on once they were at the helm.

Moreover, there was the existence of the soviets, or workers’ councils, that were taking on the roles of running things on a day-to-day basis and muscling in on what the PG saw as its territory. Soviets had been in existence since 1905, although in a much more muted form during the years of reaction between 1906 and 1912, and were a direct creation of the workers rather than the Bolsheviks. (The Bolsheviks didn’t even get elected to leadership in the soviets until July of 1917.) They were set up by workers who saw they had no interest in common with either the ministers of the Tsar’s government or the factory owners; when the PG came into power there was some support for them, but as the PG came to stand more and more with the bosses and the bourgeoisie the soviets became a stronger pole of attraction for dissatisfied workers.

Finally, it’s not the October Revolution that brought about the disaster but the destruction of the class that made it. After the civil war of 1919-1921 Russia didn’t have a working class to speak of - most had died in the fight to defend the Revolution. Given the absence of a base on which the Communist Party had built itself, there was a strong tendency to become the top-down bureaucratic kind of organization we saw under Stalin and his successors. Lenin fought tooth and nail against that; Trotsky should have fought harder. In the end Stalin won out and made a severe mess of things.

If you feel like chewing through some brick-weight books on the subject, I recommend the unabridged version of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution published by Pluto Press. Biographies of Lenin and Trotsky by Tony Cliff are also enlightening and very readable.

I don’t agree with EVERYthing you said, but good answer—thanks, Commie Bastard!

My grandfather was a Trotskyite, so I know a lot about that era. He died before I got a chance to argue politics with him, though.

What the heck, let’s tackle this one too.

**

I first read the Communist Manifesto when I was 17. A couple of years later the Gulf War broke out; I had been around the ISO for a few months beforehand, and talking the issues over with the local members solidified my agreement with socialism.

**

If you’re asking how long I’ve been able to delude myself by providing slick, weaselly, self-justifying answers to otherwise intense soul-searching - never. If you’re asking how long I’ve been able to ask questions if I don’t understand, argue with comrades on issues, make my point or yield it, and from there come to a better understanding whether I agree or not - the whole time I’ve been a member.

**

Any class society is based on inequality, whether it’s despotism, feudalism, or capitalism. The needs of the ruling class to maintain its political, ideological, and economic power over the other class (or classes, if we’re talking about earlier forms of society) compel it to use whatever methods it can find. Racism was used to justify the enslavement of men and women who differed only in the color of their skins. Child labor is officially looked down on, but generally winked at because it’s a labor pool that’s available on the cheap and won’t fight back too hard when pressed.

The fact that the dark underbelly of human nature comes from the above-mentioned inequality. Eliminate poverty and gear production towards human needs and not profit, and you eliminate the social basis for exploitation and the need to do so to safeguard one’s own existence.

You mind if I ask who he is? I might have heard of him.

Olentzero, you’re my hero. Come Comrades and rally; the last fight let us face. The Internationale unites the human race!

What’s the capital of North Dakota?

Eliminate poverty? How?

My favorite Commie Bastard,

You have given me the following:

Well, all righty then!

Here are a few more questions that, hopefully, won’t make me look like such a jerk:

How popular is the socialist movement in the United States?
At what rate are your numbers thought or known to be growing?
Is there a particular segment of the population in which you are having the greatest success in persuading?

If answers to these questions can be found at the site you referenced earlier, kindly point me in the right direction because I did not se them.

I’m afraid that I’ve never been convinced that a society, even without the influence of a feudal or capitalist structure, will not naturally develop a segregation of classes. Did feudalism ever inspire men to proclaim their superiority over their neighbors, or has it just glorified their claims after the fact? Would a socialist society not develop some sort of pecking order eventually no matter how noble the intentions of its founders? Why not?

Bismarck.

My grandfather wasn’t even remotely famous; he handed out literature in his small town in the early days of the Revolution and skedaddled while the skedaddling was good, in 1910. I still remember him referring to the Czar as “Bloody Nicholas.”

Ike—to the barricades!

—“Emma Goldman”

Please accept my appologies if my question is somehow dumb/offensive/otherwiseapainintheass…

Governmentally speaking, it is typically observed that most communist nations have been extremely aggressive (I’m not meaning to suggest capitalist countries all want to teach the world to sing either, but you know what I mean). It would seem to me (in my limited an naive understanding of communism/socialism) that a Marxist perspective implies a social contract into which people agree to participate. I believed this has worked on small scales…communes, etc. Does it not seem, then, that forcing communism onto other peoples through military domination runs contrary to this philosophy?

I can only speak for our organization on this one. We’ve been involved in any number of different things lately, most notably the protests in Seattle and Washington and around the movement to abolish the death penalty. We have attracted a greater number of people in the past year or so - our summer conference earlier this month was attended by 600 people. No, we’re not a mass monster organization, it’s true - but given the consideration that we are among the largest of this kind of organization coming out of the 80s and 90s, it’s not bad at all.
Obviously we’re not convincing people like Bill Gates or David Duke (not that we’d bother trying) we’re definitely sparking interest among people we meet around other activities.

Classes evolved primarily because there wasn’t enough surplus of goods to meet everyone’s needs. Some people had to control what was done with it - this eventually evolved into not just taking control of the surplus but taking over the surplus itself and the manufacture of goods.

Up to now, also, the daily running of society has been a conscious effort only of a minority - the rulers of whatever stripe and coloration. Socialism, and eventually communism, will be a conscious effort of the majority in running society. Basically that means real, hands-on control of one’s own life and the world in which you find yourself. Real economic and political equality won’t be handed down to the masses on high; it will be taken by them and held onto tightly. A thoroughly conscious effort at establishing and maintaining equality means that classes won’t have a chance of developing. This doesn’t mean that natural leaders won’t emerge, but it will be based more on one’s own skills and abilities rather than the financial backing you can get from those who have most or all of the property.

By establishing a permanent surplus of goods from which people can draw what they need when they need it, guaranteed by their contribution to society in the form of productive work. Work is guaranteed by the fact that there’s a whole lot we need to make, reorganize, and clean up from that capitalism’s dumped on us.

Dear Commie Bastard,

In a socialist society who will clean the toilets and pick up the garbage?

Thanks in advance.

I have first hand knowledge of the communist/socialist society. It’s all very well and good for people to sit around in relative freedom and ponder the benefits of the communist idiology without actually having lived in an applied model of such a phylosophy. I think that people who romanticize and rouminate about this type of social system should get off their duffs and live in it for a while. I promise you that you will come back with an entirely different outlook on life.

Democracy/Capitalism, such as it is, is nothing to write Lenin about but it’s a damn site better than the appalling, life draining, initiative stiffeling (sp?), parasitic, de-humanizing Lenin/Marx model of social order.

You have to be extremely naive to believe that any such system can work on any real social scale. Just once I’d like to talk to a rational individual who has lived in that environment and has found some tangeable applied redeeming quality in it and not some idealogical concept that he/she thinks will work because he/she read it in a book and it sounded good.

You know I’ve been thinking of starting this thread for a while myself. If you don’t mind Olent, I’ll chime in from time to time and try to offer my own perspective. 90% of the time it’s the same as yours. The only reason I haven’t started this thread is I’m in a state of transition right now and don’t have the time to give it it’s proper attention.

No questions are a pain in the ass. Trollery is, and this ain’t it.

In short, the answer: Absolutely. Socialism cannot be forced on the majority of society from above. It has to be built from below, not in one country but worldwide. This is the keystone in the argument that Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea, and China were not socialist or communist. (See my answer to Eve’s question for the answer on Russia.)

In an abstract sense yes, socialism is a social contract to which people agree. But it’s not just an idea that suddenly everyone thinks is great and socialism happens two minutes after. It takes serious building and action.