Tymp, I do not think my post can in any way be interpreted as to disqualify the OP on the basis of the youth of the author and it certainly wasn’t meant that way. I was just pointing out he missed the “golden age”.
Also, while I agree you want to discuss ideas and not who is voicing them, I do not think you want to discuss them in a space devoid of context. I was merely trying to provide some context in the form of pointing out that (a) this has been tried before and failed, and (b) many people tend to grow out of those ideas as they age.
Olscratch, when you say
>> People don’t just mature and realize “oh, that was a foolish idea”. Something concrete must happen to make them change their minds
I tend to disagree. I think it is merely an effect of aging. The only thing those hippies of the 60s have today is more years. I do not think anything else has happened except that they aged and most of the people who are over 50 would tell you aging has changed their view of the world.
Your point seems to be “giving power to the people” but I would counter the people already have the power. Not only do they have the power to vote in political elections but they have the power to spend their money as they see fit on the products they prefer and to invest their savings as they see fit. I cannot see what more power I can have and most politicians who say they want to give the people more power are really wanting to take their money and give themselves more power.
Anyway, the intention of the OP was not to open a discussion on this subject but to answer friendly questions and I do not want to hijack the thread and make it into a discussion it was not meant to be.
I guess I should start my own thread titled “What makes you think socialism has any chance of success?” but I am too lazy so I’ll just let you all get back to your questions and answers and lurk from my corner.
Sorry to insert pure emotion into this intellectual thread, and there is a more appropriate place for this, so maybe I’ll put a post there tomorrow, but to all you Commie Bastards: paydite vi vsey nahui, rebyata!
I cannot begin to tell you how sad I am when I see the socialist ideals help up so high. I escaped from the socialist hellhole as a child, Ukraine now, USSR then, and I know what it’s all about. That bbboat don’t float! What is the motivation to work? What is the motivation to work harder than the next guy?
“From each according to his ability”
“To each according to his need”
Who determines ability, who determines need?
Socialism is based on the idea that the worker is empowered, yet the motivation for outstanding work is removed.(Human beings are not ants, individualism is a part of our nature, so is individual reward).
I watched the fat bastards sit on their asses while others worked their fingers to the bone (literally) and did not get enough to feed their children. Socialist my ass, they were nothing but opportunistic assholes, living off the very sweat of others they were supposed to protect. Who are they? Every government official was up for a bribe, everone with some rubber stamp was ready to take your lunch. We have enough problems with Capitalism, but we don’t even approach the garbage dump that communism/socialism created.
You tell me how you will prevent this in any socialist system? Empower the worker? In your dreams. Live it first, then we can talk.
I warned you, nothing but emotion. Commie Bastards!!
Smotri, koxol, ia uzhe otvetil na eto vopros. V SSSR i Vostochnoi Evrope ne bylo ni sotsializma ni kommunizma. Ia nikak ne zaschituiu sistemu Stalina i ego naslednikov. A sistema Stalina nikak ne logicheskii rezul’tat Oktiabrskoi Revoliutsii. Ponial?
Sorry, folks - just trying to explain myself to the Ukrainian in a language he might better understand me.
That’s because they’ve always done it (with the exception of Russia in 1917) on behalf of the people, rather than leading the people to do it for themselves. We Reds call that “elitism” and have nothing but contempt for it.
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It’s never been tried. Guess I shoulda put this in the OP, may have helped prevent repetition of this point. Tho’ I think it’s pretty well explained on the ISO website.
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30 years ago public activism helped about legalization of abortion. 25 years ago public activism helped bring about the end of the Vietnam War and the abolition of the death penalty. Now we’re seeing Iraq crushed to dust under war and sanctions the U.S. has imposed, a woman’s right to an abortion has been severely curtailed, and the death penalty is cranking along like it was never stopped. Precisely because once those goals were achieved the first time, people believed the Democrats when they said they’d keep these things in place.
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Ya got one anyway, 'cos you’re being serious about this debate.
Well, going to the polls really only changes political facets of society while leaving the fundamental question of economic and social exploitation untouched.
There’s also the philosophy that only elected officials are smart enough and able enough to make these changes (which are cosmetic at best) instead of taking matters into your own hands and doing something about it.
It’s pretty clear, at least to me, that you can’t legislate away racism, child labor, homophobia, and any number of other things. They’re ideological outgrowths of a system solidly based on inequality and to get rid of them you have to get rid of the inequality. Voting once every two, four, or six years quite simply isn’t enough to change that.
Where the socialist paradise always falls apart for me is the human nature argument.
My observations of people leads me to conclude that in the aggregate we are “tribal” in nature, widely diverse in outlook on just about every issue under the sun, acquisitive, competitive, and far more interested in our own (and friend’s and family’s of course) well being than in the well being of society.
When communists talk of their visions of the future, I can’t help but react with a cynical “Yeah. Right.” I have never seen anything that would indicate to me that achieving such a vision is remotely possible in the US alone, let alone the entire planet. Sure, the “peaceful cooperation and plenty for all” ideals sound great. I’d like to live in a world where everyone has more than they need, plenty of leisure time, and a serious commitment to their fellows, but if there ever were such a world, I doubt human beings would be inhabiting it.
It’s not that simple. The 14 countries who invaded Russia in 1918 (the United States among them) dealt a severe blow to the economy of a country whose industrial output was, at the time, a mere fraction both of its pre-war output and comparable to the industrial output of England sometime in the seventeenth century.
If the invasion and subsequent civil war hadn’t occurred there still would have been severe difficulties. What the Bolsheviks looked to was socialist revolution in the more advanced countries of Western Europe - Germany, France, and England. There were opportunities, especially in Germany; these were not taken advantage of for several reasons.
The revolution in Russia would have succeeded if and only if the workers of Western Europe had followed suit in the months or first few years immediately following.
Them’s fightin’ words tovarisch… but fair enough, Tradesilicon started it. You must understand that people like he and I who have first hand experience of the type of regime you are suggesting are naturally skeptical. Well, vehemently opposed might be a better description.
Be that as it may, I’d like to suggest that you are splitting hairs here about what happened in the SSSR in 1917 and what followed. To put it kindly, you romaticize. Some of the proletariat leaders may have had good intentions while leading the revolt. In my opinion, the revolt was quite justified. Many lived under serfdom up to that point. However, the majority of the revolt leaders were simly opportunistic thugs and parasites - Lenin included. They saw Marxism as an opportunity to gain what they have not been willing to earn by personal toil.
The point I’m trying to get at is, though on paper socialism has great appeal it is fundamentally flawed because any attempt to implement such a system IRL will yield exactly the same results as the 70 years of communist rule in the former SSSR have. Your system may be applicable in a society where one could suppress human nature, but that would need to be done in such a brutal way that nothing short of totalitarianism would result (can you say Stalin?).
All this mental masturbation aside, tell me, have you spent any significant time at all actually living in a communist or socialist regime? I know that you don’t believe that the former USSR or Eastern Europe were good models of such a system, but you must admit, they came closer than anything else in our time. I’m just trying to determine if you are an experienced socialist or simply a naive pseudo-intellectual.
As outlined in Lenin’s State and Revolution, socialism is the first step after the overthrow of capitalism, where the working class really gets into learning how to run society in the interest of all, and there still will be the need for active contribution of everyone in building it. Basically it can be summed up in two phrases, which were often repeated at the time:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”
“He who doesn’t work, neither shall he eat.”
Communism, on the other hand, comes about once the surplus of goods is so large that everyone gets what they want or need, and there is plenty left over for the future. Then the necessity of work lessens, and people will have infinitely more leisure time than they do now, especially as repetitive or more odious tasks (garbage disposal, to take an example from previous posts) become automated. Then the slogan
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”
will truly come into effect.
Given the productive levels capitalism has developed over its 150 years of existence, it’s a strong possibility that communism could be built out of socialism within a generation.
No it wouldn’t. The Bolsheviks didn’t take power, they were put there by an organized, militant working class. Stalin resulted because that working class was decimated in the civil war of 1918-1921 and the Party lost the base of power which could have kept it in check.
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No, I haven’t, though I spent a year in St. Petersburg in 1995. Neither, I must emphasize, have you or Tradesilicon.
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Clarification: It’s not that I believe the USSR and E. Europe weren’t good models of the system, it’s that I believer theye weren’t models of the system at all. It’s like saying a cat is a lion merely because it exhibits some surface features similar to a lion.
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Forgive my impertinence, but of what import would that be to me?
Stalin, and his legacy aside, you have mentioned in your previous posts that when the revolution comes, those who oppose will die. I take that in a less than friendly way, and therefore choose to address you as a hostile individual. You are not going to argue this, are you?
I k stati, ti sam ‘koxol’ esli ti dumaesh shto tebiya ne zastreleyat pervovo tvoi lubeemiye comunisti!
You make the case here for private gun ownership. When the revolution comes, it will be met with a 12 gauge.
Where? Just went over everything I posted and I don’t see it. I posted with a quote containing that statement from another Doper, but nowhere did I myself state that.
Hi Commie Bastards! (Where’d oldscratch go, anyway?) Boy, am I glad you started this thread, as I recently encountered a very fascinating question that I thought I’d have to open a whole new thread for if I wanted it answered. But now you can take care of it for me…
I’m reading Romilly Jenkins’s Byzantium: the Imperial Centuries (cool book), and came across this in the first chapter:
Cool. Plausible? You point out that the USSR was not fundamentally communist; is that indeed because it was fundamentally Byzantine? If so, are these tendencies of Byzantium apt to be useful predictors of its future?
Strongly centralized religious austerity (e.g., iconoclasm, atheism) tends to be followed by a period of intense religious expression (esp. artistically) and an increase in the autonomy and power of religious institutions.
In a period of turmoil, imperial influence shrinks until a new leader (usually from the military) assumes control and re-grows the empire.
Well, this is becoming more a question about Russia than about communism/socialism, so I’ll stop there. One last question: like many people, I have the same reservations about socialism/communism that I have about libertarianism (although for libertarianism, I have more and worse! ;))—namely, that its proponents assert it would be a very workable system but also claim it’s never really been implemented. I could never support a revolution or other top-down reorganization of society in favor of something so untested. But I would love to get to state of society that has more liberty, solidarity, worker empowerment, mutual support, all those good things—in a more bottom-up sort of way. So how should a confirmed liberal/progressive/social democrat (pick a label) who is very unlikely ever to join the ISO go about furthering some of the goals of socialism? I guess what I’m asking is, what’s the best way to become a fellow traveler?
Some very good questions here, smilingjaws. I have to admit I didn’t read it very carefully the first time, as I was tangling with trollery, against my better judgement. Allow me to rectify that.
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Socialism won’t build paradise the first thirty seconds after the revolution. People will still need to work in order to eat, claim the right to housing, clothing, education for their children, and such. One thing socialism will do is guarantee you rights to those basic needs.
Under capitalism you really need to find a job that pays enough so you can live relatively decently - something that doesn’t happen for the majority of people around the world. Socialism says “if you’re working, you’ll get food, a good house and stuff for it, good clothing, and good schools.” That would be enough for me to go out and get a job.
As for slackers, that would be up to his co-workers - if people in the workplace don’t feel someone is pulling his weight, they can get together to either convince him/her to shape up, or dismiss him. More on this concept later.
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Socialism isn’t about giving stuff up so other people have more - none of this “live simply so others may simply live” kind of thing. It’s about making enough to go around so everybody has a chance at getting what they need or want, and nobody has to live any worse to do it. Nothing wrong with wanting more.
Here’s where the concept of democratic centralism comes in. The idea here is “differences in debate, unity in action” and the foundation is majority rule. Consensus is a good way to get nothing done, because if you get one person disagreeing with what’s been agreed the whole plan could be derailed. You also get the potential for too much compromise, where the original idea gets whittled away until there’s nothing to act around.
Democratic centralism, on the other hand, allows for differences of opinion to be aired and discussed, but once something’s been decided upon, then everyone puts their efforts behind doing it. It may be a bad idea from the start; if so then the outcome and the process are discussed and something new is decided on. On the other hand it may be the greatest thing since sliced bread and everyone benefits from it.
So what about dissenters? If they want to retain the right of participation in activity and discussion, they’ll need to put their weight in behind whatever’s going on, whether they agree to it or not. They’re still free to voice their disagreements; they’re even free to leave the group and find somewhere else to work/participate if they so choose. But if they stay, they need to lend a hand like everyone else.
Here’s where your slacker co-worker comes in. After he’s presented his case, it’s agreed y majority vote that this person requires some sort of discipline; it could range from a temporary reduction in “wages” to dismissal. This person is entitled to leave anyway if he isn’t dismissed; if he stays on, he’d really better make an effort to clean up his act. If it’s decided after all that dismissal is in order, well- looks like he needs to find someplace else to work. Hopefully he’ll have learned something from the experience and won’t spend all his time monitoring a thread he started in the Great Debates Section of the Straight Dope.
Oooh, chewy questions. Let’s see what I can do with 'em.
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No, I don’t think Byzantinism had anything to do with it. It had to do with the fact that a party representing a class lost its basis and became a new class over society. The Communist Party was faced with a two choices - either consolidate its rule over what was left and try to hang on by itself, or do what it can to agitate for revolution elsewhere. Stalin argued the former; Trotsky to some extent the latter. As I said before, Trotsky didn’t fight hard enough.
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This is, in and of itself, a good thing.
Activism, activism, and more activism. Look up the Campaign to End the Death Penalty here. Get involved in gay rights activism. Hell, even if you don’t want to join, look up your local ISO branch (I’m assuming you’re here in the States) and find out what they’re up to. People will argue politics with you and argue that you should come to meetings - maybe they’ll be doing a subject you’re interested in. But they’ll be involved in any number of activities and be only too glad to have you along when something’s going on.
May I please ask you where/how you rank human nature into your equation given that (as previous posters have mentioned) humans still operate on a very tibal and selfish level. In othere words, what’s in this for me (and my family) in more or less immediate gain terms?
The biggest fatal flaw I have encountered in communist phylosophy is that everyone in that society is deemed to equal to everyone else. That seems to ran counter to the fact that people are not created equal. Would you please respond to that?
Also I find it deeply disturbing that the first step in creating this utopian society you speak of, we must fist essentially destroy the upper classes and distribute the assets amongst the lower classes. It has been shown that a wealthy upper class provides jobs and stimulates the economy using it’s resources, thus increasing general wealth for all classes. If we destroy this structure, how will we generate further wealth once those theoretic reserves you mentioned dry up. This kind of begs the original question with regards to people not being created equally because even you must agree that a garbage collector is a similar to Bill Gates as,… well… the cat to the lion. In other words, what would motivate a gifted and ambitious individual to strive for a goal when he knows his rewards will not increase in line with his efforts?
Finally, in retort to your statement about the Bolsheviks failing because the working class was descimated during the civil war… I disagree. The entire premise for which the revolution and civil war was fought failed because two wrongs did not make a right. The wealthy (pro Tsar) class had entered a state of decline when they began to abuse the working class and treat them as serfs while they bootlicked the aristocrisy in Germany, Poland and France. The peasant revolt failed because they killed the landowners and well educated upper and middle class administrators. People who knew how to run the factories and the farms. People who had generations of knowledge about crops and business. Peasants who’s only job was to plow the field now needed to know something about maintaining the farmstead like a profitable business. The unwashed masses had no education or knowledge of that and that was their downfall. I would not jump so quickly to blame the western european aristocrisies for failing to help the USSR in those early days. The russian aristorcrats they were used to dealing with were all hanged and shot. The prolitariat leadership was not much more than a organized mob of semi-educated reactionaries. There was no common tongue between them nor did they have good to sell the west because they could not grow the damn crops or build the machinery.
Human nature is entirely subjective and reflects the society in which humans find themselves. For most of human history (what Marx and Engels called primitive communism) society was cooperatively based. Primarily because there was no surplus of goods that could be saved for times of hardship and everyone had to pull their weight. Once there was a surplus and a need to direct its use, competition came to the fore as people vied to get a bigger portion of the surplus and more resources to enhance it. Nowadays it’s possible to create a surplus large enough to render competition unnecessary but the drive for profits is the single biggest obstacle to this happening.
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Hell, the Declaration of Independence states “All men are created equal”. As a socialist I believe it’s possible to build a society genuinely founded on that principle, instead of just paying it lip service.
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What in God’s name made it the upper class’ property in the first place? That they found it and dug it up to use? It’s not as if they worked it out of the ground with their own two hands; they hired other people to do it for them. Everything the upper class has laid claim to was brought to them through the labor of others. We don’t need them to provide us jobs and resources; they need us to work and generate their profits. The sooner we’re rid of them and organize life in our own interests the better.
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They will increase in line with his efforts. With a society geared towards making life easier for all instead of mega-profits for the few, the rewards just keep on coming.
Bosses smart and good, workers and peasants stupid and bad. Elitism, pure and simple. Who works the lands year after year? Who runs the machinery, day in and day out? Whose lives are intimately tied up with actual physical work and would know better what works and what doesn’t?
And who sits up on the hill, or miles away in another town or city, has nothing to do with the work in the fields and the factories, and makes changes only to increase his own profits regardless of the effects it will have on the quality of the job or the workers’ lives?
I am not advocating mass slaughter of the bosses or managers or what have you. Yes, they possess training and skills that many don’t, and they should be pressed into service for the betterment of society as a whole when it re-establishes itself. But at the same time there will be members of the old rulers who will do anything in their power to drown us in our own blood if the workers take power, and it is they who should be fought against and killed.
I’m reading a very interesting book by Victor Serge called Year One of the Revolution - just came upon a few passages about the uprising in Moscow. It was nowhere near as well-organized as St. Petersburg and many lives were lost.
At one point, the Whites (the counter-revolutionary forces -O.) took the Kremlin and proceeded to massacre the revolutionary forces they had captured - no trial, no protocol for prisoners of war; just line 'em up and mow 'em down with couple of machine guns. Note this is 1917, when the Bolsheviks were just making the move for power. When the Whites were later captured the leaders were made to sign a pledge they wouldn’t take up arms and were set free. Of course they headed South and East to stir up civil war.
It is those people I would have no compunction about shooting on the spot. They showed our side no mercy, they should expect none. That’s the real dividing line here - I don’t advocate killing any- and everyone that opposes us, but if you take up arms or otherwise actively attempt to sabotage the revolution and the building of a new society, don’t expect a conciliatory pat on the shoulder and a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
quote:
Human nature is entirely subjective and reflects the society in which humans find themselves. For most of human
history (what Marx and Engels called primitive communism) society was cooperatively based. Primarily
because there was no surplus of goods that could be saved for times of hardship and everyone had to pull their
weight. Once there was a surplus and a need to direct its use, competition came to the fore as people vied to
get a bigger portion of the surplus and more resources to enhance it. Nowadays it’s possible to create a surplus
large enough to render competition unnecessary but the drive for profits is the single biggest obstacle to this
happening.
End Quote
I’m sorry but I had to laugh when I read this–People have been killing each other for the barest necessities ever since time began–not to mention murder over pride, arrogance, hurt feelings, boredom, thrill seeking, desire for control of others, etc. The way they got enough was often through conquest and murder. People cooperate primarily because it increases their own benefits. The minute it stops benefiting them (e.g. the first famine, reduction in personal wealth, etc. ), cooperation stops. Human nature is to be selfish–it’s only through socialization that we learn unselfishness and cooperation.
While I find this debate regarding the merits (or lack thereof) of socialism interesting, I must say that from a practical standpoint I find this thread to nothing more than an exercise in rhetoric.
The people of the United States of America are by and large successfully socialized in the belief that capitalism, despite its flaws, is preferable to socialism/communism. The chance that American citizens will voluntarily choose to revolt, dispossess the upperclass and become socialist is virtually nil for a very long while. I expect to live at least another 50 - 60 years and I would be surprised, nay shocked, if millions of American citizens with wildly divergent views and opinions could come to a consensus on such an important issue.
Does anyone seriously think that the United States will become socialist during any of our lifetimes?
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Sorry Kimstu, like I stated earlier I don’t have the most time in the world. That’s why I didn’t start the thread earlier.
Regarding your comment on Byzantine and so forth, it’s an interesting point but wrong. It’s the kind of stuff historians always like to say. First they stated that Russians liked czarism because it was in their National character, then they revolted because it was their national character, then they had a totalitarian state… why? Because it was their national character. The same is frequently said of any people living under a totalitarian state, Iranians? Why it’s in their character to live in a fundamentalist regime. Never mind the period of revolts in Iran that almost lead to socialism. Never mind the leftist leader who was overthrown by the US. The same has also been said of the Germans and the Holocaust. “There was something intrinsically German about the holocaust” couldn’t have happened anywhere else. Needless to say all this talk of national character is false. True, there are traits that go along with nationalities, but those traits are quite fluid and changeable.
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Good point Kimstu. I’ve felt much the same way at points. However, there is a big difference. Socialism has been tested. It hasn’t been successful for very long, but there are scores of examples of socialist uprisings throughout modern history. Marx, Engles, and the Bolsheviks used as their example the Paris Commune. You should read up on it, quite inspiring stuff. Today we have not only the Russian revolution, but also examples from Spain, Eastern Europe, Germany, Chile, Portugal, France, smaller examples from here in the United States. A really good book to read is one called “Revolutionary Rehearsals” also good is Leon Trotsky’s history of the Russian revolution or Homage to Catalonia. Examples of workers taking control into their own hands.
Now I don’t have time to go over all these examples, I suggest you do some reading on your own if you’re really interested. Let’s talk about the longest lasting and most successful example, Russia. People say that Soviet Russia could never produce an Edison or an Einstein. But, they forget what Russia did produce. Eisenstein, still considered one of the greatest film directors, a flourishing of the art and theater, Volishinov (one of the most advance linguists), other scientist whose works are still considered ground breaking. Of course much of this fell apart under Stalin, and the art was replaced with Soviet Realism, yech.
Russia was the first country to legalize homosexuality and gay marriages; we still don’t have that. They gave women the right to vote before the liberal democratic US did, they legalized abortion, gave workers control of the factories, and the list goes on and on. And if tiny backward Russia could do that, imagine what we could do in the US if we had a revolution.
So in answer, no Socialism has never been successful, but there are plenty of inspiring examples to look to.
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So are you saying that if I was put in a cryogenic freeze, lost all brain function, and was woken up 50 years later I would no longer be a socialist? Of course not. As people age they interact with the world. You don’t age in a vacuum.
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I don’t know what you’ve been reading, but it’s never been shown that that is the case. Wealth is generated by production. Who caries out production? Why, the workers.
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Exactly. Gates was born into wealth. Most garbage collectors are not.
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How terribly elitist of you. Of course the Russians had nothing in common with the aristocrats of Western Europe. And I don’t blame them for not helping the Revolution. What we’ve been talking about is the support of the Russians in the ordinary working class, and the failure of that support to
