Ok, so I was born in the late 70s. My early formative years were spent watching tv which reflected the end of the cold war: i.e. communism is bad, Russia is the enemy.
While I don’t think I ever said or consciously thought that communism was a bad thing, and I certainly didn’t view Russians as my enemy (since I was too young at that point to process that kind of thought), I still have these lingering not-quite-conscious ideas that communism is bad, that it must be reformed and so on.
Sure, it didn’t work. It created loads of problems within the society and with its rival countries (nuclear arms race, cuban missile crisis etc). But it’s not apparenty an inherently bad system (and I admit, I’m not very knowledgeable about how it works). In past decades (60s/70s, I think), it was almost fashionable (I get the impression, since I wasn’t there) for the liberal left to talk about communism and subscribe to its tenets - it was supposed to be a way to reform a corrupt society I think.
I currently work in a liberal left bookstore and in the office downstairs there are several communis posters - there’s one for the Communist Manifesto and another I can’t recall offhand. Every time I look at them, I get a little jolt, since nowhere else but movies have I really seen such things. I have to remind myself that the theory of communism is not bad, that it just didn’t work when put into practice. But nonetheless, it just seems funny to me every time I see it.
I don’t have a well formulated question, but I guess just am just looking for how people feel about all that and anything you might want to add about the evolution of the perception of communism or whatever.
I don’t think much of communism, because I believe people are mainly motivated by selfish agendas (and I say that with the recognition that selfishness is not necessarily a bad thing and indeed, is sometimes a necessary thing) and if you remove property rights and the concept of personal gain, you remove a lot of motivation.
However, I get sick-and-tired of the “Gone with the Wind” view of pre-Communist Russia. Czarism–absolute monarchy–was horrible to live under. It was feudalism and no matter how much people like to romanticize the Middle Ages, feudalism was in practice a near-negation of human rights.
I think the only relation with Russian culture is that Russia went from a feudal society to a communist one without any steps in between. To quote the Who: “Say hello to the new boss/Same as the old boss.” The Czar was simply replaced by the Party.
What I’m mostly interested in with this post is less actual facts about communism and why it didn’t work and all that. What I’m trying to get at are the responses that people (particularly people in their mid twenties like me) have towards it nowadays, being brought up in the death throes of the cold war.
If you saw a communist poster on the wall, what would you think? Would it just be another poster? Would it seem a little funny? I have no problem with it being up there, it just strikes me as odd given the political climate I grew up in.
More of how it actually affects us, the americans and our reactions to into lingering in our consciousness (I know there still is currently communism in Chinese, but somehow it just seems a lot less in your face than Russia did, maybe because the Chinese are a lot mroe close-mouthed about themselves).
My 0.02. Communism is a joke. It is flawed at the root. If you had a group of people working toward a common goal, a band for instance, each contributes to the whole and each shares in the rewards this could work. One getting more than the rest could be bad. For instance a trio. Could the whole exist without the drummer, or the bass, or the lead guitar. No of course not so the gains should be shared among the members. But lets go to a mine. Should the blaster be paid the same as the truck driver? What is the supply of drivers as compared to the supply of experienced explosives guys? Or magazine. Should a typesetter be paid the same as a Pulizer winning columnest? Under communism we are all the same. If I misunderstand please correct me. We all do our best and then we all get what some governmental entity decides we deserve. F&^ that. If I study harder and work longer I deserve more. Why should I be paid the same a slack jawed slug who cannot spell his name.
First of all there is socialism and there is communism. Socialism has existed, but communism has never existed anywhere.
The socialist state is dominated by the working class just as the bourgeois state is the dominated by the capitaltist class. Each class will organize society in its own interests. Feudal lords did the same with the feudal state as did the ancient slaveowner class in the states of antiquity.
In a socialist society, not everyone is paid the same. Doctors make more than ditchdiggers. The workers through their state and other organizations will decide who gets paid what. People with thirty years experience get paid more than an apprentice right out of high school. Why? Because it makes sense, that’s why. The doctor and the experienced person are making a larger contribution to society. Certain basic services are the same for everyone, however. Access to education and medical care, for example. The exception is when a society has become corrupt, like in the former Soviet Union.
Communism is a theoretical construct in which the state ceases to exist. The state, after all, is a coersive organization and serves the interest of one or another class like the large corporations use the US government to screw the workers. After a period of socialism, the society will become classless and the state will wither away. People will feel free and contribute what they can and use what they need. Like in a healthy family.
People debate whether human nature will allow this. When they survey history and current society, it seems laughable. Nevertheless, the prospect of a society devoid of the insecurities and miseries of societies of today will continue to have a powerful attraction for all who have seriously considered the question.
ok so I don’t know if it’s bad or not. For the purposes of this post, I don’t care. I just want to know everyones REACTIONS to it in the present day in age given the climate we grew up in and how you’d feel seeing communist stuff around.
It doesn’t bother me one bit to see communist stuff around. Hell, there should be more of it.
As for me, communism gives me the willies, but I like Socialism(especially how Galen described it) and I don’t mean Cuba either. I’m thinking more like Denmark or Swden(but then again, they’re reform captialisms. Go figure. Ehehe).
However, I’m not threatened by communists at all, unless they’re Stalinsts or Leninists. The way I see it is that nothing lasts forever and as such, capitalism will die eventually. Unless you want a barbarist world, the only system available to replace it would be, yup, you guessed it, socialism. The only way that could NOT happen is if the world were destroyed utterly.
If nothing lasts forever, what would replace socialism? I don’t buy that socialism will replace capitalism. I think that there is a balance between centralizition (socialism) and privitization (capitalism).
Still, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on an old hammer and sickle flag or C.C.C.P jersey.