And become a viable form of government for many nations?
With Castro’s impending retirement I’d thought I’d broach the subject here.
I realize that what passed for Communism in the USSR, China, and yes even Cuba wasn’t really the real thing, as outlined by Marx. I think Trotsky had it right when he called the USSR a “bureaucratically degenerated workers’ state” which was destined to morph into either capitalism once the ruling bureaucrats finally gave in to their greed (as indeed happened in both Russia and China).
So outside of a few diehard adherents such as Castro, will Communism ever make a comeback?
Communism as a movement, not as a system, may have some future. At any rate, in Russia today the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the principal opposition to the Putin government. (Which means the CIA should be funding and supporting it, yes? )
Otherwise – non-Marxist democratic socialism may have a future, but European leftists have by and large abandoned what has been called “the theology of the final goal,” the conception of socialism as something that is to come after capitalism.
Sure, as the Red Menace loses it’s drama, the demagogues lose their voice.
And the main principles, sharing the wealth, power to the people, workers are not slaves, the state should protect the weak, etc. still have resonance.
But they are directed to individual programs, like eradicate disease across vast continents.
The kinds of things capitalism doesn’t deal with.
Although in the US the class struggle has been running in favor of the rich, that’s not the trend in the world as a whole.
I doubt it. Communism is one of those political ideas that sounds good in theory. But it’s had the disadvantage of being shown to be unworkable (at best) in practice. People in the future who might have been attracted to communism will gravitate to some other theoretical ideal.
First off, actual Marxism is a fantasy world. Marx correctly saw that the utopianists of his day were heading down the garden path. He then proceeded to make a long, rambling, idiotic justification of why HIS system wouldn’t. Lenin was a very bad man, but I will give him credit: he actually saw right through Marx’s ridiculousness and actually made a workable program.
That said, Communism isn’t dead. It’s still very much alive, and hard-left parties do exist. A lot of them have converted into Greens. Well, pseudo-Greens, anyway. These parts of Green parties in Europe are usually not much concerned with the environment but very, very anxious to use it as an excuse to enact anything they want. They are not particularly successful in it. You do see some of their ilk among International ANSWER.
Sure, you’ll find a few mossbacked Marxists in academia, but Marxism is no longer a mass movement, for the same reason that fascism is no longer a mass movement. It’s been discredited, and it’s time is past.
Sure, there are a few ostensibly Marxist revolutionary groups still out there, but they’ve gradually morphed into garden variety postideological militias. Nobody joins those groups because they believe in the glorious Marxist future, they join them for the same reason people join the Crips or the Bloods…they’re a group with guns, and being a part of that group means you’re pointing a gun at someone else instead of someone else pointing a gun at you. And the various self-labeled Marxist governments have morphed into garden variety authoritarian oligarchies as the revolutionaries have died off and the second and third generation of comfortable aparatchiks have taken power. They mostly don’t even pretend to be Marxists any more.
Of course there will always be people who enjoy waving guns around and setting off bombs, but those types of people aren’t going to call themselves Marxist nowadays, everyone knows that today’s hip new ideology is Islamism.
When capitalism burns out and gets much hatred. We are already exploitive. If we do not rein in the corporations ,communism and other ideologies will look good.
I believe that Marx may have had the right idea - but a couple hundred years too early.
First of all, what exactly was his idea? Well, as best I can recall, he believed that there were a group of people called “capitalists” who were essentially useless to the economy. Since the capitalists own the “means of production,” (factories, etc.), they just sit back and get fat off of other peoples’ work. Marx believed that the people should seize the means of production from the capitalists and use them for the good of all. Thus, “workers of the world, unite!”
Ok, so what was wrong with Marx’ thinking? Well, most importantly, it’s become pretty clear that capital does serve an important function. Many capitalists are involved in investing capital to maintain and improve the means of production. If you seize the means of production, it interferes with this process and harms the economy as a whole.
At the same time, limited seizure can work if you don’t go overboard. Instead of flat out grabbing the factory or store, you might impose taxes and regulations on it for the benefit of the workers. As long as you don’t go too far and put the business out of business. Which is exactly what civilized governments try to do – redistribute wealth without wrecking the economy in the process.
So that’s my first point: Limited Marxism does in fact work, and is practiced widely.
Second, it seems to me that it’s quite possible that eventually, additional capital will no longer be necessary. For example, once somebody builds a Von Neumann Replicator, it may very well make sense for the government to seize total control of it for the benefit of everyone. Voila - communist revolution, 21st century style.
You should definitely hold your breath for that glorious day. Wise person you are, you can see that even though the world wide trend is definitely going the exact opposite way that this is but illusion…any day now the good workers and peasants will rise up and throw down the hated rich and evil capitalists and take us all to the promised land! On that glorious day ‘many Shuvs and Zuuls’ will know ‘what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!’
Should be grand, to be sure. You holding your breath?
The difference is that capitalism actually works. I’ll readily concede that too many people confuse that fact that capitalism works with the belief that capitalism is good. Capitalism is like chemistry or algebra - it’s just a tool and the results that are produced by it can be good or bad depending on the user.
His idea was that history was progressing towards a stateless society where everyone would work without being compelled to do so. It was necessary, however, for capitalism to exist and then for the workers to set up a dictatorship of the proletariat when they overthrew capitalism.
It was bullshit when he wrote it and it’s bullshit today. The whole idea of historical progression (and, if it exists, the conceit that we can figure it out) is ridiculous. His theories on labor are even more ridiculous. Marx was a fraud. Unfortunately, he wrote well enough to inspire millions of people to commit murderous acts in his name.
Except there are innumerable ideologies that are hostile to capitalism, but still aren’t Marxism. Islamism, for instance. Or Christianism. Or Nazism. Or Feudalism. The list goes on and on.
So the oppressed victims of the 21st century may turn out to have an implacable ideological hatred of capitalism, but the overwhelming likelihood is that none of those postulated future capitalism-haters will self-identify as Marxists. Marx might have wrote a popular critique of capitalism back in his day, but a Marxist restoration is as likely as Iran converting back to Zoroastrianism.
No, that’s more socialism. I’d say the defining theme of communism was “From each according to his abilities. To each according to his needs.” It is admittedly an appealing idea. But as communist societies have found, it breaks down in practice. When individual rewards are divorced from individual efforts, most individuals try to maximize their rewards and minimize their efforts and the sums don’t add up. You can have periods (usually following the revolution or during a threat from an external enemy) were enough people have a communal spirit to put the good of society ahead of their own self-interest but it can’t be maintained*. People start putting themselves ahead of society as a whole. And then you can do one of two things; revert to capitalism and offer people additional rewards for additional effort, or you can use coercion to make people put enough effort in to keep the economy running.
*On a large scale anyway. But as I’ve pointed out in the past, the overwhelming majority of families function on a communist system. Nobody questions whether family members are earning enough for the family to justify their expenses. It’s normal that some family members will produce the bulk of the family income and some family members will live off the work of others.
I dated this girl for awhile who was a communist. She seemed to enjoy it when I applied my tool to her. Of course, those communists are notorious liars, so she could’ve been faking it.
Well, I make no demand for a cite about whether she was faking it or not. My point stands…for you it was better to apply the tool than to have it applied to you. At least, I presume that was the case.
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