"Communism sounds great on paper - it just doesn't work in reality!" = most tedious line of conversation EVER?

piggyback an atheists-are-inherently-evil charge on the back of that for bonus fun

Homer: Marge, I agree with you -- in theory. In theory, communism works.... in THEORY!

Perhaps wise Doctor Casino will furnish us with examples of Communism having worked in practice.

communism was perfected in albania - ALL HAIL ENVER HOXHA!!

You want your Second Amendment, here's where you keep right on paying for it.

it doesn't even work in theory

I can't remember the last time I heard someone under the age of 65 say the word "communism"

The other variation on this, which I myself started parroting very soon after quitting socialist worker meetings, is "The problem with communism is that it doesn't take account of human nature".

maybe it would be better phrased as 'Communism is more difficult than it's alternative' which may be defeatist but at least not dismissive

i think you guys are all missing the point

im pretty sure that casino isnt offering an opinion about communism but rather pointing out that this phrase is stupid, boring and one-dimensional

Yeah, I think part of the reason why this rankles is a sort of jingoistic refusal to deal with the possibility that capitalism also sounds great on paper, doesn't work in reality blah blah.

Dingbod: Not saying communism has ever worked out in reality, just that it's a dull-witted observation as far as political tavern conversation goes. (xpost thanks max)

Stupid, boring, one-dimensional phrases (i.e. clichés) are sometimes accurate.

personal favourite is "religion is the cause of all wars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I can't remember the last time I heard someone under the age of 65 say the word "communism"

-- m coleman, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 10:54 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

that's pretty OTM. i must not be going to the same kind of parties Casino goes to.

money is the root of all evil...because paedos don't operate for free

i mean you can pretend that this is accurate but to me this phrase is so vague as to be sort of meaningless! i mean, when you say "communism sounds great on paper," what do you mean? marxism? trotskyism? maoism? and which papers? the manifesto? kapital? what is to be done? and what does it mean to say that it "doesn't work in reality"?

moreover, what political/economic systems/theories don't sound great on paper, especially when being sold by intelligent, erudite people like adam smith or karl marx? and which ones do work in reality, if what you mean is that people are happy, healthy, unoppressed?

i have a friend who's big on "when you think about it, ALL religions are cults"

"You credulous fools."

http://www.observer.com/files/imagecache/article-teaser/files/OTR-ChristopherHitchens1V.jpg

when you think about it, ALL religions are cults

heh, guilty...

Even Marx had servants, when he could afford them.

i think knee-jerk accusations of fascism are more common, and just as brainless

when you say "communism sounds great on paper," what do you mean? marxism? trotskyism? maoism? and which papers? the manifesto? kapital?

any and all.

Ask someone a thousand years ago they'd probably say "Democracy sounds great on paper - it just doesn't work in reality!"

Also, it depends how you define 'work' - the Soviet Union was doing pretty well on its own terms till external forces (and its rather overenthusiastic expansionism) brought in down. And Cuba does a passable imitation of a fully functioning society less than a hundred miles from the undisputed idealogical centre of global capitalism!

nothing works in reality

reality bites

he Soviet Union was doing pretty well on its own terms till external forces (and its rather overenthusiastic expansionism) brought in down.

There was this man called Joseph Stalin, see, and he LOVED gulags.

And Cuba does a passable imitation of a fully functioning society less than a hundred miles from the undisputed idealogical centre of global capitalism!

I know a few political prisoners I can tell you about.

when you say "communism sounds great on paper," what do you mean? marxism? trotskyism? maoism? and which papers? the manifesto? kapital?

any and all.

-- darraghmac, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 11:10 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

lol dude i dont know about you but theres plenty of "communist papers" that dont sound so great to me

'there are only two kinds of music...' is more trivial but no less irritating

Even Marx had servants, when he could afford them.

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 11:09 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^ this is the same kind of "ZINGED YA, COMMUNISM" that the original phrase partakes in

I'm not saying the systems in those countries don't/didn't come with massive human cost (as does capitalism)! I'm just demonstrating how the statement being examined is pretty meaningless. Whether or not communism can be achieved without repression is a different matter.

xpost to Alfred

xxp: "country and western"?

The statement may be annoying in its ubiquity, but it's defensible. Like much of the rationalist utopian thinking that followed in the wake of the age of enlightenment, OG Marxist communism grounds itself in a vast number of unjustified assumptions about what people want, what they will "naturally" do under this or that circumstance, and how human societies actually function. It's reductive, simplistic, elitist and even arrogant. Thus, it may seem practical/practicable "on paper", when one isn't actively challenging its assumptions, or dealing with individual and social complexities.

We can't really critique capitalism on the same grounds. Capitalism is sustainable (thus problematic) simply because it does work. I don't mean "work" in the sense that max does ("people are happy, healthy, unoppressed"), I mean that it functions as described in the sales brochure. Goods and services are traded for money, supply and demand determine value, etc. The day-to-day functionality of capitalism does not depend on dubious assumptions about humanity's higher nature, and requires no externally-imposed support system. If you'll forgive the word, it's a "natural" product of the way that human beings have organized their conception of the individual and society for thousands of years. Private property, trade, and money have existed as concepts, after all, for a long, long time.

That said, I don't know why the dumbed-down "communism is GREAT on paper" meme is so persistent.

"Republican, Democrat, they're both exactly the same thing, man!"

lol dude i dont know about you but theres plenty of "communist papers" that dont sound so great to me

-- max, 30 July 2008 15:13 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i meant that don't work in reality, and that's probably what's meant most of the time by this statement.

fwiw Russian style of government basically had absolutely nothing to do with communism as envisioned by Marx et al, especially after Lenin expelled Trostsky, etc. Stalin never even read Marx.

I mean that it functions as described in the sales brochure.

I don't think this is strictly true at all, but I definitely lol'd at your chosen metaphor

"Republican, Democrat, they're both exactly the same thing, man!"

fearless Pelosi/Reid leadership has put the lie to that. Welcome home, troops!

capitalism doesn't function as described in the sales brochure but it functions

anyway the most interesting/accurate aspect of Marxism is its analysis of capitalism - predictions of a post-capitalist society and how quickly and easily one could be achieved, eh not so much

capitalism doesn't function as described in the sales brochure but it functions

you could say the same thing about communism if it had ever actually been put into practice (ie, autonomous worker-owned collectives running everything)

Communism vs. Democracy is a better head-to-head than Communism vs. Capitalism. Democracy is another absurdly idealistic, "unnatural", rationalist utopian scheme that really shouldn't work. But unlike communism, it does seem to work (that is function as advertised, in a sustainable manner, with minimal social disruption). Perhaps this is because it promises/demands less, has often worked to disempower the state in favor of the individual, and permits the accumulation of personal wealth & power.

worker-owned collectives running everything = syndicalism?

Communism "doesn't work" in the sense that it has proven unable to keep up with capitalism as an economic engine. Capitalism wins at exploiting resources, growing the economic base, developing technology, etc. Capitalism has its own flaws that may or may not yet undo it as well, at which point Communism might actually "work." Communism did not "work" in a specific context, i.e. a global power struggle with a capitalist power.

i think what shakey is saying is that communism sounds great on paper, it just doesn't work in reality.

no, shakey = "communism didn't fail, it was just executed wrong!"

The day-to-day functionality of capitalism does not depend on dubious assumptions about humanity's higher nature, and requires no externally-imposed support system.

I am not sure this is true at all, especially the part after the comma. Cf. Gilded Age robber-baron capitalism to a system with an FTC, FDIC, SEC, etc. As for the part before the comma, it's only true to the extent that all actors are rational, self-interested and have equal access to information. (Which plays into the second part.)

Democracy.....does seem to work (that is function as advertised, in a sustainable manner, with minimal social disruption).

not as advertised, though?

How about single party Communist countries in which officials are elected by the people, such as Vietnam? Communist or no?

China.

I agree w/a lot of what's been said here btw. I think the problem is no one's figured out the right way to transition to communism from older economies (Lenin tried to use socialism as an intermediate step)

My point above kinda boils down to the idea that Democratic societies (usually hybrid capitalist/socialist) make the carrot seem easily accessible and tend to hide the stick.

I am not sure this is true at all, especially the part after the comma. Cf. Gilded Age robber-baron capitalism to a system with an FTC, FDIC, SEC, etc.

As for the part before the comma, it's only true to the extent that all actors are rational, self-interested and have equal access to information.

no, shakey = "communism didn't fail, it was just executed wrong!"

it wasn't even executed at all. Mao, Stalin, Castro et al - in every single instance these guys were just bullies who used the most convenient ideological tool at their disposal (ie, the appealling idealism of "communism") to consolidate power and run shit.

True Marxist communism requires a hell of lot more top-down control.

I think Marx would disagree. what would be required is control from the BOTTOM - ie, the "workers"

charismatic leaders: the self-clowning ovens of communism

and this is the whole problem with "communism" as executed in the 20th century - it basically boiled down to dictators and/or existing elites claiming to represent the "workers"/"the people" when they did no such thing. Every single "communist" state was/is essentially a state-run capitalist economy - the working class never got shit.

Gore Vidal: "Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor."

the problem with Communism starts at the root: the basic assumption of how prices are derived for goods is just flat wrong

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/paretian/social.htm

That said, I don't know why the dumbed-down "communism is GREAT on paper" meme is so persistent.

man, you guys love to over think things. it's probably because when people use this it's usually got sweet FA to do with their actual opinions on communism and they have no intention for it to be some statement of ultimate truth. it's just a shorthand way of saying that they are not fully convinced of some random argument that the other person is making. this is despite the fact that the other person is trying really hard to make it sound good. aka. "what-ever!"

personally I think its a huge tragedy of the 20th century that Marx's ideas were effectively totally discredited due to the actions of a bunch of bloodthirsty autocrats who never gave two shits about any of his work whatsoever. Kinda like with Jesus and Christianity.

^^ this is the same kind of "ZINGED YA, COMMUNISM" that the original phrase partakes in (sic)

-- max, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 16:16 (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Incorrect. It is a statement of fact. Much of the reason for Marx's poverty was that he insisted on not living in accordance with the theory which he helped to invent, and therefore he lived beyond his means.

Leninism =/ communism, or at least there are other variants that don't involve a dictatorship of the proletariat.

i liked this thread more when it was less about communism and more about this stupid phrase

dingbod im not really sure what point youre trying to make, but im fairly confident that its stupid

the OP is a lame-ass statement of course, but it's basically backwards. communism is a mess theoretically but it worked just fine in practice! it took heavy state force to keep a lid on everything, the population not the least, but half the world was communist for half a century, that's not a 'failed' record for a form of government. it could have gone on forever, but for the outside pressure. monarchy and feudal economics were garbage too but that had a pretty good run, didn't it.

I'm actually rather comforted that ILX still has a tough old Red in its midst. "You should have lived through the 70's" etc.

why aren't there more communes?

Leninism = communism, but like Marxism it has never been purely achieved

"living within one's means" is hardly a communist idea. what is "one's means" anyway? fiscal discipline? bourgeouis! (i always spell that wrong...)

what are communist ethics anyway

i dont know, but i bet they sound great on paper

oh i get it

something can't SOUND anything on PAPER, amirong?

another subtext to this is "liberalism sounds great, but fuck you"

The problem with the statement isn't its veracity. It's that every dumbass who never read any actual Communist tracts repeats it. It's conventional wisdom for stupid people. It would be fine if someone had read the Manifesto (or anything!) and had some developed opinions about the economy, and then had some new point to make about why Communism can't work (btw: The human nature part isn't just tired - it's wrong).

The other real problem is that it's frequently spewed by self-described libertarians who think that they have SUCH EDGY OPINIONS about the economy and politics because they've read some Ayn Rand.

I think Marx would disagree. what would be required is control from the BOTTOM - ie, the "workers"

In that, I obviously disagree with Mordy, above, though I'm not a libertarian and I've never read Ayn Rand.

Vietnam functions well because it's as much a capitalist democracy as a socialist state.

^^I can get with that analysis

which is why there aren't more communes.

Here's the problem with the "human nature" thing. It presumes that "human nature" (which in this case assumes that humans will attempt to attain as much power and wealth as possible) can't work with Communism. But guess what? Human nature doesn't work with Capitalism either. Without government interference, Capitalism would devolve into the same issues -- people trying to attain as much wealth as possible without any regard for the lower class. Which is also why Marx's Communism doesn't depend upon "human nature." It depends upon a moment of such technological superiority that Capitalism fails due to the cheapness of its goods. And that's why government control ISN'T the intermediary for a shift to Communism. Capitalism itself is the intermediary.

and pretty much all the societies that went communist were essentially agrarian/pre-industrial.

you know what else sounded great on paper--spider-man 3

there's a line in an old fry and laurie sketch "socialism is all very well in practice, but does it work in theory?"

Mordy, that doesn't parse. The "human nature" criticism of communism says if people's needs are fulfilled, and their work doesn't produce extra reward, then they won't work as hard. How does capitalism run into the same issue?

"Communism works if material goods are so cheap and abundant you can't charge for them" looks pretty good on paper...

Here's the problem with the "human nature" thing. It presumes that "human nature" (which in this case assumes that humans will attempt to attain as much power and wealth as possible) can't work with Communism. But guess what? Human nature doesn't work with Capitalism either. Without government interference, Capitalism would devolve into the same issues -- people trying to attain as much wealth as possible without any regard for the lower class. Which is also why Marx's Communism doesn't depend upon "human nature." It depends upon a moment of such technological superiority that Capitalism fails due to the cheapness of its goods. And that's why government control ISN'T the intermediary for a shift to Communism. Capitalism itself is the intermediary.

The govermental (top-down) interference necessary to effectively regulate a capitalist economy is minimal. It's not a matter of imposing an untested, artificial system of production and distribution, but merely of nudging a naturally-occurring system this way or that, depending on the needs of the moment. (Not an exact science of course, as the current U.S. economy demonstrates).

Finally, the failure of capitalism due to the cheapness of goods arugment simply doesn't work. Technology may make certain goods cheaper, but it also makes them MUCH more complex, and weaves the means of production into increasingly vast and interconnected webs.

I don't understand why Communism doesn't allow people to pursue their personal goals any less than Capitalism does.

And as far as technology, I agree that Marx didn't predict the complexity of modern technology. But not all goods become complex. We have something like food where the government personally intercedes in its production to stabilize the market. Acc. to Marx (presumably), food has reached a state of cheapness in the United States where Capitalism has begun to fail. It's kept intact through government interference.

As long as those goals are eating beets and waiting in line, it does. xp

Ok, so we're back to lolz the USSR = Communism.

I think what we've proved today is that if you want to get a bunch of people who like to talk about stuff talkin', the practicalities of communism is still Old Reliable

I'm never convinced by arguments based on 'human nature' - a concept so nebulous it can never specifically defined, much less proven

don't forget lolz USA = Capitalism

BE specifically defined etc

x-post

It could, I suppose, but was never constructed to do so. Marx and Lenin both seem to assume that individual goals will naturally be subordinated to group goals, provided that the right group goals are chosen. As a result, communist societies have tended to view individual goals that seem to run counted to expressed group goals as a threat.

At heart, the word "communism" itself may be hostile to individual goals and decision-making. The word presumes that most important social unit is the group, rather than the individual. Capitalism and democracy, on the other hand, both stress the importance of the individual.

Surviving today is so cheap it's ridiculous. What besides human nature keeps people working and spending?

"Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations."

"Hey hey, my my. Rock and roll will never die."

what percentage of self-described communists don't live deliberately as part of an intentional community and why? show your work.

I'm never convinced by arguments based on 'human nature' - a concept so nebulous it can never specifically defined, much less proven

and marx agrees with that

the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.

"...nd I'll have none of it!"

what percentage of self-described communists don't live deliberately as part of an intentional community and why? show your work.

-- Kerm, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 17:02 (4 minutes ago) Link

communists should work @ investment banks and the upper level management of multinational corporations to continue the socialization of capital. or something like that. right?

marx had a servant!!!!1!!!11

xp: no

he was also against abolishing child labor laws

Max: that quote basically boils down to, "man is not a man, man is the group." I.e., communist; i.e., anti-individualist.

One of the things people overlook in evaluating capitalism is the fact that it comes with a built-in feedback mechanism: money. An worker in a capitalist system knows exactly how well she's doing (regardless of what her boss or her spouse or her friends say) according to that one simple measure. The more she makes, the better off she is. Similarly, a company can measure its success by how much it grosses vs. how much it spends, and it can use this information to decide how much to pay its employees. If the company manufactures widgets, it knows exactly how many to make, based on how many its clients will buy. And the widget-punch manufacturer that supplies the company is similarly informed.

No one has to coordinate or regulate these interconnected systems in order to enusure that they function properly. Regulation may be necessary to prevent certain abuses, but the basic function of the system is guaranteed by the nature of the built-in immediate feeback mechanism that capital provides. No one designed this mechanism into captial. It isn't a philosopher's invention or a "good idea". It's just the way things work. You don't have to know why they work this way to notice that they, in fact, do.

In attempting to remove capital and the feedback it provides from the system of production and distribution, communism winds up with something much less flexible, intuitive and coherent. How many widgets should the manufacturer make? The number demanded by his clients? The number he feels like? The number insisted upon by a government agency in a city thousands of miles away? There is no reason for the manufacturer's clients limit their demands, or for the manufacturer to exceed his own expectations. And due to the complexities of modern manufacturing, there's no way for any individual or agency to fully grasp the entire system. As a result, production in a communist system is often something of a blind beast, spitting out widgets according to absurd whims.

Of course, the logic of production in a capitalist society is far from perfect. "What the market will allow" doesn't necessarily have much to do with what people actually need -- in fact, it explicitly excludes the poorest of the poor, simply because there isn't much money in them. But it at least has a flexible, responsive, "smart" feeback mechanism to guide production and reward success.

he was also against abolishing child labor laws

just to be Johnny Red here for a moment, "child" was still a young concept in Marx's day - the 19th century saw the whole concept of childhood coming to mean something other than "years before puberty"

In view of current events - the ongoing credit crisis prompting massive government bailouts of financial institutions - one might also say that "capitalism sounds great on paper - it just doesn't work in reality".

actually i forget where i read that marx (could've been engels) was against ending child labor. wikipedia says the communist manifesto wanted to abolish it. dude was a flip flopper.

as are pretty much all thinkers as they develop their ideas.

communism threads sound great on paper...

child labor sounds great on paper

great sounds on paper child labor

^ New Dub album.

Regulation may be necessary to prevent certain abuses, but the basic function of the system is guaranteed by the nature of the built-in immediate feeback mechanism that capital provides. No one designed this mechanism into captial. It isn't a philosopher's invention or a "good idea". It's just the way things work.

Heh. Oh, you're serious.

when I was like 12 I really thought anarchy sounded cool

nb I probably thought it sounded cool when I was a lot older than 12 too

I really dont want to check imdb and see how old I was when the movie Hackers came out

Anarchy sounds cool on paper.

When I was 14 I went to a meeting of "Anarchistic Unionists". Seriously. Actually they've probably got the key to everything.

I guess it's really just another word for anarcho-syndicalism, isn't it

Mutual Aid sounds quite appealing...that Russian guy Kropotkin. Not sure if it'd really work though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid_%28politics%29

Tracer: the problem with capitalism is that it does not manufacture its own ends. It manufactures certain results, but on a large, social scale, it's aimless, stupid, and serves nothing but capital itself. In other words, it can't be allowed to lead or guide society. We get into problems like the current credit crunch when we let capital define our goals. That's why regulation is absolutely necessary, and why people who insist that the free market will "naturally" serve the greater good are morons (or selfish liars, either way, not worth listening to).

This brings up the most obvious benefit of communism: the whole system is engineered (ideally, idealistically) to serve the greater good. Production and distribution don't depend on the hermetic logic of the market.

When I was 14 I went to a meeting of "Anarchistic Unionists". Seriously. Actually they've probably got the key to everything.

-- Tracer Hand, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 6:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

sounds like the iww

communism looks good on paper too
http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/71600357.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193875DCB1DD8387ABB40AD3EB810E63E33A40A659CEC4C8CB6

I'm never convinced by arguments based on 'human nature' - a concept so nebulous it can never specifically defined, much less proven

"I object!"

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/2005/0805/images/pinker1.jpg

Is Steven Pinker Right??

eurgggghhhh that hair *shhudders*

contenderizer, my problem with your breakdown is that you're imagining that capitalism as practiced is not also the result of regulation and social engineering. It is.

Capitalism and communism are easy to think about as opposites in the abstract, but in practice, there's rarely that kind of purity. Case in point: is China today capitalist or communist?

copulatist

No, I admit that capitalism as practiced IS the result of regulation and social engineering. But I think the basic engines of capitalism (goods and services in exchange for other goods and services, supply and demand) exist and make sense independent of such control mechanisms. Capitalism as practiced at the national level is an imperfect harnessing of those underlying engines, but at least it corresponds to something coherent and meaningful -- something that exists independent of our philosophy regarding it.

Communism -- the subordination of individual self-interest to the good of the social whole -- also exists, of course, but not in the "opposed-to-capital(ism)" way that communist philosphers imagine. Real-world, everyday communism doesn't forbid individual ownership, capital and free trade any more than everyday capitalism forbids social conscience and/or altrusim.

That last one re: Tracer.

this line is especially annoying bcz you'd think that if something had an obvious flaw that would make it not work in reality then SOMEONE WOULD WRITE IT DOWN

and like max noted the word "communism" means everything and nothing. the soviet councils of 1917, kerensky's provisional government, the mensheviks, lenin, stalin and trotsky all had completely different notions of what "communism/socialism/marxism" meant and how to carry it out. pointing out that they all didn't "work" seems beside the point.

marx himself writes in the german ideology

'Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.'

like jihad

Re: Batwing -- Marx said a lot of things. The Manifesto is a call to sudden, even violent revolution, not a dispassionate study of a slow, inevitable social process.

ilx sounds great on paper ...

ilx sounds FLY like paper

Does this bug the hell out of anybody else?

-- Doctor Casino, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 2:29 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yes.

not gettin into this thread so late in the game, looks like fun though.

DINESH

Me and some commie buddies showed up outside an event of his handing out unflattering quotations disguised as programs to people on their way inside. I managed to hand him one as his entourage escorted him inside. He stopped and gave it a once over and said "oh no, you didn't use a CAPITALIST print shop to print these, did you? *tsk tsk tsk*"

As they went inside another friend shouted out "When we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the ropes!"

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, July 29, 2008 8:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

sneaking communist propaganda onto dinesh d'souza leaflets sounds good on paper

haha

The only perspective I have on this is when I stayed in Estonia with a few people who are about a couple years older than me, so about 23ish, meaning they were about five when the baltic states left the soviet union. Their take was something like "The problem with communism is you're not supposed to want things"

then we watched hilariously disturbing/sexually explicit ads for things like chicken which were directed by their secondary school english teacher during soviet times.

I remember being shown oddly sexual ads for ice cream that came from 1970s/80s Russia three years ago or so. Anyone have a link to these things? Eerie stuff.

I once attended the Z M3dia conference put on by Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent of Z Magazin3. He wrote a book called Participatory Economics that basically seems like communism. While he talked about it in the house I think they inherited from her parents, sailboats looked lovely through their window. I recorded Ch0msky speaking. They were very proprietary about it and didn't want me to make it freely available. They live in Woods Hole, on the mainland very near my island. They had absolutely no interest in local politics, their own local economy. It was weird.

:/

I used to love Sargent's "Hotel Satire" columns. I wonder if she does them any more. I haven't read Z in a long time.

He wrote a book called Participatory Economics that basically seems like communism.

I have readed this. It is not so good, and Z is a very strange place.

Like Z are the strawmen our antagonists claim us to be.

z magazine has always been pretty terrible

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/2005/0805/images/pinker1.jpghttp://www.aolcdn.com/red_galleries/carrot-top-celeb-400a062807.jpg

so if carrot top's resources are third party, but he fashions them into props himself, does he control the means of production?

Every time I see a picture of Carrot Top I just stop everything for a second. I know there must be freakier looking people out there but the whole mad ginger hair & make-up & huge buff biceps covered in fucking freckles thing gets me every time. He has chosen to look like that!

Opening post otm.
(I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment.)

a bit late in on this but

Dingbod: Not saying communism has ever worked out in reality, just that it's a dull-witted observation as far as political tavern conversation goes. (xpost thanks max)

surely not history-ignorant then?!?!?!?!?!

No, the schmoes I referred to always turn out to be history-ignorant, regardless of the validity of this statement in particular. This is part of why the statement is irritating - it never leads anywhere (except on ILX, apparently, and even that's up for debate) b/c the people involved have nothing to back it up. Which is why I was looking for the origin story of this meme - it has all the earmarks of something that people pick up on because it sounds tidy, insightful, clever and self-flattering, not because they actually understand the history or theory, or care for that matter.

The Simpsons angle isn't bad - but it aired March '94, a year or two after I remember first hearing the phrase. The line is used mainly as a frame for a larger joke about using "in theory" to cover for having no rational objection to the theory...but it also sounds to me like the writers had already heard this meme and were reacting to it.

In attempting to remove capital and the feedback it provides from the system of production and distribution, communism winds up with something much less flexible, intuitive and coherent. How many widgets should the manufacturer make? The number demanded by his clients? The number he feels like? The number insisted upon by a government agency in a city thousands of miles away?

Communism sounds a lot like capitalism on paper...

z magazine has always been pretty terrible

The gathering was cool b/c of the radical ppl there, but I was really off-put by Lydia. She gave a workshop on graphic design and there were some brilliant kids in it. She basically told us that if you have a radical publication, you shouldn't make it look good, because "slickness" was anti-left or something. We tried to bring up Adbusters but she didn't seem to know what that was. They were both just really out of touch, like royalty in their own created universe, taling about smashing the state in this really cushy, sheltered place and seemingly not that open to the outside world or modern influences. Communism doesn't even sound good on paper, but it's that similar thing of imposing ideas from a sort of vacuum. There's also the issue of mediocratization, a sort of distrust of "slickness" (i.e. beauty).

urrgh - that was me

friend brought over La Chinoise tonight. lols.

scott, I was actually thinking about something similar today (mostly in terms related to my thesis). There seems to be these two contrary strands in modern Communism/anti-Capitalism, where they are espousing a populist world view, but taking a very bourgeois stance towards culture. Ie: Oh, if it's slick, that's just to appeal to the masses, which is the cynical purpose of Capitalism. (Adorno, I think, made a similar mistake when his Culture Industry critique - you can't ignore what the masses like and pretend to be populist at the same time.)

damn contenderizer owned the hell out of this thread

hey max, other commies - how's it feel living in ~*THA OWN ZONE*~

What's up with Carrot Top, mascara & 'roids: he's become some sort of mutant Dave Navarro.

isn't it more like, capitalism looks great on paper, but doesn't work in reality?

[i have not read this thread, wherein such 'observation' has probably already been made]

Coronation Street sounds great on paper, etc

Nothing "works" in reality.

capitalism looks great if you can follow the paper trail

i like this thread!

lol

people really missed the point of this fuckin thread huh

well, insofar as the original point was to get everyone to agree that challops are stupid, yes

by people i meant marcello

did he even post on here?

our "democracy" "works" really "well"

Nothing "works" in reality.

beat me to it, Hurting

Results 1 - 10 of about 275 for "communism works on paper". (0.71 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 873 for "communism sounds good on paper". (0.33 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 125 for "communism sounds good in theory". (0.16 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,300 for "communism works in theory".

i don't sound great on paper, and i don't work in reality

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/4/1/1238588167615/G20-protests-and-security-016.jpg

communism doesnt look good on paper or in large crowds

great aesthetic tho, red is such a terrific color

who's hotter: young republicans or commies

^^^^^^ republicans tbh

CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING

HOW ABOUT TRYING A TUBA

who's hotter: young republicans or commies

we need a hotness v tedious convo scale to really work this out

Is it me, and this is spoken from not a serious leftist by any means, but is there nothing more cringe-worthy than the "lol, communism" attitude of certain people today. I'm talking about shit like this
http://csammisrun.net/images/cparty.jpg and I've heard of people having communist themed parties and stuff like that. I can't imagine anything more frustrating for a committed leftist than this sort of reduction of a history of social theory and action to a petty, unaware, and outright not-funny punchline. This just strikes me as just extremely stupid and uncritical, especially since it's usually not attacks on communism but from left-leaning people (of the Daily Show mindset, though), like this takes "communism sounds great on paper. . ." to a different level, just communism, lol.

Not to mention displays an very complacent attitude toward capitalism as is, nullifying any marxist thought into the some of the least humour out there.

I dunno -- if you do care about the seriousness of socialism or communism as ideas, maybe you should see it as a good thing when people adopt a chuckling ancient-history stance toward some of the folks who once made it seem synonymous with mass murder, labor camps, and violent repression?

I mean, I don't want to alarm you or anything, but if people began to see Soviet or Maoist stuff as just amusing iconography and funny historical figures, that would actually be a pretty big improvement in people's favorability responses to these things

you are certainly going a long way to debunking the idea of communist sympathizers and marxists being humourless, though.

1) its not really communism as such—the "essence" of wealth redistribution & control of the means of production—thats getting lampooned & treated ironically—its "communism" specifically manifested as kitsch, i.e. propaganda & earnest soviet realism & dictator/thinker hero worship.

2) this is less about "our" collective feelings about communism specifically than it is about "our" collective feelings about "history" and "iconography"—if communism seems to be targeted more specifically its because its icons are so strong graphically/historically/etc

tbh i thought saroyan's post was going to be about how offensive it was to advertise a party with a funny picture of a mass-murdering tyrant with a party hat on.

I feel like a "communist party" would be full of bad pick-up lines about forming a "soviet union"

a specter is haunting this party--the specter of dat ass

Apparat dat chik

lets seize control of our own means of production back at my apartment

gangstas unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. oh.

I'm gonna prole-tear that ass up

this party will repeat itself, the first time as a tragedy, the second time... as a porno!!

from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, and baby, i need you

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval.

the seas of change are certainly heaving

I realize this is about history and its icons, but they are nonetheless signifiers of an ideology, although what Marx, Stalin, the USSR, etc, point to, with the people I've encountered, is less anything about wealth, property, state control, etc. and more just an empty punchline (literally: "communism, lol").
It works both ways with people mocking say Stalin on one hand and Marx on the other. Wealth, property, repression, state control, murder, etc. never enter the equation, conveniently forgetting about the history and the thought that informs it.

Of course this isn't exclusive to communism but it having so much currency in society, and at this point in time, where these people are too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, for instance (i.e. at a time where people forget the reality of history). I'm trying to not be humourless, or too agitated, since as I said I'm not so invested in leftist politics that I take it personally, I just see this as a certain brand of humour and attitude toward history and thought that's increasingly detached from reality and unaware of the gravity of say, communism's role in history, be it Marxist thought or violent tragedy. I'm also looking at this at the viewpoint of people who grew up in Soviet states or are dedicated far-leftists, as something that more than insults them but denies any right to what they have experienced and believed in.

P.S. how'd you like to get that base up in this superstructure.

yeah. well. "modernism." whatre u gonna do.

what Marx, Stalin, the USSR, etc, point to, with the people I've encountered, is less anything about wealth, property, state control, etc. and more just an empty punchline (literally: "communism, lol")

Actually w/r/t Soviet stuff, I think it's more that you now have younger adults whose memories of Soviet images are largely based around late Cold War stuff like bad 80s action movies and this seemingly Important Threat that had sort of evaporated by the time they were old enough to care -- this is a recipe for jokes, insofar as "late Soviet images," in addition to meaning historical stuff, also wind up filed in about the same mental place as the Thundercats and Alf

Kind of repeating myself here, but given that up until recently common people associated things like Stalin/the USSR with gulags, mass murder, repression, an Evil Empire, a mortal threat to our way of life, etc., surely "LOL communism" is a public-perception improvement? I mean if that had been the general attitude a few decades back, all those HUAC hearings would have more fun and hilarious for everyone involved

you know, you can't spell marx w/o M - A - X

Perhaps wise Doctor Casino will furnish us with examples of Communism having worked in practice.

― Dingbod Kesterson, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 10:48 AM (9 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm always ready for a good gulag joke.

perhaps wise Dom will read the thread and figure out that's not the point i was trying to make

homie

dont play me like that

girl, i will bury you

I own that t-shirt that Edward linked to. idk, I like it. I don't think making a joke that the Communist Party could be a Communist party is anti-leftist, and I definitely think someone like Emma Goldman would approve of the sentiment. There's nothing wrong with having fun with the ideas, and the shirt doesn't undermine anything (unless it's in the sense that you have to exchange monies to get it). If anything, I've had more people think I was sympathetic with radical leftist ideas because of the shirt, than in spite of it.

I'm also looking at this at the viewpoint of people who grew up in Soviet states or are dedicated far-leftists, as something that more than insults them but denies any right to what they have experienced and believed in.

idk mayne the ppl i've met (including during the 80s) who lived in communiss countries really fkn hated living under it. i will ask if people going 'lol communism' denies them the right to what they have experienced, but i reckon they'd say 'buck the fuck up, what does that even mean?' i suppose they 'experienced' living under the russian imperium but didn't really 'believe in it' :/

i don't "get" constructivism, but that whole thing, in design and whatnot -- kind of creepy? a little bit imo. graphic designers, architecture students, etc, not super historians ime.

BROSEPH STALIN

i'm having trouble understanding the objection to this dumm tshirt. like, this sentence:

"I can't imagine anything more frustrating for a committed leftist than this sort of reduction of a history of social theory and action to a petty, unaware, and outright not-funny punchline."

is incomprehensible to me. first, who give a shit? second, if i think about it for a second i CAN imagine some things more frustrating for committed leftists, many things in fact.

i think if you *do* get annoyed by it yer probably a bit weird? apart from marx and to a extent castro all of the people on the poster are total scumbags and unmitigated nogoodniks.

imo the most cogent complaints about the attitude displayed in the shirt end up being the conservative ones: "communists and communism killed millions and kept millions more in servitude and poverty, goddam kids these days think it was all a JOKE!?"

as a rough equivalent you can't have "lol nazis" shirts, something right wingers complain about in a strange way; socialism and communism is still a weak club to beat the left with, no matter how hard they try, but everyone "just knows" that fascism/nazism is uniquely evil and not jokeworthy on a public tshirt level (creepy internet level, fine). "everyone" hates the outer edges of right-wing politics, but the outer edges of left-wing politics are just... funny? dead and therefore... goofy? the conservative complaint is that this structural imbalance isn't "fair" which is pretty lulzy but also, i dunno, interesting, historically. talkin out my ass here.

communism has roots in the enlightenment, nazism = excuse to murder jews

sorry to be glib about it

since when can't you make jokes about nazis? Springtime for Hitler anyone? Hogan's Heroes?

hm good point

http://www.wooyayhoopla.be/hammerzeit.jpg

hey i said creepy internet nazi humor was ok

love that jpg btw

I generally agree with Swat Valley High, to hopefully clarify my point, though: past the cold-war impression of the evil communist boogyman, a lot of young people (for whatever reasons they may have) look at communism as just a punchline, conveniently moving the history of it and theory behind it off to the side. These sorts of attitudes will probably at least annoy dedicated leftists, or people who have had to live through a lot of strife, because it replaces communist thought and history to a joke. I.e. it doesn't just make fun of the idea of it, but also pacifies it, in a way different from just mocking it (where it seems like there still can be an awareness of an actual communism, not just a detached reflection of it (usually the product of the stuff nabisco mentioned upthread, which lends itself to being camped up. Which has not all that much to do with Marxism and gulags, for instance).

Also, I just got the communist-party-as-a-party-joke, so that makes a lot more sense now. I'm not going to criticize you for that shirt, the concert poster I saw yesterday with that image for a background on the other hand. . . (also keep in mind, this is mostly based of pretty specific experience with people I've encountered, who aren't to smart to begin with).

you really think making a joke about communism completely trivializes it?

i mean, couldn't you say that about humourous takes on ANYTHING?

yes and no. I mean certain attitudes behind jokes appear to be more trivializing.

This might be a bit obvious, but if part of your complaint is that people just don't take communism seriously enough as a valid ideology, my response might be that it is sort of up to an ideology to justify itself to people, not the other way around

in america 'dedicated leftists' doesn't suggest 'communist' anymore. this is a good thing...above all for 'dedicated leftists' who want to be taken seriously.

rather, somebody could be a chomsky-reading-hardcore leftist stereotype and still wear/enjoy that t-shirt. how many real marxists are left to be offended by this?? I don't know any and I spend my life in berkeley+san francisco.

does it have to be offensive though? I just think it's a trivializing attitude, on the part of certain people, not necessarily these shirts on their own.

as an economic system, yes, communism has been pretty universally trivialized.

as a GIGANTIC part of 20th century history, I can't imagine it will ever be.

I don't really get your complaint since "lol communism" really entails laughing at the socialist regimes of past and present that were and are really pretty terrible. I am glad Lenin, Stalin etc. are now figures of fun, because they shouldn't be figures of admiration.

On the other hand what this kind of thing does not make fun of, and shouldn't, is certain Marxian concepts, approach to history and society that takes in to consideration economic factors as well as individual agency of politicians and diplomats, the socialist inspired labour movements and workers' rights etc.

One side of my family is in parts very far left-wing, and many of the family friends of my parents were committed socialists/communists. My uncle is a trotskyist and lived in Cuba in the 70s after being exiled from Chile. Two of my cousins grew up for similar reasons in the GDR (and hated it of course). etc. etc. The ones of these who have retained their far-left politics are all very sympathetic and I believe are in it for good reasons. However I am glad that their extreme politics are now discredited and that now their politics are only really reflected in good things: activism that promotes social justice and supports the labour movement, minorities and LGBT rights etc.

yes and no. I mean certain attitudes behind jokes appear to be more trivializing.

― Edward Saroyan, Friday, May 22, 2009 9:11 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't get it. you're angry on the behalf of hypothetical communist sympathizers who might not like jokes at stalin's expense because it trivializes marx's ideology? i mean seriously, who is giving marxism a worse name here, stalin or lol jokes people?

i feel like u are kind of trolling here saroyan

Achhh, I'm starting to get as confused as you, really. This started from what I thought was a pretty uncontroversial point which I apparently haven't thought out enough. I promise I'm not trying to troll here, nor am I really angry on behalf of anyone, nor am I trying to defend any aspect of communism (also I think a lot of people generally see stalin and marxist thought to be in the same boat)

fwiw, out of curiosity, I asked my Ukrainian friend if she thought it was funny. does not.

I don't know what else to say, let alone to vindicate my original point, so I'll take any opportunity to sneak out out this debate, but I just think it's a kind of lame humour, and generally empty critique.

okay went to get a second opinion, this time Russian:

Evgenia
of course it is haha
i think ive seen them on the red square

is there nothing more cringe-worthy than the "lol, communism" attitude of certain people today

The other day I saw an Asian guy wearing a shirt with a picture of Mao, and then underneath it said LMAO

This shouldn't push yr buttons, though, cause for all we know he was expressing his genuine and substantive contempt for Maoist ideology, and his opinion that it is ultimately laughable

Also, I just got the communist-party-as-a-party-joke, so that makes a lot more sense now.

^^^omg a+++

For the record I've softened on my stance since.

communism, lol

I do, however, resent people who don't mark any difference between communism, lol and socialism, lol.

the spelling, obv

communism fails because it does not go far enough in trying to reshape the possibilities of the human. usually it just results in typical power structures re-asserting themselves under the guise of the dictatorship of the proletariat. under a true collectivism there would be no central leader. every unit of the collective would be plugged in to all the others and have no reason to take orders. decisions would be distributed across the whole, acting as a single brain. to achieve this, advances in technology and social engineering are necessary. communism arose in a period when these advances were unthinkable, so its goals of true egalitarianism were of course in vain.

communism fails because different humans in seemingly similar circumstances will NECESSARILY want and believe radically different things about the fundamental nature of reality. this will remain true no matter how well or poorly educated these humans might happen to be. the vagaries of individual interpretation (even when demonstrably false) will always triumph over mechanistic/demographic assessments of aggregate needs and wants. the human is irrational and self-destructive by nature, and thus cannot be channeled or anticipated by purely rational, appolonian means.

which is why when the technology is perfected, human nature will be improved by us. it will be a long, arduous process resulting in many dead ends and false starts, but it will be achieved.

attempts to modify human behavior have historically been accomplished through flawed means. but the more we lear about the hu8man brain and body, the more we will learn to modify it. human nature is not static or immune to change.

apologies for the glitch--we mean "he more we learn about the human brain and body, the more we will learn to modify it."

I never understood the part about it looking great on paper, to be honest.

rap would sure get interesting in a communist society (I mean I guess The Coup would be the biggest act in the nation).

It'd be interesting to hear Young Jeezy spit "I'm well provided for by the government/Ain't slingin' no crack cuz I ain't got no rent"

I never understood the part about it looking great on paper, to be honest.

Buy a leather bound set of Das Kapital, it looks great on your shelves.

communism fails because different humans in seemingly similar circumstances will NECESSARILY want and believe radically different blablaba.

― having taken an actual journalism class (contenderizer), Saturday, September 25, 2010 2:57 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark

always the most shameful posts, those born of late night drunkenness and SERIUS THOTS

Came across this thread today. Check out commissar17 - not just a Stalin apologist but a big fan of the Taliban, Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong Il. I didn't know people like this even existed anymore.

http://www.stroudgreen.org/discussion/2271/communists-in-stroud-green/#Item_0

I draw your attention to an excellent pamphlet entitled 'Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union' (available via the Stalin Society website).

my stepfather was a Stalin apologist. it was pretty bracing to actually learn the extent of Stalin's terror after growing up hearing about Comrade S.'s anti-nazi bona fides.

Robert Conquest published this photo in his Stalin bio. I love his caption:

http://visualrian.com/storage/PreviewWM/0047/44/4744.jpg?1259917735

"The next day, Stalin had her father shot"

not a Stalin apologist, but I may have posed as one in conversation before to troll well-meaning liberal anti-communists. in general, though, I don't like talking about dude unless the terms of the debate have been clearly established, or it's just too easy to end up shouting and talking past each other.

a friend of mine once got marked down on a history exam for writing something along the lines of "historians disagree on the extent to which Stalin's economic policies were directly responsible for the famines of 1932-3"; the T.A., apparently missing the irony, circled that sentence and wrote "I don't think they do"

The next day, the T.A. had his father shot.

"I got 40 commies up in here now who kill commies' fathers" - J. Stalin

a big fan of the Taliban, Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong Il. I didn't know people like this even existed anymore.

erm

You must be reading a different Comment Is Free to me. The one I read is full of right-wing trolls and bored cynics.

xpost to aerosmith. Wow. Obviously US communists ignored, forgave or were honestly ignorant of a lot while Stalin was alive but after Khrushchev's denunciation I imagine your stepfather was in a very very small minority.

but I may have posed as one in conversation before to troll well-meaning liberal anti-communists.

Why?

i'm pretty left wing but i think communism looks pretty terrible even on paper.

i know they're not commies, but how bout those semi-socialist germans kicking everyone else's ass financially? go proles!

You must be reading a different Comment Is Free to me. The one I read is full of right-wing trolls and bored cynics.

this one?

guys guys ILX commune is the only way out of this

Came across this thread today. Check out commissar17 - not just a Stalin apologist but a big fan of the Taliban, Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong Il. I didn't know people like this even existed anymore.

http://www.stroudgreen.org/discussion/2271/communists-in-stroud-green/#Item_0

― The baby boomers have defined everything once and for all (Dorianlynskey), Sunday, 17 October 2010 12:15 (10 hours ago) Bookmark

I'm happy to talk to you (or, indeed, anyone else) about our position regarding the DPRK and Zimbabwe. In the first case, that of North Korea, we recognize it for what it is -- a socialist country which has eliminated the exploitation of man by man and, in case it escaped anybody's attention, the first country to fight U$ imperialism to a humiliating standstill.

Obviously US communists ignored, forgave or were honestly ignorant of a lot while Stalin was alive but after Khrushchev's denunciation I imagine your stepfather was in a very very small minority.

― The baby boomers have defined everything once and for all (Dorianlynskey), Sunday, October 17, 2010 10:24 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark

people kept on making excuses way after that. in france 1956 didn't change much: a bigger watershed was the publication of the 'gulag archipelago' two decades later. and a lot of people just get round the problem -- i think i used to, a bit -- by saying it was all stalin's doing or w/e.

what do you mean by "in france 1956 didn't change much"? legitimately confused here.

i think that he was talking about the mindset of French Communists, not that nothing in France itself had changed much in the twenty years after 1956.

yep. obviously there were little modifications, recondite philosophical tinkerings. and you have to come to grips with what maoism meant to mean to french intellectuals in the 60s/early 70s -- probably not a celebration of unnecessary famine, mass murder, work camps, but idk. but from what i've read anyway it was the mid-70s and 'the gulag archipelago' that really tore them away from totalitarian communism; hence the attacks on grand narratives, etc.

french communism is the biggest joke the french ever played on humanity

communist humanism is the biggest joke the communists ever played on frogmanity.

humanist franglicism is the biggest joke the humans ever played on community.

otoh, french humans are the biggest joke the french ever played on same.

xpost to history mayne - I meant Stalin specifically, not communism in general. The 60s and 70s hard left approved of Mao, Ho Chi Minh, etc but I haven't read any examples of them defending Stalin by that stage.

me neither: but condemning "the stalinist deviation" was a way of continuing to approve of, or not really come to grips with, the soviet system. it's an ironic reflection of the personality cult and "bourgeois" great man history, in a way. plenty of french intellectuals (not to mention voters) stayed loyal to moscow not only after 1956, but also after 1968.

from what i've read anyway it was the mid-70s and 'the gulag archipelago' that really tore them away from totalitarian communism; hence the attacks on grand narratives, etc.

― ENRRQ (history mayne), Monday, October 18, 2010 8:30 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

for me the specificity of the French situation comes from, on the one hand, a historically strong labor movement, which was becoming more radicalized again post-WWII as the Socialists took a lot of shit for their pacifism and the Communists won prestige from the Resistance; and on the other hand, the intellectuals within and without the PCF who saw toeing the party line as something of a Faustian bargain, and never really stopped trying to find ways to distance themselves from Moscow, even as they strongly opposed US imperialism internationally and supported the French working-class at home.

in conclusion: yeah, I really don't think that yr average working-class Parisian PCF voter cared all that much about what was going on in the USSR

yeah althusser is what i mean by still believing in the one-party state, labour camps, occupation of eastern europe etc -- but being 'anti-stalinist' via these philosophical dickerings. as if the official doctrine of the ussr 192_–53 was the root of the problem.

i should allow that some french bros disavowed 'stalinism' after '56, but for most laypeople that isn't a matter of historical determinism or what have you but unbridled state power, imperialism, show trials, forced famines and the like. not sure the french left got their arms round that set of problems (other than by embracing, um, mao).

Communism sounded better on vinyl.

or

Communism sounds great on DVD Audio.

'anti-stalinist' via these philosophical dickerings

that's a p mealy-mouthed attack on the ussr, isn't it? 'oh man, how could they think that? if only they had believed in relative autonomy, they would never have put all those people in labour camps.'

idk, would censure or expulsion from the communist party really be such dishonourable things? i think not, but im soft like that.

jameson voluntarily submits to the idea of marxism as a "philosophical horizon" or somesuch thing -- in other words, he's a theological marxist. he would have prospered under any system of government, i think, but was fortunate to be born somewhere where the stakes of this kind of nonsense are so low.

I'm not saying Althusser was a great polemicist or an inspiring public intellectual or anything, but I do think he was a serious and independent thinker who believed there was something valuable in Marx and wanted to work out (for himself and for anyone else who cared) what exactly it was, and in the process he criticized a lot of lazy unphilosophical thinking. there's a part from the end of his essay "Marxism and Humanism" where he calls out the infinitely-more-mealy-mouthed idea of the "cult of personality", saying basically: this is not a theory, it's the absence of a theory, which you have hastily attempted to plug up using the first ideas you laid your hands on.

I don't really know what to say about Jameson; it seems like you just don't like the dude, which is fine. but I think it's funny that you bring up the issue of birthplace, because Jameson's steeze has always struck me as distinctly rooted in his Americanness. maybe that's why Europeans have always been skeptical of the whole "postmodernism" thing, while contemporary Chinese academics apparently love it: on some level, you "just have to be there", "there" being a flattened out non-place where 'planned communities', 'housing developments', and 'shopping centers' sprout seemingly overnight from the brows of architects and planners.

you can't claim althusser was an 'independent' thinker and say that he needed to use double-talk so's to stay on the right side of the party. it's one or the other. of course there is something valuable in marx, but he isn't the last word, and nor is any interpretation of marx going to be. there isn't going to be a last word, i suppose is what im saying -- and that's an impossible thing for a party intellectual to say. (but i don't think what he found was what was valuable -- im history mayne not philosophy mayne tho. and marx is more historian than philosopher.)

there's nothing mealy-mouthed about the idea of the personality cult. it isn't a theory: indeed. it's just a facet of the soviet union, part of that history. wasn't making a big thing out of it -- it's hardly the worst thing, or the decisive thing. im not looking for a 'theory' to explain the ussr though.

you can't claim althusser was an 'independent' thinker and say that he needed to use double-talk so's to stay on the right side of the party.

and like, I actually agree with you about this:

condemning "the stalinist deviation" was a way of continuing to approve of, or not really come to grips with, the soviet system. it's an ironic reflection of the personality cult and "bourgeois" great man history

What was wrong with 20th-century Communism was not its resort to violence per se—the seizure of state power, the Civil War to maintain it—but the larger mode of functioning, which made this kind of resort to violence inevitable and legitimized: the Party as the instrument of historical necessity, and so on.

http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2853

zizek, advocating revolutionary violence

it's all fun and games until millions of people (workers included) are killed

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lscott/2011/08/02/could-mila-kunis-be-a-sing-of-hope-and-change/

this is a several hundred-word blog post on "big hollywood" speculating about whether or not mila kunis is a "Randian Libertarian" because she said friends with benefits arrangements are "like communism — good in theory, in execution it fails"

sorta surprising there aren't more libertarians in hollywood

"big hollywood" blogger leigh scott describes mila kunis' choice to compare friends with benefits relationships with communism as "brave"

hmm....russian emigre to America...got work in Hollywood...if the shoe fits...

there is some kind of mila rennaissance on that side of the aisle because she said yes to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0om2ApQPvq

I do think libertarianism is on the rise in Hollywood. I recently produced a film starring the mighty James Woods. The average age on the crew was about 27. On set I overheard a female crew person mumbling about how she saw Woods on Fox News and that he had become a “crazy conservative.” A male crew member, cigarette in mouth, calmly looked at her and replied “he’s not crazy, he’s right”. I didn’t have to say a word.

Hope and change indeed.

what is this, do you think

what video is that, it doesnt work for me

I was gonna photoshop ayn rand in a that 70s show graphic but I got too lazy

"It’s no coincidence that people who demonstrate above average intelligence in the real world trend conservative. And I’m not talking about academic background. I’m talking about street smarts, savvy, and rich personal experiences. Smart people don’t walk around all the time explaining how smart they are. Ever notice how progressives are always going on about “intellectualism” and trying to impress you with big words for obviously idiotic things?"

Well this paragraph basically tells you everything you might need to know about the insecurities driving author Leigh Scott's life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0om2ApQPvqI

hmm dunno what the prob is

http://youtu.be/0om2ApQPvqI

oh right

haha well if THE TROOPS are involved she MUST be a randian libertarian

so ignoring the last four thousand posts i really agree with OP! it has nothing to do with the politics of it. there's just no situation where you can say that line and have it add to any discussion, because by the age of 12 everyone has heard it ~a billion times. and everyone always says it as if they're the first to! i hate it.

anyway back to your scheduled mila kunis etc

i'd liberate her terrain, if you catch my drift

damn contenderizer owned the hell out of this thread

hey max, other commies - how's it feel living in ~*THA OWN ZONE*~

― the most brazen explosion of clitoral lust in folk-metal history (cankles), Wednesday, April 1, 2009 12:30 AM (2 years ago)

tha own zone sounds great on paper, it just doesnt work in reality

so you're unhappy there is what you're saying.

im trying to emigrate but its really difficult to get a visa

money sounds great on paper. for everything else, there's visa.

i'd rapidly industrialize her, if you know what i mean

http://i.imgur.com/S6IFe.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/easwx.gif

Children, quit complaining that you don't get home from the button factory until midnight. At least you don't have to read giant books.

The original draft of the Communist Manifesto called for the dissolution of all marriages but Marx pulled it at the last second because he thought it would be a political liability.

"To each according to his own friend, to everybody according to his own benefit," has a certain ring to it.

Maybe Kunis was on to something. Friends With Benefits, No Strings Attached, m4w casual encounter -- whatever you want to call it, it's socialism in the bedroom.

still not the craziest from that 70s show thnx to the scientologist dj mom jeans

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/my-father-was-a-communist/245104/

In addition, my parents' and their friends' notion of what Communism actually consisted of was not especially highly evolved. When we were teenagers, my great friend Zachary Leader asked my father if he had ever read Das Kapital. Frank replied, "Are you kidding? No one could read that shit. We invented our own Communism." The Communism they invented was a system where everything was fair, everyone was nice to everyone else, and nobody suffered deprivation. That it contradicted human nature, ignored history, and defied the laws of economics were considerations they chose to ignore. They meant well.

Just realized I haven't heard this line in a while. Am I in a bubble (or encountering fewer undergrads at parties as I age), or is it possible its lifespan was tethered to the fall of the Eastern Bloc?

i heard it almost verbatim a little while back, from a young (mid-20s?) person at that. a good indicator that the best thing to do was to quietly back away from wherever the conversation was going to go.

Communism works great in practice- I just don't like the theory!

I'm teaching More's "Utopia" tomorrow and this cliché runs like a seam of fool's gold through a lot of embarrassed Cold War era lit crit about this author/text; there's no way around More's call for the abolition of private property and yet people try their damnedest to ironize and "yes, but..."

Perhaps the "works great on paper" half of this cliché could be cross-faded into another relevant, nearby cliché: namely, that "Utopia" is "a nice place to read about but I wouldn't wanna live there"

Gold chamber pots sound p chill to me

Utopia and Utopian texts generally get better and better as the details get filled out, aha, in the perfect society the cities are *exactly* three miles on a side - that's where we've been going wrong!

"If you like Russia so much, why don't you go and live there" is another (Cold War) cliche that's re-entered my brain recently due to this ongoing mess in Ukraine.

nu Russia comes to u

and it's opposite: "none of those communist regimes were authentically marxist."

"the truth lies somewhere in the middle"

The non-tiresome question is "where is there room for the most improvement and what are we going to do to make things better?"

"don't bring me problems, bring me solutions!"

wish i could remember the specific conversation that prompted this thread

it wasn't even executed at all. Mao, Stalin, Castro et al - in every single instance these guys were just bullies who used the most convenient ideological tool at their disposal (ie, the appealling idealism of "communism") to consolidate power and run shit...

I think Marx would disagree. what would be required is control from the BOTTOM - ie, the "workers"...

Transition to communism, though, requires a radical and comprehensive rejiggering of society at every level. Whether or not Marx admits it, this in turn requires a great deal of top-down organization and control, at least during the transition period (thus Lenin's Dictatorship of the Proletariat). In terms of practical application, that was one of the primary problems with communism in the 20th century: the failure of newly-imposed revolutionary goverments to cede power/wealth to the workers as a whole, eventually resulting in something much like despotism (Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc.). This failure wasn't due to "bad people" or to external pressure, but rather to Marx & Lenin's seeming ignorance of basic human nature.

Rereading the Manifesto a little while ago, I was struck by how openly it seemed like Marx did essentially advocate totalitarianism and top-down state control (i.e. I think he did admit it). I'm not sure the gap between theory and practice was as great as people sometimes like to claim (NB as with Peterson, this is the only major Marx piece I am especially familiar with):

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

The third highlighted passage actually seems like it might have anticipated (and excused in leaders' minds) the economic disasters of collectivized agriculture in the USSR, China, and Cambodia.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

#10 is obv good, #2 definitely could be, #3 might be defensible. #5-7 absolutely call for top-down state control of the economy. #8-9 basically anticipate the Khmer Rouge imo, considering that the "equal liability to work" in "industrial armies" and "equitable distribution of the populace over the country" will be implement by the new consolidated despotic state.

hugely relieved to scroll up itt and not find myself. now i will rob future-me of the same peace.

in general you are i think right to say that yes, marx did know what the transition he was implying was going to have to be like. here are some spitballed caveats

#5-7 absolutely call for top-down state control of the economy.

as you quote from upthread the idea is that the state will be functionally democratic, and collective worker decision-making will happen fractally, all the way from the factory floor to the ministries. now this would be quite a feat (democracy invariably sounds like bullshit) and also it would be extremely peculiar and pointless for someone in 2020 (or 1920) to wed themselves to the specific economic prescriptions of the communist manifesto. but imo accomplishing the general vision of popular economic+political control is less the problem of Human Nature it's supposed to be and more a problem of simultaneously needing to grow an organic democratic infrastructure and fight an inevitable war to the death with the old order, which is v bad for the grass. (you'll recall the prototypical bourgeois republic had similar difficulties, lurching from republicanism to militarized authoritarianism to reactionary restorationism and back while history's engine struggled to turn over. in 1848, every 60-year-old you met had lived through all of this.) anyway, our present evolved form of capitalism doesn't seem particularly to mind for instance "centralisation of the means of communication" in the hands of pretty much anyone except the state, though of course whoever it is will be happy to work v closely w the state, just as long as there's no democracy involved.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

show me the lie tbh. again, this is not too different from what had already happened as capitalism rotted feudalism from the inside, sometimes slowly and sometimes suddenly (despotically)-- the enclosure of the commons, the requisition of church lands, the execution of kings and princes, the multi-decade money sink of the railroads in countries full of starving people, entire populations sent down the mines, entire agricultural bases changed, sometimes disastrously (the irish know what a capitalist holodomor looks like). yr point about collectivized agriculture is nevertheless not wrong but it's also worth mentioning that all of the countries you name were attempting the stalinist agrarian-to-communist leap, not exactly the vision of "most advanced countries" in 1848. i don't think even the 30yo marx of the manifesto would have been optimistic about them.

don't see where full employment anticipates the khmer rouge-- "liability" i suppose implies that everyone is forced to work (whereas capitalism kindly lets a few people off) so okay let's amend that to "opportunity" now that our robots are so good-- but agree that "equitable distribution of the populace" is an unfortunate phrase in light of the 20th century. i think "gradual" is the key word there tho-- i don't know that he's thinking of forcible population transfer but imagining the eventual shape of a communist population. capitalism certainly had a shape of its own, one no one had planned but which it nevertheless assumed violently and rapidly. remember that all the changes capitalism had wrought-- contemptuous of human life almost (tho decreasingly) beyond the imaginations of we who live in the bourgeois, half-socialized hemisphere today-- were, to marx, necessary and inevitable.

Hm, well, the distinction between liability and opportunity doesn't seem insignificant to me.

the idea is that the state will be functionally democratic, and collective worker decision-making will happen fractally, all the way from the factory floor to the ministries.

Where did Marx state this?

Good points about early capitalism. I agree that the agrarian-to-communist leap was not what Marx had in mind but the fact that communism did not catch on in the most advanced countries itself seems to disprove the theory - surely the immiserating cycle of capitalist production and alienation of labour should have organically led to revolution?

it did! the manifesto is written from the middle of it; that's why it sounds so confident. then it was defeated. turned out capitalism wasn't old, but young. no doubt many hard lessons to be learned from 1848 but "this will continue forever" is not one of them, especially in our world where it seems yet another longstanding liberal safeguard against an event like 1848 is trashed every day.

my description of the worker-council model there is probably slipping forward into 1871 (or into 1905), whoops-- tho i'd be surprised if you couldn't find marx talking about something like it somewhere. in general tho you already know this is always the argument, even under a totalitarianism like stalin's where it is a transparent fiction: that you and your fellow workers are the ones who control the state.

Ha, OK, I wasn't remembering the context of the 1848 revolutions.

Yes, worker rule is always the argument, even, as you say, in the most authoritarian communist regimes, but nothing in the Manifesto really gives me an impression that Marx was mapping out some decentralized, democratic system, as opposed to the authoritarian versions that occurred irl. If anything, centralization seems pretty key.

The southeastern Indian state of Kerala is probably the most successful irl application of Marxist socialism. It actually puzzles me that it doesn't get more discussion among Western leftists.

I've been trying to think if there's /any/ system or principle about which this couldn't be said. Doesn't everything ever sound good on paper but run into problemos in real life?

Lots of things don't sound good on paper!

hugely relieved to scroll up itt and not find myself. now i will rob future-me of the same peace.

i feel like this should be the prologue to every post on ilx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism_in_Kerala

Sund4r otm - this is pretty astonishing and underrated. Well I've never seen it mentioned before.

*southwestern

Kerala is awesome

also a long history of matriarchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marumakkathayam

I fear that the absolute control required for the dictatorship of the proletariat attracts fucked up authoritarian people like Stalin.

It wasn't a case of attracting Stalin - the dictatorship within a dictatorship was his very own marvellous pièce de résistance!

although i know you on 2nd read of your post you aren't saying it wasn't tbf!

The southeastern Indian state of Kerala is probably the most successful irl application of Marxist socialism. It actually puzzles me that it doesn't get more discussion among Western leftists.

― One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact (Sund4r), Wednesday, January 15, 2020 3:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

their economy is not particularly socialist

"Sarcasm doesn't really translate over the internet".

It's almost as if sarcasm has existed in written form for centuries and you're just shit at parsing it

tedious argument i've been seeing everywhere lately, any time someone brings up billionaires having billions of dollars: "net worth isn't the same thing as liquid capital though"

guess a lot of people just learned that jeff bezos doesn't literally have a hundred billion dollars in a capital one account

a lot like the "communism sounds great on paper" and "the truth is somewhere in the middle" lines, half the time i think people just say these things because they heard other people say them and they want to say something, not because they're actually trying to make an argument

my fault for hanging around reddit/twitter

Love this essay (Tronti died a couple of weeks ago).

"Speaking for myself, I know that I would never have the freedom that I feel, inside myself, without having passed through, in my thought and my life, the historic experience of communism."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/a-message-from-the-emperor

admittedly I didn't know he was still alive, but I'm surprised I'm only hearing of his passing now

RIP

I don't have time to read this right now, but the Marx/Kafka thing is so perfect I can't believe I haven't encountered that before! thanks for posting this

Yes was laughing at the Marx-Kafka observation earlier. Great essay.