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

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!