The concept is a theory. Its application has so far proved less convincing than the practice of democracy, q.e.d. - This doesn't say that there isn't any evil in democracy but it's still the one that is better adapted to our human nature. Democracy needs boundaries (legal, social) to function properly.
If humans were only good and self-less, communism could work but that's not how we are which is why communism implies repression at all levels, and repression is a vast term.
This is put in practise with some success among the Amish, and some other Christian groups. Kibbutzim also operate with some success.
All other examples you may cite, involving entire nations whose citizens did not decide out of free will to want to adhere to this societal order either failed or have very big problems.
So, do you simply dream of this perfect world with wonderful human beings where communism as described in theory would be a reality? How would you want to put it in practise? The starting point would have to be that everyone would have to WANT it first.
:) What if the Londoner wasn't allowed to decide on living in Nice anymore? ...
But in many of the cases Ted cited, the citizens actually did choose that way of government, at least inasmuch as democratic elections and constitutionally permissible laws can be called an expression of the will of the citizens. In all those cases, the regime was put in big trouble by outside forces who decided that they didn't like the domestic policies they practised - usually because they involved forcing transnationals to actually, horror of horrors, pay taxes and because they involved confiscating property of the feudal nobility and various colonial charter companies. Actions not entirely without precedent in democratic countries in Northern Europe.
As an aside, I would claim that many, if not most, of the countries Ted cites were not actually communist at all - rather a lot of the deposed regimes in Latin America were developmentalists, which is basically social democracy for third-world countries. The labelling of developmentalist governments as communists was part of the propaganda justifying the various and sundry "interventions," and does not necessarily reflect the facts on the ground.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Cite your cases - and let's compare them with all the right-wing coups organised by the US and direct interventions by the US this century. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
The whole point is that the west was the good side in the cold war, and that moral position cannot be relativised
A moral position can not be argued without an ideological compass of what is right and wrong. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I agree that that's not ideological at all. I don't find it particularly admirable, though.
The bottom line is that for you, life is either ideological, or is not at all, and truth, like good, like justice, are defined according to the ideological compass.
That being said, it's the end of our discussion because I can't debate with a fundamentalist notions that I deem as not relative to any faith. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Helping a sick man on the street can be a commendable act of principle, if it is founded in some sort of moral obligation to help the less well-off. But if it's simply a matter of gratifying a sense of moral superiority by helping those who are made disadvantaged by a system that you otherwise support, then no, on balance I don't see that as a particularly moral act.
Give a man a fish, and he'll have food for a day. Teach a man to demand justice, and he'll have food for the rest of his life.
We've covered the nature and merits of ideology elsewhere in this thread. And if you feel that acting on a set of gut feelings and superficial impressions that have no connection to each other, no coherence and no requirement of consistency is admirable and something that all of humanity should strive for, well, that's your prerogative.
For myself... not so much.
And some of the principles used to justify free press can be incorporated both in ideologies that are right wing and ideologies that are left wing.
Very few principles are inherently right-wing or left-wing. Most often, the political alignment we assign to a principle has more to do with the context and justification for the principle than with what it says in and of itself.
Another way of putting that is that most principles don't say all that much in and of themselves, unless one knows the context in which they are applied. Which is why some of us keep harping on the fact that you seem to want to divorce principles, actions and politics from their context and history. Because when one tries to do that, one most often ends up with either a load of fluffy generalities or a baggage of implied context that one refuses to examine because one assumes to be liberated from the need to examine context.
The one I quoted was a much more common way to assume power than the one you do
Which is - aside from the dubious truth value of that statement - entirely irrelevant. That a malicious variant of capitalism instigated a dozen or so coups in Latin America that brought vicious capitalist dictators to power in no way invalidates social democratic capitalism as practised in Scandinavia.
Similarly, that a malicious variant of communism instigated a dozen or so coups in Eastern Europe that brought various vicious communist dictators to power in no way invalidates social democratic communism as practised in Allende's Chile (leaving aside the fact that I dispute that Allende was doing communism...).
That the communists in Czechoslovakia came to power in a coup is hardly relevant to how "communists" (actually developmentalists, but I digress) came to power in Chile.
In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm#art
At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm#art
Cf. Cuba - see comment above, and in the short-lived Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, brutally sabotaged by the US, a philosopher and priest was put in charge of education - and literacy increased dramatically, and a poet, Ernesto Cardenal, was put in charge of the arts:
Ernesto Cardenal is a major poet of the Spanish language well-known in the United States as a spokesman for justice and self-determination in Latin America. Cardenal, who recognizes that poetry and art are closely tied to politics, used his poetry to protest the encroachments of outsiders in Nicaragua and supported the revolution that overthrew Somoza in 1979. Once the cultural minister of his homeland, Cardenal spends much of his time as "a kind of international ambassador," notes Richard Elman in the Nation. Victor M. Valle, writing in the Los Angeles Times Calendar, cites Cardenal's statement, "There has been a great cultural rebirth in Nicaragua since the triumph of the revolution. A saving of all of our culture, that which represents our national identity, especially our folklore." Literacy and poetry workshops established throughout the "nation of poets," as it has been known since the early twentieth century, are well-attended by people whose concerns had been previously unheard. Most workshops are led by government-paid instructors in cultural centers, while others convene in police stations, army barracks, and workplaces such as sugar mills, Valle reports. In these sessions, Romantic and Modern poetry is considered below standard; Cardenal also denigrates socialist realism, which he says "comes from the Stalinist times that required that art be purely political propaganda." http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/cardenal3.html
Victor M. Valle, writing in the Los Angeles Times Calendar, cites Cardenal's statement, "There has been a great cultural rebirth in Nicaragua since the triumph of the revolution. A saving of all of our culture, that which represents our national identity, especially our folklore." Literacy and poetry workshops established throughout the "nation of poets," as it has been known since the early twentieth century, are well-attended by people whose concerns had been previously unheard. Most workshops are led by government-paid instructors in cultural centers, while others convene in police stations, army barracks, and workplaces such as sugar mills, Valle reports. In these sessions, Romantic and Modern poetry is considered below standard; Cardenal also denigrates socialist realism, which he says "comes from the Stalinist times that required that art be purely political propaganda."
http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/cardenal3.html
This threat of a good example had to be destroyed - and was. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
The typical response of the ideologist - ignore the evidence, ignore the arguments - a dictatorship is not a version of communism - and pretend that "practice" is your opinion about what happened. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
No, of course you don't have to cite anything - you just think to know and we are supposed to accept your opinion which is, like the truly ideological, impervious to the evidence and doesn't bother to offer any. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
You want me to prove that dialectical materialism, or historical materialism was materialist and, well, dialectical ? :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Only at the end of it all, after the Armaghedon, came the selfless sharing community.
I provided evidence showing this was not true, Marx allowed for the possibility of peaceful change. You don't dispute the evidence - you simply decide to ignore it and just proceed with the usual ideological nonsense. It's about time you tried to deal with arguments in a serious way. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
You know, you've almost earned all of these in a single thread... Those aren't precisely merit badges, ya'know. No need to pursue them so relentlessly.
At the same time Marx treated the situation concretely - he allowed for the possibility of a peaceful revolution as well as the likelihood of violent uprising. In July 1871, a few months after the crushing of the Commune, Marx gave an interview to a certain R Lander, the London correspondent of the US-based journal The World. Marx explained to him that the methods employed by the various national sections of the International should "include every form of working class activity". "In each part of the world," Marx continued, "some special aspect of the problem presents itself, and the workingmen there address themselves to its consideration in their own way ... In England, for instance, the way to show [manifest - JC] political power lies open to the working class. Insurrection would be madness where peaceful agitation would more swiftly and surely do the work. In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602). The last question posed to Marx by the gallant reporter concerned Britain (or "England", as the bad habit of the day would have it). Lander put it to Marx that Britain had a free press and a system which allowed minorities to become majorities and thus avoided any violence. Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power" But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606). Put another way, in respect of Britain, Marx advocated peaceful revolution and urged the working class to be vigilant against a bourgeois counterrevolution. Whether or not there was violence depended entirely on the ruling class. Marx and Engels came out with similar arguments to the ends of their lives. http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/448/peaceful.html
Marx explained to him that the methods employed by the various national sections of the International should "include every form of working class activity". "In each part of the world," Marx continued, "some special aspect of the problem presents itself, and the workingmen there address themselves to its consideration in their own way ... In England, for instance, the way to show [manifest - JC] political power lies open to the working class. Insurrection would be madness where peaceful agitation would more swiftly and surely do the work. In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602).
The last question posed to Marx by the gallant reporter concerned Britain (or "England", as the bad habit of the day would have it). Lander put it to Marx that Britain had a free press and a system which allowed minorities to become majorities and thus avoided any violence. Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power" But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606).
Put another way, in respect of Britain, Marx advocated peaceful revolution and urged the working class to be vigilant against a bourgeois counterrevolution. Whether or not there was violence depended entirely on the ruling class. Marx and Engels came out with similar arguments to the ends of their lives.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/448/peaceful.html
I'm not interested in revolutionaries, be them of the far left, or far right, nor in their papers, nor in their nuances, feelings, intellect, taste for art or whatever. Class warfare, the world in black and white, the fist raised to the sky and the fiery look towards invisible ideals, how was that expression, mene, mene, tekel, peres. Outing such ideas no better than justifying the "ideology" leading to fascist rule and nazi camps. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
First you just can't read, far from "avoiding scoial conflict" I cited Marx as saying:
"In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602). ... Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power" But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606).
Secondly you don't present any arguments to justify calling oppressive dictatorships communist, other than that the dictator kept using the word. Right-wing people use the same stupid argument to claim that Hitler was a socialist. By the same argument one might, if one had as little regard for rational argument as you, claim that the Khmer Rouge were an example of the evils if democracy, given what they called themselves:
Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, and in 1976 Khmer Rouge established a new constitution with the new flag under offical name, Democratic Kampuchea ... As one of the most violent regimes of the 20th century, the Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.7 million people by execution, starvation and forced labor. http://www.cambodia.org/khmer_rouge/
http://www.cambodia.org/khmer_rouge/
Yes, I know, they were really communists, but of a kind so unlike anything Marx advocated that Marx would have been amongst the first to be killed:
Anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed.
They and Stalin were as communist as Hitler was socialist, or the Contras of Nicaragua were the freedom-loving democrats of Reagan's lies. Now do try to come up with something resembling a serious argument. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Oh really - just as an example, do remind me of where in Marx and Engels they advocate a huge and repressive police force - in a communist society. This is pretty fundamental - so your first-hand experience was of a regime which was no more communist than Kampuchea was democratic under the Khmer Rouge.
Also yet again you use the phrase "communist dictatorship" - if YOU had really read and remembered anything from Marx you'd know that he would see this as a contradiction in terms - as already pointed out. Just try to take on board that simple fact and stop repeating yourself. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
"justified the necessity to overturn order violently , to literally terminate the opposite "class".
when I have now TWICE quoted Marx as saying that there is no necessity about violent revolution, it depends on the context and that in Britain peaceful change was a possibility. But history showed that it was the ruling class who usually used violence to defend their privileges.
Read before ranting.
"but marxism/communism in its accepted meaning has little to do with humanism or classical liberalim "
Which meaning is that - accepted by whom ? Those who write similar uninformed rants ?
Not that it will penetrate your dogmatism, but some evidence of what Marx actually said on the subject:
Rather than thinking of a being with simple needs and simple productive powers, Marx looked to the `development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption' (Marx, 1973: 325). This is what Marx's conception of communism was all about - the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop his full potential--- i.e., the `absolute working- out of his creative potentialities,' the `complete working out of the human content,' the `development of all human powers as such the end in itself' (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In communist society, the productive forces would have `increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly' (Marx, 1875: 24). The result, in short, would be the production of rich human beings. `What is the aim of the Communists,' Frederick Engels asked in a draft for the Communist Manifesto? He answered, `To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.' In the final draft of the Manifesto, Marx presented this goal as necessarily indivisible - as an `association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.' http://www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/research_report%203_2004%20Lebowitz.pdf
This is what Marx's conception of communism was all about - the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop his full potential--- i.e., the `absolute working- out of his creative potentialities,' the `complete working out of the human content,' the `development of all human powers as such the end in itself' (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In communist society, the productive forces would have `increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly' (Marx, 1875: 24). The result, in short, would be the production of rich human beings. `What is the aim of the Communists,' Frederick Engels asked in a draft for the Communist Manifesto? He answered, `To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.' In the final draft of the Manifesto, Marx presented this goal as necessarily indivisible - as an `association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.'
http://www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/research_report%203_2004%20Lebowitz.pdf
But history showed that it was the ruling class who usually used violence to defend their privileges.
What should be done with the ruling class who want to keep their privileges and money, defending them violently -
I feel "marginalized"!!
How can I convert to the right wing of this screen??
In many cases it will be possible to dispose of them through perfectly democratic elections resulting in a government that enforces confiscatory taxation of excessive wealth.
In other cases, where democracy has been sufficiently undermined that the ballot box cannot be trusted - the USA springs immediately to mind - a series of general strikes can serve to force the powers that be to hold honest elections.
Where a general strike has been made impossible by violent repression - think Pinochet's Chile or South Africa during Apartheid - one can agitate for various kinds and degrees of international pressure to be applied by countries in which the above methods still work.
When a country proves unresponsive to international pressure - or when there is no such international pressure to be found - one can take direct action in reasonable proportion to the kind and degree of repression faced, from civil disobedience through sabotage, through armed resistance to arrest to actual violent uprising in the most extreme cases.
To give a practical example, the liberation movement in British India employed many of the above tactics. There were strikes, and smuggling activity, to deprive the colonial overlords of revenues. Attempts were made to gather support from the international community. There was civil disobedience. There were attacks on British military targets by militant liberation groups.
All of these activities contributed - with different degrees of impact - to the liberation of India from British colonial rule. And given the nature of the repression faced and the weak support from the international community, I certainly don't fault the insurrectionists who attacked legitimate military targets.
Attacking civilians is, in my view, out of bounds, although there are borderline cases, such as paramilitary groups (think Israeli settlers on the West Bank, armed gangs of skinheads in Croatia during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, etc.) where it is unclear whether they are civilian or military targets.
to dispose of them
lol
Actually, I think that all these measures help to control or reduce the power of the money or military "elite". Communism requires that the elite become integral part of society, without their privileges.
I wouldn't want to miss my freedoms to the extent as is required in a communist society (I think of positive examples like Christians choosing communitarian life; I know examples, not only Amish people). This doesn't mean that I'm egotistical and selfish to the bone. It only means that I like to choose when I want to be selfish and when I want to be generous (which appears selfish, too, I guess). I approve of social democracy where there is a balance of sacrifice for and benefit from the common good and we still have freedom to pursue our own happiness.
I don't count myself to above elites but do not buy into Marx's writings, have read some of them. His ideals are simply not fit for human nature, as is. Sorry, the right wing has nailed this and uses this fact for their own ends. I don't condemn all his ideas but we are selfish, the world is run by money and corruption, ... and no matter how peaceful Marx's ideas were, we - are - not.
"We", that's not all of us, but if there are 97 % selfless, citizens, there would still be a rest of 3 % rebellious, selfish, greedy, violent people left who could spoil the whole enterprise. But, I doubt that there would ever be only 3 %.
True. But then again, I'm not a communist :-P
OTOH, in a reasonably democratic society, depriving "the elite" of its disproportionate wealth would also deprive it of most of its privilege - certainly of most of its ability to distort the political process - and force it to live as an integral part of society. That's why I'm in favour of banning billionaires.
Also the link you provide, from Lebowitz, is more about exploring Marx's unfinished work, from a sentiment that the Capital was excessively deterministic, reductionist and lacking a humanist touch. This kind of research work will not replace the fact that the fundamentals of marxism are just that. Also you may post a thousand links like that, actually saying nothing, I won't bother analyzing them more. This is not a discussion about marxism and its application. I gave the general ideas, justified them with the ideology (which you could accept or not, comment, but not demand quotations as if we cannot use our own mind and say that seeing the society in a dialectical and historical materialism is blatantly reductionist, and led to revolutions and dictatorships.
If you really want more hairsplitting, do start a diary. My original remark was about the press freedom in communist dictatorship (term generally accepted today) and you dragging it astray is pointless. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
It is not such peripherical phrase, but the antagonism (dialectic) and the materialism along with the whole idea of taking over power that led to the bloodbaths.
It is said that a good description of chutzpah is to murder your parents and then plead for clemency on account of being an orphan.
I wonder whether we have found an even better one: To lambast a political theorist for being excessively deterministic, on account of historical determinism deterministically leading to genocide.
Do look up the history of the left wing of the Perónists. When you can place them in the correct country (and perhaps the correct decades), we can argue the merits of calling them communists, the merits of calling them totalitarian oppressors, and then the implications of the conclusions from the above points to your claim that Marxism leads inevitably and deterministically to repression and totalitarianism.
And then we can continue on to the Sandinistas, the Argentine social democrats, the Paris Commune, the left wing of the PLO, Nasserite pan-Arabism and so on and so forth.
Now, if it turns out that even one of these groups can rightly be called communists but cannot be said to be violent oppressors, your claim of deterministic causality between Marxism and totalitarian repression goes the way of the dodos, and you'll have to backpedal to a much looser Bayesian claim.
Should it turn out, then, that not even the majority of these groups imposed totalitarian dictatorships (or attempted to do so), your position will become decidedly precarious.
But you'll have to do a little reading first, I think, because I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that you don't know half those groups even by reputation. And I'm done doing your homework for you.
Those who were in a position to, and did not, were not real marxists :) I know all of those groups, I'm just not in the mood / not the time to discuss such a huge topic here and now - for instance, the Sandinistas can hardly be called marxist or communist, they looked like that, but their actual ideology never followed, and their policies when in power were hardly looking up to the Communist Society.
If you look a bit around, you'll see those who say those dictatorships were not true communists, are the latest surviving communist faithful. Fortunately in France we're almost done with both extremes, and I can't tell you how much more quiet and peaceful everything is :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Interesting. So, in your mind, had the 1956 Hungarian Revolution prevailed in Hungary or the Prague Spring in the Czech Republic; Imre Nagy, the Workers' Councils or Dubček would have progressed to exterminating the enemy class? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Neither the 1956 Revolution, nor the Prague Spring was an ideologically homogenous movement. However, Nagy, a large part of the Workers' Councils (which in fact survived the Revolution, were at first recognised by the new regime, and were dismantled only over the next two months) and Dubček were all card-carrying communists. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
"Those"? You are trying to change the subject for a second time. I asked you about Nagy, the 1956 Workers Councils, and Dubček.
Gorbatchev was a card-carrying communist too, even the best of them, right. And look where he brought them :)
Not into the extermination of the enemy class. QED. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I said that a man with a card doesn't make him communist. You don't agree that the USSR was a communist dictatorship ? Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Where is this caricature described in marx's theory ? You didn't get it from reading Marx, but from the usual caricatures in the media.
First, about the only thing we can say about human nature is that is is very flexible and adaptable, hence the great diversity of human cultures through history. We are capable of great selfishness and brutality and also self-sacrifice. Different cultures emphasise different aspects of our many possibilities.
Marx did not give any simple recipes for future communist societies, they would be developed by the people themselves in their particular circumstances (rather like Chomsky's reluctance to give advice about what people should do). But such societies would involve the removal of class differences, which doesn't involve us all being the same, having no personal possessions and all the other features of right-wing caricature.
But a communist society would not encourage selfish consumerism, but rather the development of what ML King termed "the content of their character". A recent documentary on Cuba did not yet again talk about lack of political freedom, instead it showed that culture's support for the arts, e.g. ballet, and, in that still macho culture, there were a large number of boys in the ballet schools.
Cf.:
The U.S. government would like you to believe that all U.S. citizens support the campaign against Cuba, but in fact lots of U.S. people think the country's anti-Cuba policy is for the birds. Treuhaft is one of them. He is one of the organizers of a project with the catchy title Send A Piana To Havana. "We tuners collect used pianos for Cuba, visit the island en masse to fix them, and help run our Newton Hunt Workshop/School of Tuning and Instrument Repair at the National School of Music in Havana." To show how absurd the U.S. policy is, while the Treasury is hounding Treuhaft for "trading with the enemy" in 1994, the following year he received permission from the U.S. Commerce Department to ship to Cuba the hundreds of pianos donated by U.S. citizens to Send A Piana To Havana! So far, the U.S. tuners have delivered 210 pianos to "the 90 conservatories that dot that musical island." And they have another 30 "waiting to go." But the U.S. government is well aware of the threat posed to American values and the democratic way of life by tuned pianos just over the water in Cuba. So this year OFAC refused to renew the U.S. piano tuners' license to travel to Cuba to tune the pianos Americans donated. "This makes no sense so I'm going anyway," said Treuhaft in a letter to the Cuba Desk of the U.S. State Department earlier this month. And he went. No doubt there will be further repercussions and efforts to stop Benjamin Treuhaft and his colleagues from continuing their simple humanitarian work. But every time U.S. government officials try to stymie such actions and to silence the "perpetrators," they create more rebels against U.S. policy in the U.S. itself. This article is reprinted from The Guardian, the newspaper of the Australian Communist Party. http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/us_cuba_policy_out_of_tune_opinion/
He is one of the organizers of a project with the catchy title Send A Piana To Havana. "We tuners collect used pianos for Cuba, visit the island en masse to fix them, and help run our Newton Hunt Workshop/School of Tuning and Instrument Repair at the National School of Music in Havana."
To show how absurd the U.S. policy is, while the Treasury is hounding Treuhaft for "trading with the enemy" in 1994, the following year he received permission from the U.S. Commerce Department to ship to Cuba the hundreds of pianos donated by U.S. citizens to Send A Piana To Havana!
So far, the U.S. tuners have delivered 210 pianos to "the 90 conservatories that dot that musical island." And they have another 30 "waiting to go."
But the U.S. government is well aware of the threat posed to American values and the democratic way of life by tuned pianos just over the water in Cuba. So this year OFAC refused to renew the U.S. piano tuners' license to travel to Cuba to tune the pianos Americans donated.
"This makes no sense so I'm going anyway," said Treuhaft in a letter to the Cuba Desk of the U.S. State Department earlier this month. And he went.
No doubt there will be further repercussions and efforts to stop Benjamin Treuhaft and his colleagues from continuing their simple humanitarian work. But every time U.S. government officials try to stymie such actions and to silence the "perpetrators," they create more rebels against U.S. policy in the U.S. itself.
This article is reprinted from The Guardian, the newspaper of the Australian Communist Party.
http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/us_cuba_policy_out_of_tune_opinion/
Communism is about people's potential and forms of social organisation which will develop that - not people's potential to make a few individuals very wealthy. People won't be perfect, but they won't be ruthlessly exploited and will be encouraged to understand that the development of each person requires the development of the whole society towards more humane ends (see the bit about medicine in Cuba in an earlier comment). Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
At some times, we can fit reality into many ideological frames. But beyond some point, ideology becomes like a masturbation (in mild cases). Stalin was probably aware of how far were Marx-Lenin's ideals and the real world. Trying too hard to realize a "perfection" in practice is certainly dangerous. Working ideology should be respectful of existing background, and give people time to adjust. This smells like conservativism a bit. But modern conservativism allows this wild race economical transformations, while being very narrow-minded how the whole world should adjust.
There may be times when we need to guess the right view of the world, for mere survival or civilization continuation. Otherwise no one would have a vision nor determination. Collective thinking may not be in the human nature (even without so much rationalization of individualism), but if this is this is necessary for adaption, it is within our capabilities to adopt that collective way.
i'm starting to wonder if stalin hijacked marx in the same way bush hijacked jesus... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Fortunately he was quite produtive and his writings has studied extensively.
Dictatorship of the proletariat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term "dictatorship" describes control by an entire class, rather than a single individual (dictator rei gerendae causa). According to Marx, the bourgeois state, being a system of class rule, amounts to a 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.' When workers take state power into their hands, they become the new ruling class and rule in their own interest, temporarily using the state machinery to prevent the bourgeoisie mounting a counterrevolution. Although Marx did not plan out the details of how such a dictatorship would be implemented, he pointed to the Paris Commune as a model of transition to communism. He stated that: The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.[1] This social order with its emphasis on recallable delegates and maximal public participation in governance has many similarities to the modern conception of direct democracy. Friedrich Engels, in his 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France, stated that "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." He criticized what he saw as corruption among politicians and stated that "the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts - administrative, judicial, and educational - by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion." He also stated that the state is "at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap."[2] Marx's attention to the Paris Commune would make the commune take a central place in the thought of later Marxists.
Although Marx did not plan out the details of how such a dictatorship would be implemented, he pointed to the Paris Commune as a model of transition to communism. He stated that:
The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.[1]
This social order with its emphasis on recallable delegates and maximal public participation in governance has many similarities to the modern conception of direct democracy.
Friedrich Engels, in his 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France, stated that "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." He criticized what he saw as corruption among politicians and stated that "the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts - administrative, judicial, and educational - by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion." He also stated that the state is "at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap."[2] Marx's attention to the Paris Commune would make the commune take a central place in the thought of later Marxists.
Sounds a bit different to Lenins defintions. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
But speaking of your excerpt, I knew this, I just didn't want to get into that much detail, because seeing a situation as the enemy class' dictatorship is a part of the same manicheist and violent vision. One can always argue violence can be justified when nothing else works, but the point was about the term communist dictatorship being a contradictio in termine.
We can discuss all this in detail, I only feared, as before, that this blog too will become about each and every social and political issue today or in the past.
Or is it me managing to systematically position myself opposite each and every "truth" established through previous ET debates. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/common_liberal.htm#fw03
...it must be a democracy for the exploited, ‘and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from “democracy”. The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class, and, consequently, the infringement of “pure democracy”, i.e., of equality and freedom, in regard to that class. The proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its adversaries, and that, where there is “forcible suppression”, where there is no “freedom”, there is, of course, no democracy
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/equality.htm Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
"So, do you simply dream of this perfect world with wonderful human beings where communism as described in theory would be a reality?" Where is this caricature described in marx's theory ? You didn't get it from reading Marx, but from the usual caricatures in the media.
No.
I got this caricature from comparing Marx/you with what I have seen and experienced and heard/learnt from others in real life.
First, about the only thing we can say about human nature is that is is very flexible and adaptable, hence the great diversity of human cultures through history. We are capable of great selfishness and brutality and also self-sacrifice.
In the "free world", democracy - you risk having poor people, a hopefully broad middle class, and few (very) wealthy people, i.e. huge inequality. But then, there would also be freedom of speech for everyone, and selfishness is framed by legal boundaries. Maybe we achieve only little but life is full of possibilities.
Of course we're flexible and adaptable but I would not want to adapt to what other people believe works best for them, and hence for me. I don't repeat any media mantra. I speak of myself.
Right-wingers also say that we are all selfish, and that "communists" are greedy people who want to have from rich people [read in the media]. Well, well, ... - I have read a bit about Cuba, and have found that your words about Cuba's education and health systems have merit. At the same time, the rich and many people of the middle class, artists and intellectuals in particular LEFT THE COUNTRY when it went communist. Those who benefited from the change stayed. ;) Further, Cuba depended on aid from the Soviet Union which led to a crisis after 1989. (no quotes; from a brochure on Latin America issued by the German Government).
Marx did not give any simple recipes for future communist societies, they would be developed by the people themselves in their particular circumstances
Communism is about people's potential and forms of social organisation which will develop that - not people's potential to make a few individuals very wealthy. People won't be perfect, but they won't be ruthlessly exploited and will be encouraged to understand that the development of each person requires the development of the whole society towards more humane ends (see the bit about medicine in Cuba in an earlier comment).
All this can only work when all involved can agree on a (this) common belief system. I for one have a genuine distrust in human constructs. Let's assume that a majority will democratically decide on communism as the new state form. This would not simply mean that I would then be part of the "minority" because there would be no minority anymore but all would have to "forcefully" (that's reality; it doesn't necessarily imply physical force) surrender to this system, where I would LOSE my anti-communistic voice. I would have to be oppressed.
This is profoundly different from the communist who complains about social injustice in a democratic system. He can still make his voice heard, give his wealth to the poor. The greedy rich ones will stay wealthy, and there will still be poor people. Communism implies that wealth will be (more) equally distributed (ideally). The rich person will have to give his money to the less fortunate.
Individuals who prefer democracy to communism also understand that it is unhealthy when there is a huge discrepancy between rich and poor. From the rich person's perspective, there will be instability.
It seems that today's pragmatism takes this also into account: In above-mentioned brochure, it was also stated that both Bolivia and Chile today rather looked like social democracies, and Obama's change also includes improving social safety (health care, education, ...).
These are natural developments that take into account both our selfish human nature and this:
the development of each person requires the development of the whole society towards more humane ends
Marxist theories will be (and are already) put in practise, neither in its idealistic perfection nor in its destructive form. Diversity (cultural, religious, personal, through free choice at many different levels) will be preserved; there will still be incentives to grow and excel (the positive side of our selfish nature), etc.
