Made For Each Other | 83 comments (83 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Couple comments. (4.00 / 5)

First, the screed has taken as central point of analysis of Communism the Communism practised in the PRC since Deng...I'm not saying this is wrong, but I would say two things. One, this is but one variant, a highly successful one no doubt in terms of economic and social development (let's not ignore that the PRC has developed quite a lot socially over the past generation) but all the same, only one version of the story. Not all Communists look at the PRC as a model (far from it) and not all "actually-existing-socialism" operated (or indeed operates) under this model. Two, in the PRC's case this "actually-existing-socialism" really needs to be analysed within a much larger context, the context ultimately of the direction of where the Party sees Chinese society developing (and in this I personally, while taking issue with some of the Party's rule in the PRC, would take to be very much one of progress). This is not at all the case for US conservatives - progress is not at all an animating feature of US Conservatism; though they will use technological advances to facilitate further wealth transfer to their own class, the overarching ideological framework is ultimately reactionary, which is why Dubya was reading about the McKinley administration when he was first elected. So, while you can clearly see how there is an intersection of interests between the Party and US Conservatives (in the former, using the latter to further develop the economy, for the latter, using the PRC to enrich themselves further) the ideological basis underpinning the interests of each is quite different.

Another comment is that one criticism of Communism which fall flat for me (and please note, many do not...) is one where party cadres "are rich" or "enjoy priviledges mere workers can only dream of," and that somehow this is problematic. The goal is egalitarian society, but we also have to consider Principal-Agent issues; incentives need to be in place to reward hard work, ingenuity and so forth, or you will not get hard work or ingenuity. The point is to ensure that no one is overly rewarded (as in Western oligarchies) all the while ensuring the basic needs and dignity of all. Think moving towards ever lower gini, coupled with decent growth, over the long term. That's not what the US conservatives are seeking, but it is what the regime in Beijing is seeking. After that, we can talk about corruption, and in the PRC's case this is a big issue. But, that is a side (if indeed major) issue which does not address the actual ideological position of the regime itself (and indeed the party takes corruption quite seriously to which much high-profile criminal cases can attest). It is quite a different thing to be wealthy in the PRC than it is to be wealthy in the USA, and this should be considered.

But the PRC is only one model. There are others, and in particular there is much recent literature here in Europe on those others, which may or may not be of interest to the screed-writer. I personally think, given his theme here, that he'd enjoy the chapter on Stalin in Slavoj Zizek's "In Defence of Lost Causes".

I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from them Eugene Debs

by redstar on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 05:45:31 AM EST

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 3)

It must be remembered that the author is writing for an American audience. Deprogramming such an audience of the reds-under-the-beds view of socialism is probably a much less productive effort than demonstrating how the current imperial oligarchy conforms so very closely to the reds-under-the-beds view of socialism.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 06:17:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 2)

But it doesn't make communication between Anglo Americans and the rest of the world easier. I know that they tend to say "liberalism" where they mean political capitalism, and "communism" for authoritarian state capitalism, but it's tedious to always have to think if a word means what it means or what they use it for in the USA.

My first reaction to this text was laughter about the commie under the bed stuff. I found the author's views on communism ridiculous. I really had to re-read the text before I got that he wasn't writing about communism at all, and I wouldn't have re-read it normally.

by Katrin on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 06:48:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (none / 1)

I generally find it easier to assume that anything written in English by someone of whom I know nothing else is going to conform to the somewhat idiosyncratic American political terminology.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 09:46:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (none / 1)

I think the article is not strange by terminology, but by the "dialectic" (ideas and way of thinking?).

by PerCLupi on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 10:14:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 2)

Right: it's not only the terminology. It's the attitudes the author takes for granted.

by Katrin on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 10:35:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 3)

i think he's trying to meet the people 'at their level' prior to dragging them up a notch wrt class consciousness, aka social perception.

if that's his goal, i think he probably succeeded.

"It's very hard to see what is kept invisible" Roseanne Barr

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sat Jun 23rd, 2012 at 07:22:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 2)

Sure, but reaffirming the red scare myths means that these people will continue to hide under their beds whenever they hear words like "trade unions", "wealth distribution", and all that. So, he will perhaps have changed some attitudes, but he will have discouraged his readers from doing something.

by Katrin on Sat Jun 23rd, 2012 at 02:19:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 5)

The message should be: "Remember all of that scary talk about the Communist Conspiracy? Well, guess who admires the last remaining major Communist state, has that state as their preferred business partner, and is working hard to obtain exactly the same kind of total power over the citizens as that power holds?

The Faux-Libertarians and their minions in the financial sector!

Here is how and why. Through the corrupt political campaign funding process they have more influence that all other groups combined. Both US major parties are sufficiently captured by financial interests that they will not enact any legislation that harms that sector and have repealed rules and regulations that protected the average citizen but constrained the financial sector.

No matter how risky and ill-advised are the bets that financial organizations make in 'the markets' the big corporations will be bailed out at taxpayer expense when things go wrong. Does that mean taxpayers get control of those corporations when they are bailed out? Don't be foolish. The politicians are so captured that they cannot conceive of operating without these financial entities, so the Too Big To Fails will be set back on their feet with public funds so they can continue to make the contributions the politicians count on.

Think that this is insane? It is, but it is the insane reality. If the entire US political class, all partners at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and all top executives, vice presidents and directors at Citi, BOA and Wells Fargo were put in jail it would be no great loss to the country. Quite to the contrary, it would be the beginning of an opportunity to reclaim the rights we though we had and to run the country in the interests of the bottom 98%.

The only question is if the rest of the country, together, could come up with leaders who had the courage and vision to attempt to create a better world. The danger is that we would be like liberated lab rats and run back to our cages looking for food and water. It is your choice.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Jun 23rd, 2012 at 05:12:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 2)

Much better than the original!

by Katrin on Sat Jun 23rd, 2012 at 05:24:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 7)

the ideological basis underpinning the interests of each is quite different.

The ideological basis underpinning the interests of each is irrelevant. All that matters are actions.

A critical failure of both the left and the right is that it's so painfully easy to seduce people with promises and rhetoric.

The only useful basis for judging true interests is action. If actions are authoritarian (and let's not pretend that Mao and Stalin were anything other than dull-witted king wannabes, no matter what their rhetoric said) then the ideology is also authoritarian.

The goal is egalitarian society, but we also have to consider Principal-Agent issues; incentives need to be in place to reward hard work, ingenuity and so forth, or you will not get hard work or ingenuity.

Fer sure. But sometimes it seems very hard to tell the difference between rewards and the gratuitous enjoyment of unearned privilege.

The key takeway for me is that there is a single reliable process by which societies fail and destroy themselves. The process is identical no matter what rhetorical clothes it dresses itself in, or what enemies it claims to hate.

Concentration of power and resources reliably poisons every culture it happens to. The only possible result is oligarchy, and a subsequent failure of resilience and the ability to deal with real-world challenges successfully.

I think we need to get past the old descriptions - left, right, communist, conservative, etc - and make the common problem the issue it is.

We could also do with getting this narrative into politics and law, so that unlawful concentration and appropriation of more than a reasonable share of anything - money, power, media ownership, land - is explicitly forbidden.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 08:24:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 7)

Ibn Khaldun wrote something about nomads conquering the throne because the rulers grew fat and demanded ever higher tributes. Then the nomads became rulers and at first demanded low tributes because they were not used to luxuries anyway, but as timed passed so grew their appetite until it was time for new nomads to conquer the throne.

Fits with Curtis latest btw:

BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: HOW TO KILL A RATIONAL PEASANT

Galula was the star guest and he got up to speak first. To begin with he put forward his fundamental theory.
"Revolutionary warfare requires a revolutionary approach on both sides in the struggle. Whereas in ordinary war the objective is to destroy the enemy and occupy his territory, the guerrilla's aim is to control the population.
This, therefore, must be the aim of the counter-guerrilla as well"
But then Galula put the boot in to the aspiring counter-insurgents. Whether it was due to his disenchantment with what had happened in Algeria is not clear - but Galula laid out the central problem for the counterinsurgents when they tried to mirror the communist revolutionaries - they didn't have a cause:
"One basic difference between insurgency and counterinsurgency is that the insurgent starts out with nothing but a cause and grows to strength, while counterinsurgent often starts with everything but a cause and gradually declines in strength to the point of weakness"
So the RAND corporation decided to find something equivalent to a cause, powerful enough to bring the villagers in SE Asia over to the American side.

But somehow the ideas of the rulers had problems gaining traction, perhaps because they underpinned a system designed to control the very same persons they tried to sell the ideas to.

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!

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 08:32:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 4)

Fascinating. But he implies that the colonial administrations needed Mao to teach them torture. And that the horror started when the people involved in the torture and murder program started to torture and murder the slightly wrong people.

Von überall könnte das Volk, Urbrut alles Undemokratischen, Zelle des Terrors, über die gewählten Hüter von Wachstum und Wohlstand® kommen. - flatter

by generic on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 09:32:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Three recommends for citing Ibn Khaldun. (none / 1)

Assuming via Toynbee?

I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from them Eugene Debs

by redstar on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 10:51:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Three recommends for citing Ibn Khaldun. (none / 1)

No I have Ibn Khaldun in my bookshelf, and have yet to read Toynbee. :)

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!

by A swedish kind of death on Fri Jun 22nd, 2012 at 04:13:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 4)

It is said that most of the Spartacus army wanted just to take positions of their masters rather than to live independently from them. That is why they did not escape to the North but turned deep to the peninsula. Rome was offering much more goods and entertainment than boring provinces and - gods forbid - outside lands. Ask Ovidius.

by das monde on Fri Jun 22nd, 2012 at 05:05:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

I think there is a action/reaction (4.00 / 3)

interplay that you are missing when you posit that only actions count. And, the motive (or ideology, if you will) of the action is often calculated with reaction in mind. In short, one does not engage in one acts neccesarily with only a mechanistic view towards the results of those actions, but it can happen, when with an ideological impetus and with a proper institutional apparatus, that those actions be calculated to bring about not only economic progress but also social and environmental change.

For all their shortcomings and authoritarianism, I cannot help but not that the Party in the PRC has also overssen vast social change which has moved China from a country where women had their feet stunted on purpose in order to walk in a certain way (and certainly not ever be able to run) to a world where Chinese women are nearing equality with men on par with many if not most of the western oligarchies (and I have no doubt strides will continue to be made in this regard). I note a China whose attitudes towards homosexuality were as backwards as any in the world and see that equality in this regard is equally seeing great strides. I note a China which is far more open to tourism both of its own citizens and of peoples of other countries to the PRC, something we did not see in proper measure in other coutries with "actually-existing-socialism". And, I note that the Party is allocating resources (capital, if you will) to Green energies in a way the banks of the western oligarchies are incapable of doing, especially in Solar.

So, I'm with you on actions, I just interpret the actions a bit differently than you seem to.

I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from them Eugene Debs

by redstar on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 11:57:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

chinese progress on sexual equality (4.00 / 4)

is not progressing, it is receding if anything, from the high water mark in the maoist era. that it remains much better than before the northern expedition in the 20s (a joint venture between the communists and nationalists, before their falling out in '27) is less of a statement on the progress of the current CCP on gender, and more of a legacy of the huge changes in the 20th century before deng.

before deng's reforms, you couldn't just fire women because you felt like it. these days, the radical equality of the maoist era is disparaged as "unnatural," and employers can discriminate however they want.

there are significant progresses being made on sexuality, however, although there as well it is despite the CCP and not because of it.

by wu ming on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 03:21:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: chinese progress on sexual equality (4.00 / 4)

wu ming:

chinese progress on sexual equality (none / 1) is not progressing, it is receding if anything, from the high water mark in the maoist era

I suspect gini coefficient follows a similar pattern.

My guess is sometime down the line - when it no longer matters that much - historians will mark an arbitrary but neat-looking point in time when communism in China was replaced by fascism (exact point depending on what you consider the dominant feature of communism and fascism).

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!

by A swedish kind of death on Fri Jun 22nd, 2012 at 04:20:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: chinese progress on sexual equality (4.00 / 6)

After living in Vietnam quite a long time then crossing China, what struck me was that the little bit of countryside I saw in China seemed much poorer and dreary (despite being near the tourist hotspot of YangShuo) than the equivalent countryside across the border in Viet Nam.

Also, the fields in southernmost China were devoted to industrial sugar cane monoculture - a kind of large scale cultivation that implies proletarisation of the workers - whereas Vietnam still has, and seems to keep, small scale ( but extremely productive) rice cultivation.

China is very strongly redistributing wealth from the countryside to the big cities (Shanghai is already as modern and well-kept as your average western city ; a smaller city like Nanning, much less so...)

Also, comparing the systems of China and Vietnam (legally pretty much identically based on party rule), it seemed clear the "rule of the state" is not as strong-handed in Vietnam where the party must in some ways compose with civil society ; when the governement tried to ban facebook it was unable to do so properly so that Vietnamese still use it ; many expropriations are refused by the occupiers of the land who are able to prevent them...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Tue Jun 26th, 2012 at 04:12:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: I think there is a action/reaction (4.00 / 2)

As others have pointed out, I think you're confusing tokenism on certain issues (specifically those mentioned in the Official Left Curriculum) for progress in general.

The fact that you couldn't fire a woman is surely overshadowed by the fact that most women still had very limited freedoms. And I think anyone who believes there was no casting couch or droit de cadre oppression of women in Maoist China may not have been looking at what was really going on.

We don't know what a non-Communist China would have looked like. But is China really any more progressive now than Taiwan or Japan, which seem like reasonable reference points?

It's certainly true that China is working towards Green energy. But China is also producing vast clouds of lethal pollution. Which is the true China?

The basic Marxist problem is that Marx took industrialistion as a given and simply wanted to give the keys to the factories and mines to the workers.

So far as I know he never questioned industrialisation as a goal. And he didn't lay down any specifics for dealing with predatory or sociopathic personalities.

Therefore, Stalin and Mao.

Now, it's acknowledged often enough that while capitalist societies have some diversity of power, even when they become oligarchies, socialist and communist societies always seem to revert to kingdoms. The king may appear to wear factory fatigues - sometimes. But the essential dynamic is even more feudal than that of Western cultures. (Although usefully, the West exports its feudalisms elsewhere while giving its citizens some extra benefits - rather like Rome.)

The point of the article remains - in the limit, feudal and industrial societies converge, and citizens in both labour for their masters rather than for themselves.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat Jun 23rd, 2012 at 11:16:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: I think there is a action/reaction (4.00 / 3)

Now, it's acknowledged often enough that while capitalist societies have some diversity of power, even when they become oligarchies, socialist and communist societies always seem to revert to kingdoms.

Is this a coincidence? I don't know much about Marx, but he has obvious dislike to urban bourgeoisie, that was so common among landed aristocracy. Engels opposed land taxes as an "utopist" idea. The only goal of socialism was to be the nationalisation of industrial capital, without any idea how housing and resources would be allocated afterwards in "the dream society." When asked, he said "socialism is not supposed to be fair, it is supposed to be effective."

by kjr63 on Sun Jun 24th, 2012 at 08:33:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (none / 1)

It must also be understood that the PRC took power about thirty years after the Soviets and that the development of semi-hereditary status, membership and privilege in the Chinese Communist Party, and, especially, the negative effects of such status has taken comparable time to develop. But I think that the tact of formally worshiping the forms of Republican Democracy, as in the USA, all the while undermining the substance, especially by capturing first academia and then the government through offers of wealth and status, is a much more effective strategy, and, perhaps, the only possible long term strategy to pursue, when the intent is to loot and despoil for private profit the wealth and assets of a country such as the USA or Canada.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 09:04:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Couple comments. (4.00 / 4)

party cadres "are rich" or "enjoy priviledges mere workers can only dream of,"

Many of the "new rich" in Russia and the ex-Soviet states are former Party cadres (especially in legal enforcement and services, military), so we could ask them, how the privileges and riches compare. Some would guess that they are among the biggest beneficiaries of the regime change.

I don't particularly know about the Communist special shops and dachas. But the Commies did spend a lot on public education, transportation, not just military and cosmic races. Social segregation was pretty small - your kids could be playing with big boss's kids at school or on a summer camp. Now Eastern European media brags about 3 floor apartments with chic design and saunas for record rent in capital centers; thereby former library, book shop, movie theater buildings are occupied by banks most frequently.

by das monde on Thu Jun 21st, 2012 at 09:38:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Made For Each Other | 83 comments (83 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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