Attitudes Towards Communism

CaptJ said:
Can you elaborate? Most people just shout right wing conspiracy and leave it at that.
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Sure:

"Cultural Marxism" is literally not an ideology that anyone actually describes themselves as following, nor a word used by anyone but those saying it's supposedly a problem. Nobody thinks to themselves "Gee, I'm going to make sure the means of production go from one culture to another", nobody actually practices Marxism but with cultures.

The term is used by people who simultaneously misunderstand progressive ideology and misunderstand Marxist ideology so lump them together even though only the most tenuous connections are there.

Say hypothetically someone wanted to dispute conservative ideology so started referring to how there's a real problem with "Conservative Monarchists" because conservatives agree with inheritance and so do monarchists. That'd be an insane characterisation of conservative ideology based on tenuous connections, and would basically make them look ridiculous.

That's how people who talk about "Cultural Marxism" come across. Mischaracterising progressive ideology to make it seem like it's an extension of (Their poor understanding of) Marxist ideology.
 
CT Phipps said:
The real question for me is....why do so many Europeans seem to still like it? In Portugal, Italy, and many other places you'd think they'd completely missed the truth about so many communist states.
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Because Western Europe countries didn't suffer under the communism. They had loans from US to rebuild after WW2, while Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, DDR or Yugoslavia had to rebuild from scraps that USSR left them from reparations.

Even today you can see disproportion between East and West. But those western communists live too far to see all those scars left by communism.
 
Because a great deal of he American commies here and the like are completely delusional, at best, naive. They say Euro socialism is possible simply because the Europeans do it and completely ignore the differences between culture and populations.

If our 'free college' folks knew that free college meant bare bones education with little choice, especially the loss of 'useless degrees', they wouldn't like free college very much at all. No campus culture, no rock climbing walls, no brand new dorms and Olympic pools, no consistent access to professors, oh nooooos.
 
mithrap said:
"The cleansing of the Russian land of any harmful insects, swindler-fleas, wealthy bugs and so on and so on. In one place, they should imprison a dozen wealthy people... in a fourth place, one out of every ten people guilty of parasitism should be executed on the spot!" (Lenin, 1918).
That's litteraly a call for the decimation of its own land. What followed was death camps, and about 4 million people killed just to make a point.
Then, there's the civil war, the extermination of the cossacks etc.
As soon as they got into power in 1917, Lenin and Trotsky abolished the right to strike, abolished the free press, abolished the right to emigrate, abolished the right to freedom of religion and abolished workers trade unions (which were a thing under the tsars, surprisingly)
Maybe there's a reason why communist countries were rightfully hated before they even formed a proper government, since any kind of doctrine that calls for the decimation of your own country is fundamentally brutal.

Economic prosperity? Russia applied Marx's centralized economy idea, which made the ruble lose 96% of its value by 1919. He then thought it was a good idea to weaponize starvation to starve out the enemies of the regime. Same thing happened in Cuba. 30 000 makeshift ships left for Florida, led by people who were starving.

Progress? The pseudoscience of Lysenkoism was enforced in schools and universities in the Soviet Union, and scientific dissenters were executed.


"Merciless war against these kulaks! Death to them!" (Lenin, 1918). About what, 4 million people killed?
You can't install a communist government without people resisting, since you are attacking their private properties by the mere existence of the philosophy behind the state. Unless you are bringing an era of peace and prosperity, if you try to nationalize my business, I'll salt the ground it stands on. Try to force me into a philosophy, I'll resist. That's human nature.
The mere existence of communism calls for an opposition, because human nature. We value what we own, wether it's objects, funds, rights, activity or structures.
THEN, you have to make sure resistance doesn't kick in, because if you don't, resistance WILL kick in. So what, democides like in every single communist state ever made?
El Salvador, Somoza, The Sandinistas, the Guatemalan, the Russian, the Cubans, the Chinese... every single communist entity went through democide.


Agreed, absolutely. But, something else is happening with economic imperialism: We should get to 3% of poverty by 2050, when it was about 80% about a century ago. That's the first real significant, global poverty decline in human history.


On the scale of one single village, and information can be quite hard to combine when we talk about China.
Also, communism fully understands hierarchy. Just ask Marx about the slavs, or ask Lenin about the kulaks.


Fish don't have sex the way we do.
Fish don't fuck.
That changes everything when it comes to social structure, and therefore, they can't be used as comparison.


Bears are solitary animals, while humans are not.


Not quite. Their structure is based on pure raw strength, and they acknowledge "social classes" based on that. That's why they are the species known for hiring "hitmen" orangutans to kill female rivals. They have a hierarchy, based on who they fuck, and based on how strong they are.
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I asked you to bring your sources, and you didn't give any. Not a single one. Instead you write lots of letters, and many of them make up wrong statements. This is not very encouraging. It makes me suspect that you're not a person who seeks the truth, in this case, but rather a person who seeks to maintain and spread one's beliefs, no matter how right or wrong. So i won't spend any much time refuting anything you said, as i doubt it'd help. But in distant hope i am wrong with said suspicion, here's some bullet points for your consideration.

- the quote you gave (Lenin 1918) mentions parasites, and execution of every tenth of them on the spot. This is not aggression - but reaction to actions said parasitic citizens were doing in the country, and were doing for many decades. Exploitation was widespread. Do you take pity when you poison rats and cockroaches to get rid of such infestations? As for executing each tenth, that goes all the way back to ancient Rome. Called "decimation", iirc. Quite effective when any softer means are known to fail. Not a "commie" invention at all.

- "death camps where 4 millions were killed just to make a point": this is your sick imagination, buddy. Lots of people were killed during civil war, collectivization and repressions, but none "just to make a point". You were not there during secret NKVD meetings. You have no freaking idea how and why so much blood had to be spilled in order to prevent even worse. You probably do not even know the language NKVD wrote their documents with, nor did you see any.

- civil war there was, yes. Which in no way anyhow proves that communism in itself requires any violence.

- extermination of cossacks: like i told you, Red Terror was always only reaction, not unprovoked aggression. In this particular case, you possibly do not know that "In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the tsarist regime employed them extensively to perform police service and suppress the revolutionary movement, especially in 1905–07". That's a quote from wikipedia's article on the subject. I doubt you even read that readily available source before making your statement here. I even doubt you know what happened during said 1905-07 years, and how much bolshviks' blood was spilled. This ain't pretty no matter "who started", but back then, there was not much of a choice. Especially after Don cossacks claimed control of their own government. Too much blood between the two parties. One had to go, and to go for quite good, for things to somehow settle.

- what Lenin did in 1917 once he got in power is not what you say. Far from. What you say it like hater's vision of it, twisting every possible detail to depict Lenin's actions as bad and bad only. Do yourself a favor and at least read this, if you're going to know anything about it...

That's enough of it. I'm tired of your crap. You can go on without my participation if you want - but i'm outta here. Can't go on with this talk if you fail to know even such undisputed and documented hostorical facts, instead voicing dramatically biased opinion on the matter.
 
Jogre said:
Sure:

"Cultural Marxism" is literally not an ideology that anyone actually describes themselves as following, nor a word used by anyone but those saying it's supposedly a problem. Nobody thinks to themselves "Gee, I'm going to make sure the means of production go from one culture to another", nobody actually practices Marxism but with cultures.

The term is used by people who simultaneously misunderstand progressive ideology and misunderstand Marxist ideology so lump them together even though only the most tenuous connections are there.

Say hypothetically someone wanted to dispute conservative ideology so started referring to how there's a real problem with "Conservative Monarchists" because conservatives agree with inheritance and so do monarchists. That'd be an insane characterisation of conservative ideology based on tenuous connections, and would basically make them look ridiculous.

That's how people who talk about "Cultural Marxism" come across. Mischaracterising progressive ideology to make it seem like it's an extension of (Their poor understanding of) Marxist ideology.
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Although Marxism is certainly present in "progressive ideologies". Large parts of modern sociology is based on or at least heavily influenced by poststructuralism which in turn was heavily influenced by Marxism.
There is, of course, lots of variation in the political opinions in sociology/cultural studies/critical studies. For example, here's a plea for radical geographers to abandon Marx and embrace anarchism instead!
 
@Jogre
I was hoping that you would clarify specifically how is Cultural Marxism a conspiracy theory. Do people mean its origin, its existence, its "purpose", or something more specific or more general? You make the case that Cultural Marxism is just some weird umbrella word for things that some conservatives dislike that isn't outright Marxism. However, I was hoping on some insight on whether the Frankfurt school's development of Critical Theory (which is said to be inspired by a Marxist perspective) led to "Cultural Marxism".
 
Well, "Cultural Marxism" was apparently first used by critics of the Frankfurt School who thought that the Frankfurt School was not radical enough.
Now it's mainly a term that's used to say that the commies are back, and they're trying something different now!
I think it was first used in that way by William Lind in 2000.
"Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious."
And yes, "political correctness" as we know it today is based on intersectionalism and critical theory, which is heavily influenced by Marx. But that doesn't mean that there's a secret plot to turn everyone into commies under a different name.
 
CT Phipps said:
The real question for me is....why do so many Europeans seem to still like it? In Portugal, Italy, and many other places you'd think they'd completely missed the truth about so many communist states.
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I can't talk for other countries, but the case in Portugal is because the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) fights for the workers rights and for those in rural areas that usually are ignored or screwed by the government.
In addition, the PCP was also one of the more fervent "enemies" of the Portuguese dictator Salazar, and got persecuted, arrested, tortured, executed and actively hunted by the secret police while always "fighting" against the dictatorship.

Portuguese communism is a lot different from the communism that caused massacres, corruption and all of those evil things.
Unlike virtually all other European communist parties, the PCP was not formed after a split of a social democratic or socialist party, but from the ranks of anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary syndicalist groups, the most active factions in the Portuguese labour movement.

While Salazar was waging a colonial war that was devastating Portuguese economy and military, the communist party was causing mistrust on the regime, by opposing that war and educating people about how devastating it was for Portugal both economical and in terms of people. This lead to a decline to the dictatorship regime by increasing people's distrust against Salazar. This was more aggravating since a few high profile people from the communist party managed to escape from Salazar's high security prison and told all of the atrocities that were committed there.
All of this helped lead to the peaceful revolution (not one shot was fired) that deposed Salazar and brought democracy to Portugal.
They also helped grant independence to African colonies after the dictatorship.

The party also managed to push worker rights that wouldn't be otherwise granted over the years (for example, they were responsible for the 8 hours work daily).

So, in Portugal's case, communism was actually very useful to bring democracy, worker rights and other good things to the country (better rural representation for the country financial budgets for example). And that is why many older people and rural people like them.

Hope that explains why in Portugal, the PCP has some supporters.
 
For Spain it's pretty much like the above; except Franco actively went out of its way (and made the Civil War not be a Blitzkrieg due to doing that) to imprison, execute and scare away all "reds". There is the fact too that the URSS was the only foreign intervention still actively in favour of the Republic after the Treaty of Non Intervention that the would-be Allies and the would-be Axis signed about the conflict (which the former would ignore). There is to add that during the Civil War itself and the Republican front being splintered for arming the populace, several quite literal and effective regions adoped communism proper until the rebels got up there.

During and after the war, the communists, anarchists and republicans left were responsible of most guerilla and "terrorism" directed at the regime, too.

There is hardly any attention for them nowadays, though.
 
My attitude towards communism is that it will always fail no matter how implemented as it goes against base human nature. No matter how it has been implemented a black market will always spring up to accommodate peoples wants. Communism will take care of there needs but not there wants, so inevitable a capitalist economy will spring up weather legally or not to accommodate those wants.

To butcher Churchill "Capitalism is the worst form of economy, except for all the others."

You just cant go against your base nature.
 
Arnust said:
I think that this ideal "anarchism" of yours is way closer to the respectively ideal communism than you might think.
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I generally favor a mixed capitalist/socialist model as a political and economic body. Wealth needs to be generated for the public but also distributed to the benefit of all.

I'm also motivated strongly by theism.

:)

My RL beliefs don't much reflect my desire for Raiders and city-states in Fallout.

GonZo_626 said:
My attitude towards communism is that it will always fail no matter how implemented as it goes against base human nature. No matter how it has been implemented a black market will always spring up to accommodate peoples wants. Communism will take care of there needs but not there wants, so inevitable a capitalist economy will spring up weather legally or not to accommodate those wants.

To butcher Churchill "Capitalism is the worst form of economy, except for all the others."

You just cant go against your base nature.
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My actual belief is communism isn't a coherent economic system at all but an ideology of anti-elitism. It doesn't really say what its for so much as against.
 
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CT Phipps said:
It doesn't really say what its for so much as against.
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That is really only a matter of perspective. Capitalism is also "against" many things, and so will any dogma, ideology and set of principles and terms. I'd say don't confuse a greatly transformative with an aboloshing.
 
...Again, most European 'Socialism' is Social Democracy. The Portuguese and Spanish 'socialist' parties dropped even Democratic Socialism in the 90s and are just Social Democratic. The French Socialists are SocDems and DemSocs. They're almost fully capitalist, just in a Social Democratic model. Nearly every Socialist party in Europe is, to Socialists and Communists, Centre and Center-left at best. Other parties don't even pretend to be Socialist in any way, such as the SPD and SPO. Traitors and compromisers to the radicals, really.
 
...while having suffered the most from its failures, and consequences of its failures.
As much as I dislike communism and find it little more than a nice pipe dream, this phobia of communism and socialism and everything even remotely "red" that is inherent in parts of American population is simply hilarious.
 
Hassknecht said:
Why do Europeans don't hate Communism as massively as Americans? We weren't indocrinated as hard against it in the last century.
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Actually, my confusion was more the fact they'd know the horrific conditions going on just beyond the wall and repression.

My bewilderment is primarily from the perspective of seeing so many people supporting it who would otherwise be hugely into personal liberty and freedom of thought.
 
CT Phipps said:
Actually, my confusion was more the fact they'd know the horrific conditions going on just beyond the wall and repression.

My bewilderment is primarily from the perspective of seeing so many people supporting it who would otherwise be hugely into personal liberty and freedom of thought.
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Most people sympathethic of the communist ideology or even just loose principles would same. You aren't really showing much perspective, in a way.

People worked and lived inside the society that they found themselves in; just like you and I do in ours. It is no dount pitiful that the grander scale attempts have all been warped, but that doesn't mean it is somehow inherently completely unreasonable from the ground up. That movie, "Bye bye Lenin" is, while not as much of a documentary, a pretty good show of how it worked for the people who weren't split apart or became the protagonist of any future historical drama. Hell, the Berlin Wall itself is as representative of capitalism respectively as it is of the opposite.

Not everyone experienced the same TERRIBLE ATROCITIES the same way you aren't suffering the terrible shit that happens under liberal, dangerously reaching to neo liberal capitalism all over the world for all excuses and circumstances.
 
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