Discussing Communism

[JagerIV]

This is a place for the overflow on the discussion on the merits of communism, since it was starting to derail.

@Lord Sovereign @Navarro

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Communism is big gay.

I have spoken.

 

[Navarro]

So as I was saying, modern Marxists literally invert Marx himself as a result of their desperate rationalisations as to how the World REVOLUTION!!1! didn't happen:

Justly Discredited, Trade, Moneylending, & Capital

friesian.com

After the epigraph above by the British English professor Terry Eagleton (b.1943), I might have a look at one of the principal exemplars of English Department Marxism in the United States, Fredric Jameson (b.1934), a professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, responsible for a book with the interesting title Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism [1991]. The reference to "late capitalism" in the title is typical of the genre, embodying a conceit that capitalism has somehow almost run its course, which means the communist revolution must be imminent. Unfortunately, as the book was being published, Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was itself collapsing, followed by a decade of strong economic growth in the United States, with whole new industries of computer technology emerging. The failures of socialism, of course, have not dented the convictions of pople like Terry Eagleton or Fredric Jameson -- with the former's Why Marx was Right book published in 2012, long after any sensible person should have discerned the poverty, misery, and stagnation induced and perpetuated by socialism. Needless to say, the ideological support of people like this have enabled the whole terrible experience to be reinacted in a place like Venezuela, where people are starving and rioting in 2017.

Reading about the sublime, I came across an excerpt from Jameson's book, with some characteristic and revealing statements ["Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," 1991, The Sublime, Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, Whitechapel Gallery & The MIT Press, 2010, pp.141-136]. In the most intriguing passage, Jameson begins considering a quotation from an even earlier Marxist, the Trotskyite Ernest Mandel (1923-1995), and his 1978 book, Late Capitalism. Perhaps Mandel introduced this term, at a time when the United States was enduring Jimmy Carter's "stagflation," when quite a few economists thought that the Soviet economy was running successfully as the second largest in the world, but when the Soviet need for American grain betrayed that something wasn't quite right. That subsequent history should have discredited someone like Mandel, however, would require the sort of discernment obviously lacking in Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton.

Technological development is however on the Marxist view the result of the development of capital rather than some ultimately determining instance in its own right. It will therefore be appropriate to distinguish several generations of machine power, several stages of technological revolution within capital itself. I here follow Ernest Mandel, who outlines three such fundamental breaks or quantum leaps in the evolution of machinery under capital: [p.143]

This looks like nonsense, and it is what we might expect from people in literature who are mesmerized by language and jargon but actually don't really know anything about technology, economics, philosophy, or history -- things they didn't need for their literature degrees and certainly don't need to practice their current craft. If technological development represents a real increase in the quantity and quality of production, then it is precisely a "determining instance in its own right," and cannot be due, according to Marx himself, to capital, which is itself a fiction. And if capital, as a real thing, is necessary for technological and economic development (as, actually, it is), then this simply refutes all of Marxism.

It should not be forgotten that industrial civilization is what Marx believed made possible the end of class struggle. Mere machines take over the tasks that previous modes of production had required be performed by slaves or exploited workers. What capitalism did with its machines and their production is what really constituted "capitalism." After the revolution, all the machines will still be there, run by and benefiting the workers, who miraculously gain an understanding of the system of production within which they work. Stages of technological development thus simply catalogue the inheritance due to the workers -- even as Mandel seems to have missed the point that all real work in Marxism is done by the workers, which means that "quantum leaps in the evolution of machinery" are due to the workers, not capitalists.

Jameson continues with his Mandel quote:

The fundamental revolutions in power technology -- the technology of the production of motive machines by machines -- thus appears as the determinant moment in revolutions of technology as a whole. Machine production of steam-driven motors since 1848; machine production of electric and combustion motors since the 90s of the ninteenth century; machine production of electronic and nuclear-powered apparatuses since the 40s of the twentieth century -- these are the three general revolutions in technology engendered by the capitalist mode of production since the 'original' industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century. -- Late Capitalism (London 1978) 118 [ibid.]

I dare say that from a Marxist point of view, this is all entirely irrelevant. Marx knew about railroads. Lenin knew about electricity and automobiles. All that these technologies meant to them is that they would be inherited by their rightful owners, the Proletariat under Communism. They were not something held in a proprietary fashion by capitalism, or mere epiphenomena of its mode of production. Why Jameson or Mandel make of an issue of this may come out in Jameson's subsequent remarks.

This periodization underscores the general thesis of Mandel's book Late Capitalism: namely, that there have been three fundamental moments it [sic, in?] capitalism, each one marking a dialectical expansion over the previous stage. These are market capitalism, the monopoly stage or the stage of imperialism, and our own, wrongly called postindustrial, but what might better be termed multinational, capital. I have already pointed out that Mandel's intervention in the post-industrial debate involves the proposition that late or multinational or consumer capitalism, far from being inconsistent with Marx's great nineteenth-century analysis, constitutes, on the contrary, the purest form of capital yet to have emerged, a prodigious expansion of capital into hitherto uncommodified areas. This purer capitalism of our own time eliminates the enclaves of precapitalist organization it had hitherto tolerated and exploited in a tributary way. One is tempted to speak in this connection of a new and historically original penetration and colonization of Nature and the Unconscious: that is, the destruction of pre-capitalist Third World agriculture by the Green Revolution, and the rise of the media and advertising industry. At any rate, it will also have been clear that my own cultural periodization of the stages of realism, modernism and postmodernism is both inspired and confirmed by Mandel's tripartite scheme. [ibid.]

Having read this remarkable passage, one wonders if Mr. Jameson has ever heard the phrase used by Karl Marx, "the idiocy of rural life." Also, what would Jameson consider the collectivization of agriculture by Stalin or by Mao if not the "destruction of pre-capitalist Third World agriculture"? Does he know about the collectivization of agriculture by Stalin and Mao? The drift we get here is that the "destruction of pre-capitalist Third World agriculture by the Green Revolution" was bad, part of capitalist exploitation, when this would probably greatly surprise India, whose stagnating economy labored under the kinds of socialist inhibitions probably favored by Mr. Jameson, while the benefits of the Green Revolution actually enabled India, and many other countries, to feed itself. Real "Third World agriculture," largely meaning subsistence agriculture, was a "mode of production" subject to period crop failure and starvation, such as had always been the lot of India.

One might then wonder, "Does this fellow know what he is talking about?" More assuredly not. The Green Revolution was a function of "capital" only in terms of the money that went into the research that created it. But reading this passage, I am left with the impression that "uncommodified areas" were violated by the "prodigious expansion of capital," something that never would have happened under an enlightened socialism. Perhaps the way Stalin made the Soviet Union unable to feed itself. I wonder. Otherwise, "Mandel's tripartite scheme" is meaningless in terms of a Marxist analysis of the "contradictions" of capitalism or the dialectical historical necessities that will produce the communist revolution. If "purer capitalism" simply means the spread of capitalism into the Third World, well, Marx was seeing that already in British India, and he regarded the industrialization of any economy as good, while Lenin wrote all about it in Imperialism. The idea of "late or multinational or consumer capitalism" is indeed consistent with "Marx's great nineteenth-century analysis" because it is more or less irrelevant to it. Lenin could at least argue that colonialism and imperialism had delayed the revolution because the expoitation of colonies could be used to buy off the Proletariat back in Europe and America. It is not clear that Mandel or Jameson have even thought that far, or how the benefit to India of the Green Revolution either delays or promotes the revolution.

Thus, while Lenin thought that imperialism derailed the revolution, there is nothing here about "Mandel's tripartite scheme" that involves anything but a natural development of technology that would have delighted Marx and Lenin as much as anyone else. Lenin was as excited about "rural electrification" as any New Dealer. So, we really must ask if Fredric Jameson thinks it would have been better if "pre-capitalist Third World agriculture" would not have been destroyed? Is he thinking that technological development, creating the "purest" form of capitalism (whatever that means), is something as alienating and undesirable as capitalism itself? Does he want India to reverse and prepudiate the Green Revolution? We don't get a clear statement here one way or another, but the drift seems to be that the "stages" in the technological development of capital represent an ever greater distortion of the economic conditions we would have seen under socialism. Indeed, economic conditions in the Soviet Union, without capitalist exploitation, remained largely those of a Third World country, with the Potemkin villages of Moscow and Leningrad showing somewhat better conditions for foreigners, thanks to the exploitation (i.e. looting) of the rest of the country.

Thus, Fredric Jameson's English Department Marxism, besides being innocent of any real knowledge of history or economics, doesn't even make much sense as Marxism. He seems unaware of the purpose of the communist revolution, which is to deliver the industrial civilization created by capitalism into the hands of the workers. Instead, as with everyone who disparages "consumerism," the idea may turn out to be a valorization of the poverty that has been long and is currently still on display in Cuba and North Korea. Not that Fredric Jameson wants to live in such poverty. Just the rest of us.

It's hilariously retarded.

 

[Navarro]

Here's also a general takedown (same page) of commie cargo cult economics and the unspoken assumptions behind it:

The original Cargo Cult developed in New Guinea after World War II. During the war, the Melanesian locals, who lived at a mesolithic or neolithic level of culture, saw airplanes arrive and disgorge vast quantities of "cargo." They did not understand that these things had to be manufactured and that the airplanes themselves were artifacts. They believed that the planes and the cargo were gifts from the gods, brought down to earth by ritual invocations. There were incidents where the crew members of aircraft were murdered because the locals thought they were no more than supernumeraries to the divine operation. When the modern armies left and the cargo stopped arriving, the "Cargo Cult" was a religious attempt to reproduce the invocations and effect the continued blessing of the gods. Not surprisingly, it didn't work.

People who like (some of) the products of a modern economy but don't like the entrepreneuers, industrialists, and financiers who make it all possible end up with something rather like the beliefs of the Cargo Cultists. There are several forms of this:

1. One uses the fundamental principle that natural resources are themselves wealth -- for which Third World countries are never paid enough (except, I suppose, Saudi Arabia). Thus, we see former Vice President Al Gore saying that one of the problems of the international order is "the ongoing redistribution of wealth globally from the poor to the wealthy" [An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do about It, Al Gore & Melcher Media, Rodale Press, 2006, p.13]. So what is the "wealth" that is being moved from poor countries to wealthy ones? They are certainly not being looted of ipods or refrigerators. So there must be piles of goods there, "resources," that already count as wealth and that somehow are being improperly moved. Perhaps if the resources stayed where they are, they would miraculously transform into ipods and refrigerators.
   But if the complaint is that the poor countries are not being paid enough for their resources, we still have the problem that many countries that are wealthy from oil still don't produce anything else. The total non-petroleum exports of the entire Arab world are less than those of Finland. What the Saudis do with their money does not seem to involve any investment in native industries that make any contribution to the international economy. And they spend money on religious education and propaganda in their own radical Wahhabî sect that has helped promote terrorism -- even while unemployment and labor force participation in the Kingdom are dismal. At the same time, Hugo Chavez was able to all but destroy the economy of Venezuela because oil revenues could cover the loss, and also subsidize the money pit of Communist Cuba -- even while the oil industry itself was being undermined by the politicization of its management, resulting in less revenue for the government and for Cuba. When it became hard to find toilet paper in the stores, the Chavistas blamed some sort of conspiracy to withhold it. Now it is hard to find food.
   The fallacy involved in talk about "natural resources" usually involves ignoring two things: (1) Natural resources are worth nothing unless you know what to do with them. Petroleum was usually a nuisance until it was discovered that it could be refined and burned. This knowledge involves a certain kind of capital, as a certain kind of human capital, namely the knowledge and imagination it takes to think of new products and processes. And (2) Natural resources must be recovered, which takes money, investment, equipment, all of which involve capital, and the knowledge of how it is to be done, which is the human capital of knowledge and imagination again. The way some people talk, you would think that the whole value of the finished industries is owed to those who happen to have the "natural resources" under their land, but who otherwise never would have done anything about it. Now it is hard to find food.
   But the Cargo Cultists may have something else in mind. When we hear complaints about the United States using more than its share of natural resources, we should realize that markets and usefullness are irrelevant to this kind of thinking. Everyone should have an equal share of natural resources, even if they have no idea what to do with them. Indeed, we might be better off if they don't know what to do with them; for, since natural resources are fixed, found, limited, and finite, they must be used sparingly. By using more than their share, Americans practice "overconsumption," which wastes resources and pollutes the Earth. The goal is virtuous poverty; and if Zimbabwe, for instance, doesn't know how to use its resources, then Americans should share their production, for which, given the total economic production of the planet, Zimbabwe has an equal claim to its share (since produciton, as we will shortly see, is also a fixed and found quantity).
   Natural resources, on the other hand, have a habit of not being as limited and finite as the Cultists seem to think. As we have seen, Julian Simon won his bet with doomster Paul Ehrlich. The dynamic in these matters is revealed by the history of oil, which, since the earliest days of the oil industry, has constantly been said to be about to run out. In the 1970's, with gas rationing and long lines, it looked like that was happening; but when Ronald Reagan removed price controls, supplies went up and, in short order, prices went down (to stay down more than 20 years). With prices again going up on oil in the 2000's (although no noticeable shortages), doomsters again began to predict "Peak Oil," i.e. the supplies would begin an inevitable decline. However, just as fools like Paul Krugman were exulting in the coming misery, prices fell precipitously because of technological breakthroughs that have put the United States on the path to being the largest producer of oil (again) in the world.
   Thus, natural resources have a way suddenly becoming more abundant, and this is because the ways they are used and the ways they are extracted are a matter of human imagination, whose power is actually unlimited. The Cargo Cultists never contribute an iota to this process, but they rely entirely on a paradigm of hoarding and theft -- i.e. your productivity is "hoarding," while my theft is "redistribution."
   
   
2. Another form of Cargo Cult economics is the idea that the goods produced by an economy are fixed and "found" quantities, rather like "natural resources." This is the "pie" we keep hearing about in politics, and the Marxist principle of "to each according to his need" implies that some piece of the "pie" is owed to everyone just in proportion to their "need." Again, this ignores the role of capital, both material and human, to the point that any role of capital, knowledge, or imagination is eliminated and that any function beyond the bare labor necessary to produce or distribute goods is superfluous -- a folly of which even Lenin was swiftly disillusioned.
   When capital is ignored and disparaged and suppressed, the result removes the incentive for anyone to ever produce anything, let alone produce anything new. Thus, no new consumer product was ever created in the Soviet Block, and there where chronic shortages of everything. The people who might have worked to increase production and innovation were given no reason to do so, and risked positive vilification, if not imprisonment or execution, if they ever enjoyed the slighted degree of personal success. In socialism, the principle is that personal success is unworthy and even criminal, so that everyone should work only for the benefit of others. This sounds nice until one realizes that, (1) it doesn't work, and (2) that the "benefit of others" ends up meaning the benefit of the political and bureaucratic elite, and not that of the mass of the people who otherwise would have benefited from a market and consumer economy.
   Thus, treating production as something that is fixed and found results both in goods actually disappearing, and in new kinds of goods never appearing. That the elite benefits while others don't may ultimately be noticed, but now there are also Environmentalist activists who actually want production destroyed, because they believe people should live in virtuous poverty, because consumer goods and wealth exploit and damage the planet. In this way, the impoverished totalitarian police state of Cuba has been praised as "ecotopia," where the Castros, wallowing in luxury, prevent most Cubans from destroying the planet with consumer products.
   In late 2015 there have been ugly incidents of students, and their faculty facilitators, attacking free speech at American colleges and universities, with cowardly administrators mostly failing to resist -- indeed, for years the administators themselves have constantly attempted to impose illegal "speech codes" on students and faculty. This all is not particularly new, but it now seems marked by a new level of self-righteousness and hysteria. And there is an economic aspect, which we should expect from campus radicals. They want free education and forgiveness of student debt. This is at a time when the cost of higher eduction has inflated beyond bounds -- thanks to government subsidies and the ease of student debt -- while the value of higher education for future employment has become questionable, even as absurd amounts of debt cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. The whole economic future of students is compromised, even as their degrees lead to no particular income advantage. The clueless students activists, however, are comfortable with "education" that is nothing but political indoctrination, without any economic value -- or even any value as traditional "liberal" education, which is the knowledge of a free person, rather than a blind Stalinist minion. Since they want to tax the rich to pay for their increasingly worthless colleges degrees, we see Cargo Cult economics peek out from their rhetoric. Thus, one student leader referred to the "hoarding" of wealth by the "1%," as though they just had rooms full of money or gold, like the treasure of Smaug in The Hobbit. Since this student was talking about increasing income taxes, and didn't mention a wealth tax, such as that advocated by Thomas Piketty, she obviously had no idea what the rich do with their wealth or how they earn income from it. Smaug's treasure paid no interest. Of course, if the student got a clue and decided to tax wealth as well as income, then the wealthy would need to liquidate their investments, which would deprive the economy of capital, which might well put the parents of the student out of work. But we can see here the depths of folly and ignorance produced by modern "higher education."
3. A third version of Cargo Cult economics is now embodied in the notion of "income redistribution," which depends on the idea that income is a fixed and found quantity. Like the pile of fixed and found wealth, this was "distributed" one way and now needs to be "distributed" another way, to reduce "income inequality." But income is not, of course, any more than wealth or production, a fixed or found quantity. It is volatile. When people are deprived of the fruit of their labor, which is what "redistribution" is all about, they lose the incentive to produce wealth in the first place. The income that is stolen by the political class, which is what "redistribution" is all about, will evaporate. This affects far more than capitalists or entrepreneurs. Everyone who earns an income is impacted when government, in line with this ideology, seeks to fix wages. All the evils of price fixing follow. And since the idea is to drive up the wages of the poor and deserving, this generally prices them out of the job market, leaving them with less income than before. At the same time, people with incomes assigned by right begin to treat their jobs as sinecures, for which they actually do not need to be productive or even competent. This was once called the "British disease," as British union workers actually worked little or not at all. This was improved, although the attitude was not abolished, by Margaret Thatcher. Now it is characteristic of American education.
   Thus, in the reference to Al Gore above, he may have been thinking, not just about natural resources, but that foreign business exploits third world countries by hiring people at low wages to make products that are sold elsewhere. Perhaps this is what "redistributes" wealth in the way he describes. However, if the third world workers otherwise wouldn't have jobs, or if they will be forced into prostitution instead, and if they are well paid by local standards, then the net effect is an improvement in their lot, and their wealth increases. In freer economies, the workers soon start their own businesses, which become targets of envy by the Left (e.g. Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa, Jews in Eastern Europe, or Koreans in Harlem).
4. Finally, we get something that is not quite a version of wealth, but is seen as a source of it in daily life, namely jobs. Much of modern political discourse revolves around the apparent assumption that jobs are a fixed and found quantity. This is, of course, related to wages, as above. Jobs get treated like feudal "livings," which were based on land and rents, so that there was a sense, certainly under the economic conditions of the time, that these things were fixed, as much fixed as feudal domains and peasants attached to the land. Under modern conditions, the whole idea suffers from multiple absurdities. First of all, the number of jobs simply depends on supply and demand. As wages fall to a market clearing level, the number of people hired rises to "full employment," which has often been seen at or below 2% unemployment. This can be confirmed in many historical employment statistics. Of course, as we have seen, the goal of much of politics is to drive up wages, either on the principle that this is owed to the workers or on the theory of Demand Side economics that the economy grows through higher wages. Of course, driving up wages by political fiat and price fixing simply prices low wage workers out of the market and generates greater unemployment. This was evident in Sweden, before the Swedes reformed their labor market, and is still evident in France. In fact, it is what created and perpetuated the Great Depression; yet this is still a lesson unlearned in American politics. The objection that falling wages means that workers become poorer is false, since what wages can buy depends on their value, not on their nominal quantity. Wages buy any amount of wealth depending on production, and production depends on Say's Law, whose operation is now systematically obstructed by "progressive" politics.

A attendant characteristic of the Cargo Cult belief that resources, wealth, production, and income are fixed and found quantities is the view that economics is a zero sum game, which means that the gain of one person is the loss of another, while the quantity of wealth, income, etc. remains the same. However, free exchange means that transactions are positive sum games, where value increases for both parties in the transaction, as Benjamin Franklin had already recognized (although he had never heard of Game Theory). On the other hand, in forced exchanges, like robbery, taxation, and "income redistribution," the result is a negative sum game, where the value declines for both parties, for one simply because of its loss, for the another because, especially for bureaucrats and politicians, looted wealth is never worth as much in their calculation as it was for its original owner, whether the looters are overt criminals or act under the color of legal authority. After all, easy come, easy go; and while those who earn wealth are aware of what it took to get it, politicians and activists just see it as fruit falling from the trees.

A dramatic example of this was the infamous Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of New London [2005]. The Court ruled that private property, including a neighborhood of homes, could be condemned by the City of New London, Connecticut, just so an industrial project in the area could generate more tax revenue. As it happened, the project fell through, which means that today (2015) the neighborhood is empty and desolate, generating no tax revenue, and constituting no value for anyone. The City of New London, in its wisdom, with the Supreme Court as a conscious accomplice, completely destroyed, for the time being, the value of the area -- a negative sum game indeed. Thus, the value even of land itself, dignified with the character of "real estate" (a "natural resource"), is itself volatile and can be ruined and evaporate through forced, politically motivated transactions. Verily, they have their reward.

The ultimate outcome of "redistribution" is thus simply poverty, as the economically productive are vilified, looted, and eventually drop out or move away -- or have actually been killed, as in the Stalinist "kulak" campaign against farmers. Since this is clearly what happened in Cuba, which is now nearly the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (but for Haiti), the most instructive result is the complacency of the American Left for this manifest outcome. They return from trips to Cuba with a bogus narrative about literacy or medical care but gloss over the obvious impoverishment of the island -- next to the privileges of the elite (among whom they themselves count). And this is what they clearly want for the United States -- what even Pope Francis now seems to want for the world -- along with the totalitarian police state that enforces the poverty of Cubans and the privilege of the Castros and Communists.

He goes a bit full "taxation is theft" near the end though.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

True communism is a good thing like anarchism is at least in theory, but not in reality. The idea of everyone living perfectly equally and fairly together is by no stretch the imagination wrong to want but much like heaven its something that shouldn't be attempted in reality due to human nature.

 

[Navarro]

Here's a useful repository of info on commie genocides and genocide denialism:

Left-Wing Bloodbaths

Left-Wing Deniers

Not pleasant reading, I know, but still necessary.

True communism is a good thing like anarchism is at least in theory, but not in reality. The idea of everyone living perfectly equally and fairly together is by no stretch the imagination wrong to want but much like heaven its something that shouldn't be attempted in reality due to human nature.

Not just to human nature, to basic laws of economics. Even if angels attempted to implement communism, it would fail as they would be completely unable to figure out the proper amounts of produced goods to make and which resources to distribute where.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

Not just to human nature, to basic laws of economics. Even if angels attempted to implement communism, it would fail as they would be completely unable to figure out the proper amounts of produced goods to make and which resources to distribute where.

I know I just felt that really didn't need stating.

 

[Aldarion]

I will just say that, despite what (a lot of) people say, evils of Communism actually have direct root with Marx himself - even though he did not necessarily intend them to happen (and even that is iffy). But I will be posting a commentary on The Manifesto next month, probably (And if I forget, I scheduled it to be automatically posted on my blog).

EDIT: Anyway, a good resource on the evils of Communism:

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html

 

[Navarro]

Some people, like @mesonoxian here, have argued that "socialists only care about facts" or somesuch. Now an actual survey of which college majors most and least support socialism puts this to the lie:



Now looking at the data, we can see that the majors most supportive of socialism are anthropology, philosophy, international relations and sociology, followed shortly by music and English. It's telling then that anthropology has a noted history and a strong streak continuing today of believing in the "noble savage" myth while philosophy (which has the largest level of individuals viewing socialism "very favorably") is based almost entirely on abstract conceptualisations with little reference to reality and IR along with sociology has similar problems. English boils down to literature analysis and hence has a similar tendency towards abstraction and away from empiricism, while music is a purely artistic pursuit.

And what are the anti-socialist majors? First we have law/criminology, which deals in part with why criminals do the things they do - then we have the trifecta of economics, finance and accounting: economics studies how the economy actually works and how economic policy functions while finance and accounting are all about managing a scarce resource, money.

So in summary, we see that the pro-socialist college majors are less about the facts of the world as-is than they are about the world as it is imagined to be.

 

[Navarro]

Repost:

The myth of "Libertarian Socialism"

Socialists are fond of modifiers these days. “Democratic Socialism”, “21st Century Socialism”, “Millennial Socialism”, and, most absurd of all, “Libertarian … Continue reading "The myth of “Libertarian Socialism”"

iea.org.uk

Socialists are fond of modifiers these days. “Democratic Socialism”, “21st Century Socialism”, “Millennial Socialism”, and, most absurd of all, “Libertarian Socialism” and “Libertarian Communism”.

When asked to explain what those terms are supposed to mean, socialists argue as follows:

Socialism, like most ideologies, comes in different flavours. It comes in authoritarian varieties, such as Leninism. But it also comes in decidedly anti-authoritarian, anti-totalitarian varieties, associated with names like Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Emma Goldman or Alexander Berkman. Leninists believe that a socialist society ought to be run by huge hierarchical, top-down state bureaucracy. But libertarian socialists believe in dismantling hierarchies, in grassroots democracy, and in self-emancipation. Most contemporary socialists see themselves in the latter tradition. They therefore believe that it is unfair when their opponents hold the dire results of Leninism, or other examples of authoritarian socialism, against them. As they see it, this has nothing to do with them. It’s a completely different type of socialism. Socialists believe that their opponents are either being disingenuous, or simply not clever enough to understand the differences between different varieties of socialism.

In this, as in so many other things, socialists are completely wrong. The distinction between a “libertarian socialism” on the one hand, and an “authoritarian socialism” on the other hand, is wholly illusory. Socialist projects always start with the intention of dismantling hierarchies, democratising the economy, and empowering working class people. Even Lenin started with such aspirations. Socialist projects always end up doing the opposite – but this is not because its protagonists believe in the “wrong kind” of socialism, an authoritarian as opposed to a libertarian socialism. It is because their theories are wrong, and a “libertarian socialism” cannot be achieved. The choice is not between an authoritarian and a libertarian socialism. The choice is between an authoritarian socialism, and no socialism at all. Faced with that choice, socialists always opt for the former.

A good illustration is Lenin’s seminal book The State and Revolution, in which he sets out his vision of a socialist society. The book was written in the months just before the October Revolution, so it cannot be dismissed as the writing of a younger, more naïve and more idealistic version of Lenin: this was the same Lenin who would go on to become the main architect of the Soviet Union. But neither was he in power just yet, so the book cannot be dismissed as regime propaganda either. It is the closest thing to a genuine Leninist manifesto.

The State and Revolution does not at all read like a blueprint for a totalitarian society. The type of society outlined in this book has next to nothing in common with the Soviet Union that actually existed. It is not that Lenin simply glosses over, or omits, the unpalatable aspects of the future Soviet Union, such as the bureaucratisation of society, or the mass arrests and mass executions. No: he specifically explains why the future Soviet state would not, and could not, develop any such features.

Echoing Marx and Engels, Lenin believes that the state is, always and everywhere, an instrument of class rule, an instrument of the ruling class. The flipside of this is that in a society without class antagonisms, there will be no need for a state. Socialism, of course, is all about the creation of a classless society. It would therefore ultimately lead to a stateless society – communism:

“[E]very state is a “special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not “free” and not a “people’s state […]

So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.”

This is a long-term aspiration. Lenin is not an anarchist; he believes that a state will still be necessary for some considerable time after the revolution. But, crucially, he believes that even during this transitional period, the Soviet state will not have to do very much. There is no mention of, for example, Five-Year Plans. Lenin believes that the new society will require a few administrative functions, but in the main, it will more or less just run itself:

“The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. […]

[T]he accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost and reduced to the extraordinarily simple operations – which any literate person can perform – of supervising and recording, knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic, and issuing appropriate receipts.”

A state bureaucracy as such will no longer be needed. State officialdom, in general, will be a thing of the past. The country will be run more like a large working men’s club:

“Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfil all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power. […]

[C]ontrol by society and by the state over the measure of labor and the measure of consumption […] must be exercised not by a state of bureaucrats, but by a state of armed workers […]

Under socialism functionaries will cease to be “bureaucrats”, to be “officials” […]

Under socialism […] for the first time in the history of civilized society the mass of population will rise to taking an independent part, not only in voting and elections, but also in the everyday administration of the state. Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.”

Self-management of society, without state bureaucrats, is not a vision for the distant future, but a short-term action plan:

“It is quite possible, after the overthrow of the capitalists and the bureaucrats, to proceed immediately, overnight, to replace them in the control over production and distribution […] by the armed workers, by the whole of the armed population. […]

[T]he “state” which consists of the armed workers […] is “no longer a state in the proper sense of the word”.”

Lenin also believes that this entity, which he describes as a “proletarian state or semi-state”, will not be particularly oppressive. His reasoning is simple. Under capitalism, a small minority (the capitalist class) oppresses the vast majority of the population (the workers and the peasants). This is hard work. It therefore requires an elaborate state security apparatus: a police force, a prison system, a standing army, etc. Under socialism, on the other hand, state power is wielded directly by the workers and the peasants, and thus by the vast majority of the population. They only need to oppress a small minority, namely, the deposed capitalists. This is very easy. It therefore does not require an elaborate security apparatus, or even much of an apparatus at all:

“nder capitalism we have the state in the proper sense of the word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one class by another […] Naturally, […] such an undertaking as the systematic suppression of the exploited majority by the exploiting minority calls for the utmost ferocity and savagery in the matter of suppressing, it calls for seas of blood […]

[D]uring the transition […] suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the “state”, is still necessary, but […] the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed […] Naturally, the exploiters are unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple “machine”, almost without a “machine”, without a special apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed people”

In other words, Lenin does not claim that the revolution will be a walk in the park: he says, repeatedly and very clearly, that repressive measures will be required. But he also believes that there will be far less repression than under the previous system.
This, needless to say, is not quite what happened. In its worst year on record (1905, the year of the failed revolution), the Tsarist regime executed about 11,000 people. In a “normal” year, it executed fewer than 20 people. Under the Bolsheviks, the number of executions immediately jumped to about 28,000 per year (p. 82) – and this was before Stalin took over.

Similarly, while labour camps already existed under Tsarism, fewer than 30,000 people worked in them in 1917. In the years after the Revolution, that number quickly soared to 70,000 (p. 5) – and again, this is all before Stalin.

The Tsarist secret police was indeed dismantled after the revolution, but its socialist successor, the Cheka, was in a different league in terms of size, scope and brutality – also before Stalin.

Now, of course, you could claim that the entire book is just a big pack of lies. You could claim that Lenin always wanted to create the totalitarian hellhole that he did help create, and that he just sugarcoated his true intentions for PR reasons. Or you could claim that he may have held those convictions initially, but that they were only skin-deep, and that power quickly corrupted him. Or that adverse circumstances, such as the civil war, derailed his original plans.

But here’s a more plausible explanation: when Lenin wrote those words, he meant it. In his aspirations, Lenin was a “libertarian socialist”. But once he was in power, it soon turned out that you cannot just abolish market signals and market exchange, and expect society to somehow spontaneously organise itself without them. It soon turned out that “the working class” is just a Marxist abstraction, and that an abstraction does not suddenly spring to life, and act independently.

It is cheap, and easy, to claim that Lenin and so many others just had the wrong intentions, or that they just picked the “wrong kind” of socialism. The supposed distinction between “libertarian socialism” and “authoritarian socialism” is a post-hoc excuse to explain away socialism’s inevitable descent into authoritarianism.

Socialism is always “libertarian” in its aspirations. And it is always authoritarian in its actual practice. Had Lenin died during or just after the October Revolution, he would today be remembered as a great “Libertarian Socialist”, and socialists would be convinced that the Soviet Union would have turned out completely differently with him at the helm. Conversely, had the Spartacist Uprising in Germany succeeded, the whole of Germany would soon have turned into a very large GDR, and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht would today be remembered as “authoritarian socialists” who “perverted” Marx’s ideals. “No, you just don’t understand”, socialists would argue today. “I’m a Libertarian Socialist – not a Luxemburgist!”

Socialism - always libertarian when out of power and always authoritarian when in it.

 

[Aldarion]

Some people, like @mesonoxian here, have argued that "socialists only care about facts" or somesuch. Now an actual survey of which college majors most and least support socialism puts this to the lie:



Now looking at the data, we can see that the majors most supportive of socialism are anthropology, philosophy, international relations and sociology, followed shortly by music and English. It's telling then that anthropology has a noted history and a strong streak continuing today of believing in the "noble savage" myth while philosophy (which has the largest level of individuals viewing socialism "very favorably") is based almost entirely on abstract conceptualisations with little reference to reality and IR along with sociology has similar problems. English boils down to literature analysis and hence has a similar tendency towards abstraction and away from empiricism, while music is a purely artistic pursuit.

And what are the anti-socialist majors? First we have law/criminology, which deals in part with why criminals do the things they do - then we have the trifecta of economics, finance and accounting: economics studies how the economy actually works and how economic policy functions while finance and accounting are all about managing a scarce resource, money.

So in summary, we see that the pro-socialist college majors are less about the facts of the world as-is than they are about the world as it is imagined to be.

If they "only cared about facts", they would not be socialists. That is the basic psychology: socialism is about idealized world, about the world as it should be. Marx, Engels and their followers (including Progressives today - it is even in the name) are imagining an idealized world, a literal Utopia. Meanwhile conservativism and traditionalism are based on the world as it is / used to be, respectively. There is little to idealize or imagine there, whereas future can only ever be imagined.

That is also why fans of fantasy tend to be more conservative while those of sci-fi tend to be more progressive: one is based on the past (history and mythology), while sci-fi is based on the ideals and pipe dreams. Of course fantasy will be way more conservative.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's mindboggling people keep advocating for socialist/communist states when we've had the past 200 years of history indicating that such socialist/communist states fail 9 times out of 10 and cause unprecedented suffering in the history of the nation.

Socialism and totalitarianism go hand in hand. You can't redistribute wealth on a massive scale without a powerful, violent state government. Once you have a powerful, violent state government, it's going to want to perpetuate itself, which means brainwashing people and executing dissenters. Also, once you have a powerful, violent state government, nobody is equal anyway, because the people in power just redirect all the resources towards themselves. So much for a society where "everyone is equal".

 

[Navarro]

A bit cringey with the fake Russian accents and cheap flag, but good description of the Holodomor and how it was denied.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

@Val the Moofia Boss
While I don't think most people ever read Plato, I think there's a line of thinking regarding the presence of "Philosopher Kings" who will enforce a perfect order and be extremely competent

Replace "Philosopher Kings" with government bureaucrats who just so happen to work with big corporations

Without a "Big Government", you cannot "trust" the people to care for one another or be smart

Socialism is "Pop Science" or a "Pseudoscience" that's popular amongst guys who "love the science" but probably don't really have much knowledge regarding how people respond when it comes to economics

Plus, when people think "Conservative" they almost automatically think "religious" and when they think of "religion" they think of backward apes worshipping rivers and such. Nevermind nearly the past two millennia of theological debate or how there were ancient Egyptian Priests who were also scientists, that Ptolemy guy, I think

The current version of "Socialism" is one that people think will lead to Star Trek's United Federation of Planets. It's a "compromise" between the big government and the "private industry".....specifically the big douchebag ones that get to be exemptions to much of COVID-19 restrictions. That's also mixed with a bunch of hippy-douchebag talk that's really condescending AF too, all while gaslighting you. Globalism is part of said version.....no loyalty to any one country and allowed to ditch everyone who's local for a bunch of VERY cheap people abroad. Can get rid of dissent too, by replacing populations as well.

 

[Doomsought]

Communism was not created by Carl Marx, it actually had its inception during the French revolution with the French communes.

Also, despite communists liking to use the word "reactionary" as an insult, Karl Marx was a bigger reactionary than most people they use it on. What he basically wanted to do is destroy the factory system to reinstate the cottage industry where the laborers owned the means to production. In the cottage industry, the workers had better work conditions than workers in factories, and that is pretty much his entire motivation. He was also a moron.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Communism was not created by Carl Marx, it actually had its inception during the French revolution with the French communes.

Also, despite communists liking to use the word "reactionary" as an insult, Karl Marx was a bigger reactionary than most people they use it on. What he basically wanted to do is destroy the factory system to reinstate the cottage industry where the laborers owned the means to production. In the cottage industry, the workers had better work conditions than workers in factories, and that is pretty much his entire motivation. He was also a moron.

Given that by now, most of what I think me and most people know about the French Revolution is from Pop Culture and an incredibly abridged version of history

Just what could the French have done outside of that revolution that had a period of constantly murdering suspected counter-revolutionaries before Napoleon eventually showed up?

I thought there was still much manual labor in the Cottage Industry? I mean I think even kids had to do lots of work to make even a small amount of whatever product was being made

 

[Cherico]

Its been over a hundred years now.

communism has been tried all over the world over and over again with the exact same results.

Economic destruction and immolation, hunger, want, repression and death, at this point in time the excuse of ignorance or good intentions doesn't work any more. You should infact consider any words to the contrary to be blantant lies, any modern day communists have as their true goals to increase human suffering and murder innocent people.

Its an irredeemably evil form of government and its inherents should be treated with the same scorn Nazi's receive.

 

[mesonoxian]

Some people, like @mesonoxian here, have argued that "socialists only care about facts" or somesuch. Now an actual survey of which college majors most and least support socialism puts this to the lie:



Now looking at the data, we can see that the majors most supportive of socialism are anthropology, philosophy, international relations and sociology, followed shortly by music and English. It's telling then that anthropology has a noted history and a strong streak continuing today of believing in the "noble savage" myth while philosophy (which has the largest level of individuals viewing socialism "very favorably") is based almost entirely on abstract conceptualisations with little reference to reality and IR along with sociology has similar problems. English boils down to literature analysis and hence has a similar tendency towards abstraction and away from empiricism, while music is a purely artistic pursuit.

And what are the anti-socialist majors? First we have law/criminology, which deals in part with why criminals do the things they do - then we have the trifecta of economics, finance and accounting: economics studies how the economy actually works and how economic policy functions while finance and accounting are all about managing a scarce resource, money.

So in summary, we see that the pro-socialist college majors are less about the facts of the world as-is than they are about the world as it is imagined to be.

I'm guessing there is some "debunking communism" website out there (or maybe some dumbass's YouTube channel) that mentioned "the noble savage" because you keep returning to that despite it having nothing to do with communism.

Also, a savage own being favored by philosophers, that group known for disinterest in facts and truth.

If you want disciplines with low levels of academic standards, economics and "criminology" are the first two that would come to mind. There are entire schools of economics completely divorced from any real world data, and criminology is a mix of just-so stories and pseudoscience.

Its been over a hundred years now.

communism has been tried all over the world over and over again with the exact same results.

Economic destruction and immolation, hunger, want, repression and death, at this point in time the excuse of ignorance or good intentions doesn't work any more. You should infact consider any words to the contrary to be blantant lies, any modern day communists have as their true goals to increase human suffering and murder innocent people.

Its an irredeemably evil form of government and its inherents should be treated with the same scorn Nazi's receive.

Makes total sense "we shouldn't let people starve" is basically the equivalent of "kill all the untermenschen".

So a few things, first off, what has been tried is one very specific model of communism that differs significantly from original recipe Marxism (Stalinism is extra crispy, I think Trotsky was honey barbecue, but I'd have to reread The Revolution Betrayed to be sure.) Essentially all communist governments that survived for any appreciable length of time were associated with the Soviet Union. there is a reason for that. Socialist governments without Soviet backing got couped by western powers, who put some piece of shit like Pinochet in power to rape and torture people.

Also, the two largest countries in which this mode of communism were attempted were basket cases. Tsarist Russia was so bad that the conditions of the peasants shocked Black Americans in the 1900s. Imagine how fucked up things had to be. They were also among the most technologically backwards countries in Europe. China had suffered centuries of colonial domination, a period of famine, a period of civil war, invasion from Japan (leading to some of the most horrific atrocities in world history), followed by yet more civil war, before a warped version of communism from the Stalinist USSR was imposed. There were more stable countries that nearly had communist governments, but they either got destroyed from outside by the US like Chile, or had the liberals and conservatives join with the fascists to oppose them.

So no, people aren't going to abandon one of the few real alternatives to our broken, immoral system because a superficially similar system failed to make two absolute wrecks of countries functional. I'm not really a Marxist, though some elements of Marxian economics are super important. But they are in no way like Nazis. Believe me, I've interacted enough with both to know the difference.

Communism was not created by Carl Marx, it actually had its inception during the French revolution with the French communes.

Also, despite communists liking to use the word "reactionary" as an insult, Karl Marx was a bigger reactionary than most people they use it on. What he basically wanted to do is destroy the factory system to reinstate the cottage industry where the laborers owned the means to production. In the cottage industry, the workers had better work conditions than workers in factories, and that is pretty much his entire motivation. He was also a moron.

Not sure who "Carl Marx" is, but "Karl Marx" did not in fact invent communism. Neither did French Revolutionaries. I think you are thinking of the Paris Commune, which is after Marx. The French Revolution wasn't communist, and the term "commune" in French doesn't mean what it does in English.

For a loose enough definition of communism, it is probably as old as humanity. The early Christians lived in something very close to the end goal of communism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. And there were similar movements in the late medieval era. Various forms of more rigorously defined, secular socialism start in the early modern era. What Marx did was lay out a model for a transition from capitalist society to communism, and spell out the underlying economic and political forces the made socialism necessary. He did a lot more, of course. He completely revolutionized economics, and laid out am extremely influential philosophy of history, but that is sort of secondary.

Your claim he wanted some regression to cottage industry is just incorrect. When Marx talked about workers owning the means of production, he meant collectively, not that everyone should have one specific machine or set of tools they held as private property. There were people who advocated for something like that. The most significant is probably William Morris, who wanted a return to the medieval guild system. (Morris was a great artist, but not much of an economist). And Chesterton and Gill's Distributism is something like that, but it isn't very rigorous, and nobody really wants to do anything associated with Gill these days because he turned out to be a truly horrible human being.

 

[Cherico]

I'm guessing there is some "debunking communism" website out there (or maybe some dumbass's YouTube channel) that mentioned "the noble savage" because you keep returning to that despite it having nothing to do with communism.

Also, a savage own being favored by philosophers, that group known for disinterest in facts and truth.

If you want disciplines with low levels of academic standards, economics and "criminology" are the first two that would come to mind. There are entire schools of economics completely divorced from any real world data, and criminology is a mix of just-so stories and pseudoscience.

Makes total sense "we shouldn't let people starve" is basically the equivalent of "kill all the untermenschen".

So a few things, first off, what has been tried is one very specific model of communism that differs significantly from original recipe Marxism (Stalinism is extra crispy, I think Trotsky was honey barbecue, but I'd have to reread The Revolution Betrayed to be sure.) Essentially all communist governments that survived for any appreciable length of time were associated with the Soviet Union. there is a reason for that. Socialist governments without Soviet backing got couped by western powers, who put some piece of shit like Pinochet in power to rape and torture people.

Also, the two largest countries in which this mode of communism were attempted were basket cases. Tsarist Russia was so bad that the conditions of the peasants shocked Black Americans in the 1900s. Imagine how fucked up things had to be. They were also among the most technologically backwards countries in Europe. China had suffered centuries of colonial domination, a period of famine, a period of civil war, invasion from Japan (leading to some of the most horrific atrocities in world history), followed by yet more civil war, before a warped version of communism from the Stalinist USSR was imposed. There were more stable countries that nearly had communist governments, but they either got destroyed from outside by the US like Chile, or had the liberals and conservatives join with the fascists to oppose them.

So no, people aren't going to abandon one of the few real alternatives to our broken, immoral system because a superficially similar system failed to make two absolute wrecks of countries functional. I'm not really a Marxist, though some elements of Marxian economics are super important. But they are in no way like Nazis. Believe me, I've interacted enough with both to know the difference.

Not sure who "Carl Marx" is, but "Karl Marx" did not in fact invent communism. Neither did French Revolutionaries. I think you are thinking of the Paris Commune, which is after Marx. The French Revolution wasn't communist, and the term "commune" in French doesn't mean what it does in English.

For a loose enough definition of communism, it is probably as old as humanity. The early Christians lived in something very close to the end goal of communism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. And there were similar movements in the late medieval era. Various forms of more rigorously defined, secular socialism start in the early modern era. What Marx did was lay out a model for a transition from capitalist society to communism, and spell out the underlying economic and political forces the made socialism necessary. He did a lot more, of course. He completely revolutionized economics, and laid out am extremely influential philosophy of history, but that is sort of secondary.

Your claim he wanted some regression to cottage industry is just incorrect. When Marx talked about workers owning the means of production, he meant collectively, not that everyone should have one specific machine or set of tools they held as private property. There were people who advocated for something like that. The most significant is probably William Morris, who wanted a return to the medieval guild system. (Morris was a great artist, but not much of an economist). And Chesterton and Gill's Distributism is something like that, but it isn't very rigorous, and nobody really wants to do anything associated with Gill these days because he turned out to be a truly horrible human being.

No I am not letting you get away with this one.

Every time we have a communist government we end up having the exact same problems.

The soviet union was a horror show, Maoist china was a disaster, the killing fields of Cambodia were horrific, even the 'nicest' communist regiemes were horrible places to live.

Just recently we had venusula which is now an oppressive nightmare world. It is systematic problem that all communist systems have. There have been attempt after attempt all having the same bad results.

And then after all of the murder, rape, torture, oppression gulags and at least a few outright genocides you have the ghall to act morally superior?

You have no moral authority at all, your idealized system is a nightmare world not only is it wrong it is immoral. You want to feed the hungry?

Go out and work for a soup kitchen, donate to charity, help out with charity. I don't know of a single city in America that doesn't have a program to help feed the needy. Go out and help them but for the love of god don't try yet another failed experiement that murders millions and then do another.

It wasn't real communism/socialism again....

 

[Free-Stater 101]

It wasn't real communism/socialism again....

And this is the bottom line argument.