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erikhHere we go, a real one!
<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>
This provides some insight (to me anyway) on the disconnect within the US. See, here, every time the right wing says "Hey, we really need to decentralize power to avoid a totalitarian state," the left freaks the fuck out. Here in the US, present day, the left and the communists are conflated (to what extent exactly is up for debate, but there's a conflation there). Part of that, certainly, is old-school cold war era propaganda, and also, part of it is the idealistic appropriation of the left. Not intending to point fingers, merely to express this: you're talking about the one thing (small government, empowered population, democratic representation at the local level, etc) and that's a FAAAAAAaaaaar different thing than "communism," as it exists (conceptually or otherwise) in the present day. So to converse properly, we each have to understand one key thing (and I get the sensation that we each recognize it already): that the brand of communism which you discuss is neither the mainstream, nor one that has existed in any nation in the history of the earth.
Am I wrong? I'll just continue on the assumption that I'm not wrong. It's more constructive that way, and apparently that matters in Spam of all places.
To address what is the meat of this part, then yes admitting up front what is more or less on the table is that of Marxism-Leninism. Though among the far left the fact it exists does not often validate that its correct among Communist or even Anarchist theorists and this sort of leads into the next point about Karl Marx's ghost coming back to write about his theory as it was adapted, and we have then in particular the number of anti-Stalinist/ML communist or socialist movements themselves which has taken quiet a bit of their own analysis of the matter.
It's similarly notable that Marx had a lot less history of Marxist (and/or so-called Marxist) governments to draw from. I'd love to see an intellectually honest follow-up from his ghost, written in 2017, but hey. Anywho I've never heard of Kropotkin in my entire life, so I'm woefully outgunned here. I'll take your word for it.
While we can't fix dead the best possible answer we have to re-examining his works compared to its historical use as it applies to the Eastern Bloc the next best thing we have are the writers, politicians, and such and such that have come and gone offering their observations. But first: Kropotkin.
As a quick primer on Kropotkin was born as a Russian aristocrat, entered into the army, and did some work in Siberia. He was eventually called out on his anarchist activism and exiled from Russia for forty years in the middle of the 19th century where in Western Europe he wrote some books and shit on communism, notably the Conquest of Bread. He returned home as a commie after the Bolshevik uprising, but became dispirited with Lenin's centralized practice of communism and called him out on it.
Needless to say he promptly left after the October Revolution.
He's not necessarily alone in his criticism of the Leninist state, and Trotsky soon came to be a critic during Stalin's time leading to his own exile over his criticisms of a centralizing state and eventual assassination. Trotsky's criticism focuses on the lack of participation in policy by the Russian workers and population and the rising isolation of the Soviet state from the people by wrapping itself in bureaucracy. In wordier terms this generally stands as being one of the more thorough analysis of the fall of Soviet styled socialism by Trotskyites and Anarchists (without getting into the combative relationship between them).
History after this then tends to follow the course prescribed by Soviet intervention by Stalin and the Soviet state and into that realm of ideological impurity by sides known as the Cold War.
Communists and Anarchists partook in part during the Spanish Civil War in the thirties and among the Republican ranks held considerable sway and actually administrated their own land. I have heard in cases they were more productive in their use of land and labor than before and George Orwell has written positively about the revolutionary egalitarian spirit found in Anarchist Spain at the time, calling it the mystique that attracts men to Socialism in the first place.
Later in the mid 50's the people of Hungary overthrew their Stalinist leadership to implement a style of Council Communism. Knowing they were pretty weak and that the Russians could just steam-roll them back into the fold they made appeals to the international community to help them out, but none came when the Russians eventually dissolved them 4:1. But the Council Communist experiment lasted long enough in its independence to provide some insights, namely in that nothing broke down when effective full communism was put in place.
More recently we have post-Bookchin groups like the Zapatistas in Southern Mexico advocating for absolute horizontal democracy among the population there and the Rojava Kurds asking very much the same, the present mood having shifted from classic Marxism to Left-Libertarianism or Libertarian Socialism, basically the same thing. Whether or not this is particularly relevant is up to you, but I will say something I'll say again: welcome to Sectarianism.
I don't have one single issue with the dissolution of federal power. For that matter, if California wants to go full-on socialist, I don't think Texas should have any power whatsoever to prevent it (property issues notwithstanding), if you catch my drift. If "all politics are local politics" as the adage says, then why are we ruled by 545 strangers in Washington with a single-digit collective approval rating? Split that shit up. One shouldn't have to secede from the union to achieve a degree of self-determination.
In my estimation, the disruption of federalization is not a communist issue. In light of that, the snipped, split, and quoted section of your post -- while intriguing and light-shedding and a bit educational -- isn't really relevant to the conversation. Like if I told you that Christianity preaches charitable giving, and you agree that charitable giving is the tits, that's still a bit of a red herring when it comes to the "is there a god" conversation, no? Anyway. The clever bit in all this is, in no way shape or form does this communist vision, which you're conveying well, resemble whatsoever the version peddled in the OP. So going back to that whole conflation bit, communism has a bit of a branding issue and I think that explains at least part of the at-each-others'-throats nature of any conversation on the subject. Communism apparently means whatever anybody wants, and in (so-called) practice it has only ever produced tyranny, genocide, and abject state failure. So yeah, we on the right tend to come in hot a little bit, but like..... you know.....
Welcome to Sectarianism.
What can often be analyzed per Russia as the faults of the Soviet theory being its lack of input from its participatory citizens and a fast and dangerous exercise of rapid modernization as being that notable theory's lack of viability (ignoring the whole explosive GDP growth during the Great Depression despite the Holdomor). We then have Tito.
Of the nations to pursue communism in the post-war years Yugoslavia developed its own state and theory outside of the Stalinist model because the Red Army didn't get involved in the liberation of Yugoslavia. Tito's philosophy was to allow workers in the factory the ability to share in profits from that factory and of factory self-management (the workers either elected specialized managers, a body of such, or refused any notion of factory management). Tito's notions of each constituent country coming to communism in their own way put him at odds with the Soviet model where they had to out-compete the west, as opposed to cooperation which also likely doomed the Soviet model.
Tito's major flaw though would probably have been his penchant for allowing greater and great autonomy among the constituent nations of Yugoslavia and/or a failure to ensure a stable government for after his passing and failure to negate nearly an entire region's history of animosity towards one another.
And to come back to the Christian example, one can't really say there can only be one type in much the same way it couldn't be said there can only be one Church, and then there was many. So this sort of addresses the point where we're arguing Communism on the basis that the only Communism to Communism is Marxist-Leninism.
I'd also like to comment we could go into God and like Human Nature that's something I ask to be defined before heading in because you could grapple the entire notion in a debate before the debate, and the one of God I would enjoy having but never get the chance to do so. But that's off-topic.
Arguably we all benefit today. The only sticking point is that I don't actually OWN the big shopping mall that agreed to rebuild 60 miles of aging highway in exchange for development rights -- but I still get to drive on it, I still get to shop at the mall, I still get to walk around the park they built. There's a bit of a false-binary here, by which it's implied that the rational self-interest of capitalism benefits only the self, and the shared interest of communism benefits only the community. The limosines of the ruling party, and the electric self-driving space trains or whatever of Elon Musk, should put that right to bed. Interest, benefit, and the common good are not political issues at all. We don't need to radically alter the political makeup to control or achieve them; to do so invites, well, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Chavez, Castro, etc. We, collectively, should only alter the political structure when it is in OUR interest to do so -- when WE are the ones taking advantage (a la American Revolution, French Revolution, and pretty much every other good one in history). Capitalist? Yup. Good for the community? Yup.
To tackle this: good for you. However, it doesn't do much to change the fact there's a wealth shift going on in this country. Peter Temin of MIT has released a study on this, here's an article. And here's another. The basic idea is we're falling apart fast, and as he's even quoted:
“America is not only reverting to developing-country status, it is increasingly ripe for serious social turmoil that has not been seen in generations.”
And while the area around a new mall has repaved the highway to make it first world, Detroit, Baltimore, Appalachia, and Newark are falling apart as the eyes and interests of the nation leave them behind because now they got to spend on the fashionable coast where the middle class are going.
While the free capitalist market may have been a good thing, or if it was controlled better to preserve a viable middle class then perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion. But because of lack of input by the people who find that the economy matters to them and for the system then like Stalinism its leaving them behind.
So while it can be said that Communism under the Stalinist image disenfranchises undesired groups, or enacts aggressive policies that change things faster than they can be managed and thereby kills thousands, capitalism does the same on simple neglect for the supposed market they're left to care for.
Yeah, the labor picture is gonna be RADICALLY different in a very short while (if you think 3D-printed industrial tools and robot factories are an issue, just wait until we get self-driving semi trucks). What you're leaving out, though, is that the notion of scarcity is radically changing right along with it. Maybe in a hundred years we're not gonna have the kind of workforce participation we've counted as essential to the functioning of society...... but also you'll be able to fly to New Hampshire in your pickup truck to grab unobtanium for your phase-assembler for like a buck, if and when your phase-assembler ever runs out, and the clever, self-interested money-makers will STILL be looking for better ways to build a mousetrap so they can get more spacebucks. To categorize this as 'slavery to the wealthy' (my words) is rather pessimistic -- slavery, when all labor is robotic anyway? To what extent can tyranny even exist in the first place, in such a world? I garner no horror, no concern whatsoever from the prospect of a mechanized future workforce. It's the part between here and there that concerns the shit out of me. Into what corners will we legislate ourselves in this interim? How much (human, apparently) sacrifice are we going to tolerate, in order to arm the toilet-scrubbers of the Indobekistania with soon-to-be-obsolete manufacturing talents? Why are we revolutioning again? What is the goddamn point?
To answer the end question first: my primary concern over the course of things is letting such a small group of people have such control over our lives, and to without necessary input of labor by the consuming body of the population enjoy a quality of life in excess of the rest of us. This may either lead to a sort of hardcore Swedish-”Socialism” by necessity with living wages granted to every individual irregardless of activity, or we riot and everything goes full post-Rome as Vilage doesn't want to happen in his life-time.
It is also this future may not really merit any future progress in the first place if we're on fixed incomes and not producing any sort of labor that can be used in exchange for greater material resources, this is a Proudhonian argument. If we're all doing nothing but living on a wage given out by our state benefactors for the purpose of consumption and living, then what is the point for advancing technology to a better model if no one will be able to afford it?
Matters of having a Y better than X, I consider this more a matter of competition than it is of additional funds, since monetary capital can be replaced with any sort of capital and it'll function the same. The reason we worry about the monetary aspect of capital is we're told it's important and we believe it is because we're told that so much we're lead to believe it is important. I could go on about spooks and legitemate memes and shit but that may be digressing.
But we could still fulfil certain conditions of communism by way of workers control of the means of production with some adaptation. While not explicitly Communism, Anarcho-Mutualism is perhaps the safest synthesis to approach this. Written by Proudhon before Marx even, Proudhon proposed workers control of the shop or the factory, but had their labor all the same rewarded by maintaining the same sorts of market forces in the economy at that time. It would basically be if we turn everything into Mondragon Corp.
We then go into my own personal theory. But moving along.
Democracy is also known (to Toqueville anyway) as the "tyranny of the majority." To consider a revolution with democracy in it is a bit of a conundrum, innit? Because, if your democracy needs to violently compel people to play along, does that represent self-determination anymore? Is that even democracy anymore? Remember that concept of self-determination is what drives revolution in the first place (else what's the goddamn point -- "We VIOLENTLY REFUSE TO HAVE A SAY!"). Communism which must compel even one citizen to participate, dooms itself to counter-revolution. I seem to recall that being part of the whole idea.... whatever. My point is, this can only work at a local level, and even then it's very iffy.
Spain 1933, let's go with that. In this case turbulence in the country at the time forced King Alfonso to call municipal elections during which the socialists and liberal Republicans won a vast amount of the seats, forcing the abdication of King Alfonso to Portugal and preparation for attempted coups against the elected Socialist-Republican government in Madrid by nationalist forces to launch in 1936. Adding the French Revolution in as an example as well I would say if there was to be violence, then there'd be no stopping it; even if against a popularly elected government.
So here's a riddle for you. I'm disabled -- missing a leg. Let's magically transplant me into Communism 2050 -- we've got some pretty sweet robot legs, and I'm part of the community so I own one. Now let's say I want a better one. Who devises it, and why?
See today, Ossur invents the Genium X3 because they won a contract from DARPA to develop a microprocessor-controlled knee which can withstand water, sand, fire, and (allegedly) a gunshot, with a battery that lasts a week and recharges in four hours, and weighs less than eight pounds. In exchange, Ossur gets a shitload of money, and when they make a better leg, they get a shitload more.
So in Communism 2050 -- why are they building an X4? I've already got an X3, and we both already own everything. My accommodation is already sufficient that I should be plenty capable of sculpturing or whatever it is I'm allowed to do. If it costs one unit of unobtanium to feed an average citizen, but two units of unobtanium to build me a better leg, what right do I have to a better leg?
It's a riddle. Bear in mind, collectives in the past have not been kind to the differently-abled -- we were offed along with the other undesirables in just about every genocide in history. Frankly we're more trusting than we ought to be, and any disabled person with any kind of experience in social healthcare (be it VA, NHS, or elsewhere) has the scars to prove it.
This comes back around to the Proudhonian tradition mentioned earlier, and being too lazy to re-affix to this as opposed to the previous time I mentioned it I'll shrug and call back to it.
But this argues that reward is necessary for something to become better. But the recent trend towards opensource/open access software and hardware. While perhaps it may not survive a nuclear blast, Easton LaChapelle's open-source prosthetic hand is totally open and free to tinker with on your own time. Just like the code for the internet. It's not going to be massive an noticeable sweeping change like with what you would get for getting a DARPA grant, the method of open sourcing effectively means that the product will be gradually improved over time, and in the spirit of open source may even become part of the product for free for the next guy.
This has been an attributable aspect to the success of the Android phone since it got built on the free and openly available stage of internet code, and Linux, or GNU. But mostly Linux. And GNU. There's a reason Stallman is God for those that care.
But to move to the disability bit: the Soviets – back to Marxist-Leninism – adapted the Bolshevik definition and approach to disability. But at a time where the west and capitalist world basically ignored the shit out of disability the Soviet government at the least attempted to provide for lost earnings of the disabled person and didn't send them to some hospital forever or they were expected to live on some saved personal pension. The Soviets provided a wage and to those who were still able retraining in a field to provide for themselves before the US instituted Social Security in 1935 and formalized workplace insurance in 1917.
And then Stalin.
It would be argued that disability in east and west traveled on much the same course so attempting to compare the two is a strained effort because it's comparing something from the 40's or 70's to today. While it wasn't pretty there, it wasn't any better in the west either with the UK passing anti-disability discrimination law in 1995. And it wasn't until about the seventies anti-disability discrimination in the US picked up steam and 1990 when the ADA was signed formally into law. And in 1999 it finally became illegal to detain someone for being disabled, mentally.
Violence is a fickle thing, wielded far more often by those in the wrong than by those in the right. Do not embrace it easily. We (the people arguing against communism atm) are flagging this because it's like "Well, we're gonna have to crack some skulls. OH WELL. We won't shoot guys we like." That's not how you empower a community, that's how you empower a tyrannical group (which may, admittedly, hold a temporary ideological majority, and thus have 'some democracy in it'). Communism in general has a revolution fetish and that should REALLY give you pause.
Then would it be better if for now I dropped the Robespierre meme'ing?
Because moving ahead there's a perception even among the apathetic that American democracy isn't at all responsive and if you're going to vote then it doesn't matter. At consistently below 50% of the population participating in elections at all, it might be said that government in the US has a very low mandate to even exist.
Compared to Australia (97%, figure 3), France (79% as of 2012 election, and the UK (Making it recently one of the lowest and closest to America in political apathy, but still higher).
It would be supposed then that if the country's democratic process has become dysfunctional, then action is needed. Whether or not that's to storm the polls to try and vote in a party in election where historically only two parties ever have a chance at all of doing any thing. Or to actually go smashy bashy. Personally, I would rather the smashy bashy is held off until someone actually attempts a coup like in Spain, but that's just me. But the notion isn't going to stop lone crusaders.
But the belief that violence is necessary to affect change stems from the belief that European parliamentary politics shuts out the common man, as proposed by Rosa Luxemborg. This is also enforced in part by the present awareness of the use of big money in the elections, where the men and women running for office are campaigning on a platform supported by corporate interests out of the necessity that elections need funds, so they take funding from rich kids wanting someone to play out the policies they want. So in order to unfuck the system, you gotta crack some skulls. This is the logic of the theme on the revolutionary side.
Per just getting things done simply playing your cover of John Lennon's Imagine isn't going to compel the ruling class to begin democratizing more aspects of society and give up more power. And bringing them back up again Civil Rights didn't advance as it had simply because the Southern Baptist Congregation wasn't taking the Hillary high-road and letting the Klan beat the shit out of them, and per that purpose they had the Deacons of Defense backing them up, or the Deacons themselves running armed self-defense against Jim Crow law to make them a thornier bunch to silence in Jim Crow. Or even the more radical Black Panthers being spooky about the whole struggle.
It is in this case the notion that a group can defend themselves, or has a purpose they will arm themselves that can compel change when all other avenues are lost, or perceived as such. Again, I repost this comic:
It is not that King Louis made the conscious decision to become the People's King during the early setting of the French Revolution, but that the people of France showed a particularly bitter resentment towards his office, one that for a time LaFeyette helped keep them safe by negotiating with the radicals to permit them as a body in the France to come at the National Assembly. And it wasn't their asking nicely that had his powers reorganized, or the King John was asked nicely by the rebels to sign the Magna Carta, or the Continental Congress asking King George to let them go all nice and polite. Violence if preferable, but of the actions it's one that produces results, it's just the political management after and how the pre-existing structure of the previous state is managed to conduct what ends are needed.
