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> collectivist ideologies like communism and national socialism I sense a conflation between communism and USSR dictatorship. I'm not sure this is warranted.

> collectivist ideologies like communism and national socialism I sense a conflation between communism and USSR dictatorship. I'm not sure this is warranted. (Then again, China is supposedly lead by a "communist party".) More generally, are you suggesting that collectivist ideologies necessarily leads to totalitarianism? > which enable the individual to exist without any dependencies except a job. That last exception will need to be remedied some day. Some more automation and substantially more redistribution should do it. Which is why I'm so disturbed by your juxtaposition of communism and national socialism: many people equate redistribution with communism with dictatorship, preventing us to solve the problem of ever growing structural inequality. We're going to get over this trauma if we're to avoid the coming horrors of corporate capitalism (or the horrors of its unplanned demise).

UweSchmidt 11y ago
I didn't mean to conflate things; imagine a benevolent communist leadership, or compassionate national socialism: you would still be under a massive ideologically influence. They might not burn your book, but expect massive resistance to anything that does not conform to the collectivist mainstream. To any human from before WW2 we are all crazy weirdos and live a life of an eccentric dreamer.
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  Possibly. But we do have our own conformism too. We do live under our own ideology. There is no escaping ideology: we humans have values that go beyond our own self anyway. Good luck finding the "right" (whatever that means) ideology, though.
mafribe 11y ago
conflation between communism and USSR dictatorship. It's a simplification, but historically warranted, in the sense that the USSR was created explicitly with the end-goal of leading to a communist society as described by Marx/Engels in the "Communist Manifesto", i.e., the ideal society where the "contradictions of capitalism" have disappeared. Moreover, the 10 points that the "Communist Manifesto" says (Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists) are required to bring about communism were all carried out in the Soviet Union and its satellites (and brought about not communism, but Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not to mention an inability to feed the population). If you want to be more precise in your terminology, I suggest the following distinctions: Marxism is a theory. Typically 3 things are theorised. (1) How capitalism (re)produced inequality. (2) A theory of revolution as intrinsic part of the transition from contemporary society to communism via socialism. (3) A theory of post-revolutionary society. Socialism. This describes post-revolutionary, but pre-communist societies, in particular USSR and its satellites. Communism. The ideal society, post-revolution, where the "contradictions of capitalism" have disappeared.
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  > the USSR was created explicitly with the end-goal of leading to a communist society […] I'm not sure that's true. Granted, it was ostensibly, outwardly created for that purpose. But I'm not sure that was the actual intent of those who lead that charge. My History is quite dusty, so I wonder what exactly brought about the dictatorships you mentioned. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time a revolution lead to (near) absolutism. The French revolution for instance lead to Napoleon. Given this, I wonder how representative governments were able to emerge at all. It doesn't make me very optimistic about the possibility for democracy either. (Yeah, for various reasons, representative governments are hardly democratic: elected leaders are very poor proxies for the will of the people.)
  - mafribe 11y ago
    the actual intent We cannot look into people's head. We have to take into account what they say they do. Yes, we can question to what extent they were telling the truth, possibly even to themselves. wouldn't be the first time That's why revolutionary political movements continue having a bad name.
    - loup-vaillant 11y ago
      > We cannot look into people's head. We have to take into account what they say they do. The latter often gives a pretty good insight about the former. The fact that USSR became a dictatorship so quickly makes the leaders of the movement look pretty bad.
- fsloth 11y ago
  "It's a simplification, but historically warranted, in the sense that the USSR was created explicitly with the end-goal of leading to a communist society as described by Marx/Engels..." IMO, it's not very fruitful to study the ideas of Marx/Engels together with the soviet union. Soviet union was a military dictatorship that used the communist story as the replacement theology for their domain. Sure, there were the true believers who ate up the dogma but I'm pretty sure most of the soviet leadership were pragmatic revolutionaries who just wanted power. They needed to replace "the story of the czar as a loving father" with the story of the communist agenda in peoples minds.

UweSchmidt 11y ago

I didn't mean to conflate things; imagine a benevolent communist leadership, or compassionate national socialism: you would still be under a massive ideologically influence. They might not burn your book, but expect massive resistance to anything that does not conform to the collectivist mainstream. To any human from before WW2 we are all crazy weirdos and live a life of an eccentric dreamer.

loup-vaillant 11y ago
Possibly. But we do have our own conformism too. We do live under our own ideology. There is no escaping ideology: we humans have values that go beyond our own self anyway. Good luck finding the "right" (whatever that means) ideology, though.

mafribe 11y ago

conflation between communism and USSR dictatorship. It's a simplification, but historically warranted, in the sense that the USSR was created explicitly with the end-goal of leading to a communist society as described by Marx/Engels in the "Communist Manifesto", i.e., the ideal society where the "contradictions of capitalism" have disappeared. Moreover, the 10 points that the "Communist Manifesto" says (Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists) are required to bring about communism were all carried out in the Soviet Union and its satellites (and brought about not communism, but Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not to mention an inability to feed the population). If you want to be more precise in your terminology, I suggest the following distinctions: Marxism is a theory. Typically 3 things are theorised. (1) How capitalism (re)produced inequality. (2) A theory of revolution as intrinsic part of the transition from contemporary society to communism via socialism. (3) A theory of post-revolutionary society. Socialism. This describes post-revolutionary, but pre-communist societies, in particular USSR and its satellites. Communism. The ideal society, post-revolution, where the "contradictions of capitalism" have disappeared.

loup-vaillant 11y ago
> the USSR was created explicitly with the end-goal of leading to a communist society […] I'm not sure that's true. Granted, it was ostensibly, outwardly created for that purpose. But I'm not sure that was the actual intent of those who lead that charge. My History is quite dusty, so I wonder what exactly brought about the dictatorships you mentioned. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time a revolution lead to (near) absolutism. The French revolution for instance lead to Napoleon. Given this, I wonder how representative governments were able to emerge at all. It doesn't make me very optimistic about the possibility for democracy either. (Yeah, for various reasons, representative governments are hardly democratic: elected leaders are very poor proxies for the will of the people.)
- mafribe 11y ago
  the actual intent We cannot look into people's head. We have to take into account what they say they do. Yes, we can question to what extent they were telling the truth, possibly even to themselves. wouldn't be the first time That's why revolutionary political movements continue having a bad name.
  - loup-vaillant 11y ago
    > We cannot look into people's head. We have to take into account what they say they do. The latter often gives a pretty good insight about the former. The fact that USSR became a dictatorship so quickly makes the leaders of the movement look pretty bad.
fsloth 11y ago
"It's a simplification, but historically warranted, in the sense that the USSR was created explicitly with the end-goal of leading to a communist society as described by Marx/Engels..." IMO, it's not very fruitful to study the ideas of Marx/Engels together with the soviet union. Soviet union was a military dictatorship that used the communist story as the replacement theology for their domain. Sure, there were the true believers who ate up the dogma but I'm pretty sure most of the soviet leadership were pragmatic revolutionaries who just wanted power. They needed to replace "the story of the czar as a loving father" with the story of the communist agenda in peoples minds.