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Imagine a world where you could say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Naziism is bad"...

andrepd 10y ago
Communism is an economic system with flaws and virtues you can discuss and argue about. Nazism is about race supremacy and totalitarianism. So yes, thankfully you can't say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Nazism is bad".
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  Communism as envisioned by Marx is an economic system, sort of. Communism as anyone has ever tried to implement it, or has talked about implementing it in pratice, is a system of totalitarian social control masquerading as an economic system. The only difference between Nazism and Communism in practice has been whether "right genes" are defined by race or by your ancestors' professions and social classes. The totalitarianism is pretty similar, really. (As a side note, "communism" as practiced in the Soviet Union, the version I'm most familiar with, had quite its share of racism as well, both official and just people on the street.) The terminological confusion is unfortunate on the one hand and great for motte-and-bailey arguments[1] on the other. [1] As described http://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf http://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf and discussed at a bit more length at http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word... . Note that such arguments are very common. They are not limited to postmodernism or the fringe elements of the social justice movement by any means; I see them all the time on both the left and the right.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Imagine a world where you could say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Naziism is bad"... I can imagine a world where "Communism", like "Naziism", was a label for a single system of government implemented by a single group of people in one time and place in history, with no theoretical model (and prior practical advocacy) that shared the same name but had substantial differences. OTOH, that world is very much different from the real world, so when one wants to criticize one of the things called Communism, one needs to be careful in identifying which it is, since there are multiple of them, and they have different traits.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  I marvel at how Lenin (allegedly?) failed to realize that he wasn't implementing Marx, given just how much he studied Marx and how routinely he referred to Marx to justify his policies...
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I marvel at how Lenin (allegedly?) failed to realize that he wasn't implementing Marx What? Failed to realize? Leninist vanguardism was, viewed optimistically, a deliberate modification of key elements of Marxism to address the fact that Lenin wanted to avoid the mess of actually having to have a mature capitalist society with the features Marx saw the transition from capitalism to communism through socialism requiring, what with Russia not having gotten there yet. Viewed cynically, it was a modification that allowed using the language of Marxism -- an idea that had quite a bit of appeal internationally at the time -- to implement a centralized authoritarian dictatorship governed by a narrow elite, as well as providing the cover of a superficial theory that provided a veneer of an excuse for how "Marxism" could be applied a country with what was largely, in Marxist economic terms (not traditional political terms), a feudal rather than capitalist system. I don't think I've ever seen anyone claim that Lenin's divergences from Marx were unintentional.
    - clock_tower 10y ago
      I'd always heard that Lenin claimed to be implementing Marxism, but that actual Marxism wasn't what he was implementing; this is the first I've heard it said that he deliberately wasn't implementing Marxism.
- teacup50 10y ago
  What if you believe the tautological kernel at the core of Marxism is what causes communism ("as implemented") to always run off the rails, and become an oppressive authoritarian state? What I see is the root of Communism; "No True Communist" is simple deflection.
  - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
realusername 10y ago
So much revisionism (and bad history) in this whole thread... No, Stalinism does not represent communism as a whole and Stalin was very controversial even at that time. "Communism did not work in practice" - by which metric ? The Soviet Union transformed itself into a world superpower from an backward agricultural undeveloped nation in just 40 years while fighting two world wars and losing almost all their male population. That in itself is a pretty amazing feat in itself. Not to take into account the countless inventions we owe to the Soviet Union today, it was a very productive place for scientists. Ironically, it's the social policy of the Soviet Union which had the most issues since during most of its history, it was a brutal dictatorship sending opponents (and even random people) to Gulags.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Stalinism isn't Communism as a whole, to be sure; but it was Lenin's men who threw prisoners of war into blast furnaces (not on Wikipedia, but I think this was in _The Sword and the Shield_, from the Mitrokhin archive); Lenin who robbed the peasantry at the end of the NEP; and Mao who created the world's largest famine. You can't sacrifice Stalinism to save the rest of actually-existing Communism; Leninism, Maoism, Trotskyism (probably, although Trotsky didn't rule for long), Kim Il Sung thought, Enver Hoxha-ism, and all the rest were just as vile. (Castro was less bad, but that hardly means no political prisoners at all, or no torture at all.) Catch-up industrialization is easy; many societies have done it, dictatorships or not. Staying developed is harder; the USSR, like Argentina and North Korea, first developed and then regressed, which is not a particularly impressive feat. Meanwhile, China's development was stalled for 50 years because their implementation of Communism was more than usually destructive; it wasn't until Deng Xiaopang renounced Maoism and overthrew the Maoist die-hards that China finally began to industrialize. Nor are impressive feats acceptable when they're built on bones; or was the opium trade justified because of all the money it made for the UK and US? And the GULAG proper existed until 1961, with forced-labor camps for political prisoners (so, GULAG but on a smaller scale) existing until 1987; likewise, the VChK and its many renamings persisted for the whole history of the USSR, and I think the FSB is descended from them -- although they're evidently much less bad.

Communism is an economic system with flaws and virtues you can discuss and argue about. Nazism is about race supremacy and totalitarianism. So yes, thankfully you can't say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Nazism is bad".

bzbarsky 10y ago
Communism as envisioned by Marx is an economic system, sort of. Communism as anyone has ever tried to implement it, or has talked about implementing it in pratice, is a system of totalitarian social control masquerading as an economic system. The only difference between Nazism and Communism in practice has been whether "right genes" are defined by race or by your ancestors' professions and social classes. The totalitarianism is pretty similar, really. (As a side note, "communism" as practiced in the Soviet Union, the version I'm most familiar with, had quite its share of racism as well, both official and just people on the street.) The terminological confusion is unfortunate on the one hand and great for motte-and-bailey arguments[1] on the other. [1] As described http://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf http://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf and discussed at a bit more length at http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word... . Note that such arguments are very common. They are not limited to postmodernism or the fringe elements of the social justice movement by any means; I see them all the time on both the left and the right.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Imagine a world where you could say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Naziism is bad"... I can imagine a world where "Communism", like "Naziism", was a label for a single system of government implemented by a single group of people in one time and place in history, with no theoretical model (and prior practical advocacy) that shared the same name but had substantial differences. OTOH, that world is very much different from the real world, so when one wants to criticize one of the things called Communism, one needs to be careful in identifying which it is, since there are multiple of them, and they have different traits.

clock_tower 10y ago
I marvel at how Lenin (allegedly?) failed to realize that he wasn't implementing Marx, given just how much he studied Marx and how routinely he referred to Marx to justify his policies...
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > I marvel at how Lenin (allegedly?) failed to realize that he wasn't implementing Marx What? Failed to realize? Leninist vanguardism was, viewed optimistically, a deliberate modification of key elements of Marxism to address the fact that Lenin wanted to avoid the mess of actually having to have a mature capitalist society with the features Marx saw the transition from capitalism to communism through socialism requiring, what with Russia not having gotten there yet. Viewed cynically, it was a modification that allowed using the language of Marxism -- an idea that had quite a bit of appeal internationally at the time -- to implement a centralized authoritarian dictatorship governed by a narrow elite, as well as providing the cover of a superficial theory that provided a veneer of an excuse for how "Marxism" could be applied a country with what was largely, in Marxist economic terms (not traditional political terms), a feudal rather than capitalist system. I don't think I've ever seen anyone claim that Lenin's divergences from Marx were unintentional.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    I'd always heard that Lenin claimed to be implementing Marxism, but that actual Marxism wasn't what he was implementing; this is the first I've heard it said that he deliberately wasn't implementing Marxism.
teacup50 10y ago
What if you believe the tautological kernel at the core of Marxism is what causes communism ("as implemented") to always run off the rails, and become an oppressive authoritarian state? What I see is the root of Communism; "No True Communist" is simple deflection.
- 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

realusername 10y ago

So much revisionism (and bad history) in this whole thread... No, Stalinism does not represent communism as a whole and Stalin was very controversial even at that time. "Communism did not work in practice" - by which metric ? The Soviet Union transformed itself into a world superpower from an backward agricultural undeveloped nation in just 40 years while fighting two world wars and losing almost all their male population. That in itself is a pretty amazing feat in itself. Not to take into account the countless inventions we owe to the Soviet Union today, it was a very productive place for scientists. Ironically, it's the social policy of the Soviet Union which had the most issues since during most of its history, it was a brutal dictatorship sending opponents (and even random people) to Gulags.

clock_tower 10y ago
Stalinism isn't Communism as a whole, to be sure; but it was Lenin's men who threw prisoners of war into blast furnaces (not on Wikipedia, but I think this was in _The Sword and the Shield_, from the Mitrokhin archive); Lenin who robbed the peasantry at the end of the NEP; and Mao who created the world's largest famine. You can't sacrifice Stalinism to save the rest of actually-existing Communism; Leninism, Maoism, Trotskyism (probably, although Trotsky didn't rule for long), Kim Il Sung thought, Enver Hoxha-ism, and all the rest were just as vile. (Castro was less bad, but that hardly means no political prisoners at all, or no torture at all.) Catch-up industrialization is easy; many societies have done it, dictatorships or not. Staying developed is harder; the USSR, like Argentina and North Korea, first developed and then regressed, which is not a particularly impressive feat. Meanwhile, China's development was stalled for 50 years because their implementation of Communism was more than usually destructive; it wasn't until Deng Xiaopang renounced Maoism and overthrew the Maoist die-hards that China finally began to industrialize. Nor are impressive feats acceptable when they're built on bones; or was the opium trade justified because of all the money it made for the UK and US? And the GULAG proper existed until 1961, with forced-labor camps for political prisoners (so, GULAG but on a smaller scale) existing until 1987; likewise, the VChK and its many renamings persisted for the whole history of the USSR, and I think the FSB is descended from them -- although they're evidently much less bad.