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I'd like to say that I am a British (born and raised in England) Communist. This does not mean that I support the actions of Stalin, nor Mao, nor Che or Castro.
by ue_ 9y ago
I'd like to say that I am a British (born and raised in England) Communist. This does not mean that I support the actions of Stalin, nor Mao, nor Che or Castro. I also don't think we should play numbers games with ideologies or figures of history. Both the USSR and Nazi Germany committed various horrible acts, and so did the British Empire.
There are various strains of Communists who either (i) believe that the actions of those 20th c. regimes were failures, and the points of failures must be investigated and fixed or (ii) believe that the approach taken by these nations (Marxism-Leninism) was not based on sound principles or (iii) are not proponents of orthodox Marxism at all, such as anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists or to some extent anarcho-Communists.
To lump all Communists together as a monolithic block which supports those actions of past people is ahistorical and wrong. Many do support the actions, though many also do not.
- remarkEon 9y ago>There are various strains of Communists who either (i) believe that the actions of those 20th c. regimes were failures, and the points of failures must be investigated and fixed or (ii) believe that the approach taken by these nations (Marxism-Leninism) was not based on sound principles or (iii) are not proponents of orthodox Marxism at all, such as anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists or to some extent anarcho-Communists. I always find it fascinating that, when defending failed Communist states, Communists tend to revert to a variation of the No-True-Scotsman. The previous Communist regime, with all its murderous barbarism, simply wasn't Communist enough or was the "wrong" Communism to begin with!
- icebraining 9y agoI don't think that's a fair criticism, because there have always been Communist critics of those regimes, even before they turned out to be murderously barbaric. It's not necessarily revisionist like in an NTS fallacy.
- ue_ 9y agoSocialist critics include George Orwell (known for his criticism of totalitarian Socialism in Animal Farm), economist I.I Rubin, the anarchists which the USSR suppressed, Luxemburg, Bordiga, Bookchin, and later on Hobsbawm, Trotsky (to some extent), Sylvia Pankhurt (and various other feminists) etc.
- remarkEon 9y agoI'm still waiting for one to not end up being murderously barbaric, existence of early critics or not.
- ue_ 9y agoWhy not contribute to the modern Marxist discourse in finding out how this can be achieved, then?
- thriftwy 9y agoWhy would an opponent to Marxist discourse want to contribute to it? There are a few discourses with much better traction than Marxism, why not stick to those? It's basically a request to produce Failblog-grade falling-on-a-face-while-smashing-your-balls results. Maybe you will be able to do what noone could before you, but chances are, you will just hurt yourself. And your society.