6 ms·

Comrades don't need to indoctinate when is way easier for them to just censor by making illegal everything they don't like. Didn't Maduro in Venezuela told its

Comrades don't need to indoctinate when is way easier for them to just censor by making illegal everything they don't like. Didn't Maduro in Venezuela told its minions a month ago to prosecute twitter users who expressed dissent? He even inspired them to put them 30 years in jail. What we are seeing here is the instantiation of that strategy in internet messages. That doesn't mean that it is not their normal for every other aspect in society. Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism.

yarg 9y ago
The Communist Party does not practice communism - it never has. They are no more communists than the DPRK is democratic. Communism was co-opted very early on and became just another form of authoritarianism.
- tosser350 9y ago
  "X is not true socialism/communism" has become the new godwin's law. Whenever the failure of a socialist/communist government is discussed inevitably is wasn't TRUE socialism/communism
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yes, this can't be stressed or repeated enough! The Soviet Communist Party was/is rather like Scientology. At the noob level, in the Pioneers (a lot like US Boy Scouts) it was all about ideals/ideology and honor. At some point, you realized that members got nice perks. More money. Access to stores that carried better food and stuff. And eventually, as you got into higher-level leadership, you started to get that it was all bullshit.
  - oculusthrift 9y ago
    did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same? is it possible they misunderstand human motivations and psychology and will always devolve to authoritarianism?
    - yarg 9y ago
      I think that a fundamental aspect of that we are yet as individuals within our societies to understand the implications of Nash equilibria (and other significant economic theories). In any functional communistic society I think that it would need to be taught from a young age in order to provide the populace with a near inate understanding of just how damaging selfish individual motivations can be (when applied on a global scale).
    - quotemstr 9y ago
      It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature. Attempts to force human nature to conform to the ideals of utopians in power leads to tyranny and misery. We should bear this experience in mind when looking at our own utopian projects. It's easy to mock China's defiance of human nature, but it's much harder to look in the mirror ask whether we've gone too far in our own pursuits of "justice".
      - etplayer 9y ago
        >It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature This asks the question - what isn't at odds with human nature? Why do you think that utopian projects are necessarily at odds with human nature? Marx and Engels were sociologists, and in fact many modern sociologists are Marxists too. That doesn't mean they're right, but it's some indication that the "human nature" argument needs looking into. And it has been looked into. Erich Fromm, a member of the Frankfurt School, wrote a book called Escape From Freedom in which he details the investigation of the human condition and attempts to identify what human nature is and to what extent it is malleable. The idea that "human nature" is suited to our current mode of production is as he notes a little fallacy stretching back to Freud's time. The nature of humans is at least in part influenced by their environment. The mode of production we currently see (capitalism) is part of our environment. Are not changed men the product of changed circumstances? Perhaps Marx himself would agree with both you and I here: "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." — Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach, III" To "human nature" I say firmly: human society.
  - sebastianconcpt 9y ago
    Correct, a bandits cult with good marketing/gamification (ideology).
- ferongr 9y ago
  No true Scotsman?
  - ue_ 9y ago
    No, NTS applies to cases in which an additional qualifier is added to an object after a claim made by someone in order to disqualify that object from being a Scotsman. In this case, it is not the case - Communists of many stripes, even the some who follow Marxism-Leninism have been critical of the CPC and DPRK. Even the Maoists themselves disavow Chinese Communism after Deng's reforms. Left-communists have always been critical even during the Soviet Union's time. Socialist George Orwell was critical of the Soviet regime. Anarcho-Communist Kropotkin was critical of the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks were critical of the Bolsheviks, etc. The list goes on. In short, a great many Communists have not supported the Soviet CP nor the Chinese state, from their inception all the way to now. I've yet to see any evidence of an NTS fallacy.
- meric 9y ago
  The land distribution and collectivisation I think we're communistic - you're right it's very early on. I think the Khmer Rouge were communistic too - everyone became a farmer. The city people can't farm properly and died.
  - etplayer 9y ago
    That said, there are modern Communist projects which rely not at all on agrarian population; they believe that education should be tailored to fit the current mode of production; for a view on this, you may be interested in Paul W. Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism in which he elaborates what a society might look like under lower-stage Communism and what methods can be used to get there, and how an economy might be organised. Communism is nothing about farming or peasantry - this was largely a Leninist invention to apply to the feudal society of pre-revolutionary Russia, and strengthened by Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese revolution. Marx, to my knowledge, had no support for the idea, nor did his contemporaries or predecessors.
    - alphaalpha101 9y ago
      And of course it makes sense in context. ('It' being changing an agrarian capitalist society to an agrarian communist society - clearly the natural progression.)
ue_ 9y ago
>Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism. Could it be that, if they talk in favour of it, they have a different idea of Communism to you? Modern Communist academics do, we must investigate the ontology of Communism; a good read on this is from Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis. Most modern academic Communists believe that we must search for what happened, how to prevent it and how to move past it, to say nothing of the various splinters and brothers in the Communist family tree - anarchism, Communailsm, democratic Socialism, etc. If you do reading on Communist literature since about 1950 you'll see they have occupied themselves with this investigation, the very one you are accusing them of ignoring.
saryant 9y ago
Since when has The Economist ever been pro-communist? They don't even like Piketty.

yarg 9y ago

The Communist Party does not practice communism - it never has. They are no more communists than the DPRK is democratic. Communism was co-opted very early on and became just another form of authoritarianism.

tosser350 9y ago
"X is not true socialism/communism" has become the new godwin's law. Whenever the failure of a socialist/communist government is discussed inevitably is wasn't TRUE socialism/communism
mirimir 9y ago
Yes, this can't be stressed or repeated enough! The Soviet Communist Party was/is rather like Scientology. At the noob level, in the Pioneers (a lot like US Boy Scouts) it was all about ideals/ideology and honor. At some point, you realized that members got nice perks. More money. Access to stores that carried better food and stuff. And eventually, as you got into higher-level leadership, you started to get that it was all bullshit.
- oculusthrift 9y ago
  did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same? is it possible they misunderstand human motivations and psychology and will always devolve to authoritarianism?
  - yarg 9y ago
    I think that a fundamental aspect of that we are yet as individuals within our societies to understand the implications of Nash equilibria (and other significant economic theories). In any functional communistic society I think that it would need to be taught from a young age in order to provide the populace with a near inate understanding of just how damaging selfish individual motivations can be (when applied on a global scale).
  - quotemstr 9y ago
    It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature. Attempts to force human nature to conform to the ideals of utopians in power leads to tyranny and misery. We should bear this experience in mind when looking at our own utopian projects. It's easy to mock China's defiance of human nature, but it's much harder to look in the mirror ask whether we've gone too far in our own pursuits of "justice".
    - etplayer 9y ago
      >It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature This asks the question - what isn't at odds with human nature? Why do you think that utopian projects are necessarily at odds with human nature? Marx and Engels were sociologists, and in fact many modern sociologists are Marxists too. That doesn't mean they're right, but it's some indication that the "human nature" argument needs looking into. And it has been looked into. Erich Fromm, a member of the Frankfurt School, wrote a book called Escape From Freedom in which he details the investigation of the human condition and attempts to identify what human nature is and to what extent it is malleable. The idea that "human nature" is suited to our current mode of production is as he notes a little fallacy stretching back to Freud's time. The nature of humans is at least in part influenced by their environment. The mode of production we currently see (capitalism) is part of our environment. Are not changed men the product of changed circumstances? Perhaps Marx himself would agree with both you and I here: "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." — Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach, III" To "human nature" I say firmly: human society.
- sebastianconcpt 9y ago
  Correct, a bandits cult with good marketing/gamification (ideology).
ferongr 9y ago
No true Scotsman?
- ue_ 9y ago
  No, NTS applies to cases in which an additional qualifier is added to an object after a claim made by someone in order to disqualify that object from being a Scotsman. In this case, it is not the case - Communists of many stripes, even the some who follow Marxism-Leninism have been critical of the CPC and DPRK. Even the Maoists themselves disavow Chinese Communism after Deng's reforms. Left-communists have always been critical even during the Soviet Union's time. Socialist George Orwell was critical of the Soviet regime. Anarcho-Communist Kropotkin was critical of the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks were critical of the Bolsheviks, etc. The list goes on. In short, a great many Communists have not supported the Soviet CP nor the Chinese state, from their inception all the way to now. I've yet to see any evidence of an NTS fallacy.
meric 9y ago
The land distribution and collectivisation I think we're communistic - you're right it's very early on. I think the Khmer Rouge were communistic too - everyone became a farmer. The city people can't farm properly and died.
- etplayer 9y ago
  That said, there are modern Communist projects which rely not at all on agrarian population; they believe that education should be tailored to fit the current mode of production; for a view on this, you may be interested in Paul W. Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism in which he elaborates what a society might look like under lower-stage Communism and what methods can be used to get there, and how an economy might be organised. Communism is nothing about farming or peasantry - this was largely a Leninist invention to apply to the feudal society of pre-revolutionary Russia, and strengthened by Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese revolution. Marx, to my knowledge, had no support for the idea, nor did his contemporaries or predecessors.
  - alphaalpha101 9y ago
    And of course it makes sense in context. ('It' being changing an agrarian capitalist society to an agrarian communist society - clearly the natural progression.)

ue_ 9y ago

>Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism. Could it be that, if they talk in favour of it, they have a different idea of Communism to you? Modern Communist academics do, we must investigate the ontology of Communism; a good read on this is from Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis. Most modern academic Communists believe that we must search for what happened, how to prevent it and how to move past it, to say nothing of the various splinters and brothers in the Communist family tree - anarchism, Communailsm, democratic Socialism, etc. If you do reading on Communist literature since about 1950 you'll see they have occupied themselves with this investigation, the very one you are accusing them of ignoring.

saryant 9y ago

Since when has The Economist ever been pro-communist? They don't even like Piketty.