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> Nothing about Communism as a concept requires massacring people. Elimination of exploiting classes and abolition of family are two things that certainly requ

by varjag 9y ago

> Nothing about Communism as a concept requires massacring people. Elimination of exploiting classes and abolition of family are two things that certainly require massacring people. If you see any other realistic means of achieving these two points of Communist Manifesto, am all ears.

ewzimm 9y ago
From the Communist Manifesto: >The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. If one were dead-set on following he original principles of communism, which I don’t necessarily recommend, as the world has changed a bit since they were published and new ideas have sprung up since then, I think the best method would be as follows: 1. Support workers’ rights without settting up separate political entities or telling people what to do. 2. Make and support great free software so that the most valuable things in the world are free from private control.
- varjag 9y ago
  But that's not communism. Socialism is about workers rights, sure. Communism is about abolition of property, the proprietor class and abolition of family (since it's a wealth accumulation instrument). > The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. Notice how it is very specific about "working-class". It's not coincidental.
  - ewzimm 9y ago
    Of course I’m not promoting orthodox Marxism here, but it was generally his view that capitalism’s purpose was to catalyze the development of the means of production in preparation for socialism. If that’s the case, we can argue about when they are sufficiently developed to warrant a socialist revolution, but I could argue that conditions are not yet right for it and we first have to reach the point where resources are much more available than they are today. At some point in the future, when we have a healthy asteroid mining industry, fully automated industry, and human genetic engineering, social classes and traditional families will likely no longer be as relevant, so let’s try to reach for that before we implement full communism.
    - varjag 9y ago
      Marx' view was that communism is the next stage of social-historical development after capitalism and as such is unavoidable due to build up of internal contradictions in the latter. He did envision the transition to be revolutionary and violent, however, and ensuring class struggle wasn't meant to be bloodless. Socialism was viewed by communists as "fake news" if you will, a fad to distract oppressed working class from building a communist society. FWIW I personally don't find socialism objectionable across much of the continuum of bilateral social compromise it represents. It also seem to have defused most of the tension present in late 1800s-early 1900s. My reply above was to the common "No True Scotsman" retort to criticisms of Communism. We have at least two societies that did sincere attempts at following tenets of Manifesto, i.e. including both elimination of proprietors and family: early Bolshevik Russia and Khmer Rouge. Internet Communists find the appalling outcome hard to advocate and instead focus on criticising the implementation.
      - ewzimm 9y ago
        Those are perspectives grounded in history, but I think you’d have to qualify socialism in that case as “market socialism” or “democratic socialism” as it’s understood today. Marx did lay out socialism as the next stage to follow capitalism but didn’t provide detail about how it was to work, which led to the various types of socialism we have today. Still, many argue that these are all essentially vanguard movements for the communist ideals you laid out: the abolition of private property, social classes, and even the family. This is still the source of a lot of skepticism about the effects of these types of systems. Even without the revolutionary ideology, socialism as it’s implemented today seems to be breaking dependence on traditional social structures.
        varjag 9y ago
        It's been a while since my Marxism-Leninism class so caveat emptor, but I believe the role of socialism was limited. There supposed to be transitional phase from coercive proletarian state to truly classless society aided by "socialist mode of production", but not much after that. The socialist and social-democratic (as you correctly put it) movements promoted socialism as end-game within bourgeois/capitalist social framework and were viewed as adversarial. And clearly there are ongoing changes in social fabric but it's hard to attribute them to socialist movements alone more than to e.g. technological, agricultural or medical advances.
GVIrish 9y ago
> Elimination of exploiting classes and abolition of family are two things that certainly require massacring people. If you see any other realistic means of achieving these two points of Communist Manifesto, am all ears. I mean if you want to strictly adhere to the Communist Manifesto then you're probably going to end up with strike and violence in some form. That still doesn't mean you have to massacre people to evenly distribute property and wealth. That could be done through a judicial system if a government was so inclined. It just so happens that autocrats prefer massacring people. That has been true of capitalist dictatorships as well as communist ones. Communist dictatorships killed far more people to be sure. If you want to look at Communism as a very strict system that can only exist in the way that Marx conceived then yeah you'll probably end up with bloodshed. But every sort of political system has a number of different interpretations and modes of implementation. The Communist governments we've seen thus far have taken a few different forms so it's entirely possible that a more benevolent form of Communist government will take root somewhere. I just don't think mass killings is a key component of Communism as a system. Mass killings were how Communist autocrats seized power and maintained power.
- varjag 9y ago
  > That still doesn't mean you have to massacre people to evenly distribute property and wealth. The point of Communism isn't to evenly distribute property and wealth. It's to eliminate property ownership completely, and prevent further accumulation of wealth by individuals. The commune part of Communism. > I just don't think mass killings is a key component of Communism as a system. It's not an end goal, but an unavoidable instrument if you want to rob people of their property or destroy their families. Historically, there was not much voluntary cooperation.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The point of Communism isn't to evenly distribute property and wealth. It's to eliminate property ownership completely No, just non-public ownership of the means of production (at least in Marxism and those forms of Communism whose approach on this point follows Marxism, which is not all of Communism); this is a frequent point of confusion in criticism of Communism because Communist literature and theory uses a different definition of “private property” than non-Communists are used to, which both leads to both accidental confusion of people not familiar with this fact, and intentional misrepresentation by dishonest critics who are fully familiar with the difference but expect that their audience is not.

by varjag 9y ago

ewzimm 9y ago

From the Communist Manifesto: >The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. If one were dead-set on following he original principles of communism, which I don’t necessarily recommend, as the world has changed a bit since they were published and new ideas have sprung up since then, I think the best method would be as follows: 1. Support workers’ rights without settting up separate political entities or telling people what to do. 2. Make and support great free software so that the most valuable things in the world are free from private control.

varjag 9y ago
But that's not communism. Socialism is about workers rights, sure. Communism is about abolition of property, the proprietor class and abolition of family (since it's a wealth accumulation instrument). > The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. Notice how it is very specific about "working-class". It's not coincidental.
- ewzimm 9y ago
  Of course I’m not promoting orthodox Marxism here, but it was generally his view that capitalism’s purpose was to catalyze the development of the means of production in preparation for socialism. If that’s the case, we can argue about when they are sufficiently developed to warrant a socialist revolution, but I could argue that conditions are not yet right for it and we first have to reach the point where resources are much more available than they are today. At some point in the future, when we have a healthy asteroid mining industry, fully automated industry, and human genetic engineering, social classes and traditional families will likely no longer be as relevant, so let’s try to reach for that before we implement full communism.
  - varjag 9y ago
    Marx' view was that communism is the next stage of social-historical development after capitalism and as such is unavoidable due to build up of internal contradictions in the latter. He did envision the transition to be revolutionary and violent, however, and ensuring class struggle wasn't meant to be bloodless. Socialism was viewed by communists as "fake news" if you will, a fad to distract oppressed working class from building a communist society. FWIW I personally don't find socialism objectionable across much of the continuum of bilateral social compromise it represents. It also seem to have defused most of the tension present in late 1800s-early 1900s. My reply above was to the common "No True Scotsman" retort to criticisms of Communism. We have at least two societies that did sincere attempts at following tenets of Manifesto, i.e. including both elimination of proprietors and family: early Bolshevik Russia and Khmer Rouge. Internet Communists find the appalling outcome hard to advocate and instead focus on criticising the implementation.
    - ewzimm 9y ago
      Those are perspectives grounded in history, but I think you’d have to qualify socialism in that case as “market socialism” or “democratic socialism” as it’s understood today. Marx did lay out socialism as the next stage to follow capitalism but didn’t provide detail about how it was to work, which led to the various types of socialism we have today. Still, many argue that these are all essentially vanguard movements for the communist ideals you laid out: the abolition of private property, social classes, and even the family. This is still the source of a lot of skepticism about the effects of these types of systems. Even without the revolutionary ideology, socialism as it’s implemented today seems to be breaking dependence on traditional social structures.
      - varjag 9y ago
        It's been a while since my Marxism-Leninism class so caveat emptor, but I believe the role of socialism was limited. There supposed to be transitional phase from coercive proletarian state to truly classless society aided by "socialist mode of production", but not much after that. The socialist and social-democratic (as you correctly put it) movements promoted socialism as end-game within bourgeois/capitalist social framework and were viewed as adversarial. And clearly there are ongoing changes in social fabric but it's hard to attribute them to socialist movements alone more than to e.g. technological, agricultural or medical advances.

GVIrish 9y ago

> Elimination of exploiting classes and abolition of family are two things that certainly require massacring people. If you see any other realistic means of achieving these two points of Communist Manifesto, am all ears. I mean if you want to strictly adhere to the Communist Manifesto then you're probably going to end up with strike and violence in some form. That still doesn't mean you have to massacre people to evenly distribute property and wealth. That could be done through a judicial system if a government was so inclined. It just so happens that autocrats prefer massacring people. That has been true of capitalist dictatorships as well as communist ones. Communist dictatorships killed far more people to be sure. If you want to look at Communism as a very strict system that can only exist in the way that Marx conceived then yeah you'll probably end up with bloodshed. But every sort of political system has a number of different interpretations and modes of implementation. The Communist governments we've seen thus far have taken a few different forms so it's entirely possible that a more benevolent form of Communist government will take root somewhere. I just don't think mass killings is a key component of Communism as a system. Mass killings were how Communist autocrats seized power and maintained power.

varjag 9y ago
> That still doesn't mean you have to massacre people to evenly distribute property and wealth. The point of Communism isn't to evenly distribute property and wealth. It's to eliminate property ownership completely, and prevent further accumulation of wealth by individuals. The commune part of Communism. > I just don't think mass killings is a key component of Communism as a system. It's not an end goal, but an unavoidable instrument if you want to rob people of their property or destroy their families. Historically, there was not much voluntary cooperation.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The point of Communism isn't to evenly distribute property and wealth. It's to eliminate property ownership completely No, just non-public ownership of the means of production (at least in Marxism and those forms of Communism whose approach on this point follows Marxism, which is not all of Communism); this is a frequent point of confusion in criticism of Communism because Communist literature and theory uses a different definition of “private property” than non-Communists are used to, which both leads to both accidental confusion of people not familiar with this fact, and intentional misrepresentation by dishonest critics who are fully familiar with the difference but expect that their audience is not.