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It's a fascinating exercise in antrhopology to see otherwise smart people confidently discuss the mind of people most of them have had no exposure to in person.
by vidarh 7mo ago
It's a fascinating exercise in antrhopology to see otherwise smart people confidently discuss the mind of people most of them have had no exposure to in person. Having spoken to a variety of people across the very broad spectrum of left-wing thought, ranging from libertarian marxists opposing the very existence of a state, to hardline marxism-leninists who thought the former group belonged in labour camps, I find the idea of a singular "communist mind" as ridiculous as you.
- mike_hearn 7mo agoAll actual communist societies work the same way, so it's clearly possible to generalize.
- vidarh 7mo agoAll "actual communist societies", have been run by marxist-leninists or regimes supporting derivations of it, which is a couple from dozens of ideologies within the umbrella. So, sure, you can generalize about those regimes. That still does not speak to any unified "communist mind". Those regimes have collectively murdered vast numbers of proponents of other communist ideologies.
- unmole 7mo ago> All "actual communist societies", have been run marxist-leninists or regimes supporting derivations of it, In other words, real communism has never been tried.
- ButlerianJihad 7mo agoNo true Scotsman would argue with you!
- vidarh 7mo agoIf you believe "real communism" can not be achieved by marxism-leninism, then that would be a conclusion. I intentionally did not make any claim like that, because that is wildly subjective and contentious. You're entirely free to think these regimes are "real communism" - I have no interest in that argument. What, however, is not subjective, is that the stated ideology of all of these regimes is derived from ML, and that there is a vast number of communist ideologies outside of ML. You're free to consider those equally bad if you please. I've not made any argument about that either. It is a fascinating picture of exactly what keybored argued that the immediate reaction of people is to drag out strawmen like this.
- devilbunny 7mo ago> communist ideologies outside of ML Color me intrigued. Any good books to recommend?
- vidarh 7mo agoNothing springs to mind that gives a good overview without going to primary sources. It's been literal decades since I spent time reading up on a wide range of these ideologies. This Wikipedia list is reasonably comprehensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies The main split is between "right-communists" and "left-communists" (hence Lenins "Left Wing Communism: An infantile disorder"; the Bolsheviks were considered "right"), where the "left" are those who rejected ML/Leninism on the basis of "democratic" centralism and the idea of a vanguard party. Most of the anti-ML ideologies like council communism, anarcho-communism, libertarian Marxism are in that category. Perhaps texts by Joseph Dejacques, Kropotkin, Rosa Luxembourg, Emma Goldman would give a reasonable introduction to those.
- balamatom 7mo agoSo what if it hasn't?
- unmole 7mo agoYeah, real communism has never been tried. /s
- vidarh 7mo agoStrawman - at no point did I make that claim. It has no relevance to my comment.
- unmole 7mo agoIt's a variation of the same tired argument that's proffered up when communist praxis is criticised: That communist regimes they don't represent real communism unlike the all the other hippy versions.
- vidarh 7mo agoAnd yet you're the one here bringing that up, not me. It is irrelevant if it is "real communism" or not - it remains an objective fact that all of these regimes have derived their ideology from one very specific branch. In fact, all of them make a big fuzz over exactly that, and all of them had a history of brutally persecuting supporters of other communist ideologies. You don't need to support any of them to recognise this. I did not make an argument about the desirability of any of them at all, very intentionally.
- unmole 7mo agoYou argument is just No true Scotsman with extra steps.
- vidarh 7mo agoIt seems you know what I'm thinking better than me. I have categorically not argued it's invalid for you to consider these regimes communist. How, exactly, is it you imagine this is a "No true Scotsman"? What I have argued is, if anything, that there are lots of Scotsmen, and trying to reduce them all to one is meaninglessly reductive. In other words, I've indirectly explicitly argued against No true Scotsman.
- flohofwoe 7mo ago...or as the post-'68 West-German joke goes: "When two leftists meet, 3 splinter groups are formed", doesn't quite roll off the tounge like the German version "Treffen sich zwei Linke: bilden sich 3 Splittergruppen."
- vidarh 7mo agoIndeed. It is quite fascinating how that is simultaneously a wide-spread view of the left, while at the same time the left is regularly accused of being all collectivist. Some left wing ideologies are decidedly collectivist. Some are going equally far in the other direction...
- IAmBroom 7mo agoNo one but you and the poster above you is discussing "the left" as a single group. "Communism" is being discussed, and implicitly Soviet communism, which ruled a gigantic portion of both Europe and northern Asia for several decades, producing a very definable system of rewards and disincentives, both legal and otherwise.