communist writing actually okay?

Question

i started reading some of Joseph Stalin's works and i thought it would be an instant load of bullshit but the guy talks plainly and actually makes sense? sometimes he quotes these guys named Engels, Marx, and Lenin, and Engels is kind of hard to understand but Marx makes a lot of sense too? it reads a lot like a science journal but written very plainly for the most part. i thought this would suck cause of all the identitarian bullshit i see from leftists and all the hate that people on the right give to communism in general, but Stalin is saying a lot of shit i inherently get, like studying social relations in order to build better methods of structuring society, uplifting workers, taking the real world as the primary concern rather than ideology and argumentation. hes just treating society like its something to be improved through practice, observation, and self-criticism. this is literally what i do to get better at cooking or any other skill.

did you guys get this from Stalin? everyone talks like he was some dictator but he seems more like a science nerd to me. hes not really screaming "oppress the people and deny them rights and liberties" to me like people say he was. anyone seeing that in his other writings? have you heard things like this from people who lived in the USSR?

Report Topic

Answer

Stalin is a wonderful comrade and a great teacher. And his theoretical contribution on the national question helped greatly in the black belt struggle in my (regrettably so) country the U.S.! Harry Haywood's Black Bolshevik reveals all

Report Reply

Answer

I think one of the best things people who read a lot of leftist literature can take away from reading Stalin's work is that it's possible for someone to have great ideas on paper and also be a terrible person to implement them. His writings do reflect a worldview of uplifting the working class so that they can dismantle the class structure, do reflect a desire to use scientific advancements and engineering to make labor safer and easier, and do advocate for a government that assesses the needs of the people and distributes accordingly. That doesn't mean he wasn't also an authoritarian dictator who used violence to maintain power.

Anyone can learn theory, write about ways to make the world a more equitable place, and then fail to live up to those ideals. Ideologically, he stood for some pretty okay things; in practice, he caved to the temptation of power many, many times.

Report Reply

Answer

Marx's conflict theory does make sense, and is very much a real thing that happens in Capitalist / Industrialized societies. However, his answer to that by creating communism is pie in the sky thinking. To think that for 1. The state with complete centralized power would ever wither away after everyone learned to not compete is complete fantasy. 2. Thinking that people would stop competing ever is complete fantasy. 3. Thinking that a centrally planned economy would create abundance or even thinking that the govt's plans for the economy would work flawlessly is fictitious thinking. 4. Saying that everyone would be equal, and important in the communist utopian society is a complete and utter lie.

Facts about human nature. 1. People don't need to be regulated. The reason we have so much chaos today is because of governments and their endless regulations. Govt's have a way of making mountains out of mole hills, and screwing up things much worse by their intervention than if they would just let things work themselves out.

Ponder this for example... A person will steal without hesitation in the free world, and as such get arrested, convicted etc. However this same person when they go to prison, they know not to steal in there, and won't. Why? Because the inmates will beat that person's ass to an inch of their life, or in some cases.... kill them. That fear of dangerous and swift punishment discourages thieves from acting out any thievery in prison. However, once back on the street, they are not afraid of legal consequences, and will go back to stealing. This is an example of government not only being ineffective / wasteful, but in fact useless in being able to change a person's behavior. People on the other hand left to dish out their own justice, is far more effective. It would not create chaos as people would mutually agree that stealing can have grave consequences, and thus is not worth the risk. One could argue a brutal communist government can discourage thieves by being ruthless, but the problem is the thief will only obey when govt authorities are around, more than likely they will try to find ways to fly under the radar so that they do not get caught by authorities, and feel no risk toward the average citizen as they are not capable nor desiring to punish the thief. They will call for authorities, and by then the thief would be gone. It encourages the behavior, and also aids in making the thief more clever at their thievery.

So in conclusion what I am saying is that government fucks everything up, and to say we need more government so that people will be taught to act right as they teach in communism, is foolish and stupid. What it does create is criminals who run the government, the same elite bourgeois being in the government instead of being capitalist business owners, slavery for the masses, and constant shortages due to incompetent and careless leadership. The only thing it teaches people in the end, is that big government sucks. By then, it is too late for them. They just have to wait for the communist system's inevitable downfall, or their change into a psuedo-capitalist economy. But that can take many years, and many people suffering and dying for nothing until that happens.

Report Reply

Answer

Another thing about communist societies, and human nature is this. People think about themselves and their personal happiness, and are usually not willing to make sacrifices unless..... they are fighting a common enemy. This is why communist governments are completely focused on their military - industrial complex. As a result a communist government has always got to be fighting something so the people will continue to accept their shitty circumstances for the sake of the cause. This means Perpetual unending wars of little purpose. War is not always combat, but there is always some kind of war. War on drugs, war on climate change, war on viruses, war on racism, war on religious extremism, war on greed, war on hate speech, war on unhappiness, war on obesity, real wars too.... war, war, war, war. Constant wasteful wars on bullshit. You as an individual have to keep accepting these limitations on your freedom, and your personal happiness and well-being, because... it's about winning the war on whatever bullshit the communist government wants you to be at war with. Now some might say, "hey! That's been going on in America!" My point exactly. We haven't been a free people for quite some time. We are being played. The system is 90% already communist and most people don't see it, because they didn't come out and declare it on CNN, NBC, Fox, ABC etc. Just look at how the government over the covid pandemic has totally forgotten about the US Constitution. It really is a meaningless piece of paper at this point. They have taken people's right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness in favor of protecting everyone from a virus that kills 1% of the population. The only way to get your freedom back is to take the vax, and to take it not just once, or twice, but three times, and however many more they deem is necessary. They keep dangling the carrot, and keep moving the goal posts every time people comply to their stupid unconstitutional rules. It will only stop when the people say "fuck you, take that shot and stick it up your ass". Not until then. They will keep doing this shit forever if they can get away with it.

In the end a communist government isn't really communist like Marx, Engels etc had envisioned. It just becomes a totalitarian government, and capitalist governments like ours has gone the way of totalitarianism as well. They say and do what ever they have to do to get the totalitarian system they want regardless of name, and when they have it, you're fucked. Period.

Report Reply

Answer

re: last two posts, do you have any sources for those wild claims about Stalin and human nature? i personally believe "human" nature changes as people experience changes in their material circumstances and environment, and Stalin actually backs me up on that in his work. humans are constantly changing and this is reflected in society; the changes in society are then reflected in ourselves. boiling things down to human nature, when the nature of humanity has observably changed so drastically over the course of the millions of years we have existed, is just foolish and cynical. if human nature was inherently selfish then we would have created society in the first place. we rely on each other to survive and advance, and if an individual acts selfishly, they do so out of fear that what they have will be taken away, or that nothing every will be theirs to begin with. this is not a problem of the individual, but of the society into which the individual was born. there is much to say about all this but thats all i have for now.

in short, thank you for your responses comrades. i disagree with your outlooks, but i hope they help you in making peoples lives better!

Report Reply

Answer

@EngiQu33ring the good news is if you know Stalin's theory is correct, you can just read it regardless of your opinion on him as a person. Today's highly competitive social media landscape has made it normal to moralize the person behind a work but that's not how things were always done and is a cultural shift in-line with the shift in the mode of production to primarily information (in imperialist countries). In fact...that's what Stalin talks about in Dialectical and Historical Materialism! :D great read btw.

@Vigilante Stylez I hear you. There's a difference between Utopian Socialism (which Marxists think of as a joke) and Scientific Socialism. If you're interested in learning about the non-Utopian Socialism (as contrasted with Utopian) and why that myth pervades today, I recommend Engels work in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (PDF). You'll probably be relieved to discover scientific socialism is based on the more advanced version of "conflict theory" called Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism. A good intro is in the other link above from Stalin.

The best thing about all these theorists is their work is always free to read. It's about empowering the working class to take control of their lives and stop being subject to the whims of the very rich few.

Report Reply

Answer

thank you comrade Alice for the constructivity and suggestions! this is good stuff!

Answer

@Alice

I was specifically responding to, "everyone talks like he was some dictator but he seems more like a science nerd to me," I suppose I should have made that clear.

To your point though, while I agree that it's necessary to put the author aside while examining the ideas, I also believe there's also a lot to gain by contextualizing an author's writings. We can gain a greater understanding of what to expect from present and future movements, leaders, and activism by examining not only the work of past influential figures but also what they did.

Additionally, waving away the input of other leftists as simply the product of a broken modern social media culture without actually engaging what they're saying and telling them that maybe they just need to read more seems like a fairly unproductive discourse. Whether that's what you intended or not, it feels very patronizing. I've read Dialectical and Historical Materialism before (and am definitely bookmarking that site & doing some weekend reading, thanks btw), and I think the following excerpts are very much worth noting:

"The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being."

"...dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing..."

"Everything depends on the conditions, time and
place. It is clear that without such a historical approach to social phenomena, the existence and development of the science of history is impossible; for only such an approach saves the science of history from becoming a jumble of accidents and an agglomeration of most absurd mistakes."

I'm not suggesting we throw out his ideas because I find some of the things he did to be terrible, I'm suggesting, just like he does, that a broader view of ideas and events (as opposed to a purely textual one) is important to forming better ideas about how to uplift the working class.

Report Reply

« News and Politics Forum

communist writing actually okay?

Posted by Danielle

8 Replies

Reply by sean (secret transexual)

Reply by EngiQu33ring

Reply by Vigilante Stylez

Reply by Vigilante Stylez

Reply by Danielle

Reply by Alice

Reply by Danielle

Reply by EngiQu33ring