Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Those who seek power least deserve it
I think those quotes answer your question well enough
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
228 points (89.3% liked)
Ask Lemmy
27089 readers
2251 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Thats like asking why North Korea became a dictatorship when it is a people's democracy.
Power gaps get filled, small states get conquered.
Simple. Power corrupts. Even with a socialist government there is always gonna be power hungry people seeking authority over their constituents. Think of the majority as sheep, comfortable with being herded and the power hungerers as the wolves slavering to enslave them.
ITT
First, and above all else, there are assholes (US) who will prevent you from having nice things. Democracy is the easiest vector to let CIA/money get a corrupt asshole into power. Democracy tends to be a fiction anyway. Money/CIA/Media control is just part of the reason. Should you let corrupt assholes vote or run for power?
A country that has an army has dictatorial power, whether there is a theater of elections or not. An autocratic chain of command controls it, and if you don't behave, regardless of your constitution, you get smacked by the army.
In the US, there is communism for the corporatist oligarchy. Government they own will protect them from competition and bail them out when they fail. The CIA/media defines the communists as anyone who is not as pro business as the most pro business corporatist oligarch. US is a pure dictatorship in that Israel first corporatist oligarchy is guaranteed to win every seat/election, or 95%+ of the seats anyway. Every NATO country has a CIA allegiant party leader is also guaranteed to produce a CIA allegiant government. CIA vets all appointments to EU government to be pro US dictatorial NATO. IMF has 50%+ of votes all from US colonies.
Celebrating media simplifications of Democracy vs. non-US-compliant is the wrong metric to apply to nations. Industrial policy meant to promote equitable prosperity or defense from Imperialist forces determined to subjugate them are more important to a nation than what US media describes them as. "Everyone" loved Russia when they had Yeltsin as a puppet privatizing everything cheaply to US interests, just as they love Zelensky for the same. Ukraine, since US coup, is an apartheid ethnostate, which cannot qualify for any objective definition of democracy (we praise it for it anyway), and recently has suspended all elections.
Imagine asking a question to a less qualified, more ideologically antagonistic group of people than you just have.
Easy.
Ask this question almost literally anywhere else on the Internet.
The english speaking internet
I don't think the Polish parts are going to be friendly either.
That's fair, but frankly, in my experience, the average American's idea of communism is "evil bad oppression big gubmint dictatorship". I was never taught in school about the theory behind communism or the practical government of the USSR (regardless of how close they may or may not have been), so I have little understanding into how these systems actually work and whether it's actually beneficial for those under them. I'm trying to rectify that on my own time but there's many people who don't care enough to do so and just parrot the same thought terminating cliches like "human nature".
Since you said you're trying to rectify that, allow me to hijack and recommend my introductory Marxist reading list. Section 1 is all you need to get the basics and a decent contextualization of AES states, but you can feel free to continue onward. Nearly every work has an audiobook and a text format linked, and the 2 works without an audiobook are short (and there are hopes of getting an audiobook for them, fingers crossed!).
Because there was never anything communist about these states in any way whatsoever.
Communism is a state (as in a social, political and economic condition, not a government). None of these states ever reached this condition, and, therefore, was never communist. And, one could argue, that their development literally went the opposite way to what could be called communist with a straight face. As the anarchist Bakunin famously said, "the people's boot is still a boot."
This is why the Maoist-types call this shit "democratic centralism," which is essentially just double-speak for "what the party says goes."
This does not make the idea of communism invalid - but it's still as perfectly vague as ever, unfortunately.
Because, at a high level, communism requires that a leader or group of leaders get things on track and then give up all of their power over time. Instead, the type of people who tend to lead revolutions are the same type of people who are unlikely to want to give up power and instead end up wanting more power. So no true communism has ever existed because it never gets to that phase.
That's Leninist "Communism".
As a reminder, Lenin lost the 1917 election and then seized power to make himself a dictator, then wrote about how dictators are essential to communism.
The Truth is that Dictators are anathema to communism. A dictator who seizes the means of production is called a king, and the people are then called serfs. It's a full step backwards in the pursuit of the communist dream.
In 1917, there were 2 governments, the Worker and Peasant supported Soviet Government, and the Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie supported liberal Provisional Government. Lenin was elected via the Soviet system, and the Socialist Revolutionaries were elected in the bourgeois controlled Provisional Government. After the election, the Soviet Government disbanded the Provisional Government via revolution, the same measures proposed by Marx the entire time.
Secondly, Lenin never once wrote about how dictators are essential to Communism. Lenin fully believed in Soviet Democracy, ie workers councils, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a term coined by Karl Marx to describe a Socialist State that had not fully absorbed all Capital into the Public Sector, and thus had to suppress the still existing Bourgeoisie. The reason for this is that Capital can only be wrested by the degree to which it develops! Per Engels:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
Dictators are indeed antithetical to Communism, but you've entirely misframed Marx, Lenin, the USSR, and the October Revolution. The Soviet Republic in control of a largely Publicly Owned, Centrally Planned economy is in no way comparable to feudalism, but is actually existing Socialism.
Funilly enough, Lenin described exactly what you're now doing in The State and Revolution:
What is now happening to Marx's teaching has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the teachings of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. At the present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the working-class movement concur in this "doctoring" of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of this teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now "Marxists" (don't laugh!). And more and more frequently, German bourgeois scholars, but yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the "national-German" Marx, who, they aver, educated the workers' unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of conducting a predatory war!
It's funny that you describe Communism as a "dream," it accurately depicts your idealistic understanding of it, along with your "reminder."
That's an interesting reading of history... I'm sure.
But the truth is that Lenin lost the 1917 election, threw a hissy fit and demanded that the newly elected assembly cede all power to him, or else.
The Bolsheviks seized power and banned all opposition parties, and then Lenin justified his coup by claiming that "Vanguard Parties" are part of communism, when all they actually are is a dictatorship.
Stalin wasn't the first Soviet Dictator. He was just more honest about being a monster. Well, to himself, anyway.
It isn't an "interesting reading of history," it's what literally happened. The fact that you're placing such importance on the vestigial Provisional Government's election when the Workers had already embraced the Soviet Government and used it for all intents and purposes as their only government is liberalism, and anti-revolutionary.
Secondly, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as envisioned by Marx is fully compatible with a One-Party system. Multi-party systems are not more democratic, just more divided. Within the Soviet system, there was more democratic control than in the liberal Provisional Government system.
Finally, the idea that a mass worker party can be a dictatorship, as in the modern, single-person autocracy, is absurd. Vanguard Parties, moreover, are a proven method to establish Socialism. They aren't unaccountable cabals, but large worker parties made up of the most politically experienced of the Proletariat, which has been successfully replicated in countries like Cuba and the PRC in establishing Socialism.
You seriously need to read Marx, it's desparately obvious that you are working off of Wikipedia definitions and not actual Marxist theory. I suggest my intro to Marxism list.
Theoretically, one could spontaneously be created from scratch starting with a small group of people on a new world who have never experienced a centralized form of government. Formal governing is not required if the society is small enough and there are no outside forces at work to create a threat. But once governing is required, there will generally be forces at work that will centralize it. The only exception might be in a society with very limited need for cooperation due to plentiful resources available to all, such as a utopia like Star Trek's Earth.
In all other, realistic scenarios, there will need to be a revolution. That will always be led by a person or group of people to organize the overthrow and coordinate the changes. This group will inevitably be in search of power themselves, corrupted by the power they are given, or infiltrated by those in search of such power and are unlikely to give up that power.
That village that talks out their problems and thus needs no government is A, a fiction, and B, a form of extreme democracy. Every decision is discussed and agreed upon by the group. That's extreme democracy.
And if you push for more democracy, you can get it. But you have to resist the revolutionaries and the fascists. All while prepping to be a revolutionary if required.
Work within the system as much as possible, because when it's gone, when that fragile peace is broken, nothing good can come out. As you said, the revolution is inevitably betrayed.
Now if we could actually teach people what a Tariff is. Fuckers voting for Trump wanting to bring prices down, when that's exactly the opposite of what happens with a Tariff. And Democrats abandoning their base to chase a mythical center that just does not exist...
I understand the push for revolution. I just know that in order for things to get better, the transition to communism needs to happen slowly and democratically.
This is an incorrect interpretation of the phrase "withering away of the state," which I elaborated on here.
I'm not really talking about Marxist communism. See my other comment, but in any realistic scenarios, communism is unlikely to form spontaneously as the first form of government in a new society.
And since revolution on a large scale requires centralized coordination and leadership, there will always be someone or some group given centralized power that is unlikely to allow for decentralization to happen on a large scale and is actually more likely to grab the power of the previous government system and keep it centralized, "for the good of the people" or "to defend the people" or whatever. Even well meaning revolutionaries are highly likely to crave control and be unlikely to want to allow "someone else" to change what they put in place. This then leaves in place the centralization indefinitely and never leads to communism.
Communism is centralized. Central Planning and Public Ownership are the core foundations of the economy in Communism. You're talking about Anarchism as though Marxists were trying to achieve that, and you're calling Anarchism "Communism."
But communism is less centralized than representative democracy or dictatorship or whatever the pre-revolution government likely was. These portions of the government must decentralize as part of the process of moving between government types. That decentralization is essential or it's not true communism, it's the fake things that pretend to be communism like PRC, USSR, DPRK, etc.
The only way that some amount of decentralization doesn't need to happen is if were talking about a society with no previous need for government forming into a communist state, which is what I mentioned was extremely unlikely, even if there were societies isolated enough to still exist without any form of centralized government.
No, Communism is centralization. It isn't less decentralized than pre-revolution government, but more. That's the point, to fold the entire private sector eventually into the Public, with Central Planning. You keep saying "decentralization is essential for Communism" but that's Anarchism. AES are examples of Socialist States trying to work towards Communism.
Where on Earth are you getting your ideas? It certainly isn't Marx.
No, now you're talking only about Marxist communism. Communism as a whole does not state that a single central power owns everything or that individuals can't own property. Marx was very much against almost all personal property, but communism is simply about making the means of production owned by the people doing the production and not a small subset of individuals. That doesn't mean ownership by a single entity. That very much could be local community governments that own each factory or power plant or whatever. And it's only about the "means of production" not the products necessarily. People can still own the products in many forms of communism. Communism doesn't necessarily dictate a specific economic theory beyond the idea that entities that produce goods that are to be owned by the people, should be owned by the people making the goods, not individuals, and especially not individuals who don't participate in the production, only in the sale and profit of the goods they don't produce.
You're conflsting Communism, which refers in 99% of cases to Marxism, with Socialism, which is more broad.
Marx opined that certain material conditions had to be achieved before a socialist state could be successfully made. These material conditions include bourgeois capitalist democracy. Marx explicitly said that capitalism forges the tools with which it will be destroyed.
A certain subset of communists known as Marxist-Leninists decided that bourgeois capitalist democracy wasn't necessary if you just oppressed people REALLY hard, you could skip straight to a socialist state. And because they 'succeeded' in overthrowing traditional Marxists in 1917 Russia and getting the full power of a massive country to spread their ideology, they've had bootlickers calling their particular brand of insanity the only 'real' form of communism ever since.
When we think of 'communist' countries, we think of Marxist-Leninist countries which tried to jump from feudal societies to socialist societies, which, quite obviously from the results, doesn't work. Doesn't stop the cultists from licking boots, of course.
There's also a story in the hammer and sickle itself. It was spun as a symbol of 'all workers' but its original purpose was to depict an alliance between farmers (who owned the land they worked) and the tiny population of wage earners in Russia's largest cities (who didn't even own their homes). The farmers saw no reason for the new policies so concessions had to be made.
Lenin's Russia had to leverage the state apparatus to fiercely industrialize and capitalize, effectively creating an enormous business conglomerate with a company store that encompassed nearly every product in the nation outside the black market. But with all the complacency of abject monopoly. They couldn't skip generalized capitalism, and so they created it in a way that seriously disadvantaged workers as capitalism does.
In other words: state monopoly capitalism. Wrong direction from marxist withering of state: instead seeks to establish a permanent totalizing state, oppressing all, including the vanguard. Stalin's paranoia metastasized and now oligarchs pick over the bones.
Realistically anybody who can take control of a country is a bit of a ruthless cunt, and ones that take over in an armed uprising especially so.
It's not a massive shock that some of them don't want to give up the crown once they've got it.
Even in so called democracies, we basically get to choose our "king" from a heavily vetted list. It ain't going to be people like me and you rising to the top.
view more: next ›