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Old 10-20-2011, 02:02 PM   #1
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Alan: Y U NO ANARCHY?

How come you stopped being an Anarchist, and went straight communist?
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Old 10-20-2011, 02:07 PM   #2
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Seriously. Tell me.

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Old 10-20-2011, 03:47 PM   #3
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FUCK!! I wrote a huge wall of text and I accidentally closed the window. I don't want to write all of that again, so we'll tackle this issue one step at a time.
To start with, here's the condensed version:


The anarchist/communist divide is a white people problem, honestly. In the rest of the world, the word anarchist and the word communist are circumstantial, not ideological. Just look at how many people in the United States that call themselves anarchist happen to be white and quite privileged, and even worse, look at how these white kids call groups like APOC authoritarian.

Anarchism is a moralist and ethical stance. It merely says "here's how the world is, and here's how it SHOULD be." Marxism is not an ideology, it's a socioeconomic worldview. Marxism says "here's how the world is, here's why it is the way it is, and here's how it COULD be."

Lastly for now, from the above, communism is much more liberating than the anarchism of the first world. All anarchist literature is nothing but either a) shallow and uninformed jabs at other types of leftism for being 'authoritarian' or b) shallow and uninformed condemnations of the current world contrasted to their idealized world. There's rarely any analysis of WHY the world is as it is, and ends up being just a description followed by a proposed alternative by merely starting over.
Where's the psychological, sociological, anthropological, and cultural sides to such a break? When they condemn the state, they do not realize that most forms of oppression are already internalized (case in point, look at how many anarchist manifestations or squats still end up following the same gender roles as the rest of society). Foucault once condemned Chomsky for this in television: starting anew is impossible, if we were to dismantle the current institutions like the state and capitalism we're only dismantling their physical manifestation, but not our psychological and cultural dependence to such institutions. The cynic's opinion that every revolution just creates a more authoritative regime is only true because there were no efforts to ween society out of being dependent on authority.

Developed-world anarchists see a flood and they want to attack the clouds. But they're too busy condemning society for not adjusting to their own standards, to take the time in understanding society.
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Old 10-20-2011, 07:17 PM   #4
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Yeah, that pretty much makes sense.

But is the psychology and culture unchangeable? Is the "problem" too big?

Or is communism just a bit more of a pragmatic approach?
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Old 10-20-2011, 07:31 PM   #5
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All the contrary. I'm not saying that the psychology and culture of a society are unchangeable. All the Frankfurt School was created precisely because of this.
Freud was leading his later ideas into grounds to question whether the fact that instincts are natural need mean that they're fundamental.

But anarchists don't think psychology or culture is an issue. They seem to think as if they were mere contingencies instead of the very fabric of human consciousness. Zizek, as a Lacanian psychologist and a communist, wants a cultural break so radical, so semiotically violent, so revolutionary, that we forget what it's like to not live under communism. And this type of 'shock therapy' is not some form of crypto-Stalinism; it's what happens with every socioeconomic paradigm shift. Realize just how long currency has existed and compare it to how young capitalism is, and try to wrap around your head how for thousands of years exchange value had little knowledge of the profit motive as known in the modern world. That's how revolutionary a socioeconomic change is, and how short sighted we really are in regards to socioeconomic alternatives. This shortsightedness is not because of 'ignorance', but as Marcuse argues, because the psyche tends to be internally conservative.

You ain't finding these type of analyses in anarchist literature, and that's what I'm talking about. They had already taken for granted along with the anglosaxon economists and french liberal thinkers that the human being is the way the western world thinks it is and that configuration is unchangeable.
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Old 10-21-2011, 09:31 AM   #6
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Wow. That's a really good answer, which highlights many of the problems I have with other folks on the left.

So, can you elaborate on why you chose communism specifically? That and what school of communism you belong to and why? (You called yourself a Maoist before, is that still the case?)
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Old 10-21-2011, 01:50 PM   #7
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I called myself a maoist just for shock value, so that people would be interested in that thread. Maoism had some very good theoretical developments but I'm no Maoist. I completely respect the idea that the peasant population can be revolutionary but that's just an issue of Mao being the first communist to do so, not the best at doing so. Revolutionary peasant revolts have happened all through history, just without a knowledge of marxism.
The peasantry as a revolutionary force is a maoist thought. Surrounding the cities with a citizen blockade is a maoist thought (and very effective where possible, like in cities in Oaxaca, but they wouldn't be possible in desert cities like in my state of Chihuahua). The emphasis on cultural revolution in the manner Zizek advocates, along with political and economic revolution, was first taken to the extreme by Maoist China. Violent, yes, but less violent than the Soviet Union because of that, where even in Lenin's time.

Yet maoism as a theory also advocates heavy centralism, and the world 'ultrabureaucracy' is not a hyperbolic criticism but a cornerstone of the State. Not only am I against these, but I believe such forms of centralism are impossible anymore. Maoism is still clearly a relative of Stalinism and even taking away the brutality of Stalinism, it is still indefensible as a theory because of its Stakhanovist emphasis: production, production, production. Communism, in this perspective, is only better than capitalism because it is more 'efficient', not because it's more liberating or more humane.

The point of that thread was not to make Mao look less of a bad person, but rather to compare Maoist China's statistics with other global statistics, and shed some light into just how violent the current global structure is, that even Mao barely comes up in the radar as a particularly violent figure.
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Old 10-21-2011, 02:17 PM   #8
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Now, as to why I call myself a communist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Ey5ioS4GU

Negri and Hardt write that there are three different possible types of ownership of resources: the private, the public, and the common.

You already know I'm against private ownership, but I also shun away from public ownership, as opposed to common ownership.
It becomes a little academic to mark the differences between them and Hardt explains it better in that link, but basically public resources still mean a resource 'is not yours' as opposed to 'it's of everyone'.
Public ownership is the socialism to the communism of Marxist thought. Just as socialism is a transitory stage towards communism, where there is still a state, and laws, and authority, public ownership is egalitarian but not free.
For there to be public ownership, there have to be social structures in place that act as a representative of the public, and that representative is what owns everything, i.e. a State. This state does not need to be authoritarian merely because it owns all public resources, because if it is legitimately democratic, it has no power but the power to channel resources, not to withhold them.
That said, it is still a socioeconomic institution based on the idea that economics is a zero-sum game. That if you're given this resource, you're taking it away from everyone else.

Common ownership, on the other hand, well, it's easier to understand with one example: Language.
Language is commonly owned. Your use of language does not exclude anyone else's use of it. The use of language does not exhaust it, nor break it, and on the contrary, changes to it might be good enough to be memetically reproduced and thus this common resource evolves.
Technological knowledge is the same, with open-source communities being generally more innovative than commercial enterprises, and as any scientist know, scientific breakthroughs happen not because of one sole 'genius' but because of the sharing of knowledge among thousands and thousands of researchers with one team focusing on a single genome, hoping that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Even real estate is based on the common. "Location, location, location." Real estate agents with this mantra don't do shit but make a profit out of feeding from the common construction of a community by the individuals already living there. Gentrification is the maximum example of how capitalism invades the common and how capitalism cannot be innovative by itself, it can only sell innovation it subsumes.

What school of communism I belong to? Nothing specific, but my main teacher, so to speak, is Antonio Negri.
The communist movement, of people who aren't afraid of calling themselves communist, is not a specific cadre, and the Communist Party USA, of which I'm a member, doesn't even seem to follow the current developments in communist thought, like those of Badiou and David Harvey. They're just very very progressive leftists.
I join whatever I can and help wherever I can, and try to make more people knowledgeable about modern communism. I have ideas of my own and hopefully some day I will be in a position where I can propose them to a decent amount of people and add it to the same body of contributions as Butler and Jameson, but for now, it's enough for me to make people know the diversity of Marxist thought, and let them realize how much it, as an approach, not an ideology, offers them satisfying explanations to the vaguely shaped discontentment and criticisms that they know they have but haven't had the education to be able to phrase them.
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Old 10-23-2011, 10:28 AM   #9
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Good stuff.

Two Questions:

1)

An American libertarian would probably say that Public Ownership would never morph into Common Ownership of property because those representatives who own everything in the transition would refuse to give it up (And therefor we must keep the majority of property in private hands).

Your rebuttal?

2)

Christopher Hitchens describes himself as a "Trotskyist". Is Trotskyism a school of communist thought like Stalinism and Maoism, and if so, what is your opinion on it?
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Old 10-23-2011, 12:35 PM   #10
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Good stuff.

Two Questions:

1)

An American libertarian would probably say that Public Ownership would never morph into Common Ownership of property because those representatives who own everything in the transition would refuse to give it up (And therefor we must keep the majority of property in private hands).

Your rebuttal?
Because it's people who become empowered through widespread public ownership. You give a public good to the people as if it were an inalienable right and it will be impossible to ever take it back. That's why conservatives don't dare touch medicare and have to rationalize so much to attack medicaid and they still don't have popular support. It is also the same reason Greece is in revolt for austerity measures that still give the workers more rights and privileges than most Americans will see in their lives.
Thinking that a government is strong because it manages the economy is as ridiculous as thinking a company's CEO (or even its accountant) are the ultimate authorities of a company and can do whatever they want.
Governments are strong by military might and the social acceptance of their authority. If a government has no monopoly on violence and the society at large places value over the bottom than the top, it doesn't matter how much the economy is centrally planned, the planners have no despotic ways of staying in power.

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Christopher Hitchens describes himself as a "Trotskyist". Is Trotskyism a school of communist thought like Stalinism and Maoism, and if so, what is your opinion on it?
I don't know why you point out the two most violent and authoritarian branches of marxism and not, for instance, Makhnovists or Social Democrats. Was it just an example or are you asking me if Trotskyists are as authoritarian or as centralist?

If so, no, they're not really comparable to Stalin or Mao. Trotsky was a mean son of a bitch, but that's something you respect, not something you condemn. Show me another man who can take an axe to the head and STILL have the time to kick the shit out of his axe-wielding assassin before going to the hospital and I'll show you a man that knows how to run a country through war.
Trotsky really was quite brutal during the formation of the Soviet Union, sending royalists and anarchists alike to prison, or executing them without a trial. For this reason some people wonder if Trotsky would have been even more brutal than Stalin had he been in power. I personally don't think so. Trotsky was a juggernaut of a man, with very strong and unstoppable ideas, and there are few things more dangerous than a man who believes his ideology to be always right.
However:

1) Stalin's power did not come from giving him a powerful position in the Soviet Union. He was just a 'secretary' after all. But he realized that what this position entailed was that he could appoint the people he needed, those whom he knew would be loyal to him, to the seats which had some real legislative authority. The Great Purges came around precisely because of this desire to have only people loyal to him. Stalin's power came entirely through diplomacy and quid pro quo.
Now imagine Trotsky in that seat. A military man who has relinquished all his control over the Union's military. He was never versed in the art of intraparty diplomacy and never really made friends besides Lenin in that party. His only motivation would be to see the socialist project thriving. His position as General Secretary would have literally just been that: a general secretary.

2) Trotsky's apparent ideological stubbornness is proved to be false by his heel-face-turn after he was demonized in the Soviet Union.
He killed many anarchists after the October Revolution for being traitors to the communist cause. Yet he worked side by side with them during the Spanish Civil War. Trotsky had already written heavy criticisms to the Soviet Union even when Lenin ruled it, namely by saying that the Communist Party was holding back the proletariat instead of leading it forward as it promised.
It took exile for him to realize that communism needed to happen through 'socialism from below' and that anarchists in this time period were much closer to it than communist cadres which had already become little but Soviet proxies.


Trotskyists today are mainly defined by this 'socialism from below', and an unwavering emphasis on international socialism (as opposed to Stalin's "socialism in one nation" approach). These two things are extremely important, and no respected communist would dare question these two concepts.
That's why I get along with Trotskyists, and why the Fourth International is one of the most refreshing solid branches of communism today.
The only bad thing is, Trotskyism developed in a time where postcolonialism wasn't an issue yet, and the New Left still hadn't come along to combine Marx with Freud.
For this reason, Trotskyism is everything a political ideology should be, but it again only deals with the political and sometimes economic aspects of revolution, not the psychological or cultural aspects. These things have to be explained beyond Trotskyist theory.
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Old 10-23-2011, 04:57 PM   #11
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Alan, I think I'm falling a little bit in love with you.
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Old 10-24-2011, 11:05 AM   #12
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Alan, can I ask a question without being attacked?

I'm trying to make sense of everything you've written here, so I can understand it from the average american's point of view, but you may think it's a dumb question.

How does communism allow for individuality and self expression?

If you think it's a dumb question, can you explain why?
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Old 10-24-2011, 02:45 PM   #13
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Be warned, this is gonna be fucking long, but it's the most commonly asked question in the United States by still relatively progressive people so I feel the need to explain it in detail.


Short version, communism does not focus on production but on human potential, thus it would be failing if it didn't allow for self-expression. This has been true of most forms of communism since the 50's and why it was first radical leftists and communists that started denouncing the Soviet Union even before the atrocities of Stalin came to the light. This question just shows how little mainstream society knows about the theoretical and philosophical development of communism for the past sixty years.


Long version, this is why and how it places extreme value on individuality, leisure, self-expression, and creativity:

Capitalism is what doesn't allow for individuality and self-expression.
It demands from you at least eight hours every day of your time to not be yourself. Coupled with commuting time, the average employed individual in the developed world is denied to be himself for ten hours a day, and it's worse in developing countries.
This is the first front of alienation. Only a very small amount of people would say that their job and their identity is one and the same (such as doctors) and only an even smaller fraction of these would be content with their jobs being a defining characteristic of theirr identity.

Thus, individuality and self expression happen in spite of capitalism and not because of it.
However, one could still argue if in at least the remaining six hours of the day (assuming one does not sacrifice the biological need for sleep as if the performance principle were more important than our basic health), that capitalism allows us to express ourselves via the market.
Well, first of all, even in using the market for pleasure and leisure, these are still not a part of the socioeconomic system, and are only aspects of the human condition that the market tries to cater to, thus, the existence of the entertainment and service industries. These offer a commodified version of pleasure, but is that really what we're looking for? Guy Debord demands most poignantly to all of us if we're comfortably living in a society of spectacle, in which we're nothing but passive consumers; in which our value is based on having and not on being.
I ask, how does this sublimation of all human potential into mere consumerism allow for the individuality and self expression we supposedly value so much?
In all honesty most of us wouldn't know genuine individuality and self-expression if it dickslapped us in our face (and we on this gothic forum should know this more than the average person, for how many people come into this forum feeling morally superior than their families and colleagues and yet they follow the same personality template over and over again, trying to assert themselves as different while still depending on the market for 'self-expression')

Communism and individuality go hand in hand because the measure of success of communism is precisely the actualization of human potential, not production (thus, my condemnation to Stakhanovism in my posts above that both the Soviet Union and China have championed, showing their direct opposition to Marx himself).
According to Marcuse, labor and pleasure are incompatible, but this incompatibility is the very same allower of genuine pleasure, for the time that we do not spend following the performance principle, we can genuinely dedicate it to the pleasure principle, but this can only happen in a genuinely free society, a non-repressive society.
Capitalist society is always repressive because its emphasis is production; that's why even in our leisure time it expects us to be consumers, so that even in apparent rest we are still part of overall production. That's also why sexuality is caged into very specific templates, and why taboos exist. In a repressive society, we're not allowed genuine freedom - we do not have permission for leisure so much as tolerance for rest. This is clearly just a bastardization of honest leisure.
It might seem paradoxical but the liberal individualist ideology is really repressive to the individual. This is because this ideology shapes society in the name of a theoretical Individual, capital I. In theory you could be happy as an individual, but only insofar as your identity conforms to the specific template you're supposed to occupy in society. The Individual of liberal ideology is perfectly rational, perfectly autonomous, perfectly mentally consistent, and 'free' of all instincts. None of us are like that, and none of us should or even could be like that.
We are not perfectly rational, not in the sense that we can't be perfectly logical, but in the sense that the libido has a logic of its own, which is completely ignored in the sexually repressed performance principle.
We are not perfectly autonomous. We are social and interdependent beings, and even if we could cater to out material necessities without the help of others, we would still be missing the social component of interaction with others beyond mere material negotiations, beyond the performance principle.
We are not perfectly mentally consistent, because we know that we consist of at least the id, ego, and superego. The idea that we are an atomized "I" is ridiculous and offensively outdated. There is as much diversity within us as between each other, and if we do not understand and embrace that, then we cannot even begin to follow a genuine self-realization.
Finally, we're clearly not above instincts. Modern civilization always demonizes our instincts as if we should not be guided by them. It is an unambiguous demand that to be civilized, one must deny himself - in this we see that not only does modern society not allow for self expression, but indeed it relies on the very destruction of self expression to survive.


Karl Marx never wrote about this. This is all from the New Left which learned that it must incorporate psychology to politics.
Marx was gearing to this direction with his idea of alienation of labor, of course, but there had been no Freud in his time to explain how capitalism does not just create repression, but it in fact needs repression for effective productivity.
At most, the extent to which Marx talked about individuality and self expression is that it's inhumane that a person should sell their bodies for labor that does not fulfill them.
Marx wanted a society where one did not need to be an assembly line worker, or a fisherman, or a hunter, or an official scholar. He wanted a world where a man could go to the factory in the morning, fish on the afternoon, go hunting in the evening, and read philosophy at nights. Work as play, if you notice.


The basic seeds of Marx, together with the discoveries by Sigmund Freud and Max Weber of the human condition, allowed the New Left to understand that communism should not be a particular mode of social organization the way Fourier and St. Simon had tried in the early emergence of socialist thought, but rather it should be a human condition; a point zero where every individual is assured safety from the fear of death and poverty, so that they genuinely can pursue the full blossoming of their creative potential, and can thus add to human society at large, not by resigning themselves to a 'productive position' in society when they grow up ('fun is for children, you're an adult now, be miserably like the rest of us'), but by society being the flexible one and incorporating the output of the individual into the common.

I know this might be highly eclectic, but I'm sure you can see how this really is not just utopian fantasies, but a very real world where expression and play are not condemned as 'unproductive'.
When looked through the glass of the human subconscious and the value of human interactions, you realize that it's the modern world that really depends on a very fragile and deluded ideological propaganda to con every man into believing that their unhappiness with feeling powerless is their own fault.
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Old 10-24-2011, 03:26 PM   #14
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I know this might be highly eclectic, but I'm sure you can see how this really is not just utopian fantasies, but a very real world where expression and play are not condemned as 'unproductive'.
When looked through the glass of the human subconscious and the value of human interactions, you realize that it's the modern world that really depends on a very fragile and deluded ideological propaganda to con every man into believing that their unhappiness with feeling powerless is their own fault.

There was a book written by Barbara Ehrenreich called "Bright-sided
How Positive Thinking is Undermining America" which actually takes your point and kicks it up a notch. That not only is it the fault of the individual that they feel unhappy about being powerless but that their unhappiness about anything is their own fault(the whole "you create your own reality" thing).
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Old 10-24-2011, 03:39 PM   #15
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Ugh, don't even get me started. The saddest thing is all that rhetoric, for instance the "you create your own reality" thing you mentioned, directly comes from existentialism and postmodernism.
Anyone sophomorically versed in these two philosophical trends knows that all the main figures like Sartre, Derrida, Foucault and Husserl were Marxist, yet in modern times the moral and even ontological ambiguity of the world that these trends opened up have been co-opted by the status quo.
Existentialism now means "be happy where you are" and postmodernism means "I take your anger for justice as a form of oppression".
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Old 10-24-2011, 06:09 PM   #16
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Interesting.

Can you elaborate on the ties between sexuality and communism vs capitalism? I'm not sure why they have anything to do with each other. Is it a stereotype that communists are usually promiscuous versus monogamous or am I talking about something entirely unrelated?

Where are the boundaries drawn in terms of property? What are you allowed to own, what are you forced to share? If i create something, does it remain mine or are proprietary rights dissolved?

How does it apply to the person, or couple, or family, who don't want to live in society and prefer to be away from it up in the mountains or out in the woods, growing their own food and looking out for each other? What protects their home from a group that decides they want what that family has?

Where are the limits of personal space and privacy? If I can't own my home, how am I able to customize it to my own desires (which is a major factor in self expression and individuality)?

There are many people who identify themselves by their profession and draw their happiness and livelihood from it. I'm one of them. I'm an artist because I'm only happy creating. I don't work jobs I don't enjoy. If that means living poor for months at a time so be it. I don't mind. I'm still able to live comfortably from what I do make.

Communism requires group effort. But what happens when there aren't enough qualified people in an area to take care of some necessary function that needs doing? Or simply no one wants to? There's obviously the necessity of some sort of zoning for production requirements. Food, sanitation, etc. How do you avoid creating an environment where the people are forced to work in fields they may not have any interest in, but are still necessary for society to function?
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Old 10-24-2011, 06:22 PM   #17
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I meant to also ask about national security and defense. how does a military exist in a communist, non-dictatorship?
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Old 10-24-2011, 07:09 PM   #18
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You know this is gonna be long, I apologize for that.

All of these questions go into details so honestly I'm not going to answer that much, not because I don't have an answer or because I don't care for the questions, but because these answers don't reflect on communist thought.
They'd be specific communist ideas, but they're not shared by all communists. Remember that communism is not a crystallized and unchanging socioeconomic structure and it's more a social condition. If you have agreed with what I've said thus far, and you'd want to explore on ideas on how to accomplish the 'communist hypothesis' as Badiou calls it; then you can already call yourself a communist.
You don't have to agree with what I say below to be a communist; this is just a way I could see these problems solved. If you come up with other solutions that still open society to a world with no spacialized hierarchies, you're still coming up with a communist society.
Here we go:
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Old 10-24-2011, 07:10 PM   #19
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First off, I personally like the concept of local militias. I saw them working in a town near Creel and they drove off both the cartels and the military. Almost all communists know that violence is a reality, and it's not that we'd pursue violence against innocents 'in the name of communism', but that we know the world is already violent, and taking away people's possibility of armed defense is just another act of aggression.
Fundamentally I don't have a problem with right-wing nutjobs that glorify the second amendment. I tend to like the NRA's principles. It's all the ideological baggage that comes with them that I have a problem with. Right-wing militia fans don't tend to want to protect the community so much as their property.

Now, quote by quote, I promise I'll be more laconic with these ones.
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Communism requires group effort. But what happens when there aren't enough qualified people in an area to take care of some necessary function that needs doing? Or simply no one wants to? There's obviously the necessity of some sort of zoning for production requirements. Food, sanitation, etc. How do you avoid creating an environment where the people are forced to work in fields they may not have any interest in, but are still necessary for society to function?
I wanted to preemptively answer this question but I noticed I didn't above. I got carried away in other directions.
This comes back with what I was saying about Marcuse saying labor is always repressive. There's no escape from it. We're still animals and the world is a harsh world for the pleasure principle. So long as all our needs aren't magically catered we're going to have to go through suffering to survive. But the point of civilization was initially that we would drastically reduce the amount of suffering, the amount of effort. The point of the division of labor (into economic specialties, not assembly lines) is that if someone dedicates themselves to a particular trade they can do a better job at it than if everyone did everything for themselves, and thus the shoemaker can make good shoes for everyone knowing that he will enjoy the benefits of the cheesemaker and the flowergirl.
At some point, production became more important and thus the time dedicated to labor was never reduced but in fact expanded. The emphasis was on commodities than freedom.

Under communism, at least by Marcuse's ideas, of course we'd still have jobs no one wants to do, and they'll still have to be done, but the goal of technology isn't further production but rather further automation. That way, human society has to spend less and less time on menial labor and focus more on meaningful labor. By Marcuse's calculations, the average individual in the developed world should only need to do two hours of menial labor a day and still enjoy a standard of living above developing nations, instead of the eight hours of labor assigned by the western world as a standard.




God DAMN I'm not sure if this is gonna be short after all

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There are many people who identify themselves by their profession and draw their happiness and livelihood from it. I'm one of them. I'm an artist because I'm only happy creating. I don't work jobs I don't enjoy. If that means living poor for months at a time so be it. I don't mind. I'm still able to live comfortably from what I do make.
That's already a pretty communist mindset. Or not exactly. The proper term in Marxist language is petit bourgeois, in English it tends to be petty bourgeoisie, but the word petty sounds as if it were an attack rather than an analysis to a particular class.
But still, this is why the petit bourgeoisie can be revolutionary. They do not live the harshness of the working classes, yet they also do not share the power of the ruling classes, nor even their value for capitalism.
To the petit bourgeoisie, money is a means and not an end, and that echoes a lot of communism.

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Where are the limits of personal space and privacy? If I can't own my home, how am I able to customize it to my own desires (which is a major factor in self expression and individuality)?
This is one of the questions that would be decided in open dialogue by a community, but in general, make a difference between private property and possession.
We're against private property in the sense that you cannot own the means of production, you can only own yourself and your mind. Material creations are an extension of the mind and philosophical discourse would dictate in different times just how much that means you can have.
Remember that the goal of communism is not for everyone to have absolutely the same things; just for everyone to enjoy everything that can be common. When you create something, it does not preclude that you take is away from everyone else because it wouldn't have existed without you on the first place. This is why you can own and even sell (if in this hypothetical community there's credit, because remember currency existed way before capitalism so it's not synonymous to it) something like, let's say you make guitars. But you can see a difference between this and rent, because even if you built a house and sold it, and there are payments, the payments are for your work and effort of making the house, not for the house itself.
Thus, it's bullshit when in today's world a renter makes their house prettier, and land values rise and therefore the owner raises the rent for effort the family made!
If you notice, even though there's no solid answer, customization might even find a more welcoming embrace in communism than in an economic system where rent exists.

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Where are the boundaries drawn in terms of property? What are you allowed to own, what are you forced to share? If i create something, does it remain mine or are proprietary rights dissolved?

How does it apply to the person, or couple, or family, who don't want to live in society and prefer to be away from it up in the mountains or out in the woods, growing their own food and looking out for each other? What protects their home from a group that decides they want what that family has?
This question is very close to the one above (or below, because I inverted them). All I can say is that the only value of ownership possible is that of use, not of title.
A family that wanted to live by themselves, apart from a community, just does so. Similar things happened in revolutionary Spain to farmers who did not want to collectivize but were still allowed to sell their products in the mutualist markets.
The thing is, no one can perfectly be an island; they must have some contact for some things with society. In these, at least they're not dealing with a market where they need to come up with something they can sell so they can buy back the necessities they were looking for, like how Tarahumaras in the sierra frantically keep making artcraft because they can't imagine what else they could sell to the cities and they earn a pity from it. Tarahumaras and indigenous people tend to be very autonomous - they don't buy chicken, they buy a chicken, and thus contribute very little to the market but also depend very little from it. However, if there ever is a need for something from the market, like a specific medicine, they have to work even harder to get just enough money for it.
Under a non-capitalist society, this hypothetical family at least wouldn't have to temporarily compromise with such a market, but would rather appeal to the community itself. And sure, that is a little more uncertain, but honestly when have people been more ruthless than markets?

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Can you elaborate on the ties between sexuality and communism vs capitalism? I'm not sure why they have anything to do with each other. Is it a stereotype that communists are usually promiscuous versus monogamous or am I talking about something entirely unrelated?
Not that we're more promiscuous, although it's hard to find a communist that is sexually conservative.
We just don't have many sexual taboos. Social ills to us shouldn't be a manner of ethical values, but a matter of immanent well-being. Homosexuality does not bode ill to a society, and in fact the suppression of the sexual identity of gay people would be the social harm in here, thus homosexuality is not a taboo to us.
But that's an easy one, let's talk about promiscuity. The sexual liberation movement actually has roots precisely in Marcuse whom I mentioned above, so in a sense sexual liberation was a communist endeavor. Not a specific communist project, but sexual liberation is definitely communist in essence, because social norms do not take precedence over pleasure and self-expression.
Sexuality is a very big part of the human being, and it still gets downplayed in modern society. Even more sexually casual individuals still focus on mainly genitality, meaning that the erotic principle is still seen as a 'simulation of reproduction' when it is much more than that.
According to Frankfurt psychologists, the erotic principle is precisely what is behind art, and because you're an artist I think you can understand that. It would be too long to explain that, but I'm sure you can instinctively feel the connection there, and feel how the erotic is more about the aesthetic than the sexual. How sexuality is more about Eros than just sex, and sex merely a part of sexuality.
Sure, I might be a little promiscuous, but even then you can ask my partners how I go beyond just genitality in regards to sexual pleasure. It's more of a liberatory exploration of your body's potential, than an orgy. And that's mainly what hippies got wrong and why they fucked up the sexual liberation movement.
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Old 10-24-2011, 08:42 PM   #20
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so it does allow for an open market and free trade? i thought that went against the concepts of communism.

i don't mind lengthy, i'm just trying to understand. i'd rather a lengthy explanation than a few quick blurbs that would likely leave me with more questions than they answered.

it seems to me that true communism has to gradually occur and grow organically then, in order to prevent it from becoming a dictatorship like it has in the past. aren't we already moving in that direction? more and more artists and crafters are able to produce their work and market it on their own thanks to technologies we didn't have before, like the computer and internet, for one. this eliminates the need for giant record companies and book publishers and returns more proceeds directly to the artist. just about anyone with a decent machine and proficient software can produce a cd, or publish a manuscript, or create a movie. the same concepts can be applied to just about every industry.

eroticism plays a huge role in art but its not always the motivator. i know what you mean though. i've always been sexually conservative. i identify to the world as a gay man, but in all honesty i think i'm more a-sexual than anything else. the level of shallowness and promiscuity among gay culture has always disgusted me. i've tried to find value in it, to assimilate into the 'scene', but no matter where i look it always boils down to random sex with no substance. i believe in monogamy to the fullest extent. to me it's not about control or possession the way so many want to label it and it has nothing to do with religion. it's about love, respect and devotion to another soul. once that's attained there is no taboo between two bonded people. i've never met anyone who valued it the way i do though and i've accepted the fact that i likely never will. i've never been capable of separating sex from emotion the way most men can. i've tried and it always leaves me feeling physically and emotionally ill. so i'm definitely not 'sexually liberated', by nature.
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Old 10-24-2011, 10:13 PM   #21
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so it does allow for an open market and free trade? i thought that went against the concepts of communism.
Private property over industry is inherently against communism. Basically, if you're crafting guitars with your hands and you're selling them at prices that give you a living wage without "profiteering", that'd be different than owning a factory that produces guitars.


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it seems to me that true communism has to gradually occur and grow organically then, in order to prevent it from becoming a dictatorship like it has in the past. aren't we already moving in that direction? more and more artists and crafters are able to produce their work and market it on their own thanks to technologies we didn't have before, like the computer and internet, for one. this eliminates the need for giant record companies and book publishers and returns more proceeds directly to the artist. just about anyone with a decent machine and proficient software can produce a cd, or publish a manuscript, or create a movie. the same concepts can be applied to just about every industry.
I'm being pretty elementary about this stuff, but that was the point of communism I think. It was or is more about trying to change how people interact and co-operate to a point of dissolving the state. It was the progression of societies to come to a realization of a kind of Anarchy.

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eroticism plays a huge role in art but its not always the motivator. i know what you mean though. i've always been sexually conservative. i identify to the world as a gay man, but in all honesty i think i'm more a-sexual than anything else. the level of shallowness and promiscuity among gay culture has always disgusted me. i've tried to find value in it, to assimilate into the 'scene', but no matter where i look it always boils down to random sex with no substance. i believe in monogamy to the fullest extent. to me it's not about control or possession the way so many want to label it and it has nothing to do with religion. it's about love, respect and devotion to another soul. once that's attained there is no taboo between two bonded people. i've never met anyone who valued it the way i do though and i've accepted the fact that i likely never will. i've never been capable of separating sex from emotion the way most men can. i've tried and it always leaves me feeling physically and emotionally ill. so i'm definitely not 'sexually liberated', by nature.
That's what works for you.

I'll bow out of this conversation anyway. I'm not exactly as eloquent as Alan is being.
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Old 10-24-2011, 10:47 PM   #22
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i've always been sexually conservative. i identify to the world as a gay man, but in all honesty i think i'm more a-sexual than anything else. the level of shallowness and promiscuity among gay culture has always disgusted me. i've tried to find value in it, to assimilate into the 'scene', but no matter where i look it always boils down to random sex with no substance. i believe in monogamy to the fullest extent. to me it's not about control or possession the way so many want to label it and it has nothing to do with religion. it's about love, respect and devotion to another soul. once that's attained there is no taboo between two bonded people. i've never met anyone who valued it the way i do though and i've accepted the fact that i likely never will. i've never been capable of separating sex from emotion the way most men can. i've tried and it always leaves me feeling physically and emotionally ill. so i'm definitely not 'sexually liberated', by nature.

Sexual liberation doesn't necessarily equate to promiscious behaviour (although, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with promiscuity...) it just means that you are able to freely connect to your own sexuality.

My partner and I have been together in a committed relationship for almost 10 years now, but we are poly. We both see other people, but we have guidelines about how that plays out for us. We are completely honest and open with the people that we allow into our lives in this way, and it is always with the understanding that our primary relationship with each other comes first.

Some people might see that as promiscuity, but when you look at it closely in the time that we've been together I've only seen two other people (one of whom was involved with both Tracey and I) and she has only seen 6 others.

The way that we see it is that anything that increases the amount of love and joyfulness in our lives and the lives of others can only be a good thing, so we nurture that.

Sexuality comes in all shapes and forms, and being asexual is a totally valid expression of one's sexuality.
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Old 10-25-2011, 07:59 AM   #23
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it seems to me that true communism has to gradually occur and grow organically then, in order to prevent it from becoming a dictatorship like it has in the past. aren't we already moving in that direction?
Yes and no. The world is gradually moving towards liberation, now is better than 1776, 1776 was better than 1492, etc.

However, the right is currently fighting tooth and nail to maintain and extend their privilege. For years they had people convinced that it was best to just let them have their way and monopolize economic and political power because the alternative was Stalin (a lie) and everyone could get to be the 1% if they just worked hard enough (another lie).

There are HUGE problems that need to be addressed in the way we as a society do business, and what we value. The longer we wait, the worse we make things for the oppressed and less likely it becomes that this struggle is one which can be done in a relatively bloodless manner.

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more and more artists and crafters are able to produce their work and market it on their own thanks to technologies we didn't have before, like the computer and internet, for one. this eliminates the need for giant record companies and book publishers and returns more proceeds directly to the artist. just about anyone with a decent machine and proficient software can produce a cd, or publish a manuscript, or create a movie. the same concepts can be applied to just about every industry.
Yes. BUT as Net neutrality was killed by the republicans, it really won't be too long before the sites of independent artists are blocked and stymied by the very industries that the net threatens. You really can't even blame them for this, it's what capitalism demands.

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eroticism plays a huge role in art but its not always the motivator. i know what you mean though. i've always been sexually conservative. i identify to the world as a gay man, but in all honesty i think i'm more a-sexual than anything else. the level of shallowness and promiscuity among gay culture has always disgusted me. i've tried to find value in it, to assimilate into the 'scene', but no matter where i look it always boils down to random sex with no substance. i believe in monogamy to the fullest extent. to me it's not about control or possession the way so many want to label it and it has nothing to do with religion. it's about love, respect and devotion to another soul. once that's attained there is no taboo between two bonded people. i've never met anyone who valued it the way i do though and i've accepted the fact that i likely never will. i've never been capable of separating sex from emotion the way most men can. i've tried and it always leaves me feeling physically and emotionally ill. so i'm definitely not 'sexually liberated', by nature.
I sympathize. The gay scene has a tendency to be seedy and predatory.

However, this is because people respond to context. Psychologically, it's easier to commit a crime in a broken down, darkened alley covered in graffiti, than the exact same alley, just well lit and clean.

The "deviant" (heh) nature of gay culture is a direct result of oppression of that culture by social conservatives. If one wakes up every day, and is told that the way they are is wrong, and dirty, and immoral, if their basic human rights are stripped and limited (either through outright laws against sexual behavior or a prohibition on the right to marry, or widespread use of propaganda "It's sinful! It's immoral! You'll go to hell!") it is only natural that they will respond as deviants. It is only natural that they will pick up on the social cues set by their oppressors and behave accordingly.

Sexual repression, is one of the most sinister and evil things that was ever done to the human race, and we're still living with it. Sexual liberation goes hand in hand with economic and political liberation, but unfortunately it often gets overlooked and miss-interpreted.

When you have sex, you like many people, probably trigger a great deal of cognitive dissonance. Hell, I had the same problem for years, and I'm mostly straight, it's just that I was brought up with an almost irrational fear of the medical complications that could result from sex.

Get over the dissonance and then get the right partner, and it becomes a healthy outgrowth of love and affection.
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Old 10-25-2011, 09:52 AM   #24
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i was in agreement until that last line.

it has nothing to do with dissonance. its about self respect and a sense of morals. i tried that with my ex and he wound up taking it to the extreme. what is healthy about risking your health for a few minutes of pleasure? why is that more important than building trust and commitment and a future with someone? he threw all of that away, not me. fucking everything that moved was more important to him than anything we were building and in the end he was the one who turned up poz. serves him right. i hope it rots him into an early grave. don't draw assumptions on something you know little about.
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Old 10-25-2011, 10:09 AM   #25
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i was in agreement until that last line.
It is not a requisite to fall in line with the popular desires in order to be sexually liberated.

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it has nothing to do with dissonance. its about self respect and a sense of morals. i tried that with my ex and he wound up taking it to the extreme. what is healthy about risking your health for a few minutes of pleasure? why is that more important than building trust and commitment and a future with someone? he threw all of that away, not me. fucking everything that moved was more important to him than anything we were building and in the end he was the one who turned up poz. serves him right. i hope it rots him into an early grave. don't draw assumptions on something you know little about.
You want commitment. You want honesty and transparency. There's nothing in the least wrong with that. In fact, if you forced yourself into actions that weren't congruent with what you personally wanted, you'd be sexually oppressing yourself. Liberated sex isn't about being promiscuous. Unless I'm off my mark, liberated sexuality is knowing what works for you and not feeling bad about it. If a man can't respect what your needs are and you can't understand or respect his needs, then you're just incompatible.

Verily, I had many friends back in my old hometown, gay and straight, and whatever else that shared the same sentiments as you.

There is nothing wrong with wanting trust.
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