Is Communism Relevant?

[SolInvictus]

looking at political movements there are none that have become quite as popular as communism. the idea of a claseless society without the strife caused by greed and poverty is extremely enticing, and in all honesty, who in their right mind wouldn't want to live in a society of equals, peace and plenty? now of course you may be saying that this is too good to be true, that communism doesn't work, but that is not the point of the thread.

going back in time to when communism was first envisioned as the socio-political solution to all the world's ills we see the world of the industrial revolution and pure capitalism. workers, men, women and childre, working long hours for little pay and living in cramped and unsanitary conditions. these poor people were being mercilessly exploited by rich employers who cared little of their plight. the vast majority suffering under the cruel heel of capitalism; clearly there must be a solution.
that "solution" soon presented itself in the form of the communist/socialist movements that promised to end the proleteriate's oppression. the new world that was promised was something that has pushed individuals to fight to this day for communist ideals. the support of communism seems to hardly have been affected by the considerable world changes.

communism was to end the exploitation of workers, but this has been addressed.
communism was supposed to make us equals, this too has been addressed.
in short, the world communism was intended to save us from has been destroyed thus inspiring my question; is communism relevant to us today?

[MortifiedPenguins]

I don't think it's been relevant since it's first inception.

It's usually an already broken idea that's just pirated and raped by some naive peasants and a few intelligent despots that want power quickly.

[MrFlopz]

Communism makes all people equal. It turns them all into poor slaves.

[SmilezRoyale]

except 1 = communists don't beleive society is equal. [and neither do i; we are not equal, we never will be, meritocracy, not equality, is as close as we can get to a utopia]

2 = communism was made irrelevant in western european countries because of trade unions, something that Karl marx thought would never happen. [which was a fairly logical assumption for his time in the mid 19th century; since there were no trade unions and the idea of trade unions was looked down upon] In places where no freedom existed, a communist revolution was highly appealing.

Communism is no more relevant today than Nazism; they no longer exists and are not likely to reappear since the game has changed; yet they have made their mark on the history of mankind.

[AapoJoki]

At 4/22/08 11:01 PM, SolInvictus wrote: communism was to end the exploitation of workers, but this has been addressed.
communism was supposed to make us equals, this too has been addressed.
in short, the world communism was intended to save us from has been destroyed thus inspiring my question; is communism relevant to us today?

Looking at the developing countries, their sweatshops, and how it all affects us globally, I'd say that ideas supporting the emancipation of the proletariat are highly relevant. It's not like the "communists" are helping though - workers tend to have even less rights and freedom under self-proclaimed communist regimes than elsewhere, particularly in the capitalist west.

[bearchild]

Is Communism relevant?

In short, yes.

When you say that oppression of the proletariat has been addressed there are still many places where the proletariat is being oppressed (ironically, the worst affected country is China).

Anyway, people like Marx and Engels are philosophers who think of new ways of government which they believe will work. If you compare 'communist' dictatorships to M&E's theories you can see almost at once they are totally different. Firstly, China(for this is the example we will use) is a reluctant capitalist country. After opening their borders to trade China has been effectively taken over by the USA and Europe. Sweatshops and child labour are rife, and there is nothing of Mao's sayings in his little bloody red book which appear today

In summary, Communism is relevant. However, it is not effective nor is it a good idea.
The only thing that Communism has done for China and Russia is drag them back into the shit when (almost) other countries have thrived.

Regardless of how fucked up you think the USA, Canada and Europe is, you don't haven't seen shit till you've seen Communism

[SolInvictus]

At 4/23/08 08:55 AM, AapoJoki wrote: Looking at the developing countries, their sweatshops, and how it all affects us globally, I'd say that ideas supporting the emancipation of the proletariat are highly relevant. It's not like the "communists" are helping though - workers tend to have even less rights and freedom under self-proclaimed communist regimes than elsewhere, particularly in the capitalist west.

but in developed countries were these things solved by a communist system? communist ideals may have shaped the first world but communist government didn't.
in itself, many of the ideas brought forward as support for communism, i.e. the equality of all men, had been established prior to communism. with this already in place can we really say that communism that reshaped the workplace? is communism responsible for unions and sympathetic factory owners and government officials who realised the horribly inhumane conditions of 19th century industry?
i would have to say that this isn't the case as unions and sympathetic superiors predate communism.

[TheMason]

One thing you need to keep in mind is what Marx & Engles described was a utopian vision much like Plato's Republic and Thomas More's Utopia. Good on paper, but impossible to institute in reality.

But does that mean it is irrelevant? In social science I think it has some interesting things to say about class and the stratification of society.

As a political regime I think it is nightmarish, as a social science (political science or sociology) it is an interesting and fruitful theoretical construct for research.

[Gunman44]

SolInvictus: It's all about hindsight. Why are the failures and victories of WWII relevant? or the ideology of Nazism? or the setup of the Vietnam Conflicts? When we know what happened then we can prevent it from happening in the future. That's why there are no more facist states, or new (post 1990) communist governments. Most everyone knows they failed and why. Beyond that reason Leninism, and Stalinism are no longer relevant. Marxism well I don't know enough about it to say whether it's relevent or not.

[Leistungsfahigsten]

Communism
(noun)

An institution where the rich become poorer and the poor are worse off than before.

[SolInvictus]

At 4/23/08 07:34 PM, Gunman44 wrote: SolInvictus: It's all about hindsight.

actually, no its not. this isn't about whether or not communism works.

[Gunman44]

At 4/23/08 07:40 PM, SolInvictus wrote:

At 4/23/08 07:34 PM, Gunman44 wrote: SolInvictus: It's all about hindsight.

actually, no its not. this isn't about whether or not communism works.

did you even read my post? I said it didn't work but still had relevent due to the fact that it didn't work.

[SolInvictus]

i think i have to stop using the word relevant since its not exactly what i mean. rather is it actually responsible for the things it claims to have caused.

i guess "relevant" would still apply when talking about its purpose today.

[JoeyNukes]

Marxism would be impossible to deploy simply because Capitalism has advanced to just about every established and successful nation. It would be difficult/impossible to break that up, alongside natural morals of people who more than likely wouldn't be willing to give up whatever luxury that they have just for solidarity & equality.

[Sajberhippien]

At 4/24/08 12:16 AM, JoeyNukes wrote: Marxism would be impossible to deploy simply because Capitalism has advanced to just about every established and successful nation. It would be difficult/impossible to break that up, alongside natural morals of people who more than likely wouldn't be willing to give up whatever luxury that they have just for solidarity & equality.

Word on that. +rep.

[The-Longbowman]

At 4/22/08 11:01 PM, SolInvictus wrote: communism was to end the exploitation of workers, but this has been addressed.
communism was supposed to make us equals, this too has been addressed.
in short, the world communism was intended to save us from has been destroyed thus inspiring my question; is communism relevant to us today?

It depends heavily on what you mean by "relevant."

If you mean, "Will it become the guiding ideology for any government in the near future?" I would say probably not. It might sound good to angry young college students in rich countries, but in reality, it's overloaded with internal contradictions.

* It's a classless society, but the skilled workers still get better jobs, and the well-connected people still get higher pay off the books.

* It's a society without wealth, but government officials still live like kings and nobles while common people are forced to live in dilapidated and crowded government apartments.

* It's a society without racism, but only because the minorities have been forced to either leave the country, interbreed with the majority, or die.

* It's a "moral" society, unless you belong to any religion whatsoever (in which case you end up in a torture chamber).

* It's a "democratic" society, unless you have even a slight disagreement with the government (in which case you end up in a torture chamber).

* It's a "just" society, unless you're one of the 100 million people who died as the result of disagreeing with a communist regime (in which case they don't even bother with the torture chamber). [This, by the way, is now commemorated in the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D. C.]

In short , it doesn't work. Therefore, it's irrelevant as a method of governing a country, because it's so self-contradictory.

However, if you mean "Will the communist movement continue to play some sort of role in world affairs?", then the answer is most definitely yes. It may be a failed ideology, but that hasn't stopped people in developing countries from latching on to it as a refuge from their poverty, or people in wealthy countries from latching on to it out of some sort of misguided nostalgia for the revolutionary left.

Developing countries:
* India, for example, has at least one unusually vibrant communist party that occasionally makes headlines.
* China is still ruled by the Communist party.
* Zimbabwe is ruled by a political party historically aligned with communism.
* Most former Soviet countries in central Asia (the "stans") are run by the same sets of people who ran them in communist times. Turkmenistan in particular has a dictatorship strongly reminiscent of communism.
* Cuba is still Communist (and still piss-poor).
* Venezuela is run by Hugo Chavez, who has very good relations with Cuba and preaches the virtues of "21st century socialism."
* Vietnam and Laos are still nominally Communist (although Vietnam's economy is mostly capitalist).
* Chiapas in Mexico is still governed partially by the Zapatistas.
* Don't even get me started on North Korea.

Developed countries:
* The island of Cyprus is currently governed by a Communist president.
* Most countries in Europe, as well as the former Soviet countries of western Asia, still have active Communist parties. In a few countries with parliamentary systems like Italy, there are even a few Communists in the national Parliament.
* The European Parliament (not tied to any one country, but applying across the entire EU) has a few Communist politicians in it.
* The US still has a Communist party (although it only has a couple thousand supporters and devotes most of its time to helping the Democratic Party get its wackier candidates elected).
* Russia still has the vestiges of a communist party running around, usually as an opposition party in local and national elections.
* Most protests against war and globalization have at least a few Communists marching in them.

So, in that sense, communism is still relevant. Its movement is not dead: as a system of government, it is morally bankrupted from its gross failures and human rights abuses, but it has yet to lose all relevance as a movement.

[G-Locked]

Another reason why communism is unimplementable on a large scale is the fact that in a developing country, people follow a simple economic model: They sell goods, or they farm the land and sell their crop. This is the basis of Capitalism. Once a country grows and industrializes, this naturally continues. The switch to communism thus becomes impossible because of the system already in place. In addition, many of the problems communism attempted to resolve have been largely solved by the advent of trade unions and similar workers' rights organizations.

[TheMason]

At 4/24/08 12:50 PM, The-Longbowman wrote:

:: * Venezuela is run by Hugo Chavez, who has very good relations with Cuba and preaches the virtues of "21st century socialism."

The thing with Chavez is he is not practicing "21st Century Socialism" but the failed policies of Castro's Cuba.

New South American Left:
* Free market orientated
* Internationalist
* Wealth redistribution around economic sectors rather than socio-economic classes.
ex: Michelle Bachelet.

Old South American Left:
* Nationalistic
* Anti-American
* Wealth redistributed directly to the poor.
ex: Hugo Chavez.

The old is a cancer on a country, especially one that is rich in the devil's excerment (oil). The oil industry is well developed but other industries are neglected. Chavez's solution is to give money directly to the poor. The alternative is to redistribute tax revenue in the form of business loans and/or subsidies to underdeveloped industries in the country.

[Der-Lowe]

At 4/24/08 04:31 PM, TheMason wrote: New South American Left:
* Free market orientated
* Internationalist
* Wealth redistribution around economic sectors rather than socio-economic classes.
ex: Michelle Bachelet.

This is what the Chilean would've said: "lawl"
You should better say Lagos.
And Chile is not socialist at all; precisely if there's one thing one can object about Chile's economic model is wealth distribution.

Old South American Left:

I wonder where we fit in?

[JamesKnox]

Communism doesn't work. Everyone gets the same amount no matter how much effort you put in.

[TheMason]

At 4/24/08 07:15 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

At 4/24/08 04:31 PM, TheMason wrote:

:: : ex: Michelle Bachelet.

And Chile is not socialist at all; precisely if there's one thing one can object about Chile's economic model is wealth distribution.

Michelle Bachelet is a admitted moderate socialist. Yes she is pro-free market but she is also about wealth redistribution to reduce one of the world's largest rich/poor gaps.

I wonder where we fit in?

Classically liberal with our left getting close to socialism.

[Der-Lowe]

At 4/25/08 12:29 AM, TheMason wrote:

I wonder where we fit in?

Classically liberal with our left getting close to socialism.

There's no u in Argentina.

I love that kind of phrases!

[elliott20]

At 4/24/08 04:31 PM, TheMason wrote: Chavez's solution is to give money directly to the poor. The alternative is to redistribute tax revenue in the form of business loans and/or subsidies to underdeveloped industries in the country.

not a fan of the "economic stimulant" fund, huh?

[TheMason]

At 4/26/08 12:13 AM, elliott20 wrote:

At 4/24/08 04:31 PM, TheMason wrote: Chavez's solution is to give money directly to the poor. The alternative is to redistribute tax revenue in the form of business loans and/or subsidies to underdeveloped industries in the country.

not a fan of the "economic stimulant" fund, huh?

Nope! It only provides for short-term gain and keeps negative economic trends going in the long-term.

[stinkychops]

Ummm, relevant to what. I dont know where you live but exploitation of workers is still happening.

[PieGraphGlock]

There are eight major "ideologies" which I believe to be cults: fascism, communism, anarchism, white supremacy, nazism, anarcho-capitalism, national bolshevism, and anarcho-communism.

[Der-Lowe]

At 6/21/08 07:45 AM, MickTheChampion wrote: Although, rather than stop oppressing, oppression has simply moved onto Third World operations. It's a strange metamorphosis, but I suppose a lot of Marxist analysis could now be used in looking at economic globalisation.

Precisely, neo-marxism studies the oppression of central countries to marginal countries.
It's a really interesting movement, communism.

[drDAK]

Well, unless you can somehow curb human greed (which is a natural instinct that allows us to live in a competitive environment) Communism can never be accomplished.

What do I believe? I think that somewhere down the long line of time we will be able to implement chips into the brains of our citizens to get rid of their greed and make everyone the same. I don't know if I want a society like that, but that's what I see as the inevitable future.

Bottom line: Humans are animals designed to live in a competitive environment. We were designed to compete with one another. However, we are finally running into our natural selves versus our very unnatural society. Who will win? Society it seems..

[Kleinhans]

true communism, when looked at on paper and in how it was supposed to be practiced is a utopia. everyone works, every one eats, every one drinks, and every one has a house. It is a classless society where everyone provides what they can and take what they need. it is still relavant today in europe there is a reconized communist party in most of europe and they have been contributing to there socilist programs, american is nearly 100% conservative where our republican party is equal to their fascit parties and our democrats are their conservative parties

[termalisk]

Truth be told, most of the countries listed for being failed communist governments aren't really communist, they're socialist.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but
Communism: Everybody gets paid the same, you spend as you please.
Socialism: Everybody gets rationed the same stuff.

In this case, the only truly Communist country in my memory was Cambodia, and look how THAT turned out.