I don’t think this was the fault of that socioeconomic system known as “communism”. Yet the article tries to push that assumption a few times.
> Hitler as the biggest criminal and murderer of the 20th century. It is hard to believe that, actually, Stalin murdered significantly more. Not only are the crimes of communism not condemned, but they are by and large not known.
Right, so it was this particular implementation of communism, epitomized by Stalin’s policies.
When I was an undergraduate working in a molecular biology lab my two mentors, Andrei and Svetlana were Russian emigrants. Andrei taught me, in the 00s, that he couldn’t do the level of molecular biology in Russia because the downstream effects decades later put them far behind in the technical and cultural knowhow. Genetics was banned.
No they were in college in the 80s when things were more open, but Andrei’s point was that compared to a lot of other sciences, molecular biology like cloning genes was decades behind because of the past.
Entertaining, but not to be taken too seriously. The author himself says that it’s very subjective and not thoroughly fact-checked. Even then, the digs at the Kievan Rus’ are… well, absurd. Also, I don’t know of any European country without its share of demented and paranoid rulers. But England is not Henry VIII and Germany is not Hitler.
Also, this
> But let us start with the Communist Manifesto which is the holiest tome of communist ideology and can be called the red gospel.
is a pearl of unintended absurd humour. In this case, when someone applies their beliefs and frame of mind to a foreign object without actually understanding it.
In the end I agree with the author that all life if absurd, it’s just a matter of point of view.
I look forward to the day when the capitalist and communist eras of the 19th-21st century are analyzed coldly, in the way we look at mercantilism or medieval market towns today.
Because it really seems like both are increasingly inadequate systems for handling modernity, and the obsession with defining one as intrinsically evil and the other the obvious superior option (I’ll let you choose which is which) is such a flattening, unhelpful approach.
Personally, having moved from capitalist America to post-communist Poland, a few things seem true to me:
…the communist era in Poland was a disaster and the country today is unquestionably better off as a modified capitalist one;
…contemporary American culture really seems to be struggling under an unquestioned capitalist ethic;
…the conflict seems artificially egged on from think tanks, corporations, academics, and maybe even the simple alliteration of the letter c (i.e., you don’t hear nearly as much about Capitalism vs. Socialism, even though historically that’s a more accurate label of what governments actually were.)
…and that neither capitalism or communism has ever really been implemented in a pure sense.
Which is all a long way of saying that Mark Fisher’s quote seems more true every day, not as a pessimistic statement but just one describing a lack of imagination and the inability to transcend the debate:
“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
A simple model is that most countries internally are made up of many "competing communist orgs". Each large company is internally a communist dictatorship. Employees don't choose their bosses, and have no voting power whatsoever in the general case. Employees share the means of production, and the fruits of their labour is redistributed largely evenly, even if some employees are 10x or 100x as productive as others. It's only entire companies that compete in the capitalist free market sense.
This is... fine. Capitalism encourages innovation and efficiency, while Communism provides individual safety and reduces wealth inequality. Neither works in pure form, so just about every country combines the two.
Employees can choose their boss, that's called a work contract. And in my country workers do have voting powers on the company, but that is rejected by the US, because they dislike unions.
Communism has no wealth inequality, because it's forbidden to have any wealth at all. Maybe you actually think of social democracy?
I think this book makes a solid argument that communism is evil.
And moreover that comparing the two is irrational and causes false equivalences.
I think the book makes a solid argument that Communism, Marxism or socialism whatever you call it is absurd. And invariably leads to absurd outcomes.
Granted I think it was pretty enlightening to point out that our free western economies are not without planning. We have subsidies, tax policies, social programs, etc. But that doesn't mean we're trying to do away money or private ownership.
> While nazism and its crimes were condemned after World War II [...] this has not happened with communism.
This resonates quite deeply. In my country nazis go straight to jail but communists walk our soil completely unpunished. They have half a dozen political parties, are well coordinated, are popular and are constantly elected by the population when they promise them heaven on earth. This is especially ironic since nazism is short for national socialism.
Communism is alive and well in Latin America. Brazilian president Lula declared to CNN his intention to install communism in my country not even a week ago. It has been his intention for over 40 years. He and his party has been in power for over 20 years. Yet people act as though it was fake news.
> On the other hand, life was secure. There were no bank loans, therefore there were no bank fees or percents. There was no real worry over one’s job or workplace; one was available for everyone. Wages were low, but fear of losing one’s job was almost nonexistent. A person pretended to work; the state pretended to pay him. Living accommodations were crowded and faint hope existed to find a better apartment, but all had a roof over their heads.There had to be, since homelessness was forbidden by law.
> Nowadays, there exist people who yearn for that mollusk-like life.
This isn't an inaccurate description, and yes, it's not exactly a utopian state to find yourself in.
But I'm not going to chuckle at the hypothetical people we're supposed to pity for wanting this; I bet there are quite a few people in the United States alone who would love to have this life, who would love to have a guaranteed job, a guaranteed roof over their heads, and the heads of their children.
They definitely does not aware of soviet reality that “roof over head” usually is not in the place where human want to live, same with job. if student after university decided (not by student, by state distributing workforce) to go work at city on polar circle - that means that student will go live and work here, without sunlight for the rest of his life! not joking, personal story with soviet collapse as happy ending (moved to normal place after that)
I think that lifestyle is easily achieved by basically anyone, you don't need much money to live that kind of life. The problem is that life is only enjoyable if everyone lives the same life. You could save a ton of money and not have to work much if you lived a 70s lifestyle. Many even long for that lifestyle, but it only works if everyone lives it. If you're the only one living in the 70s and everyone else lives in the 2020s, most people would not be happy. Somehow, enduring things is much easier as a group. I remember talking to a Chinese person who said for most of their youth they spent their days studying until 11pm with breaks for lunch and dinner. That would be hell for most western kids, but apparently they didn't suffer too much because they were studying together with their friends who all had to endure the same schedule.
This is averaging across ~40 years of history (none of this applied until mid-50s and certainly not before WWII) and comparing "middle class" with low income. The "guaranteed, if low-paying, job and roof over head" was the norm, but it certainly didn't apply to everyone, the modern Russian word for a homeless person is of soviet origin. I. e. a criminal convict would lose their home automatically.
Not entirely true. Jews willing to leave had to pay an exit tax so high that it basically meant leaving all your wealth behind. Later, they weren't permitted to emigrate at all.
So you're saying people in death camps could have just walked away but didn't because being in a death camp in germany was better than the alternative?
I find that really hard to believe. Do you have a source?
> While nazism and its crimes were condemned after World War II, making the return of this form of totalitarianism impossible
Even written in 2021 rather than today, it's difficult to take the OP seriously after this. Both Hitler's nazism and Stalin's communism are manifestations of the deeper authoritarian sympathies that infect the human psyche and to which the modern world is quickly succumbing.
I was about 10 when the USSR has collapsed and have lived in the use for over 30 years yet I still see in my parents and even myself the remnants of dehumanizing ridiculousness that existed there. Eg my dad is instinctively terrified of dealing with anyone from the government even like the mailman because that person can wield their position against you even though that's not the case here at all.
Or for example I had to point out to my dad that his neighbor open carries. Like my dad is intellectually aware of the 2nd amendment but it didn't fit in his brain that people could actually exercise a freedom so his eyes were literally blind to it (obviously I drove him to the gun shop that evening)
Important to understand that these are "absurdities" only when viewed from the angle of market economy and democratic society. For people living in Soviet Union this was just a "state of the world".
Communist values (or lack of values) shaped the political and social systems in which people were born and raised.
I feel like some people are trying for the sequel right now.
Moral relativism is like digging a latrine. Almost nobody wants to do it for somebody else, it's a chore to do it for one's self, but pretty much everyone appreciates when it's already done for them.
Anyway, I feel like 'liberalism' is under broad attack by both conservatives and progressives, largely because it is very unsatisfying right now.
Speaking for myself, liberalism is a way to understand the world. Liberalism in this sense does not especially imply progressivism or conservatism, and can be practiced by anyone. To re-phrase the Robustness Principle: "be opinionated in what you do, be open minded in what you accept from others".
I feel like the stronger you push your opinions into your understanding of the world, the harder it gets to actually understand what is going on in the world. As Colbert said: "reality has a well-known liberal bias". This statement makes more sense if run in reverse: "An open-minded understanding of the world is more likely to be durably and broadly true than a strongly opinionated understanding".
Unfortunately, it has become VERY difficult to talk about what is going on in the world right now, largely because a lot of disparate groups are pushing their opinions into their understanding very very hard. There are many people who currently disagree with their own in-group, but are restricted in what they can say because of social loyalty constraints. If you can't be the first person to speak up, consider being the second.
The absolute strongest superpower that humans have is the the ability to tell another story. Don't get stuck in the first satisfying story you hear.
----
If you are satisfied with blame, try examining the situation closer. If you are satisfied that a whole political party is evil, try examining the situation closer.
Here are some questions:
What is the person or organization doing
socially
economically
emotionally
political as in policy objectives
political as in electoral strategy
political as in internal power structure - is the internal power structure sound or fragmented?
When a person or organization says something, is it
complete
accurate
satisfying (to anyone? to someone? to me?)
Sometimes, it is a trap to fight the obvious fight. Perhaps the other side is fine with losing the obvious fight for some reason.
People don't believe crazy things because of correct facts, they believe them because of satisfying stories.
---
May I humbly ask 2 things of you:
1. Please don't assume I'm saying or implying something beyond what I've said here. You may feel free to go beyond what I've said, just don't put it on me.
2. Please don't join a death cult. You can look up the characteristics of a high control group; a death cult is all that plus their definition of morality narrows over time, excluding more and more people. Death cults ramp up anger over time. It's very easy to fall into one right now, and they are not exclusive to either side of the political spectrum. It's better to endure a little moral dissatisfaction than to join a high control group.
Thank you. When the head of the labor stats department is fired for reporting labor stats (she has a PhD), when the head of the public health agency is a vaccine skeptic lawyer .. I know where we in the US are headed.
I’m the farthest thing imaginable from a Bolshevik sympathizer but I often wonder whether big-C Communism could have survived and how it would have fared if the United States hadn’t engaged in sustained economic warfare against it. I imagine it might look something a bit like Chinese Communism does today, although perhaps those days came and went in the later eras of the Party system.
Communism depended on the west and was sustained by it. Obviously they exported raw materials to purchase the many things they failed to produce themselves including food. But also particularly, the Soviets had no way to set prices in their centrally planned economy that actually worked, so they kept the show on the road by copying prices from western free market economies.
This is one reason the USSR was always lagging behind western economies despite being scientifically advanced. They had to wait for the west to develop products and do price discovery, because GOSPLAN didn't have any way to price things properly themselves.
I'm not saying USSR was a panacea or that Stalin did nothing wrong (Tankies are the fucking worst. I hung out on /r/communism for a while, and, as the kids used to say "gross").
I take writing like the OP with a HUGE grain of salt.
There are plenty of crimes and problems with what happened in the Soviet Union. Some of these were intentional by the leadership both before, during, and after Stalin. Some of these were self-owns (War Communism much?) some of these were forced errors (when doing battle one makes tough choices, and this includes in ideological/economic/actual war). Some of these were straight up evil policies (gulags, great purges, Katyn, etc...)
If someone can do real analysis I'm down, but once you start quoting Black Book of Communism, I know you're coming with an agenda and it's hard for me to take you in good faith. Especially if you're counting "The Unborn" - go on, just call the US a "Nazi Nation with the unborn holocaust" (I grew up in that shit, so saw the propaganda first hand).
Are you contending existence of mass murders under almost any communist regime? What agenda are you talking about? You are making it sound communism is a noble idea, which someone is trying to discredit undeservingly.
>>2. "Unborn"
It was about an estimation of how much more people would Soviet Union have in time if it hadn't murdered so many of its citizens. Imagine children of children of missing 20 million people.
> In their subconscious hopes that a societal formula is as simple and as universal as the famous E=mc², people are prepared to believe nonsense if it only sounds good.
One thing that only the "survivors" realize is just how materialistic the Soviet Bloc societies were.
And I don't mean philosophically materialistic, like "there is no soul". That too, but I mainly mean that in the shortage of everything (and there usually was a shortage of everything) people would become fixated on owning relatively banal objects.
Girls would prostitute themselves for a nice pair of Western jeans, people would snitch and steal, break the law, run illegal smuggling rings while bribing the police, take bribes themselves etc., over things such as stockings, tires or calculators.
I was not able to persuade one young American that not paying a fat bribe to a doctor could have fatal consequences back then. "But in socialism, there must be a common free healthcare for everybody!" - Yeah, lad, on paper. Paper tolerates everything. The one thing that was never in shortage were slogans, propaganda, red flags and red stars.
The book tells a story of how bananas were nearly unobtainable and thus became an almost totemic status symbol.
An Estonian actress pilfers a banana from a high-level Party function, risking grave consequences, just so her daughter could taste one at least once in her life. Alas, the daughter is too young to appreciate this and declares that it tastes like "poopoo".
45 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 79.2 ms ] threadwait, does this just mean pregnancies that didn't reach full term? Or like, a hypothetical number of kids that could have been born?
I don’t think this was the fault of that socioeconomic system known as “communism”. Yet the article tries to push that assumption a few times.
> Hitler as the biggest criminal and murderer of the 20th century. It is hard to believe that, actually, Stalin murdered significantly more. Not only are the crimes of communism not condemned, but they are by and large not known.
Right, so it was this particular implementation of communism, epitomized by Stalin’s policies.
When I was an undergraduate working in a molecular biology lab my two mentors, Andrei and Svetlana were Russian emigrants. Andrei taught me, in the 00s, that he couldn’t do the level of molecular biology in Russia because the downstream effects decades later put them far behind in the technical and cultural knowhow. Genetics was banned.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44843605
Also, this
> But let us start with the Communist Manifesto which is the holiest tome of communist ideology and can be called the red gospel.
is a pearl of unintended absurd humour. In this case, when someone applies their beliefs and frame of mind to a foreign object without actually understanding it.
In the end I agree with the author that all life if absurd, it’s just a matter of point of view.
Because it really seems like both are increasingly inadequate systems for handling modernity, and the obsession with defining one as intrinsically evil and the other the obvious superior option (I’ll let you choose which is which) is such a flattening, unhelpful approach.
Personally, having moved from capitalist America to post-communist Poland, a few things seem true to me:
…the communist era in Poland was a disaster and the country today is unquestionably better off as a modified capitalist one;
…contemporary American culture really seems to be struggling under an unquestioned capitalist ethic;
…the conflict seems artificially egged on from think tanks, corporations, academics, and maybe even the simple alliteration of the letter c (i.e., you don’t hear nearly as much about Capitalism vs. Socialism, even though historically that’s a more accurate label of what governments actually were.)
…and that neither capitalism or communism has ever really been implemented in a pure sense.
Which is all a long way of saying that Mark Fisher’s quote seems more true every day, not as a pessimistic statement but just one describing a lack of imagination and the inability to transcend the debate:
“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
This is... fine. Capitalism encourages innovation and efficiency, while Communism provides individual safety and reduces wealth inequality. Neither works in pure form, so just about every country combines the two.
Communism has no wealth inequality, because it's forbidden to have any wealth at all. Maybe you actually think of social democracy?
And moreover that comparing the two is irrational and causes false equivalences.
I think the book makes a solid argument that Communism, Marxism or socialism whatever you call it is absurd. And invariably leads to absurd outcomes.
Granted I think it was pretty enlightening to point out that our free western economies are not without planning. We have subsidies, tax policies, social programs, etc. But that doesn't mean we're trying to do away money or private ownership.
This resonates quite deeply. In my country nazis go straight to jail but communists walk our soil completely unpunished. They have half a dozen political parties, are well coordinated, are popular and are constantly elected by the population when they promise them heaven on earth. This is especially ironic since nazism is short for national socialism.
Communism is alive and well in Latin America. Brazilian president Lula declared to CNN his intention to install communism in my country not even a week ago. It has been his intention for over 40 years. He and his party has been in power for over 20 years. Yet people act as though it was fake news.
> Nowadays, there exist people who yearn for that mollusk-like life.
This isn't an inaccurate description, and yes, it's not exactly a utopian state to find yourself in.
But I'm not going to chuckle at the hypothetical people we're supposed to pity for wanting this; I bet there are quite a few people in the United States alone who would love to have this life, who would love to have a guaranteed job, a guaranteed roof over their heads, and the heads of their children.
I find that really hard to believe. Do you have a source?
Even written in 2021 rather than today, it's difficult to take the OP seriously after this. Both Hitler's nazism and Stalin's communism are manifestations of the deeper authoritarian sympathies that infect the human psyche and to which the modern world is quickly succumbing.
Or for example I had to point out to my dad that his neighbor open carries. Like my dad is intellectually aware of the 2nd amendment but it didn't fit in his brain that people could actually exercise a freedom so his eyes were literally blind to it (obviously I drove him to the gun shop that evening)
Communist values (or lack of values) shaped the political and social systems in which people were born and raised.
First we shape systems, then systems shape us.
Moral relativism is like digging a latrine. Almost nobody wants to do it for somebody else, it's a chore to do it for one's self, but pretty much everyone appreciates when it's already done for them.
Anyway, I feel like 'liberalism' is under broad attack by both conservatives and progressives, largely because it is very unsatisfying right now.
Speaking for myself, liberalism is a way to understand the world. Liberalism in this sense does not especially imply progressivism or conservatism, and can be practiced by anyone. To re-phrase the Robustness Principle: "be opinionated in what you do, be open minded in what you accept from others".
I feel like the stronger you push your opinions into your understanding of the world, the harder it gets to actually understand what is going on in the world. As Colbert said: "reality has a well-known liberal bias". This statement makes more sense if run in reverse: "An open-minded understanding of the world is more likely to be durably and broadly true than a strongly opinionated understanding".
Unfortunately, it has become VERY difficult to talk about what is going on in the world right now, largely because a lot of disparate groups are pushing their opinions into their understanding very very hard. There are many people who currently disagree with their own in-group, but are restricted in what they can say because of social loyalty constraints. If you can't be the first person to speak up, consider being the second.
The absolute strongest superpower that humans have is the the ability to tell another story. Don't get stuck in the first satisfying story you hear.
----
If you are satisfied with blame, try examining the situation closer. If you are satisfied that a whole political party is evil, try examining the situation closer.
Here are some questions:
What is the person or organization doing
When a person or organization says something, is it Sometimes, it is a trap to fight the obvious fight. Perhaps the other side is fine with losing the obvious fight for some reason.People don't believe crazy things because of correct facts, they believe them because of satisfying stories.
---
May I humbly ask 2 things of you:
1. Please don't assume I'm saying or implying something beyond what I've said here. You may feel free to go beyond what I've said, just don't put it on me.
2. Please don't join a death cult. You can look up the characteristics of a high control group; a death cult is all that plus their definition of morality narrows over time, excluding more and more people. Death cults ramp up anger over time. It's very easy to fall into one right now, and they are not exclusive to either side of the political spectrum. It's better to endure a little moral dissatisfaction than to join a high control group.
This is one reason the USSR was always lagging behind western economies despite being scientifically advanced. They had to wait for the west to develop products and do price discovery, because GOSPLAN didn't have any way to price things properly themselves.
2. "Unborn"
Yeah, no.
I'm not saying USSR was a panacea or that Stalin did nothing wrong (Tankies are the fucking worst. I hung out on /r/communism for a while, and, as the kids used to say "gross").
I take writing like the OP with a HUGE grain of salt.
There are plenty of crimes and problems with what happened in the Soviet Union. Some of these were intentional by the leadership both before, during, and after Stalin. Some of these were self-owns (War Communism much?) some of these were forced errors (when doing battle one makes tough choices, and this includes in ideological/economic/actual war). Some of these were straight up evil policies (gulags, great purges, Katyn, etc...)
If someone can do real analysis I'm down, but once you start quoting Black Book of Communism, I know you're coming with an agenda and it's hard for me to take you in good faith. Especially if you're counting "The Unborn" - go on, just call the US a "Nazi Nation with the unborn holocaust" (I grew up in that shit, so saw the propaganda first hand).
Are you contending existence of mass murders under almost any communist regime? What agenda are you talking about? You are making it sound communism is a noble idea, which someone is trying to discredit undeservingly.
>>2. "Unborn" It was about an estimation of how much more people would Soviet Union have in time if it hadn't murdered so many of its citizens. Imagine children of children of missing 20 million people.
This is an interesting insight on human nature.
And I don't mean philosophically materialistic, like "there is no soul". That too, but I mainly mean that in the shortage of everything (and there usually was a shortage of everything) people would become fixated on owning relatively banal objects.
Girls would prostitute themselves for a nice pair of Western jeans, people would snitch and steal, break the law, run illegal smuggling rings while bribing the police, take bribes themselves etc., over things such as stockings, tires or calculators.
I was not able to persuade one young American that not paying a fat bribe to a doctor could have fatal consequences back then. "But in socialism, there must be a common free healthcare for everybody!" - Yeah, lad, on paper. Paper tolerates everything. The one thing that was never in shortage were slogans, propaganda, red flags and red stars.
An Estonian actress pilfers a banana from a high-level Party function, risking grave consequences, just so her daughter could taste one at least once in her life. Alas, the daughter is too young to appreciate this and declares that it tastes like "poopoo".