Author: Db0

Communism is not a religion

Db0161 Comments

One argument that I tend not to hear very often but occasionally stumble onto, is the accusation that Communism or Marxism is akin to a religion, that is, something based on faith.

The reason this is used strikes me more like a way to hit a soft spot on an Atheist or skeptic, rather than an attempt at true argumentation. Indeed, such a claim does not tackle any of the core tenets of Communism such as the labour theory of value, the explanation of capitalist shortcomings etc, but rather takes a generic shallow look at the history of attempted Communism and draws conclusions from that.

One argument that I tend not to hear very often but occasionally stumble onto, is the accusation that Communism or Marxism is akin to a religion, that is, something based on faith.

The reason this is used strikes me more like a way to hit a soft spot on an Atheist or skeptic, rather than an attempt at true argumentation. Indeed, such a claim does not tackle any of the core tenets of Communism such as the labour theory of value, the explanation of capitalist shortcomings etc, but rather takes a generic shallow look at the history of attempted Communism and draws conclusions from that.

So let’s see what the arguments might be.

It is not based on science

Communism as any other socioeconomic system is not based on the scientific method. The scientific method requires an observation to happen before it can create a theory but you cannot observe a system that does not exist yet.

Capitalism is not based on the scientific method either. It did not come about because some scientists sat down and observed the current feudal system and found out that capitalism is a more optimal choice. No. It first came about and then the pseudo-science of economics set out to find out the rules that control it.

If anything else, Marxism is a absolutely materialistic philosophy and considers that only science can discover the truth about the world. In this regard, it is diametrically opposed to any other religion.

It is based on faith

As a completely faithless person, such an accusation seems absurd to me. For something to be based on faith, it needs to be believed regardless of conflicting evidence. But no such evidence exist against Communism.

This is doubtly untrue since things based on faith tend to be hammered onto the minds of children in order to stick. The enemy of faith is reason. Certainly it is possible that someone is brainwashed as a child to be a Communist, but such a person would be a very poor example of one as for Communism to work, it requires conscious, skeptical, critical and active people who can take action into their own hands and be willing to cooperate with others democratically. A passive, brainwashed follower might be fitting for a Stalinist regime but can never be considered a Communist unless he starts accepting the theory based on reason instead of faith.

Personally, I was always very critical of Communism for the same reason everyone else in the world is. Misunderstanding of what it really is. I only started accepting it once I dug a bit deeper and started criticizing my own preconceptions.

It is evangelising

This is the accusation that, like any religion, Communism requires people to spread the knowledge of it to others before they can accept it.

Like any idea before it, there is no way to spread it except through discussion with people who know about it. The idea of Capitalism, markets and merchants did not spread itself. Humanity did not begin with a part of it being merchants or capitalists. These classes of people were created when someone thought of the concept and then started spreading it to others, thought words and actions.

If this is a definition of a religion, then any idea is a religion.

It has a holy book, prophets and apostles.

This is absolutely untrue by the common definition of those terms. The Communist Manifesto is simply the expression of the part of an idea and as such it is subject to improvement as any other idea. It is not a dogma. The people who accepted Communism and spreaded the word can no more be called Prophets than Adam Smith who spread the idea of Capitalism. Nor can leaders who accept one idea over another make that idea a religion.

Finally

It is very easy to stretch the meaning of words in order to make a term less positive to the people who might embrace it. But this is a dishonest tactic. If one wishes to tackle Communism, the best way to do so is through rational dialogue on the actual points it proposes. Like any philosophy and idea, there will certainly be people who are dogmatic about it, but that does not describe the philosophy as a whole.

Was the USSR Communist?

Db0130 Comments

Overwhelmingly, most people’s understanding of what Communism is, comes from an extremely propagandistic presentation of the Soviet Union, generally by US right-wing sources. This would give you the idea that communism is supposed to be very authoritarian, rigidly collectivistic and anti-democratic.

Overwhelmingly, most people’s understanding of what Communism is, comes from an extremely propagandistic presentation of the Soviet Union, generally by US right-wing sources. This would give you the idea that communism is supposed to be very authoritarian, rigidly collectivistic and anti-democratic.

This misconception is unfortunately so wide-spread that it’s not infrequent to be called a mass murderer wannabe for simply bringing it up and even though it is trivial to find out what Communism really is and how it works, this exasperatingly wrong view of it nevertheless persists in even otherwise brilliant minds.

So let me say this first: Whatever view you may have of the USSR (and there are quite a few supporters of Stalinism out there), it was not Communism.

Now, before you hasten to leave me a comment about Scotsmen and the like, it is important to know that the original thoughts of Marx and Engels were indeed the absolute opposite of Stalinism, Maoism etc. The fact that one can create a system and label it “Communism” does not make it so, anymore than North Korea is a “Democracy” or a “Republic”. Perhaps one can label it “Socialism” but this term is by itself ambiguous and does not necessarily equate to Marxism.

That is not to say that Russia did not really attempt Communism. It did, and it managed to achieve socialism for a very short while immediately after the revolution. But this newly-fledged socialism was defeated in the most humilating way. Not only did the counter-revolution won over the communists but it kept the name and the symbols to the overjoy of the capitalist of the rest of the world. Russian communism ceased to exist as soon as Stalin came to power.

But if USSR was not Communism what was it? Well, by the way it actually worked, the most fitting description for it is State Capitalism. Simply, the state took on the role of the ultimate Capitalist and set about exploiting the workers. Some of the practices it had, like the suppression of individuality, the strict hierarchical spread of power and the like, are identical to the ones within a common Capitalist corporation anyway. Others, like it’s inability to work efficiently or its large bureaucracy are problems that any sufficiently large corporation has as well. There hasn’t been a corporation of the sheer size of the Soviet Union of course so a direct comparison is impossible, but looking at the dinosauric movements of some of the biggest ones certainly points to that direction.

Another common opinion on this Communism = USSR misunderstanding is the claim that Communism has proven to be a failure. This attempts to show that the path Russia took in the early 20th century is the only possible result any attempt for Communism can achieve and thus it is not worth struggling towards it. But this is not simply wrong, it is intellectually dishonest. This assumes that the very unique situation Russia had to struggle is the common situation any communist revolution will have to face which is simply absurd.

Not only was the situation unique but their attempt was doomed from the start. The reason for this is that Communism requires Capitalism to exist before it can take over. It needs the hugely increased level of production achieved with it and the exploitation of the workers is what creates the revolutionary force. Russia attempted to jump directly from Feudalism (with a small growing capitalist class) to Communism while skipping the phase in between and ended up dislocating itself ((This is not the only reason by far, but it is outside the scope of this article to go into much depth with this. If you’re interested more on the subject, read this very important book)). This is also the case with China as well. An agrarian society simply cannot support Communism, especially not when opposed from the rest of the world.

To extrapolate from these example to anything that may happen during our age is simply disingenuous. Not only do we have the production required to not suffer the same fate but we have many tools in our disposal that the Revolutionaries of last century couldn’t even dream of. The instant, international information exchange we can achieve now can easily be the most important.

It is simply practically impossible at this point for any attempt at communism to take even a similar path to the one of USSR and if it is achieved, it will look nothing like it.

Further Reading

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Not in our Name

Db01 Comment

Since the third of November, a shattering shout is shaking the bases of our Democracy. From the third of November, the whole prisoner population or the Country is starting a hunger strike claiming the intuitive: Their lost dignity. Against them is poised the absolute silence of the national media and the absolute indifference of the political hegemony. To these practices, those of us signing this letter, DO NOT AGREE.

The following text was taken from the recent blog action call initiated here which attempts to raise awareness about the country-wide hunger strikes going on in Greek prisons. The translation is my own in order to help a non-greek speaking audience to understand what is going on. If you wish to take part in this protest, you can publish this text on your own blog on the 20th of November and link to the original article or sign the petition.

“The situation in the greek prisons is inconsolable. The radical change of the greek penal system is a main subject”
– Karolos Papoulias 6/11/08

“We’re human – prisoners. Humans, I say”
–Vaggelis Pallis, Prisoner, 9/11/08

Since the third of November, a shattering shout is shaking the bases of our Democracy. From the third of November, the whole prisoner population or the Country is starting a hunger strike claiming the intuitive: Their lost dignity. Against them is poised the absolute silence of the national media and the absolute indifference of the political hegemony. To these practices, those of us signing this letter, DO NOT AGREE.

The situation in the Greek prisons is undescribable and can be only be understood through the rigid language of mathematics. In the country’s so-called “reformation” institutions, 417 deaths have been recorded in the last decade, while their frequency has taken off to such a degree, that today 4 people are expiring in the hands of the state per month. The occupancy touches 168% (10.113 prisoners for 6.019 positions) with each prisoner’s area ratio reaching 1 square meter. With the daily govermental expenditure per prisoner being 3,60 Euro, the rations provided are despicable, the infrastructure reminds of medieval ages and the medical coverage is very lacking. Simultaneously, the Greek government is sending to jail one citizen for every thousand, with the withheld people (those temporary imprisoned) reaching 30% of the total number of prisoners.

If the quality of a Democracy is judged by its prisons, then our Democracy is asthmatic. If the punishment of illegal behaviour with imprisonment by the state is happening in the name of the society, then for this situation in the prisons, we are all responsible, and the lion’s share of the blame on those of the state machine. In this reality, all of those signing this text respond NOT IN OUR NAME.

The information revealed by official representatives about the Greek prisons sketch an image of a hellhole. The essay of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (2007) discovers torture, inhumane treatment and life-threats against prisoners, series of violations regarding the conditions of detention, a lack of investigation and punishment of the guilty parties, silencing of incidents of violence with the collusion of doctors and guards, unacceptable medical conditions etc.

The European Court of Human Rights has published a series of damning decisions for Greece in regards to the maltreatment and/or violations of other prisoner rights from the prison authorities. The National Commission on Human Rights has taken a strong-willed decision about the abuse in prisons, proposing immediate actions for their resolution. The Ombudsman (Sinigoros tou Politi) is complaining about the total lack of cooperation from the responsible state officials, as a result of which he has been virtually banned from entering the country’s prisons for the last two years. The bar associations of the whole country, the non-government organisations including Amnesty International and many political/social institutions denounce the unacceptable situation and request a wider cooperation to resolve this problem.

If human are the rights which every human being should enjoy, every deprivation of those becomes an open wound for our society. In this situation, everyone signing this text reply BREAK FINALLY THE PRISON ABATON.

With this hunger strike the prisoners are fleeing to their last fort of resistance they have left, their own body. This was preceeded by a final request from them towards the leaders to monitor this problem as the situation could go no more. In order to resolve this hunger strike, they request to meet demands which restore their lost dignity and recover their basic human rights, demands specific, decent and immediately feasible.

Against the prisoner movement the political leadership is spending its actions with indifference, promises and repression of their demonstrations.  Any indifference and heatlessness of the political leadership at this stage as well would mean dead hunger strikers. In this frontal collision that the country prisoners have selected for claiming their self-evident humanity we can not wait pathetically while crossing our arms and waiting for the news of hunger strike deaths but we will stand in solidarity.

If the defense of democracy and human rights require the watchfulness of all of us, now is the time to take a stand against this problem without indifference and evasions.

Faced with the tense situation in prisons throughout the country, those who sign this text are making the political leadership fully responsible for what will happen and demand the immediate, both institutional and practical GUARANTEE OF BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE PRISONERS OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY

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Being Happy

Db06 Comments
ekuverikamakee, gadha fadha baareh
Image by notsogood via Flickr

Ebon Muse from Daylight Atheism is pondering on what makes people happy and comes to a conclusion that is quite close to my own thinking:

Instead, I believe that goodness in life consists in gaining experience, having love and friendship, the acquisition of knowledge, the pleasure of creating things through artistry or craft, the practice of virtue toward others, and participation in meaningful and satisfying work.

Ebon Muse – Daylight Atheism

The only thing I would disagree is that acquiring knowledge or being creative etc is a step for happiness. These are all things that different people might want and not an definite guide.

Instead I find that the way to achieve it is simply to have the capability to do whatever you wish, when you wish it. To achieve that one needs to only have the basics covered and those are the things that you need to fill first before one can start doing anything further.

Food, friends and shelter and the absence of pain.

One cannot pursue knowledge if one is starving and one will not care

about satisfying work if he is living in solitude. These things are the prerequisites of any further action one can take. However these things are our only needs. One needs simply to have these four to be content with life. Further achievements can then be pursued if they do not contrast the basic four and add more spice to life but even when they cannot, they are not necessary.

Ebon Muse also seems to be at a loss to give a name to this philosophy of life. But a name for such a philosophy already exist and has done for more than 2000 years. Epicurism.

This is the philosophy that explains how striving for material wealth, fame, power etc is a recipe for disappointment. What is difficult to achieve never gets one happy for in the course of achieving it, the four pillars are eroded in one way of another. Thus one becomes powerful and friendless, or famous and sick from the stress.

Not only that, but because these four are so easy to achieve (compared to any other goal), it is the easiest thing for people to become happy in their life. Once one reaches this level, more flavour in one’s life can easily be added through altruistic objectives. For example, one’s meaningfull work can put towards helping more people reach this level as well, thus slowly improving the whole society.

I find it a bit sad that so many people in the world must rediscover Epicurism through “reinventing the wheel” through the ages. He was not simply of the first Atheists ((Well, Deist really but pretty close)) but also taught skepticism, materialism, tolerance through the only life philosophy that works. And this is something that many Humanists should study.

Spreading the Seed: Talking to God

Db0

This is simply a brilliant piece of work.

This is simply a brilliant piece of work.

So then we got down to business…

‘Are you human?’

‘No’

‘Were you, ever?’

‘No, but similar, Yes’

‘Ah, so you are a product of evolution?’

‘Most certainly – mainly my own’

‘and you evolved from a species like ours, dna based organisms or something equally viable?’

‘Correct’

‘so what, exactly, makes you god?’

‘I did’

Go read the full thing. Oddly inspiring.

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Political "Refutability"

Db0

In the scientific method there one of the most important concepts is refutability. It is so imperative to have a falsifiability in your theories that if you do not include one, one might as well consider them as having no credence.

A very simple way to define refutability is to ask oneself “What would it take to prove my theory/idea/phislosophy wrong”. Once you ask this, and you are being honest with yourself, you should have a few conditions which, if they are met, will show you that you might be wrong and, at the least, need to rethink your theories.

Diagram showing a refutation of a false dispro...
Image via Wikipedia

In the scientific method there one of the most important concepts is refutability. It is so imperative to have a falsifiability in your theories that if you do not include one, one might as well consider them as having no credence.

A very simple way to define refutability is to ask oneself “What would it take to prove my theory/idea/phislosophy wrong”. Once you ask this, and you are being honest with yourself, you should have a few conditions which, if they are met, will show you that you might be wrong and, at the least, need to rethink your theories.

The lack of refutability is the easiest way one can tell science from crackpot theories and woo-woo. How do you prove that Homeotherapy does not work? You can’t. How do you prove that ghosts do not exist? You can’t. How do you prove that the theory of evolution is wrong? Rabbits in the Precambrian.

This lack of refutability is also the main reason why religious belief cannot be awarded any factual standing.Is there any way to prove that Jesus did not exist or was not a deity that has not been done already? And yet the religion persists.

So basically, in very simple terms, it is all about asking oneself “What would it take to convince me I’m wrong” and it is the most powerful in any skeptic’s arsenal. However science and philosophy are not the only places one can apply this very powerful too. One should seek to apply this question to any and all beliefs they hold. And one of them that many people do not is Politics.

It has become the rule rather than the exception that people associate themselves with one party and stick with it no matter what. I have very rarely seen people seriously considering the question “What would they have to do to lose my vote?“. People simply choose one party and make excuses on why they need to keep supporting them. Simply because this question has never been set, one can keep supporting a party long after most of the core values he or she holds have been overrrun.

I can’t think of any more obvious example than the US Democratic party. The party that what passes as “left” in the US, endorses. The reason most often than not is “Because they’re not as bad as the Republicans”. How many of these liberals have asked themselves this simple question? “What do they democrats have to do to lose my vote?”. Support the Iraq war? Done. Support Wall Street Bailout? Done. Increase military spending? Done. Lie? Done. Oppose Atheists? Done.

So what values exactly is the Democratic party sharing with you again? If you still have any, how many of those do they need to step on before you stop supporting them? If the only threshold you place is “They need to become worse than the republicans”, doesn’t that condemn you and your society to erosion? All the Republicans then need to do in order to achieve the agenda is move more and more to the right and the Democrats will follow (so as not to be labeled as “extreme left”) while their supporters create excuses for them. Eventually you end up with Democrats simply being the republicans of the past, as is what has happened now. You no longer have left and right, simply extreme right and lunatic right.

And all the people who voted them into power don’t have anything in common with them anymore.

Do yourself this favour. Set your political refutability and stick to it. Do not simply move the goalpost whenever they bypass it or else you’re simply deluding yourself into the illusion of Democracy.

So tell me, what would it take to lose your vote?

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What do corporations resemble?

Db08 Comments

I am not the most experienced person but I have a bit of it in working in small & big national or multinational companies. In any company I’ve worked for, I’ve noticed a very distinct authoritarian way of doing things but I never got around to thinking exactly what is is. Fortunately, my recent post regarding proprietary software companies led me to an insight on this.

A corporation works in a very distinct way…

WASHINGTON - SEPTEMBER 12: (L-R) John Krenick...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I am not the most experienced person but I have a bit of it in working in small & big national or multinational companies. In any company I’ve worked for, I’ve noticed a very distinct authoritarian way of doing things but I never got around to thinking exactly what is is. Fortunately, my recent post regarding proprietary software companies led me to an insight on this.

A corporation works in a very distinct way.

  • Non-Management workers in it, have no political rights, as in, they have no say in the direction the company takes and in the choice of the people who rule them. Indeed, the people who rule them, are selected by each other with small or no oversight.
  • The workers of a company are always assumed to be working for the best of the company. Those who are not or who do not fully align themselves with the wishes of management, are ejected.
  • The workers of a company do not receive the full result of their work. There must always be some profit which is the difference from what the company makes and what it has to pay on workers, maintenance and raw materials. Thus, one can consider that the profit, divided equally among the workers, is the “tax” they have to pay in order for the whole company to prosper.
  • Workers can be discarded or moved around at any point. Without them having any say in it.
  • Barring external factors (as in, a larger state), workers have no rights. One cannot demand a bigger pay or less hours, or a pension. They will only receive what bonuses the company deems right in regards to what is best for the company. In short, they will only grudgingly give a bonus if they are cornered.
  • The Management has all the power in their hands in hierarchical order. The owner answers to no-one. The owner alone has the last word on “what is best” for the company.

There is one political system that very closely resembles this type of setup. “Socialist” Dictatorships, of which the purest form is Stalinism (But Fascism, Nazism, Maoism etc are all very similar)

In Stalinism, which unfortunately is what most people think of when they think of “Socialism”, the state is simply the ultimate Capitalist. All the conditions I described above apply to Stalinism but in the place of Company, we simply put “Country” or “The Party”.

We can easily agree that such political systems are bankrypt. I know very few people who would wish to live in a Socialist Dictatorship and there are quite a few people, especially US Americans who love to call their opponents “Socialists”, who find the perceived antonym to be the best possibility: Capitalist Democracy.

But my question is this: Do you really have a Democracy when your society’s basic group for production is organised like a Dictatorship? Doesn’t this fact undermine your whole concept of democracy?

Indeed, this is true. Democracy has become a farce of hypocricy under this setup. Because people are living a significant part of their daily lives within a mini-dictatorship, they are conditioned to think in a similar vein. The workers, if they care to at all, only exercise a political action twice per decade and maintain an illusion of democracy. The management live in a constant state of power and thus find it only natural to extend this state to the rest of their lives.

It should come thus as no surprise that Corporations were best buddies with Fascist regimes ((Not with Socialist Dictatorships though, as those actually took their power away and gave it to the state officials instead, making them equal to the workers)) who’s rampart cronyism gives corporations eventually absolute power over the whole country.

Like seeks like.

It is the biggest irony that for all the U.S. American’s foaming at the mouth against “the evils of socialism”, they are more than happy to work their whole lives in exactly the same state they would be, were their fears to materialize.

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