The Bourgeois Nations

November 29, 2008 Db010 Comments

How come there are some nations where it seems that there is no class war anymore?

An argument I hear often in defense of Capitalism is how there is no more class struggle anymore and thus Communism has proven obsolete. How Capitalism has been shown to work and has only minor malfunctions.

This line of argumentation seems to strike immediately true to anyone living in a developed, or first-world nation. Aren’t we really, with some exceptions, living better than ever? Many of us work just 8 hours and then can go home and play with our playstation for the whole afternoon. We get at least 20 days of vacation per year and have enough money to travel the world. Even our poor can survive somewhat decently due to social security. Isn’t this really the proof that Capitalism does work?

Well, no.

What such a view of the world misses, is the amazing privilege the developed nations have. We are the minority who gets to enjoy the wealth of the whole world while living the easy & good life. The vast majority of the world lives in abject poverty and constant struggle. It is the citizens of 3rd world countries who are forced to do all the labour, with maybe a subsistence wage, so that we can get cheap goods.

In effect, we have turned the majority of our 1st world population into the bourgeoisie. Certainly we’re not all the same. We have also petty bourgeoisie and urban haute bourgeoisie and a minority of actual proletariat. The rest of them we have outsourced.
We are a nation of haves. We find it easy to have more. Our minimum wages can feed indian families for months. We are born into middle class and it’s almost impossible to fall below it.

And like the original bourgeois, we wield all the power. We have sent our corporations far and wide to mine the labour power of other nations so that we may reap the results. If those countries decide to attempt socialism and kick our exploiting corporations out, either we send in our armies, or we fund dictators to take them down and give us back our stuff.

Oh, and we consider ourselves magnanimous as well. For if we never went there, those people would be living even worse! At least our corporations pay them 9 cents an hour instead of 4. Nevermind that those nations are mostly poor because our ancestors robbed them blind during the age of imperialism. Now it’s different. We’re doing them a favour.

And this is who we are. There is no class division in our society because we are a society of bourgeois. We have turned the struggle of people into a struggle of nations, with our own nations firmly at the top. And thus, Capitalism seems just fine and dandy and anyone who says otherwise is simply someone living in the past.

But like the aristocracy of old, we cannot see our own privilege. We are born and raised on the assumption that we deserve everything we have. Haven’t I laboured hard to get as much money as others make in a year? Don’t I deserve this pair of Nike shoes a 11-year old girl made in exchange for a loaf of bread? Don’t I work my necessary 8 hours a day while others work 16? Of course I did. We deserve everything we make don’t we?

Well, no.

Does the slave owner deserve to live in wealth, even if he occasionally buys gifts to his property? (hint: We call it humanitarian aid)
Does the artistocrat deserve to live in wealth while living from the work of his feud?

If you answered these questions in the negative, perhaps you can see why Capitalism does not actually work as well as you might have thought. In the same way that Aristocracy does not work as well as the aristocrat throught and slavery as well as the slave-owner thought.

But even if you do not see the inherent unfairness in this system, do not worry, like all exploiters our time will come unless we recognise and change what we’ve become. Sooner or later, the proletariat we have outsourced will massively revolt and denounce our rule. It will claim our factories and farms within their own land and then we’ll figure out that we can’t eat “services”.

And when this happens, I assure you, the “humanitarian” and “liberal” majority who suddenly discovers the other side of the coin of the revolution will demand army intervention to get back our property. And then the true face of the bourgeois will reveal itself in it’s most ugly form.

So next time, before you declare Communism obsolete, look around and attempt to see who’s the exploiter. If you can’t tell, it’s you.

Are the commies out to get you?

November 28, 2008 Db039 Comments

How much does the communist concept leads people to act violent. Is it reasonable to think that they’re out to violently oppress?

Is Communism something violent? Does it inherently require that people start killing those who do not agree with it in order to achieve it? Hearing the propaganda thrown around, one could very well be led to believe that Communists are bloodthirsty demons who will break down your door and take your stuff. That they will force you to sing hymns, and clap for the glorious leader on pain of death etc.

Some of this is patently ridiculous but there is the sliver of truth in that every attempt at communism has gone through a violent struggle which then ended up with a dictatorial state rule. One looking no more than skin-deep at this might indeed get the idea that communists somehow spring out of the ether, kill the resisting peaceful citizens and establish their brutal rule

But when having a deeper look, one easily can find the errors in this image.

The Revolution

If one thing is true about Communism, it’s that it has proven impossible to be achieved without a revolution. The Capitalist system has proven to be very resilient to reformation from inside and instead of it changing, it ends up changing the reformers. Thus there is no alternative that to destroy the flawed system and rebuild from scratch.

But this revolution is not about violence. The people who demands things change do not want to kill their fellow man, they simply wish to stop being exploited. The way they go about it is by ignoring the Capitalist rules and simply starting to live under their own. Thus they ignore the previous agreement about private property. The majority decides that the means of production should belong to the majority who has paid their cost many times over already and they peacefully take them over.

It is at this point that violence occurs. Not from the workers, but from the state machine who steps in to protect the interests of the minority. When the workers are assaulted first by the police and later by the army, it would be foolish to remain peaceful. For peace would only mean the continuation of exploitation. But the workers are not the aggressors. Communism is not the cause of violence.

This assault from the minority towards the majority has always been the case in all revolutions. Accusing the communists of violence is as morally empty as accusing the slaves Rome of being violent when they revolted, or accusing the bourgeois of being violent when they overthrew the monarchies.

Revolutionary violence always comes from the side of the exploiter who has the most to lose and who controls the power of the state.

Imperialism

This is the fear that a communist nation would engage in the classic imperialistic moves. That it will attempt to invade other countries and forcibly turn them “Communist”. This of course is absurd. Communism has no state to wage out the war and the workers of a commune have no incentive to leave their homes and assault other countries.

Certainly, the USSR was guilty of playing the imperialist game (at least as much as the US did when it was making dictators while “spreading democracy”) but as this was a State Capitalism, it should come as no surprise. Indeed they were acting perfectly in the capitalist nature.

But a general fear of communist imperialism can simply be attributed to projection on the Capitalist’s part. If anything, the only form of “imperialism” that can be waged is peacefully cultural, where the workers or the world take the example from the ones who have succeeded and work on their own revolution. But of course, this is why Capitalist nations are so propagandistic against Communism in the first place.

Day to day

So will a communist society breed violence day to day? After all, violence is the norm in a capitalist state which depends on competition and greed. Well, that’s exactly the point. Communism does not depend on those. Why would violent crime happen when people can simply get what they need for free? How could violent suppression happen without a state?

Any system based on cooperation instead of competition can only be peaceful and this is why fears of communist violence are not only unfounded but a telltale sign of propaganda.

This Human Nature

November 27, 2008 Db040 Comments

Is Communism or Anarchism impossible to achieve due to the inherent flaws of “Human Nature”. Not at all. On the contrary, it’s human nature that makes it possible and yearns for it.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to look into an argument that is starting to annoy the tits out of me.

One of the most frequent arguments against Communism that I seem to face almost every day now, is the one that says that human nature is such that a system based on cooperation and altruism could never be achieved.

The claim is that this human nature is necessarily greedy, competitive, aggressive and whatnot. With such a nature then it’s only understandable that we’d have wars, poverty and capitalism as these are the only things that our nature is compatible with. It’s then no wonder that Communism has failed every time it was attempted. It went against human nature! Nevermind other factors, it was doomed to failure from the start.

These interpretations basically take the view that human nature is generally “flawed” and is such that only under Capitalism can it be somehow tamed. It is with such reasoning that white becomes black and vices become virtues in order to defend the current system. Against the human nature argument one cannot win for nobody can escape his nature.

Or can they?

The point of calling something a human nature is that a human cannot escape or avoid it. I cannot avoid eating for it is my nature to need energy. Perhaps at some indefinite point in the future we might arrange that we won’t need food anymore but we’ll certainly still need energy, thus our nature remains. The same goes with anything else that we cannot escape.

And this is where evolutionary psychology comes in and tell us that we have genetical predispositions to various behaviours. Fight or Flight, children’s language learning capability etc. One of these predispositions is then posited to be Competition and thus that the human society must be organised in a way that Competition is put to good use. Ergo Capitalism.

Putting aside the quite large controversy around Evolutionary Phychology itself, I have the following arguments:

Reason

If one thing is said to certainly be part of our nature, then that is our ability to reason and use logical arguments. Indeed we are the only known animal that uses it so one can easily even call it our defining nature. It is the only reason why humans are capable of introspection and thus of managing their own predispositions.

It is with reason that not only can we control our psychological predispositions, but even our biological ones. It is because of it that I can suppress my urge to eat because I am overweight. It is because of reason that men can suppress urges to rape women when they otherwise could and are driven to it by their biology. And it is because of it, that I can suppress whatever urge I have to compete or simply turn it into a noble or friendly competition.

Thus, the strongest and undeniable part of human nature, indeed the one that can be said to be defining humans, is the one that allows us to control all other parts of our nature, whatever they may be. This means that even if, theoretically, competition, greed or whatever else is in our nature but it is against our benefits, we have the innate capability to suppress it.

Cooperation VS Competition

Humans are a social animal, that much is certain. As such we have a definite predisposition towards cooperation with other humans. But is it stronger than any predisposition we may have towards competition? I believe that is the case.

Someone reading about the origins of the family and the state can easily see how before civilization, the humans were barely competitive with each other at all. Within a gentile community, the predominant behaviour was of mutual cooperation and the further back one goes into the stages of barbarism and then savagery, the more powerful this cooperation becomes. This is simply because the less tools and ability humans had to survive independently, the more they had to cooperate with each other to survive.

The only cause of competition that could have happened, was when meeting another band of humans and there was a lack of resources to go around. Then, as a results of humans being separated into haves and have-nots, competition emerged. Other than that, there was no other competition to be had. Their societies were ones of group marriages and thus there was not even male competition for women.

This cooperative method of living persisted for millions of years with the strongest forms of cooperation lasting longer (as the lesser forms of evolutionary progress lasted longer) until eventually, roughly 9000 years ago, humans enterred civilization. It is with civilization that the monogamy, private property and the state emerged. This was the reason why humans were separated, for the first time in history, into classes. And it is because of the friction between those classes that competition became the fact of life.

The larger the society grew, the bigger the class separation, the larger the gap with other humans in one’s society, The impression of individual independence grew even though it is patently false. Nevertheless, the human within a huge society finds it impossible to perceive it and ends up assuming that he actually has no codependence on other humans. Thus in this vast society, competition feels like the only choice, add to that the constant reinforcement of this idea by popular media and memes and it’s no wonder that this feels like “human nature”.

But what do you think is evolutionary stronger. Cooperation which lasted millions of years or competition which in the grand scheme of things is as long as a blink of an eye? Not only logic but simple empirical evidence points to the former. Cooperation survives even in the most hostile environment of Capitalism – the system which honestly expects people to act rationally and individualistic and ends up having to work with emotional cooperative humans.

And to top it all off, we still have reason, as explained above, which can further suppress competition in favor of cooperation when warranted.

If there is any truth to evolutionary psychology, it is as Marx noted, in that humans have the nature of cooperation and individualism. Our nature do not prevent Communism at all, it yearns for it, for it is both in all of our best interests and also closer to our psychology.

But won’t communism lead to stagnation?

November 26, 2008 Db0115 Comments

It is often claimed that because under communism “everyone will earn the same” there will be no incentive for people to work harder. Is this so?

Communism is frequently accused of having a system which promotes laziness and drudgery. They posit that this happens because as in the system everyone is equal and the incentive of people to compete with their fellow man is not there, nobody feels the need to innovate, be creative or productive. And since the state will reward everyone the same no matter what they do, as in a prisoner’s dillema, people will prefer to “defect” from work.

This problem did seem realistic to me when I knew little about it and before I actually gave more thought to it. How indeed do you make people work if they are not going to be rewarded for their trouble anymore than their lazy ass neighbour who sits and watches television all day?

The answer to this problem lies in understanding that reward does not drop down from the non-existent state but that simply the reward of each worker comes from the work they do. One of the core tenets of communism is that the total value of labour, which includes the surplus value which currently goes to the non-working capitalist, belongs to the worker who produces it.

Lets say that I work in a factory making cars with a thousand other people and we make a 1000 cars, each of us ends up owning one. Once I have a car, either I can keep working in the same factory (say because I like the work or because I do not care to learn anything else) or I can move to another job, say making computers.

But what about the people who don’t want to work in the car factory. Don’t they get a car? Of course they do. It’s very easy for a car factory to give one car to each of its workers and after that, the rest of the cars can be given for free for anyone who requests one. And why not? After all, while working at the car factory, I got to eat food for free from the bakers, got the raw material for free from the steel and plastic workers, got to enjoy culture for free from the artists etc ((This does not happen through state allocation but rather through classic supply & demand. I will attempt to tackle this in another post)).

As such, the incentive of people to be productive lies in the fact that they will get to own the result of their increased productivity. Not only that, but people have a large incentive to be more productive because that way they get to work less hours.

If you think that this is an unrealistic scenario and that this can never work you might be benefit from looking at the free software movement.
Why does a Free Software programmer help coding a program when he’s not getting paid for it? Very often it’s because he needs it to do something he can’t at the moment. But why do it for free instead of selling his labour to the highest bidder? It’s because he knows that he will get to reap the results of his labour. Not only that but once more programmers join, he will get to reap the results of their labour as well, while all of them get to work less hours individually.
Furthermore, the Free software programmer knows that there are other free software programmers out there who do the same thing as he, but in their own projects. He gets to reap the results of their labour and they do the same. Similar to my previous example of cars for food, raw materials and art.

But the free software movement is comprised from generally middle class people who can afford to do it as a hobby, generally middle class people or students. Most cannot concentrate their full potential on it because they must put a good part of it on their normal work or school. Imagine what they would do if they could work totally free without worrying about survival. Imagine what any other worker could do if he had the freedom these renegade programmers do.

‘But what about innovation?’ I hear you ask. What’s the point of someone inventing new gadgets, systems or whatnot? I already mentioned that people have an incentive to be more productive as in that way they will get to work less hours. Well, this is what machines do isn’t it? They make people more productive. The workers have thus an incentive to create new and better machinery in order to reduce the time they have to spend working.

Medicine? Art? As is obvious from even our current culture, people who are inclined to those paths generally provide their own incentive. An artist keeps creating despite the fact that in our capitalist culture he cannot make any money of it. If anything, under Communism instead of the pop-culture we have to endure because it’s the only thing that can bring a profit, artists can follow their own muse and create the new and interesting things they should. Instead of medicine and science being driven by profit, with all the known problems of that, it will be driven by need and creativity. A future Tesla will not have to die poor and starving because his exciting new science could not find sponsors or he did not understand economics, but rather will have the necessities he needs to focus on his work as much as he needs.

Of course, it is conceivable that social parasites will manage to find a way to survive within communism. Perhaps they will prefer to hide how little they work, or they will group together and avoid working, I don’t know. The thing is that it’s much more difficult to hide from the people you have to work with who know they will have to pick up the slack. Where in a capitalist corporation the parasite can simply suck up to the boss and get off lightly, in Communism, there is no boss to speak of and the other workers will quickly put them in their place when they discover them, or at worst, ostracise them.

But lets take the worst case scenario, that somehow these parasites manage to survive and hide within a communist system. What is the difference from our current system? Under capitalism we have parasites who not only don’t need hide but are actually the ones who wield all the power. They’re called Capitalists. The rich do not need to work, their money works for them. All they need to do is sit around all day and give orders to the ones who are not as rich as they. The life of the rich is one who does not contribute anything to society and gets to reap all the benefits. And the worst part is that the overwhelming percentage of them do not even need to work to reach that level. They simply are born into wealth.

Communism is not statist

November 25, 2008 Db038 Comments

Does Communism require everything to be under state control, with a Bureaucratic government deciding everything? Far from it

Whenever most people think of Communism, they assume a big fucking government which is responsible for the central planning and the running of the society as a whole as the benevolent rulers think best. This preconception once again generally comes from the way Socialist regimes of the 20th century have ended up running their shows and as I pointed out in the first part of this series, they do not represent communism.

Indeed a statist Communism is an oxymoron for, by definition, Communism is stateless. There is not central planning commitee, no benevolent leader-for-life, no bureaucracy.

In the original ideas of Karl Marx, Communism was always supposed to be the end result when the state had finally withered away. The only situation where state exists is under socialism which is the stepping stone to Communism. But the state of Socialism is not in any form the state which you are aware now or the one of Stalinist Russia either. Is is a completely new beast.

The state of Socialism is based on the working class and the point of it, as opposed to the current example of state, is to protect the rights of the majority against the assault of the minority.

It is not based on location, it is based on profession.

The elected repressentatives do not simply come from a general location and thus put forward the requests of the workers, farmers, capitalists etc as the current system is. Instead they are the repressentatives of the workers. One for the car workers, one for the computer techs, one for the scientists and the like. As such these repressentatives not only put forward the requests of a group of people who have a very close interest in their actions but they are themselves part of those people.

The current crop of politicians who generally end up being either progeny from rich families or people from professions which make a lot of money (ie lawyers), thus they have no interest or knowledge of the working class situations. If they look elitist, foreign and untouchable, it’s because they are. They have nothing in common with the lower class so how do you expect them to know what is good for you or others like you?

Unlike them, socialist delegates should know exactly what the people they represent want and if they do not, then they cannot hide behind excuses. Everyone of their group will understand their language and failings and they will be recalled and replaced.

It is not supposed to be untouchable

The most important thing that changes in the socialist state is that elections do not happen only infrequently, making it difficult for people to decide if their chosen representatives did their job or not. The members of the state are supposed to be subject to, if not instant, at the least very quick recalls when they do not represent their people anymore.

The state machine is not for the protection of the state

Currently the police and the army are not there to protect the citizens. They are there in order to stop the majority of citizens from fighting with the capitalists. When the poor and homeless rise up and demand to occupy the empty buildings of the rich, it is against them that the army will turn.

In the socialist state there is no army and police force as a separate force from the workers. This is simply part of a societal “chore” that the members of the working class must do in order to protect themselves from outside forces or from people who would destroy them in order to take power. Thus these forces are constantly changing and their members mingle with the working class, insuring that they will be protected from propaganda and not turn against their own people.

The withering of the state

All of these characteristics of the state above, are not about Communism. They are about socialism. This state is not there to control the people but to protect them from those who would use force or intrigue to dismantile the new system. Once this danger has gone away, this state has no reason to exist anymore. There is no need for many people to do the “army chore” when there is no external country ready to invade and enforce capitalism on them, and thus slowly there will be less and less people doing it until the army slowly withers away. Similarly there will be no reason for police or any other state instrument.

Only once the state has withered away can a society be said to be in Communism.

Does communism stiffle individualism?

November 24, 2008 Db049 Comments

Indeed such a thought is terrifying enough that it’s enough for the propaganda machine to label anything it does not wish to happen as communism and start rolling out those images to scare the public to the path they want, as is what happened with the first attempt of US for universal healthcare when Hillary was pushing for it.

The most scary concept for anyone who considers communism seems to be the idea that it requires the total submission of the individual will for the good of the country, the state or the party. This misconception is happily perpetuated by the capitalist propaganda machine who gives you such great images as people having to wear the same clothes, sing the same songs and share the same toothbrush.Indeed such a thought is terrifying enough that it’s enough for the propaganda machine to label anything it does not wish to happen as communism and start rolling out those images to scare the public to the path they want, as is what happened with the first attempt of US for universal healthcare when Hillary was pushing for it.

But not only is Communism not against the individual but it is the only real celebration of individualism possible and It aims to achieve this through positive freedom. Under communism people are supposed to have the liberty and the capability to do whatever they wish, as long as this does not inhibit the liberty and capability of others to do the same.

Now I can just imagine the anarcho-capitalists (or “libertarians” as the US Americans like to call them) jumping up to cry foul. They consider that true freedom is when one has just the liberty to do something, as long as they do not infringe on the liberty of others. But this is simply the illusion of freedom. Are you free when you can wear any type of cloth you like but you can’t afford anything more than plain brown?

No. Negative freedom is simply the freedom for some to reduce the freedom of others through non-violent means.

Think of the freedom Communism provides as the freedom which exists between a couple. Both have a voluntary relationship within which they agree to limit their freedom in order so that one is not degraded for the benefit of the negative freedom of the other. Thus, while they both have the freedom to wear whatever clothes they want, have their own possessions and totally different taste, they do not have the freedom to avoid doing their share of the chores, for then, the burden falls on the other and the relationship is strained. But no one would ever consider such a limitation as an affront to liberty.

And this is the kind of limitation Communism demands. It requires that people voluntary do their part of societal “chores” simply so that all the burden does not fall to the few unlucky. It requires that people do not take actions which reduce the freedom of everyone else. It only demands that people be equal, not identical.

Other than that, it is of no consequence how each person chooses to live his own life. It is exactly because under communism you do not have to limit yourself in any way in order to survive that people are truly free. Aren’t you jealous of all those small startup companies whos employees get to work whenever and however they want? Imagine that not only every job was like that, but you also had the freedom to do exactly the kind of work you want, without worrying if it’s economically feasible.

Having said all that, it is worth pointing out that there is a system that does restrict your freedom. This system not only requires that you do a kind of work that you do not like in order to survive, but it frequently requires you to conform to the wishes of the company to a large degree. From the demand for a suit&tie, to personal styling to outright uniforms. This is not only demanded in work but can even start as early as school years. Not only that, but it breeds a uniform culture where every artist ends up sounding the same and the only new things to wear are what others tell you in the form of trends.

This system is, of course Capitalism. The system where true freedom is reserved only for the rich.

Communism is not a religion

November 23, 2008 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.

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?

November 23, 2008 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.

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.

Not in our Name

November 19, 2008 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

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

Being Happy

November 19, 2008April 29, 2024 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.

A Division by Zer0

A bug in the code of the universe

Category: Pondering Infinity