lucifer_sam

Like it or not, the Occupy Wall Street movement has done one thing decisively well: exhuming the concept of class struggle from philosophical tedium into modern awareness. And while many of the movement's aims don't fall explicitly within the regime of communism per se, there remains a prevailing sentiment of disparity between capital-owning and capital-producing (bourgeois & proletariat) classes. Without drastically restructuring American economic policy, we cannot meet (most of) these goals, which begs the question...

Would you live in a communist state?

Bear in mind, communism is defined as the abolition of private property, or the abolition of capital-producing property. If you are unsure of the implications of this statement, I suggest reading Marx's The Communist Manifesto, not a Wikipedia article. NOTE: The modern interpretation of communism is very, very different than what Karl Marx envisioned...where even laissez-faire systems implemented in the PRC can come to call themselves "communists."

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first.am

Unknown Soldier

Karl Marx originally envisaged a rich industrialized country for his doctrine and not a peasant based society like imperialist Russia. He probably had Great Britain or Germany in mind when he wrote his Communist Manifesto in the 19th century. If he were around today he`d probably be looking at the USA as the perfect model for a communist society.....its an interesting concept.

The Monkey

When East Germany was turned communist in the 1940s it was far more industrialized than the UK or Germany was in the 1840s. I guess though you could argue that in the East German case the communism was forced upon the country by an external power rather than rising up within itself.

Anyway, my feelings towards communism is that any single concentration of power, such as that of the communist parties in all communist revolutions to date, will almost inevitably lead to corruption. The only exception to this rule is probably the Paris Commune of 1871, but since it lasted for just a short time, it's hard to analyse its potential for success. But that specific case was closer to the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin than the communism of Karl Marx, so maybe it's not relevant to compare to the other revolutions.

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Now another stranger seems to want you to ignore his dreams as though they were the burden of some other

My Last.fm

hip hop bunny hop

Guh. This is a prime example of why Communism disgusts me so thoroughly.

Whether you're talking Leninists or Anarchists - they are all obsessed with ideological purity. The level of dogma present is just jaw dropping....



Even if we ignore this tendency on the micro-level, it's frequency on the national level is jaw dropping - trotsky & stalin, tito & stalin, sino-soviet split, sino-albanian split, the gang of four, etc....

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Have mercy on the poor.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

...That's one of the most completely random out of context youtube clips I've ever seen in my life.

lucifer_sam

But the USA is no longer in a period of industrialization...we've been a consumer service economy since the 1980s. Manufacturing jobs are virtually nonexistent, and though they are on the rebound, they still represent less than 10% of the American work force.

However, we still have a small number of people who make money using money (rather than wage-labour), which essentially dominates the gulf between capital-owners and capital-producers and is a primary focus of the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

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first.am

Unknown Soldier

I used industrialized in the past tense as in the country is already industrialized, sure you`re a consumer service economy like most of the western nations now, but the point is that despite the recent economic downturn which has hit the USA hard, the country still serves as a great example for the Manifesto, you have great disparities between rich and poor and a society that is highly educated and politically and socially aware, just the attributes needed for a communist society to succeed. Whether an economist would agree with me is another matter though.

lucifer_sam

I don't think the economic downturn has hit the US any harder than Europe. We just don't have as large a safety net for the working class as western Europe does.

I should say, I didn't really want to discuss whether (or where) communism works, but whether communism works for you. As in, how many of you would be willing to forgo your material luxuries to ensure that everyone got a piece of the pie?

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first.am

Unknown Soldier

Well I spent some time in the Soviet Union when I was younger and studied there for a few months as part of my uni programme and despite being very interested with the country and the society, the word GRIM is what I would`ve described the lifestyle there as.

In answer to your question, well despite believing that man will never be equal, I`d still give up some of my luxuries to help my fellow human being, so the answer is yes. Over the last couple of years in the UK, we`ve had the logo of "The Big Society" where each individual is being prompted to take on a bigger role in society and thus taking the burden away from the government.

hip hop bunny hop

Q: Would you live in a communist state?
A: No ****ing way. No to Eurocommunism, no to anarcho-communism, no to any variation including "Lenin"...

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Have mercy on the poor.