The Communist Left

[David S]

The question of this poll is do you identify with the communist left.  So far 7 people have said yes. To me communism equals poverty, and oppression, and I think history supports that conclusion. I don't understand why anyone would want that, and so far no one has given me a logical reason.

[Middle-aged Europe]

You're from Germany and I suppose you should know better than me but the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers Party. That's what my dictionary says.

Yes, I know that and I never disputed that.

Also the following link takes you to a speech by Rudolph Hess, one of Hitler's thugs.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/hess1.htm
He uses the word socialist or socialism about 12 times and always in the context of German goals or philosophy, and always in an approving manner.

No, he doesn´t. He talks about National Socialism. And that IS indeed a difference.

Let me put it that way: National Socialists were socialists in name only. That´s what I tried to say with my analogy about East Germany. The "German Democratic Republic" wasn´t a democratic republic but a totalitarian dictatorship.

Most people who voted for the "National Socialist German Workers Party" weren´t even "workers", but members of the upper middle class. The man who named Hitler Chancellor was President Paul von Hindenburg, a former general of World War I and staunch conservative. After they came to power the first party they banned didn´t belong to the democratic spectrum of the Weimar Republic, in fact it was the Communist Party. The Nazis thought that Marxism was inherently evil. They also banned all labor unions and they imprisoned all active socialists and communists in concentration camps (in fact, that was the original purpose of the concentration camps, they started with detaining Jews there much later).

I would say on economic policies the Nazis were neither very leftist nor very conservative, but quite centrist.

[migrendel]

I have decided to respond to exactly why I feel the way I do. To do so, I must be perfectly frank about some of the shortcomings I have observed about communism as practiced, and the role of the communist community today.

I will start with my opinion on Marx. The only way to put it is to say that he got some things right, and he made some bad calls. I do agree with much of the theory. The arguments for nationalizing industry and broadening the welfare state, if correctly practiced, are unanswerable. The main problem is that in a rigid attempt to adhere to the letter of the text while disregarding its spirit or deviating from it too far, many governments have failed to see the forest for the trees. I find it difficult to evaluate the success of Marxism when the governments of the world have been so lackadaisical in its implementation. I do, however, need to discuss some areas of Marxist theory that are particularly relevant. Section 7 "Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation", of Chapter 24, Volume 2 of Das Kapital might be the single most important part of Marxist theory. This section states that the changes in the economy will inevitably lead to misery and an eventual workers' revolution. That isn't always so. It simply depends on how much the working class will take. If they put up with something, a revolution might never come. Yet some working classes do rebel, and I would describe this tenet of Marx as true in a qualified sense. However, this doesn't even begin to address why some workers' revolutions are not entirely successful, and why the working class sometimes rebels against a communist government, as in Poland and Hungary. A casual reader of Marx will tell you that the workers' state will be governed by workers. The more careful reader will realize the error in this, for what Marx actually calls for is a vanguard to govern in the name and best interests of the proletarian class. Only a fool would let the bedraggled and uneducated classes steer the ship of state, and Marx himself opposed allowing actual workers with no formal training in these matters to be in the leadership of trade unions and worker councils.

Lenin I think practiced one of the most accurate forms of Marxism, though he, like everyone else, made some errors. His New Economic Policy of 1921 was beyond the pale of what is acceptable in terms of a market economy. In the end, Lenin didn't have time, and his nation was beleagured by a civil war with the White Russians in 1919, and famine after that. I have confidence that he would have made impressive progress if his life was longer.

After this, the most tramatic epistemological break in the history of Marxism happened. Leon Trotsky was a diligent and accurate interpreter of the Marxist canon, and under his stewardship, the Soviet Union might have been far more than it ever was. It was the bad luck of history that Stalin came to power. Josef just didn't have the touch. He dealt with kulaks in such a way that made farming rather inefficient. Labor could have still been divided and the property held collectively. I see no harm to Marxism in that kind of agricultural cooperation. His misguided approach caused famine. He imposed a stern puritanical morality on his nation, one that strikes me as being more than a shade bourgeois, and certainly an erroneous approach to the nature of power. His human rights abuses are so well documented that I needn't recount them. His shining accomplishment was his Five Year Plan, and even that didn't do nearly as much as it was intended to do. All in all, Stalin didn't have the touch for ruling.

Mao doesn't impress me. His Red Book is more epigrammatic than insightful, and his economic policies are really quite poorly conceived. His handling of cultural affairs was his most draconian aspect, and is a perfect example of how communism should not be used to ballast a moral vision, particularly a conservative one.

Castro I do like. He has his faults, but his is more or less a reasonably faithful interpretation of communism as should be practiced.

In terms of Marxist theorists, Althusser and Marcuse are the two best. They are faithful to Marx in virtually every respect and I find very little to take issue with in their writings. Lukacs's notion of reification has been extremely helpful to everyone who wishes to apply Marxism to contemporary affairs, but his literary criticism leaves something to be desired.

I should sum it up now. The state of communism worldwide is in great peril. China and North Korea are inching towards capitalist economies, while preserving the social oppression that is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of communism. I shudder to think at the consequences if this is the main way communism is practiced in the new millennium. Some have tried to counterbalance this waywardness with an attempt to return to a literal interpretation of Marx, a fundamentalism of sorts. That too will be a problem. Marx wrote in the nineteenth century, and if we are to have that is Marxism in any way relevant to the new economy, we must practice a form of hermeneutics that can bring him into this era. His ideals can be preserved, but some of his methods have to be changed, for we live in far different times. I wish I could say that I have confidence in Marxism's future, but I do not. It is now the work of people with goodwill and good sense to carry on Marx's work, but to realize the specifics of the situation we are now in, and what this means for our future.

[David S]

Migrendel
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
From what I have seen, communism has never delivered prosperity or freedom or well being to the people of any nation. Capitalism, despite the fact that it fundamentally operates on greed, has worked well. Yes we have a great disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor, but most people are very well off by the standards of the rest of the world. And when we speak of the poor in the U.S. we are usually speaking of someone who has only one color TV. Poverty of the type which exists in some 3rd world countries, where people literally have nothing to eat, is extremely rare if it exists at all in the U.S.
It seems to me that the failure of past communist countries to achieve success is not bad luck but an unavoidable outcome of communism.
I suppose we shall have to agree to disagree, but thank you for your response.

[AuH2O]

Communism is simply the implementation of a mental illness known as Marxism; the term itself is somewhat difficult to pin down since Marx himself declared "I am not a Marxist." Likewise he admitted Das Kapital was "pure excretement" even after revising it many, many times.

Historically, Communism has been used simply for it's sometimes appealing propaganda value; the very idea of Communism is so laughable that no society has come particularly close. Even paying it lip service, however, often proves to be very damaging, costing tens of millions of lives.

Many on the far left are not technically "Communists," at least they will not admit to it, but the same irrationality affects their judgement equally. It is based around the idea ideology outweights fact, in that the ends justify the means and the ends of Communism require deceit and violence.

That those ends are still unachievable makes it even worse, but such is evident empirically.

I actually am not sure deconstructing Marx (primarily as an athiest Jew, since no other element of his background lends itself to useful analysis) is of real worth. There are still people that believe the earth is flat; Communists are more numerous and more dangerous, but nonetheless are equally immune to reason.

There remain disturbing indications the American Left is infected with Communist thought; the pro-Soviet positions of many members of the Democratic Party concerned many Americans, though attempts to rectify the matter were prevented by the leftist media and the leftist government bureacracy.