Are you anticommunist/anti-Marxist?

[Antonio the Sixth]

The term makes no sense in the Year of Our Lord 2015: the Soviet Union has been dead and buried for a quarter of a century and so there is no Communism to be opposed to.

In fairness, many Italian leftists are still obsessed with antifascism (which is obviously far less morally objectionable than anticommunism, but also even less historically relevant).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Sure but when a country has been the global centre of Catholicism for so long it is inevitable that its political life will deviate towards the ritualistic.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

The term makes no sense in the Year of Our Lord 2015: the Soviet Union has been dead and buried for a quarter of a century and so there is no Communism to be opposed to.

In fairness, many Italian leftists are still obsessed with antifascism (which is obviously far less morally objectionable than anticommunism, but also even less historically relevant).

FN, XA, Jobbik are all quite close to their borders, while I don't think the Italian and French  communist parties or the KkE are much of a deal for them
And internationally, there's just a handle of countries which are still under the "communist", and apart from China (which is a technocratic dictatorship more than any definition of Marxism I can think of), they aren't very important to Italy at all

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Yes, I am against a failed system that thankfully is dying out.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The term makes no sense in the Year of Our Lord 2015: the Soviet Union has been dead and buried for a quarter of a century and so there is no Communism to be opposed to.

In fairness, many Italian leftists are still obsessed with antifascism (which is obviously far less morally objectionable than anticommunism, but also even less historically relevant).

FN, XA, Jobbik are all quite close to their borders, while I don't think the Italian and French  communist parties or the KkE are much of a deal for them
And internationally, there's just a handle of countries which are still under the "communist", and apart from China (which is a technocratic dictatorship more than any definition of Marxism I can think of), they aren't very important to Italy at all

I wouldn't call any of these parties fascist though, especially not in the sense in which Italians conceive it, which is actually mostly influenced by politics in the Cold War years (in the sense that antifascism was for Communists roughly what anticommunism was for Christian Democrats and their satellites).

[ElectionsGuy]

Yes

[SATW]

Yes.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Well fascism still maintains strength in its extraparliamentary forces, which can be even more insidious than their parliamentary forms.

Extraparliamentary commies tend to be a joke, nowadays. Sometimes useful, (more often infuriating) but never a threat.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes. The point is that while Communism used to mean a political system that controlled one of the largest countries in the world - and later a bit more than just that - and which was officially bent on world domination and which operated and funded and to a significant extent controlled branch political parties throughout the world... it no longer does so and has not done for a quarter of a century. Which is why many parties and political systems based around anticommunism themselves collapsed shortly after Communism fell.

[VPH]

I'm not at all in favor of communism and think it's an awful idea.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Most certainly, both theoretically and in practice.

[Lief 🗽]

I'm not a fan of economic marxism but I strongly support cultural marxism. Undecided on foreign policy marxism.

[Lumine]

Yes, of course. To have a Communist Party here which is still somewhat relevant (emphasis on "somewhat") here in Chile is more than annoying.

[Goldwater]

By virtue of not being a communist, obviously yes. However, calling yourself "anticommunist" is a pretty meaningless term in the modern U.S.

[CapoteMonster]

Yes (Dad actually lived under communism)

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Yes (Dad actually lived under communism)

Just wondering, which country?

[ag]

I am surprised so many are anticommunist.  If we take the The Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto of 1848

1. Abolition of private property in land and application of all rents of land to public purpose.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work.  Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc.

It seems to me that the mainstream and for sure center-left parts if the Dem party are for most of what is above with even a good part of the GOP are for or at least accepted some of the above.

Except for points 2 and 10, which ones would anybody accept these days? Well, I guess 9 - though it is pretty meaningless at this point. The rest would be completely out of the mainstream not only in the US, but pretty much in every other sane place.

[ag]

Politically - of course, I am an anti-Communist (with the sole exception of Israel - and that is something I particularly dislike Israel for )  I have been an anti-Communist since long before many of you guys were born

But the way the question has been formulated makes it sound unnecessarily ridiculous. I have no clue what the poster means by "social Marxism" or whatever.  It is also strange to be an "anti-Marxist" in an academic sense in a field in which Marx is a chapter in the History of Thought textbook: I am also not anti-Bohm-Bawerkian or anti-Smithian or whatever. Using "Marxism" or "Communism" as all-purpose cuss-words is not particularly enlightening. Hope we are not about to set a moderatorial committee on Unamerican Activities here

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I think Marxist calculus is interesting. Not that he's was accomplished in original research, but the books weren't bad for the time period. Now every calculus text from the 1800s is absolutely terrible by modern standards. But it's interesting that his approach was infinitesimal rather than limits. The non standard analysis of infinitesimals was only rigorously proven many decades later.

I will describe myself as pro Marxist calculus.

[CapoteMonster]

Yes (Dad actually lived under communism)

Just wondering, which country?

Cuba from 1963-1972

[TNF]

No, I am pro-communist/pro-Marxist, because I favor the emancipation of mankind from the shackles of capitalist exploitation, religious dogma, etc, etc.

To those of you who say communism is dead and buried, I'd point you to the five states which are ruled by communist parties and which remain alive and well in the 21st Century, in spite of their bureaucratic deformations. One of those is the People's Republic of China, which in spite of market reforms still has its core industries under state ownership and utilizes economic planning to drive growth. It has performed fairly spectacularly over the past few decades and poses enough of a threat to the bourgeois powers that they've begun to engage in strategies to isolate it (Pivot to Asia, Transpacific Partnership, etc., etc.).

Likewise, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Republic of Cuba, The Democratic Republic of Laos, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam all still stand today as testaments to the superiority of planned economies compared to the anarchy of the capitalist market system. In these countries, medical care, housing, and education are guaranteed and not dependent upon who your parents were, where you hail from, or what accent you speak with. In short, these countries have done what the capitalist system will never do, i.e. create a fully functioning welfare state that won't be rolled back the next time a right-wing (or 'left-wing' social democratic/eurocommunist) party is elected to government.

These countries suffer from bureaucratic deformities and unfortunately are run by Stalinist bureaucracies that deny their populations the right to fully participate in the planning of production and likewise have defects in that they promote stupid, parochial nationalisms as opposed to internationalist politics. But even so, they represent a massive advance compared to capitalist 'democracies' where the only freedom you are guaranteed is the 'freedom' to be a slave to some nonworking parasite.

Hopefully in the 21st Century we'll see political revolution in the states where capitalism has already been overthrown and the subsequent introduction of real workers' democracy there. And likewise, hopefully we'll also see new October Revolutions in the places where capitalism has yet to be overthrown.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Likewise, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea ... stands today as testament to the superiority of planned economies compared to the anarchy of the capitalist market system.

What. The. Fuck

[they don't love you like i love you]

Likewise, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea...still stand today as testaments to the superiority of planned economies.

This is all that needs to be said about modern day communists.

[TNF]

Likewise, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea ... stands today as testament to the superiority of planned economies compared to the anarchy of the capitalist market system.

What. The. Fuck

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[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

@TNF

Have you ever wondered why people want to leave those countries you mentioned?