Why did the spirit of communism die? Has the global bourgeoisie strengthened itself, corrected the mistakes that contributed to its removal, and cemented itself then countries that were communist have returned to the oppressive system they had before.
>>2247357>Where has the spectre haunting Europe gone?<Why is false-consciousness worse now than it once was?This seems to be the crux of your question, but it's too big a question to realistically answer.
>Has the bourgeoisie strengthened itself.In many ways the bourgeoisie are less in control, and less brutal than they once were.
Even with the genocides and wars conducted outside of the imperial core, the degree has been reduced, along with slavery etc.
The advancement of administrative, media, and weapon technologies gives them more tools at their disposal than ever before.
>Corrected the mistakes that contributed to its removal.Changes in administration had to be won inch by inch.
Even much of the technical improvement in the modern era are a product of state directed R&D, or planning.
Others are products of technical improvements made not from bourgeoisie will but necessity and logic of capital.
>>2247818Because the problem isn’t just the name
The problem is that when class struggle was acute and the working class was well organized, the self-appointed (or mass appointed) communist leadership seemingly did everything in their power to burn up all that mass energy, whether in alliances with liberal parties, or funneling all their activities into doing propaganda for some external government, or yielding to the regime stabilizing orientation of the unions. Communists played one of the greatest and most understated roles in the global victory of capitalism, from conflated national liberation with socialism to setting welfare as the win state
>>2247820>When class struggle was acute and the working class was well organized.>Alliances with liberal parties, regime stabilizing orientation of the unions.My ignorance will show here, but wasn't this mostly non-communist union bureaucrats?
>or funneling all their activities into doing propoganda for some external government.Perhaps there was (or is) a problem with trying to redeem these foreign governments, even now that they're gone.
That would mean the problem was more in praxis than in these failed examples then though.
>>2247357I think the first wave of the communist revolution was kind of… doomed from the beginning (or at least from the moment the German revolution had failed) due to proletarians having no intellectual culture back then (famously, even Karl Marx himself was bourgeous) and thus, being forced to employ lots and lots of former bourgeous (and former cops or military officers, and sometimes even former aristocrats!) in the scienctific, humanitarian, educational, and even govermental institutions of the newfounded socialist states. With these, the pieces of reactionary culture were swallowed, took roots inside, grew, and eventually took over their societies and made them capitalist again. And this would repeat until proletarians have a robust intellectual culture by themselves… Do they now?
>>2248964show me where marx said the bourgeoisie is "those who own the means of production"
go on, i'll wait.
>>2248701>the quality of communists fell off.bit of this, last good Marxist economists are from the 60s.
>>2248719German Ideology quote remains undefeated sadly
> and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism.Seems like the best thing the Communist East gave the working class is the SocDem welfare states in the West.
>>2249310he is completely right though, every "communist" movement in the third world upon victory, degenerates into a social democratic party, then develops the country into a middle income society, see angola, mozabique, south africa, zimbabwe, bangladesh, etc all of these projects fail for that reason, in part because marxist-leninist parties always devolve into social democratic nation building projects, it's also why when applied to the first world it doesn't even overthrow its own government
>>2249327the thing is that it doesn't happen due to external pressure, it happens because these national liberation movements don't have an ideology other than vague nationalism and when they ascend into power degenerate into the path of least resistance, which is social democracy, itself something the USSR did as well, and for why there aren't any ML revolutions in the first world, it's simple, because it doesn't work in the first world and only works in less developed conditions, it's why marxism-leninism produces great bangers like the NEP, the deng xiaoping reforms, the vietnamese reforms, etc because these are functionally not too distinct from the bourgeois revolutions of 1848
>>2248957ok fuck off, i mean that all workers now live like bourgeoise fags, even better than bourgeoise fags did in their day, wit with tv, computer, healthcare, insurances, this that you name it man, i wasnt trying to fire up that shitty debate again. Now worker is doing the same stuff do but cheap version. Ok no mansion ok no yacht, but those fucking burgers are not even having fun there, they just make you think they are having fun through shitty social media, so it's same shit. Ofc, im not talking about usa because its so shithole acountry you dont even have healthcare, even a south american worker is better off than that, poor but alive from having a cold or some shit, or not indebted for life for having eat too much hamburger and have diarrhea. If you want to know real workers, go to cuba, you'll find none of this media bullshit, none of this consumerist collective mania they got in the west, a good part of asia and america (including south america these days, with some exceptions)… At least as of a decade ago, from when i know this fact.
>>2249337>which is social democracy, itself something the USSR did as well>bangers like the NEP, the deng xiaoping reforms, the vietnamese reforms, etc because these are functionally not too distinct from the bourgeois revolutions of 1848okay now we know what you are calling socdem and what exactly is the problem with that? its still historically progressive and necessary for the transition to full communism. usually this conversation is about explicitly non-socialist bourgeois states and the critique is that the lack of a communist party makes the development slow and directed. what you call socdem sounds to me like lower stage socialism.
>it doesn't work in the first world and only works in less developed conditionsokay so if we are calling ML developmental socdemism then what is your solution? what does work in the first world? because i only see two options, ultras do the rev in the first world and press the button, or the third world bands together and kills the first.
Because Eugenics won, and democratic society was thoroughly defeated and not allowed to speak in its defense, nor leave behind any record that there could be any other world. Eugenics was a cancer within socialist thought just as it was a cancer in modernity generally, and the imperatives of eugenism overrode everything else.
I keep telling you people this is it, but you keep making excuses so that the same crapulence can continue. Whatever faults may be attributed to Marxism (there are many), none of them would stick if eugenics weren't there to insert itself. The eugenists were some of the most effective practitioners of Marxism in history, while the communists really had no answer. The Marxist view only could allow the "total system" for some bizarre reason, even though the entire purpose of Marxism was to destroy such total systems. But, the Soviets weren't doctrinaire Marxist ideologues. They were communists and had already taken efforts to adapt Marxism to govern an actual country. That's when a lot of the communists figured out they were in way over their head, and the very nasty actors arranging these imperial conflicts could proceed more or less unimpeded. The one thing they didn't control is that the Russians refused to keep dying in the world wars, and eugenics never forgave them for that. It was eugenics that reversed and mocked all of the valor and suffering of the Russian people, for the conceit of those who were always safe.
Looking at history generally, I don't see how human history turns out any different no matter what volition people might have had. A few things might have been different here and there, but there was too much for ritual sacrifice and eugenics and no evidence that humans ever had anything else in them. It's hard to imagine an alternate history without going back many centuries or invoking some prophetic knowledge of what our world turned into to avert it. But, some people did have that scarily prophetic knowledge of the future, desperately tried to avert it, and we still wound up here. The weight of human history was too much.
Ultimately, the fault lies with humanity refusing time and time again to declare eugenics in total as the culprit of the past 100 years of misery and terror. There would always be excuses, or humanity would become fickle and distracted by some other shiny object. After what the eugenists did to instigate the world wars, the only thought on anyone's mind should have been to root those people out as violently as possible. I believe the only thing, and what would have been the "natural outcome" of human history would have been basically what happened in the book 1984, and again we're getting that future anyway. You would need an unlimited terror against the eugenists to stop them from doing this, and the eugenists saw that they had to monopolize such a terror and hold it as a threat until they had guaranteed the world would be what they wanted it to be. We're getting the worst possible version of that because eugenics won every single battle it waged in the past 100 years. Ultimately eugenics will be depreciated not because humanity was good, but because a more effective terror will be developed and eugenism could only continue through controlled insanity. We already see how the eugenic creed retards thought so much that computational theory is impossible. Eugenism now exists purely to maximize the torture and death of the present century, and any of you who aid and abet it are assholes. But, it's too late now. The critical period where this might have been different was the 1990s and by then it was far too late.
The "good news" for you is that very likely something like communism will arise, but it would be an overtly despotic communism with no pretense that this is about the public good or anything we would like. It would arise instead as an administrative reform when someone puts two and two together and realizes everything the managers have done up to now has been wholly ruinous and worse than unnecessary. I don't think humans have it in them to destroy themselves completely, and at the end of the day humans crave power more than ideology. Insane people, which eugenism creates, do not exercise power. They simply bark like the animals they are.
>>2281151If you look at what workers demanded and what they were thinking.. Like 8 h workday, that they can change the work day, but only them can do that, not the bourgeois or party or anyone else. Is it not revolutionary? You may think it is just economism, I think it is not. My boss delegated his role and went writing a book. Can you do that? Do you think you could do that? You see, you do not think you can do that, you will not write a book. The ideaology does not permit this type of thinking. Ok then USSR was just a big monopoly for some managers to manage, but it is a monopoly where workers were thinking they can take time like that. May be not all, not now, but …
Some time ago I was pointing that party and Lenin wrote on reducing labor time, like there were going to reduce labor time… Why Lenin said that if workers already had that idea? I now not sure I'm ok with that what Lenin wrote. Did he man I need a permission from Lenin/party to take my time.. Was the idea workers had that they can take time, replaced by _you_can_take_time_when_party_allow? If so, not ok.
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