One annoying tendency in modern political discourse is right wingers and centrists calling people communist.
They don’t know what the word means.
A communist believes that the means of production should be owned and controlled by the proletariat: the workers.
If you don’t believe this, you aren’t a communist. Wanting universal healthcare doesn’t mean you’re a communist unless you think the health workers themselves (or, just perhaps, the party or government) should control the healthcare providers.
Wanting universal healthcare, in the modern context, makes you a socialist.
Now there’s a lot of argument around what it means for the proletariat to control the means of production. If the “Party” controls it, like in the USSR or pre-Deng China, is that communism, or is it just old fashioned government authoritarianism?
Is modern China communist? About half the economy isn’t controlled by the Party, and worker co-ops are minor players. There’s clearly a capitalist class controlling vast amounts of the means of production, though government is very willing to intervene. The Chinese Communist party says this is still communism but that seems like a stretch to me. The same is true in Vietnam: the Communist party is in charge, but the economy isn’t communist.
Note that you could have a market economy which IS communist. If workers co-ops or something similar control most of the organizations, that would be communism, and it’s something that a lot of intellectuals in America and Europe during the 50s pushed for: a sort of “best of both worlds.”
Centralized control economies like the USSR, from this point of view can’t really be communist, because the workers aren’t really controlling capital.
For myself, I’d say moving away from stock companies and towards a mix of worker owned organizations and perhaps mutual companies (or mixed versions) would be the best way to move towards something that might both be communist and workable, allowing the dynamism of the market.
Generally speaking my time in the workforce convinced me that upper management is usually clueless because they don’t do the job and haven’t done it in ages. You have to be on the front lines to have some idea what the issues actually are.
Communism is worker control of capital, and nothing else. We’ve never really tried it.
elkern
I sometimes point to the early Israeli Kibbutzim as better examples of Real Communism, but I don’t know that much about Communism or the Kibbutz movement. How wrong am I?
bruce wilder
Calling anyone a “communist” today is anachronistic. The time when people were genuinely surprised by the historical novelty of pervasive capitalism and curious about how it works and where it is going, slouching toward Bethlehem perhaps — that time is past.
“Market economy” is not faintly a thing. A money economy is what we have, with metastasizing financial arrangements driving it.
Soredemos
The CCP say they’re ‘socialist with Chinese characteristics’. I think they would generally argue something along the lines of that they’re currently a state controlled, limited market economy where the capitalists and firms are firmly shackled and subordinate to state power
True communism for them is the desired end goal, but in order to get there they first need to pass through a form of a capitalist stage to accelerate development (Marx actually had a lot of positive things to say about capitalism and its ability to achieve technological and social progress over feudalism. But he also pointed out it had many intrinsic flaws and contradictions that would ultimately cause it to collapse). China tried to leap directly into communism, and it didn’t work. So now they’re trying to get through a version of limited capitalism.
Will it work? I don’t know. But the CCP would argue they’re being entirely consistent with the supposed ‘laws’ of historical epochal development. Communism is the end goal, but they don’t pretend it’s what they have yet.
GlassHammer
“upper management is usually clueless because they don’t do the job”
^The “remedy” for that is information flow from bottom to top but due to “distortions” and “selectivity” it’s not a good “remedy”. Best case scenario is management understand this “information limitation” and shifts to pursuing ever more resources to grow their team/division and cover unplanned expenses.
BlizzardOfOz
Whatever you say, commie!
Mary Bennet
Mr. Welsh, I believe I have read of your ” worker owned organizations and perhaps mutual companies (or mixed versions)” being called Democratic Syndicalism. I agree that what you said is the best way forward, and I think that program needs a name to distinguish it from socialism, which refers to govt. ownership of the means of production.
For fellow Americans, here are the names of four worker owned companies which do give good value for money spent. King Authur Flour, Bob’s Red Mill, Fedco, a purveyor of seeds and plants, and Johnny’s Seeds. I will say that the last, Johnny’s is quite pricy, but the few seeds I have bought from them did germinate and grow well. King Authur is in nearly every grocery store where I live and gives excellent results. You can only get better from the specialty organic mills, which are out of my budget. Take it from me, I have been baking for 60 years now, Gold Medal flour is a CRAP product, and the execrable Pillsbury is even worse. BTW, I get paid nothing for stating any of the above.
Dan Kelly
We need to abandon the ‘isms’ and ‘ists.’ They prevent clearer, more nuanced thought.
Noam Chomsky – not that he’s a god or anything – but Chomsky used to say that even if internally a given country is more ‘communist’ nevertheless internationally the way things work is obviously much more ‘capitalist’ – and certainly transactional.
The ‘means of production’ include a lot more than factories that can conceivably be taken over by the workers. Naomi Klein built her entire capitalist career and life on this notion by writing about one or two situations in which it actually happened – with no subsequent follow-up.
The powerful ‘own’ and control the natural resources that are required for productive means.
The ‘communist’ – ‘capitalist’ divide on the international scale is akin to the ‘left’ – ‘right’ divide within countries. Both are used by the rich and powerful to their own ends.
Either ‘system’ – each of which manifests differently depending on underlying conditions and innumerable human-envirnomental variables – either system may seem to ‘work’ for a time for enough people that we become comfortable using these otherwise broad, generic terms.
Oakchair
The difference between us and dogs is that humans have a remarkable ability to rationalize how their Pavlov reaction is a intellectual endeavor instead of a conditioned knee-jerk reaction.
As long as all terminology related to communism or socialism is excluded most people will agree with much of the substance in Das Kapital and similar writings. The second some term such as “means of production” is mentioned the Pavlov mouth foaming supersedes everything else.
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One annoying tendency in modern political discourse is right wingers and centrists calling people communist.
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If it is possible to go blind from eye rolling than hearing people go on and on about how Pfizer, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Amazon and neo-liberal political parties are communists is sure to do it.
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the means of production should be owned and controlled by the proletariat: the workers.
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It’s the power inequality, stupid. –James Carville channeling The Communist Manifesto.
Wealth inequality is an effect of the ruling class using their power to extract the proceeds of everyone else’s work for themselves.
Reduce wealth inequality with taxes and transfers such as the New deal did and eventually the ruling class will use their power to reverse it. There’s a reason the original oligarchs created police, jails and the military industrial complex. It has nothing to do with crime, justice or defense.
Ahmed Fares
[quote]
Communist revolutions end badly, I believe, because they are based on faulty ideas. The problem is that Marxists misunderstand the source of capitalism’s social ills. It all goes back to Marx himself.
Marx pinned the ills of capitalism on private property. I think this was a mistake. The real cause of most social ills, I believe, is not private property. It’s hierarchy. Why? Because hierarchy concentrates power. And concentrated power is the despot’s best friend. Concentrated power, I believe, leads to social ills like totalitarianism, inequality, mass violence, and oppression. True, private property is intimately linked with hierarchy and power. But, as communist states demonstrated, we can have hierarchy without private property. This is Marx’s fatal error.
So here’s what goes wrong with communist revolutions. Distracted by private property, Marxist revolutionaries make the problem of hierarchy worse than it was under capitalism. They abolish private property, thinking this will solve the problems of capitalism. But to achieve their goals, Marxists create a vanguard party that eventually becomes a single-party state.
So in the name of creating a more just and equitable society, these revolutionaries concentrate power. They replace capitalist hierarchies with an even larger communist hierarchy. Yes, private property is gone. But the problems of hierarchy are even worse than before. It’s an ironic twist. Marxist revolutionaries aim for a socialist utopia. But what they get is a totalitarian nightmare. And it’s all because they focus on private property and neglect the problem of hierarchy.
[end quote]
source: https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2019/05/29/the-allure-of-marxism-and-why-its-a-mistake/
Steven Augustine
“Communism” was invented by a son of the haute bourgeoisie of Europe. Marx was related to bankers on one side of the family and powerful industrialists on the other; he married into that class, as well, and was honored with posthumous memorials in the famously NOT Communist city of London, where he was buried quite respectfully.
“Communism” is a Capitalist tool with many uses, and though the “spirit” that it pretends to sing with is noble (the equality of all humankind), the Reality is quite different, just like any number of clever lies spoken by psychopaths delivering political speeches written for the credulous public by cynical hacks.
“Communism” as it was/ is actually practised, by colonized nations (like China or Russia or East Germany) was always Capitalist at top, “Communist” (Serfist) at bottom with Technocrats in the middle. What do you know about Mao? How did the supposedly impenetrable/ inscrutable dragon of China end up adopting a system invented by a son of the haute bourgeoisie of Europe?
China came under total “Western” (oligarchic/ aristocratic) control during the ”Opium Wars”. (Which explains why China became a “super power” with what is, essentially, Western Tech: there was no James Clerk Maxwell, or Faraday, of China. China would, without TFIC intervention, be entering a technological 19th century by now).
Why do you think China went along with the Covid-1984 hoax? Played a key role in it, in fact. Why? Because TFIC are global. China serves the same Masters.
Lenin’s famously protected train-ride through Germany was an act of War against Russia (otherwise, Lenin would have been detained/executed by the decidedly Capitalist Germans): even Kerensky himself suspected it!
Look into the curious figure of Sidney Rittenberg (re: Mao). “History” is full of ridiculous paradoxes and implausibilities that only add up if we see them as evidence of a con job.
“Communism” is supposedly the fiercest enemy of Capitalism, and vice versa, but we didn’t learn about “Communism” from dangerous characters in midnight’s alleyways and tunnels, did we?
No, we were informed on the matter at a young age; we read about it in TIME and LIFE; the propaganda was everywhere; Communism’s “historic” figures are often framed as noble or heroic (though perhaps “misguided” or “doomed”) because it’s all a Game; a Theater Piece. There’s a huge difference between “The Boogieman” and a Genuine Threat to Hegemony. The latter never enjoys global fame.
It’s the global version of “Democrat” versus “Republican”… a false dichotomy… owned, at the top, by TFIC who own everything. The “Communist” masses are invigorated and pious in their “battle” against “Capitalism” and the “Capitalist” masses were confirmed and grateful, for their lot, in the “battle against Communism”. Useful political energy and distraction (away from the natural hatred that could have been directed at the Ruling Classes on either “side” of the Game) flowed from the arrangement. Will we never learn?
Capitalist Wiki, says, rather admiringly, of Mao: “A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in the twentieth century. He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, and poet.”
Is this how America describes its enemies? Ever read anything like that, in a Mainstream Publication, about, say, Palestinian Freedom-Fighters?
It’s all a Game.
Ian Welsh
Marx largely abandoned his class, giving up a professorship and a good life. He lost children to starvation and was often poor.
He was a class traitor.
Soredemos
@Ahmed Fares
Cart before the horse. Hierarchies don’t just emerge from a vacuum. They have a material basis.
@Dan Kelly
Had you ever bothered to actually read any Marx, or even a summary of Marx, you would quickly realize that product of production’ means a lot more than just factories. As does ‘capital’.
‘Post-ideology’ is itself a type of ideology.
mago
I’m a commie he’s a commie, everyone you know’s a commie, don’t cha know?
That about explains it.
Once upon a time on a planet far away there lived two legged creatures alongside four legged creatures, the latter of whom struggled for food, shelter and a place to procreate.
Their two legged counterparts did the same while naming, defining, justifying and solidifying their actions as they fucked each other over.
Name it frame it talk about it—it comes down to you.
It’s up 2U.
Jorge
The important thing about the real Commie countries with actual Marxist takeovers was: previously they were run on serfdom. The Russian Empire abolished serfdom in 1861, while China was still running on serfdom when Mao took over.
The Russian emancipation wasn’t all that robust, but was probably as much as was possible at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia
Eclair
Probably most of the indigenous nations of the North Americas could be considered ‘communist,’ if we define that as ‘the workers owing the means of production.’ Although, apparently ‘own’ was not in their vocabulary if it pertained to anything other than personal effects, certainly not to land, trees, minerals, etc. But the people worked for themselves, or, rather, their ‘tribe.’
These terms, communist, socialist, democratic, authoritarian, capitalist, fascist, seem to be useful today as weapons to be hurled at ‘enemies’ or as chain-mail to protect ‘friends.’
We in the West comfort and elevate ourselves by using the ‘democracy’ label to describe our system of governance, and the label of ‘capitalist’ to describe our economy. They are the best of all possible systems, we intone. Over and over and over. (Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord hear our prayers ……. ) But, obviously, there are doubts and and suspicions that matters are not going well for many of us, under this, the best of all possible systems.
And why do we separate these two entities, democracy and capitalism? (Or communism and capitalism?) Are not a system of governance and an economic system inextricably intertwined? Is it even possible, anywhere, anytime, to have the two, governing system and economic system, separate? Because one props up and justifies the other.
If we take a clear-eyed look at our system (the one system that rules us all) in the US (and Canada and, maybe, the UK and EU), and try to dissect it, carefully and analytically, we might discover that we have developed some awful hybrid, offspring of ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism,’ something as yet unnamed and undescribed, that we have let loose upon the Planet.
Oakchair
@ Jorge
As awful as Stalin, Mao, et al were people seem to gloss over the fact that the industrialization of the west occurred with the genocide of 3 continents and the enslavement and mass murder of 2 others.
The masses in the west also didn’t choose to go work in factories for 14 hour eating 1,500 calories a day on. They were kicked off their land and forced to.
The number of people killed by England in India alone exceeds those killed by Stalin and Mao combined and that’s according to calculations done by Westerners.
Jan Wiklund
I would say that this was the original meaning of the word. But since the meaning of a word is what people believe it is, nothing else, it now means someone that believes in bureaucratic dictatorship.
All words tend to change their meanings – see semantic change – but political words change them fast. Not only that there is a fight going on all the time, which the strongest wins, but also because the content change when people with the label in question start to practice their ideas. They never succeed a hundred percent, and people will see more to the practice and the result than to the intent.
Swamp Yankee
“Communism” and “Communist” are the go-to insult for the local Trumpers in my neck of the woods. Everything they don’t like is “communist.” Recent local social media pages include notes of gratitude in my neighboring, right-wing town for voting against “Communism” on Nov. 5th (I hadn’t realized the Bolsheviks were on the ballot). Our moderate (and hyper-cautious) Democratic Governor, Maura Healey, is a “Communist.” You name it, they red-bait it.
Which is why it always struck me as strange to see soi disant online leftists actively endorsing the red-baiting and rabidly anti-Communist faction in order to “altruistically punish” the Democrats. I guess we’re about to see what that means in terms of the EPA and the rest of the administrative federal state.
Steven Augustine
re: Marx as Class Traitor: quite a few of Karl’s editorials for the New York Daily Tribune/ Herald Tribune always struck me as being from a distinctly haute bourgeois perspective and designed to amplify Bourgeois-reader paranoia regarding The Proletariat. Karl certainly remained bourgeois in his prejudices and used the n-word (English version) in his letters; he also hated it whenever someone compared him, physically, to Frederick Douglass.
In the interest of various well-funded realpolitik projects, I think almost anyone can have their actual history tweaked ‘n obfuscated to fit the character they have been tasked to play.
Karl’s Uncle: “How’s that iconic work, designed to undermine everything that I and all of your peers and family hold dear, on behalf of the masses we all sort of abhor, going?” Karl: “Slowly but surely, Unca Lion! I’ll need a bit more cash, though!” Unca Lion: “Say no more!”
So much of these “historical” narratives have to be treated forensically, knowing what we now know. Imagine how the Palestine Genocide will be “remembered” 200 years from now, if the Killers get their way? Do you expect it to be an accurate account? Nettie will be the revered Ataturk of “New Jerusalem” or whatever they will call it then.
Forget the lore (I know the lore! There’s no Apostate like a True Believer with newly-opened eyes). Why is Marx so thoroughly lionized by Capitalist Media? Is this how Capitalism treats its Nemeses? Why was Fidel Castro equally-weirdly popularized? How is it that the CIA couldn’t nail a banana republic’s famously accessible Comandante, after more than 60 tries, but did JFK in broad daylight, and got away with it, in one go? How many people unnderstand that the Bay of Pigs fiasco is problematized by trhe location of Guatanamo Bay? The US somehow couldn’t invade a tiny island they already had a massive military persence on?
I mean: we can all agree that our Psychopathic Overlords have no problem with mass murder (consider the case of small time genocidaire Madeline Albright), effortlessly manipulating the “news” and “history” to facilitate their favorite sport, right? But somehow seeing them as World Class Liars is beyond the pale… ?
People hate it when I direct them to Abraham Lincoln’s racist writings (available in his online archive), and the mountains of evidence of the awfulness of Mr. Gandhi, too. Just use your knowledge of Humanity to separate the Hollywood narratives from the Truth.
NB: This is what put me on this track: about 8 years ago I was seated at an outdoor cafe with a friend who was/is such a Communist that he has a full-sized hammer-and-sickle flag on his living room wall. We were reminiscing about Castro’s lore… mostly the Marita trope and the CIA assassination attempts. The occasion was Castro’s death… it was November 2016. I think it was the day after Castro died. Friend was retelling the Marita myth that we all knew so well… and just by hearing this myth spoken, out loud, the penny dropped for me and I realized the narrative sounded just like the Hollywoodized Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Edison myths. I realized it was UTTER bullshit. Then I started reading… not Internet Pages… old books. I read primary sources. Nothing added up. By the time I saw Fidel’s Ed Sullivan interview (Ed refers to the revolutionaries as “youngsters”), “in the jungle,” after the “Revolution,” I was ready for it. Or the ridiculous Lisa Thompson “love affair” trope. All utter and staged nonsense for a then-very-unsophistcated audience.
You can have Famous People and you can have genuinely Noble Heroes, too, but you aren’t going to get both in one package.
Not under THIS regime.
Steven Augustine
erratum: Guantanamo (I really need to get into the habit of proofreading my comments *before* I post them)
bruce wilder
Actual events have a richness, foreground and background, but history is composed of mere traces and shadows. The only advantage the historian has in telling the story is know the next chapter or three.
That Marx has been elevated to Olympus by posterity is less important than the simplifications — first of his own life and then of the vast discordant chorus of his contemporaries. Ideologues, individually, are wondrously contradictory. Marx now stands in for a dozen or more 19th century figures in the imaginations of 21st century pundits, who represented a group of revolutionary socialists of marvelous multipolarity.
I do not have much patience with the flippancy of “never tried real communism” school of thought. It has been tried many times since before the Diggers first dug 17th century English hillsides. Operationalizing the intentions of a utopian intentional community resolves contradictions without erasing human ambivalence and there’s the rub.
Operationalizing socialism as bureaucratic state capitalism with elaborate formal planning made some sense. Anarchists operationalizing syndicalism made sense. Mondragon with its mix of Catholic social theology, worker coops, junior college and syndicalism works (or worked and then evolved under pressure from a global capitalist ecology).
Purple Library Guy
Eclair: “Why do we separate these two entities, democracy and capitalism?”
Gosh, I think Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, Montt, Mohamed bin Salman, Saddam Hussein, I could go on all day . . . might have an answer to that question. Capitalist dictatorships are common like strip malls.
Jorge
The knowledge that’s missing here is “where did DemSoc countries come from?” The answer is very simple: if you are a manufacturer and want to export, you need to suppress the cost of living for your laborers.
If they spend a lot of money on food, you break the farm cartel. If they spend a lot of money on rent, you break the landlords. (In Britain, the same people.) If they spend a lot of money on transportation, you build cheap trolleys. If they tithe a large amount, you break the Church.
Now, you need people to promote your point of view about economics. Adam Smith made his bones as a economist who hated landlords, so he was paid to propagandize against landlords.
Soredemos
@Oakchair
“The number of people killed by England in India alone exceeds those killed by Stalin and Mao combined and that’s according to calculations done by Westerners.”
This more of that Late Victorian Holocausts stuff where the book doesn’t actually remotely make this sort of claim?
Soredemos
@Steven Augustine
All I see here is a complete refusal to actually engage with ideas or theories. You appear to believe that if you character assassinate a historical figure enough their ideas will just magically disappear or be rendered invalid and so you don’t have to debate them. That’s not actually how intellectual inquiry works.
That’s assuming the assassination even landed, which, nah, try again. There are things to criticize about someone like Gandhi, but at the end of the day, no, there is not ‘mountains of evidence of his awfulness’.
@bruce wilder
These days the only people who actually know anything about Marx are the same small number of people who have actually read Marx. And to read Marx is to be well aware of the varied landscape of contemporary leftist debate he existed in, because at least half his writings are him beefing with other strains of leftist thinking.
Steven Augustine
@bruce wilder
“I do not have much patience with the flippancy of “never tried real communism” school of thought. It has been tried many times since before the Diggers first dug 17th century English hillsides. Operationalizing the intentions of a utopian intentional community resolves contradictions without erasing human ambivalence and there’s the rub.”
Written with satisfying succinctness. I think any good faith attempt, to develop an equality-promoting organizing system, for All, is hypothetically feasible. The organizing systems with which we’re familiar (“communism,” “capitalism,” “social democracy,” et al) are top-down projections of Power, for the benefit of Power, in the name of Control.
Our structural predicament: Equality-loving Poets of surpassing empathy will never rise to the top of any pyramidal hierarchy… they absolutely lack the skill set. Psychopaths (all things being equal) possess the required skill set (to rise to the top of any pyramidal hierarchy). Can you lie convincingly? Are you ruthless? Is mass murder a line you have no problem crossing? Are baroque Machiavellian schemes your favorite hobby? You win!
This, in my opinion, is the eternal checkmate of post-Hominid History. The only occasional historical relief we non-Psycho Serfs get is when two (or more) Psychopathic Pyramids are in conflict, inadvertently generating little cracks of freedom for their respective Serfs… or when one Psychopath Pyramid is putting on a show of Goodness, for the world (as in how Murrkka let up on its Negrophobic obsessions, a tad, during the “Cold War,” and brown-skinned Serfs, such as myself, got some distinctly unstable “Civil Rights” for half a generation)…
If the Pharma Wing of Gov weren’t as Psychopathic as any, I’d suggest that pharmaceutical treatments, for the condition, are our only hope.