Why are people against communism?

Parmalee:Epilepsy (and the way many are wont to behave towards epileptics), autism, and having grown up in an abusive household probably have a whole lot to do with it; but regardless, the fact is that I simply understand, empathize with, and can communicate with (non-human) animals far better than I can with humans.
If I wasn't severely allergic to animals, I probably would be much less human-social...I got hit enough that I am very keyed in to body language. Does being autistic change that, or is it so for you also?
I consider the ability to read people's body language so very instinctively and well one of the few positives of growing up the way I did.

I am curious though...how do people respond to epileptics? I've honestly never seen someone have a grand-mal seizure, my (educated) response would be to protect their head first and otherwise try to keep them from hurting themselves.
Then offer them somewhere cool and dark to have a lie-down in, as seizures hurt like hell, right? Are also exhausting, I imagine.

And one area in which I am very much in disagreement with most leftists is the contention that Americans are mostly a very liberal minded and tolerant folk. Polls, voting patterns, and whatnots only reveal so much: my experiences have indicated very much otherwise...Well, I'm just not real sure as to how to describe the U.S. as anything other than a nation of retarded, Satanic Nazis.

Yeah... Sad to say...there are a lot of people who would fit that description...
 
The true FATAL flaw in communism is that it fails to take human nature into account. It simply assumes - wrongly!! - that every individual will fully cooperate to provide all the needs of each and every individual.

Yet in any group of people larger than say, two or three families, there will always be those who are lazy and will not do their fair share of work. And what's even worse is that there will always be those who want to control and dominate others. And greed also figures into communism's failure.

Since the human element cannot be eliminated, communism is *always* doomed to failure before it's even implemented. :shrug:

Hutterites not so . 100 clans-people then they brake off into other clans . They have a little genetic diversity prob so now they seek out fresh blood . I like there life style . It is probably a little to simple for most people . There work ethic is way beyond the norm
 
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United for Communism said:

Tiassa, I hate to be the outcast, but I don't support the Democratic Party either. They are also bought by corporate interests and do not promote true equality.

One problem I have with the recommendation I'm about to make is that it requires a bit of long effort. That is, to understand the context as fully as possible, one must read a few other novels first.

But Steven Brust, if you haven't read him, is an excellent fantasy author. No, I'm not huge on fantasy in general, but this isn't your average fantasy cycle.

Brust's Taltos Cycle follows a gangster from being a lowly member of the most reviled class in his stratified society to being a player in events of imperial and divine consequence.

Okay, sounds like a standard hero arc, right?

But Brust is also a Trotskyist sympathizer. His parents were renowned activists in the American socialist movement. Eventually, this pushes through in the stories.

Teckla, the third in the series, and Phoenix, the fifth, dwell in ideas quite clearly drawn from revolutionary communism.

...She sighed. "Kelly has his hands on the truth about the way a society works, about where the power is, and the cause of the injustice he sees. But it is a truth for another time and another place. He has built an organization around these ideas, and because of their truth, his organization prospers. But the truth he has based his policies on, the fuel for this fire he is building, has no such strength in the Empire. Perhaps in ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand, but not now. And by proceeding as he has, he is setting up his people to be massacred. Do you understand? He is building a world of ideas with no foundation beneath them. When they collapse ...." Her voice trailed off.
..."Why don't you tell him so?"
..."I have. He doesn't believe me."
..."Why don't you kill him?"
..."You don't kill ideas like that by killing the one who espouses them. As fertilizer aids the growth of the tree, so does blood—"
..."So," I said, "you decided to start a war, thinking they'd march off and forget their grievances so they could fight for their homeland? That doesn't—"
..."Kelly," she said, "is smarter than I though the was, curse him. He's smart enough to destroy every Easterner, and most of the Teckla, in South Adrilankha."


(Phoenix)

(I should note, as to the time scale, that the people in the Empire who aren't "Easterners" live between two and three thousand years. For definition's sake, Teckla are the peasant class, and Easterners are reviled foreigners you and I would recognize as human, living maybe seventy to eighty years if they're lucky. In the dialogue above, he, the narrator, Vlad, is an Easterner, and she, Verra, is a goddess tampering with the Empire.)

Obviously, one cannot draw exact parallels, but infused in those two books are ideas clearly drawn from Trotskyism, socialism, and other leftist influences.

Or we might consider a conversation between Vlad and the Dragaeran Empress:

..."I know that it was my own House that made the petition. But why was it granted?" In other words, since when did a Phoenix Empress care a teckla's squeal about the business workings of House Jhereg?
...She said, "You seem to think I am at liberty to ignore whatever requests I wish to."
..."In a word, Your Majesty, yes. You are Empress."
..."That is true, Baronet Taltos, I am Empress." She frowned, and seemed to be thinking. The floor began to slope up and I began to feel fatigued. She said, "Being Empress has meant many things throughout our long, long history. Its meaning changes with each Cycle, with each House whose turn it is to rule, with each Emperor or Empress who sets the Orb spinning about his or her head. Now, at the dawn of the second Great Cycle, all of those with a bent toward history are looking back, studying how it is we have arrived at this pass, and this gives us the chance to see where we are.
..."The Emperor, Baronet Taltos, has never, in all our long history, ruled the Empire, save now and again, for a few moments only, such as Korotta the Sixth between the destruction of the Barons of the North and the arrival of the Embassy of Duke Tinaan."
..."I know little of these things, Your Majesty."
..."Never mind. I'm getting at something. The peasants grow the food, the nobility distribute it, the craftsmen make the goods, the merchants distribute them. The Emperor sits apart and watches all that goes on to see that nothing disrupts this flow, and to fend off the disasters that our world tries to throw at us from time to time—disasters you can hardly conceive of. I assure you, for example, that stories of the ground shaking and fire spitting forth from it and winds that carried people off during the Interregnum are not myths, but things that would happen were it not for the Orb.
..."But the Emperor sits and waits and studies and watches the Empire for those occasions when something, if not checked, might bring disaster. When such a thing does occur, he has three tools at his disposal. Do you know what they are?"
..."I can guess at two of them," I said. "The Orb and the Warlord."
..."You are correct, Baronet. The third is subtler. I refer to the mechanisms of Imperium, through the Imperial Guards, the Justicers, the scryers, sorcerers, messengers, and spies.
..."Those," she continued, "are the weapons I have at hand with which to make certain that wheat from the north gets south as needed, and iron from the west turns into swords needed in the east. I do not rule, I regulate. Yes, if I give an order, it will be obeyed. But no Emperor, with the Orb or without, can tell if every Vallista mine operator is making honest reports and sending every ton of ore where he says he is."
..."Then who does rule, Your Majesty?"
..."When there is famine in the north, the fishermen in the south rule. When the mines and forges in the west are producing, the transport barns rule. When the Easterners are threatening our borders, the armies in the east rule. Do you mean politically? Even that isn't as simple as you think. At the beginning of our history, no one ruled. Later, it was each House, through its Heir, which ruled each House. Then it became the nobles of all the houses. For a brief time, at the end of the last Cycle, the Emperor did, indeed, rule, but that was short-lived and he was brought down by assassination, conspiracy, and his own foolishness. Now, I think, more and more it is the merchants, especially the caravaneers who control the flow of food and supplies from one side of the Empire to the other. In the future, I suspect it will be the wizards, who are every day able to do things they could not do before."
..."And you? What do you do?"
..."I watch the markets, I watch the mines, I watch the fields, I watch the Dukes and Counts, I guard against disasters, I cajole each House toward the direction I need, I—what is that look on your face for, Baronet?"
..."Each House?" I repeated. "Each House?"
..."Yes, Baronet, each House. You didn't know the Jhereg fits into this scheme? But it must; otherwise why would it be tolerated? The Jhereg feed off the Teckla. By doing so, they keep the Teckla happy by supplying them with things that brighten their existence. I don't mean the peasants, I mean the Teckla who live in the cities and do the menial work none of the rest of us are willing to do. That is the rightful prey of your House, Baronet, for if they become unhappy, the city loses efficiency, and the nobility begins to complain, and the delicate balance of our society is threatened."

I mean, certainly, we have to adapt from a mysterious and fantastic imperium to something more earthly and modern, like our republic. But there are parts of that meandering exploration that are quite clearly drawn from our own reality. To what degree does any executive actually rule the government? To what degree does supply and demand shape political outcomes? Certainly, Zerika IV is an idyllic empress, but there must be a reason a Trotskyist sympathizer wants us to be sympathetic toward a hereditary monarch. The reason, of course, is philosophical distillation.

The reason I would encourage you to enjoy these adventures is because they are laced throughout with the kinds of considerations you and I might find relevant. For instance, if you hated a particular group of people, what do you say to yourself when you realize that all your friends come from that group? There are bits ranging from gambling theory to poverty and discrimination as motivators of crime, theories of jurisprudence, and even some adapted Von Clausewitz (e.g., all wars are started by the defenders; if they gave the aggressors what they wanted, there would be no war) in the various books. Even Valabar's, the best restaurant in the Empire, has its place in the thematic context (e.g., "Do whatever you do to the Easterners, but leave Valabar's alone.")

Over time, my trust in Brust has softened some of my more insistent communitarian arguments, and even contributed to my belief that the revolution must be bloodless, and must work from the bottom up. It's as swashbuckling a good time as can be had while tromping around in social commentary.

One of my favorite bits comes from Yendi, which is pretty much pure gangster adventure, but hints at what would come next in Teckla:

...Walking through the filth in the streets made me want to retch, but I hid it. Anyway, we all know Easterners are filthy, right? Look at how they live. Never mind that they can't use sorcery to keep their neighborhoods clean the way Dragaerans do. If they want to use sorcery, they can become citizens of the Empire by moving into the country and becoming Teckla, or buying titles in the Jhereg. Don't want to be serfs? They're stubborn, too, aren't they? Don't have the money to buy titles? Of course not! Who'd give them a good job, seeing how filthy they are?
...I tried not to let it bother me. Cawti tried too, but I could see the strain around the corners of her eyes and feel it in the purposeful way she walked. I should have felt good about coming back here—successful Easterner boy walks through the old neighborhood. I should have, but I didn't. I only felt sick.

Take that bit and apply it to any number of groups discriminated against in American history: blacks, hispanics, Jews, Irish, Italians, &c. One can even draw certain parallels to Wollstonecraft and Rousseau arguing about dolls.

Yes, the Democrats are generally bought, and largely incompetent. Compared to the seemingly sinister machinations of the Republicans, though, most American liberals, progressives, or whatever else we might call ourselves, will support Democrats in order to slow the pace of digging our own graves.

Meanwhile, we cannot break the cycle entirely without something to replace it. Top-down revolutions, such as the Soviets, Chinese, Koreans, and even the Venezuelans, just don't work. With top-down revolutions, the problem is that we don't necessarily know that the replacement structures will hold. Working from the bottom up, though, we can install each new pillar as the old ones fail. It's a longer process, with less certainty about what the end product will look like, but it's also a process generally untested, and the most likely candidate to replace the top-down revolutions.

It may be a slow transition, but it is more civilized than the alternative on record. And, to be sure, people will continue to starve around the world while waiting for the outcome, but they're starving, anyway, under the current scheme. The question is how to solve the problem soonest, and right now I would suggest a freely electoral transition is probably the quickest route.
____________________

Notes:

Brust, Steven. "Phoenix". 1990. The Book of Taltos. New York: Berkley, 2002.

—————. "Yendi". 1984. The Book of Jhereg. New York: Berkley, 1999.
 
If I wasn't severely allergic to animals, I probably would be much less human-social...I got hit enough that I am very keyed in to body language. Does being autistic change that, or is it so for you also?
I consider the ability to read people's body language so very instinctively and well one of the few positives of growing up the way I did.

I am curious though...how do people respond to epileptics? I've honestly never seen someone have a grand-mal seizure, my (educated) response would be to protect their head first and otherwise try to keep them from hurting themselves.
Then offer them somewhere cool and dark to have a lie-down in, as seizures hurt like hell, right? Are also exhausting, I imagine.



Yeah... Sad to say...there are a lot of people who would fit that description...

I have had about 4 in my life . The worst one was when the whites of Me eyes were showing and everybody in the room thought I was dead . They drug Me into the living room from the kitchen and were about to do something when my step brother came in and stopped them . He told them to leave Me alone and I would come out of it soon . I did and the first thing I did was run to the bathroom and puke on a girl sitting on the toilet. Drained does not describe the feeling after . Ah comparable would be sneezing 50 times in a row . I did that before too . Drained does not describe it . Spent is the word I use . I hate em and have some how figured out how to ward them off when they come . Never know when the trigger will hit and be out of my control though , so constant surveillance is necessary. Anticipation is good to cause I have warded a few that had the potential to be real nasties by laying down on me belly . Maybe I have one in my sleep as lots of times I can't shake the feeling until I slept even if it is just 20 or 30 minutes .

I don't know how related they are to grand-molls or anything like that cause seriously Doctors . Not for me ! They will tell Me I am sick and I can not have that . Not part of Me personal agenda
 
Well, Tiassa, that is the pragmatist approach; but I am not sure I feel comfortable compromising my ideals. And, revolution is something which comes out of necessity, not out of want; it may well be the case that the proletariat of the world shall revolt whether you or I like it or not.

I wouldn't call the Soviet revolution "top-down"; at its core was the peasant and working class, and so I'd call it more bottom-up.

Here is the problem with your solution, though: in all this democratic, gradual reform, the capitalist class continues to resist, makes compromises, and is eventually forgotten, but not destroyed. Again, we forget about communism, and instead end up with a quasi-capitalist society which is still full of injustice.
 
Well, Tiassa, that is the pragmatist approach; but I am not sure I feel comfortable compromising my ideals.
I figured out it was either compromise my ideals or resign myself to killing lots and lots of people to bring the ideals about.
Besides the logistics of getting a .50 cal full auto machine gun...
I could kill someone who was directly attacking me, but an enemy of my political goals?
No.
I am not generally going to be down for mass murder as a way to political goals.

:shrug:

Do what thou wilt and pay as thou goest.
 
If I wasn't severely allergic to animals, I probably would be much less human-social...I got hit enough that I am very keyed in to body language. Does being autistic change that, or is it so for you also?
I consider the ability to read people's body language so very instinctively and well one of the few positives of growing up the way I did.

Honestly, television was a godsend for me. I haven't had one in twenty years (I watch stuff on the internet), but during my formative years it was crucial. I can't read people intuitively at all, but television taught me what to look for--consciously. It also taught me how to "emote" and "express," which is something I apparently do kinda over-the-top.

I am curious though...how do people respond to epileptics? I've honestly never seen someone have a grand-mal seizure, my (educated) response would be to protect their head first and otherwise try to keep them from hurting themselves.
Then offer them somewhere cool and dark to have a lie-down in, as seizures hurt like hell, right? Are also exhausting, I imagine.

Oy, I could go on for hours about this, but a list of some experiences should suffice. I have few tonic-clonic or clonic-tonic seizures, and the ones I do have are of the secondary generalized variety. It's the complex partials which seem to make people behave in a most irrational manner. So, for the partial list:

-- I've been beaten up by cops on two occasions for the "offense" of having a seizure. The second time resulted in a concussion which seriously fucked me up for the following three months.

-- A few years ago, my roommate--an extremely competent and intelligent nurse who has known me for well over a decade--took me into an E.R. at three a.m. about two hours into status epilepticus. The fucking intake morons and nurses stood about and him-hawed for several minutes, insisting that I wasn't seizing--until I started turning blue in the face from cessation of involuntary breathing.

-- Medics have dropped me on my head, shot me up with the wrong meds, and fucked up in every conceivable manner. Now, anyone who knows me well knows to NEVER call the medics on me, lest I shall hunt them down and kill them afterwards.

-- I've been accused of being possessed by demons or devils on more than one occasion.

-- I've been terminated from countless jobs specifically for the reason of "epilepsy"--illegal, yeah, but whatever. :rolleyes:

-- I was fired from a band for being "too epileptic," by a friend of nearly a decade.

I could go on, but frankly it's too depressing. The best thing about it is that you quickly learn who your real friends are. I often joke that I likely would have fared better in Nazi Germany, in spite of being an epileptic Jew--I mean, at least I'm not gay!

In spite of testimony by more than a handful of highly regarded neurologists, ample empirical documentation of the fact that I seize pretty much, well, all the time, all the employment termination crap, etc., I was turned down for disability: the primary reason being that I ought to be able to do something because of my 150+ i.q. Yeah, whatever. So I inhabit the "underground," pay no taxes on what little I make, and basically try to remain as off-the-grid as possible. My only slightly irrational concern being that by not taking these measures, I risk being rounded up for the gulags or internment camps.



Yeah... Sad to say...there are a lot of people who would fit that description...

It's hard to say if they are in fact the majority, or simply a very vocal minority. Regardless, the rest certainly do seem rather complacent. Yet I still embrace anarchism (more of a post-anarchism rather), so I'm not completely pessimistic.
 
But Brust is also a Trotskyist sympathizer. His parents were renowned activists in the American socialist movement. Eventually, this pushes through in the stories...

I mean, certainly, we have to adapt from a mysterious and fantastic imperium to something more earthly and modern, like our republic. But there are parts of that meandering exploration that are quite clearly drawn from our own reality. To what degree does any executive actually rule the government? To what degree does supply and demand shape political outcomes? Certainly, Zerika IV is an idyllic empress, but there must be a reason a Trotskyist sympathizer wants us to be sympathetic toward a hereditary monarch. The reason, of course, is philosophical distillation.

The reason I would encourage you to enjoy these adventures is because they are laced throughout with the kinds of considerations you and I might find relevant. For instance, if you hated a particular group of people, what do you say to yourself when you realize that all your friends come from that group? There are bits ranging from gambling theory to poverty and discrimination as motivators of crime, theories of jurisprudence, and even some adapted Von Clausewitz (e.g., all wars are started by the defenders; if they gave the aggressors what they wanted, there would be no war) in the various books. Even Valabar's, the best restaurant in the Empire, has its place in the thematic context (e.g., "Do whatever you do to the Easterners, but leave Valabar's alone.")

Over time, my trust in Brust has softened some of my more insistent communitarian arguments, and even contributed to my belief that the revolution must be bloodless, and must work from the bottom up. It's as swashbuckling a good time as can be had while tromping around in social commentary...


Take that bit and apply it to any number of groups discriminated against in American history: blacks, hispanics, Jews, Irish, Italians, &c. One can even draw certain parallels to Wollstonecraft and Rousseau arguing about dolls.

Hmmm. You may have sold me on this Brust character. Better than Le Guin, you think?
 
Unfortunately ....

Parmalee said:

Better than Le Guin, you think?

I haven't read enough LeGuin.

• • •​

United for Communism said:

... but I am not sure I feel comfortable compromising my ideals.

If human beings were not intended to compromise, we would not. That is, evolution would have eliminated or forestalled that behavior as extraneous.

Beyond that, the question is a risk-benefit analysis.

I wouldn't call the Soviet revolution "top-down"; at its core was the peasant and working class, and so I'd call it more bottom-up.

The Revolution installed a government, which in turn installed the societal structures. This is the problem of top-down; the Soviets failed to accept that their model could be wrong. Indeed, this is the general failure of top-down revolutions.

Here is the problem with your solution, though: in all this democratic, gradual reform, the capitalist class continues to resist, makes compromises, and is eventually forgotten, but not destroyed. Again, we forget about communism, and instead end up with a quasi-capitalist society which is still full of injustice.

Fits and starts, comrade. Fits and starts. When revolution happens, it happens. Inviting or even picking a fight only gets a lot of people killed, and scares the hell out of the survivors.
 
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I've read quite a bit of LeGuin, and everything by Brust.

I won't say one is better than the other, but I will say I like Brust quite a bit more than LeGuin.
 
BTW, I haven't read this whole thread, so I don't know if it's been asked, but can anyone point to anywhere that communism has worked? On any scale larger than a hippie commune?
 
Sorry, I like Le Guin more. That said I really have liked Brust's Taltos series.

Funny, I always thought he was younger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust

@ Parmalee:
You have some really extreme epilepsy there. It sucks to be one of those people who's way, way outside the norm for severity...
My sinus disease has had two surgeries; the second of which produces clearing in 90% of cases...has not produced clearing in mine and they seem to think I'm nuts.
Welll I am nuts, but that's a different problem-the problem with my sinuses is that I'm a pretty severe case, although not that far out of textbook.

Anyway...
The status epilepticus wiki says:
About one in five people, a total of 42,000 annually in the United States, will die within 30 days of having an initial status epilepticus seizure.
So unusual, not rare though, for the medics to see status epilepticus.
:confused:WTF???

Basically, medical people, especially young doctors, don't deal with exceptional cases well, is what I'm saying, and when told "______ doesn't apply here because of______" they seem to get their nose in a sling.

'Scuse me, you do have training, yes, but I've been living with this since before you were born, please get off the high horse and listen, thanks.
 
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The glaring flaw is that the capitalist class always finds a way to corrupt or destroy you.

There are several glaring flaws in capitalism, just as there are several glaring flaws in socialism, communism, theocracies, monarchies, pure democracies etc. We do pretty well in the US because we pick and choose which of each to utilize, so we avoid the excesses and extremes of any pure -ism.

That's why, though democracy is desired in the long run, the initial phase (socialism) must be a dictatorship of the proletariat class...which will transform into communism.

Dictatorships have a way of evolving to protect the dictators until overthrown violently.
 
Yeah, it happens

Chimpkin said:

I thought of Brust as early 40's for some reason...got the impression he still had teens underfoot...

Well, at one point he did. When did you pick him up in your library?
 
At the end of the day, I'm down for gradualism if we will eventually reach communism. But I don't want to reach a point of stasis before we achieve communism.
 
All hail Marx and Lennon

Allhailmarxandlennon.png
 
That was a time of enormous upheaval; Russia was not an industrialized country, and of course there was bound to be conflict. But the peasant class lived better under communism than under feudalism. This, you cannot deny.
Lived better? Anyone who dared say they weren't happy or wanted to have a say were either killed or forced into labour camps. Take off the rose coloured glasses and see reality.

The peasant class under Lenin were exploited and repressed, feared into complying and sharing the labour while he lived very comfortably and forced the invasion of neighbouring lands.. Any who did not comply were either killed or forced into labour. And you think this was better?

They had no rights.


Why do you continually defend capitalist exploitation?

Because you are offering worse exploitation and repression and trying to name it true communism. That is not true communism.

No; but communism is the end goal.
Then you truly do not understand Marx. Communism should come about naturally, not be the end goal..

Again, why do you keep defending capitalist exploitation? A compromise will not end exploitation.
I want to know why you wish to add repression to the mix?

we won't reach communism through democracy, because the capitalist class will never willingly give up their exploitation; they will want to compromise at best (hence democratic socialism) but they will never accept full communism.
So you wish to reach communism by forcing people into it?

I'm not for centrally-planned government in regard to the day-to-day affairs of the community, anyway; that's why I'm for city-state type government within a larger international framework of communism.

At that level, things can be managed and controlled; and mitigating the worst effects of capitalism can only be done by abolishing it altogether.
You mean akin to what we have now?
 
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