/lit/ - Literature

>>4223207
Well for one it wasn't a very good idea, though it did gain a lot of traction after WWI. Two, you wouldn't be any richer so I don't see why it should've.

>>4223207
.elyts ni kcab emoc ot gniog si ekil uoy mug tahT

It did? No society that I know of has ever referred to themselves as communist, other than, maybe, a few communes here and there.

Are you thinking of Marxist-Leninist single-party States? Their failure was largely due to political and institutional ossification, made worse by the intrinsic stupidities of hierarchy and centralization. Communism didn't fail in these places because communism didn't exist in them.

Communism relies on an inherent goodness in people whereas Capitalism relies on the greed of everyone. It's like asking why /b/ and /pol/ are among the most popular boards on 4chan while /lit/ gets 200+ posts an hour tops.

A history teacher at university put it in perspective for me: Communism was based on a logical outcome for the industrial age. The problem was Russia was not industrialized like the US or the rest of Europe. It kickstarted too early, and it was also too extreme and the only time it worked (it worked for a long time, for a solid decade or two people thought that was going to be the future) was when Stalin was straight up threatening people and killing them, so that kind of doesn't work.

It's incoherent gibberish Marx never meant to be taken seriously as a political platform

>>4223221
Why did it fail to be widely adopted?

inb5 dilettantes who have never read Marx or Gramsci and couldn't tell Bakunin from Bukharin talk about muh human nature and gulags

>>4223207
It didn't. The proletariat made a higher tide in 1968 than was ever made before, even than in 56.

SOLIDARITY FOREVER

>>4223258
Read Lukacs on the only authentic native socialist realist art from the soviet union.

Pro-tip: the GuLag exemplifies proletarian resistance. Moreover, guess which Party Lukacs was a member of in late October 1956?

>>4223207
ah china still communist and has the most economic power atm

>>4223258
holY SHIT AN ELITIST ASSPAINED MARXIST DOUCHE

SOMEONE TAKE A PICTURE

>>4223275

>Thinking that people should read the authors whose ideas they're criticising and have some basic understanding of their basic ideas before doing it is elitist

u r 1 cheeky cunt m8

>>4223207
Ит диди'т.

It can all really be traced back to the constant stage of siege socialist states lived under from 1917 on - the stagnation, the ideological corruption, the growth of the illegal black market in Russia and the rest of the Warsaw Pact states. This stunted their development and led to aberrations and realpolitik that the socialist experiment was still too young to survive. That and the fact that poor old Lenin was too early in his predictions of the end stage of capitalism. I think that now, when capitalism is actually unsustainable, when belief in it or the systems that prop it up are at an all-time low, communism is actually more relevant than it was before the October Revolution.

Because it was imposed by people other than the proletariat.
Because it wasn't international.
Because, surprise, surprise, you can't inject class consciousness into something from above, because if you were successful that class would shake you off or incorporate you (as something not itself). Because the Bolsheviks were primarily communists first, not proletarians. You can't run ahead of history. You're in it.


Later on:

The Soviet economy was slowly becoming stagnant, whilst military spending went through the roof. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was seen as a threat to be countered, and the Soviets threw more money at the military - the US was spending 15-18% of its Gross Domestic Product (how much the country earns) at the military, the Soviets were spending up to 35% - they were bankrupting themselves.

To counter this stagnation Gorbachev introduced the policies of Glasnost' and Perestroika (Openness and Re-Structuring) hoping that people would be open about how to rebuild the communist system, and make it work better. All it did was allowed people to openly criticise the system - soon they were calling for it to be replaced.

Communism was also simply not delivering the promised "workers paradise", wages were stagnant, housing shoddy, cars a rarity, and, from the 1970s they could see the differences between their lifestyle and the West on TV - especially when the (uncensored) Olympics were on.

Soviet Youth were growing tired of being told that they couldn't see certain films, couldn't listen to Western Music, or listen to Western Radio stations, even wearing jeans were frowned on. Glasnost' allowed them to speak out against the regime - and enabled them to listen to the music they wanted.

In the Republics, people were tired of being told what to do by Russians, they wanted to govern themselves, or, at least, have more autonomy within the Soviet framework - but the centre would not budge. Because of Glasnost' they could criticise and soon they began to organise. Eventually the people in the Baltic Republics started protesting - demanding independence, and soon, with the collapse of the union, they got it.

The event that pushed the Soviet Union into the history books was the failed coup of August 1991, when communist hard-liners tried to remove Gorbachev from office, and put in place a more Stalinist system - within two months of this coup the Soviet Union was no more.

On top of all this was the fact that the party-state elite no longer believed in communism, and saw in capitalism the chance to gain the wealth that they saw their Western contemporaries earn. This elite abandoned any pretence of communism from about 1989 onwards, setting up businesses, banks and taking over the ownership of the enterprises where they worked.

The capitalist revolution was, in fact, a revolution by the elite, for the elite.

Because it was imposed by people other than the proletariat.
Because it wasn't international.
Because, surprise, surprise, you can't inject class consciousness into something from above, because if you were successful that class would shake you off or incorporate you (as something not itself). Because the Bolsheviks were primarily communists first, not proletarians. You can't run ahead of history. You're in it.


Later:

The Soviet economy was slowly becoming stagnant, whilst military spending went through the roof. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was seen as a threat to be countered, and the Soviets threw more money at the military - the US was spending 15-18% of its Gross Domestic Product (how much the country earns) at the military, the Soviets were spending up to 35% - they were bankrupting themselves.

To counter this stagnation Gorbachev introduced the policies of Glasnost' and Perestroika (Openness and Re-Structuring) hoping that people would be open about how to rebuild the communist system, and make it work better. All it did was allowed people to openly criticise the system - soon they were calling for it to be replaced.

Communism was also simply not delivering the promised "workers paradise", wages were stagnant, housing shoddy, cars a rarity, and, from the 1970s they could see the differences between their lifestyle and the West on TV - especially when the (uncensored) Olympics were on.

Soviet Youth were growing tired of being told that they couldn't see certain films, couldn't listen to Western Music, or listen to Western Radio stations, even wearing jeans were frowned on. Glasnost' allowed them to speak out against the regime - and enabled them to listen to the music they wanted.

In the Republics, people were tired of being told what to do by Russians, they wanted to govern themselves, or, at least, have more autonomy within the Soviet framework - but the centre would not budge. Because of Glasnost' they could criticise and soon they began to organise. Eventually the people in the Baltic Republics started protesting - demanding independence, and soon, with the collapse of the union, they got it.

The event that pushed the Soviet Union into the history books was the failed coup of August 1991, when communist hard-liners tried to remove Gorbachev from office, and put in place a more Stalinist system - within two months of this coup the Soviet Union was no more.

On top of all this was the fact that the party-state elite no longer believed in communism, and saw in capitalism the chance to gain the wealth that they saw their Western contemporaries earn. This elite abandoned any pretence of communism from about 1989 onwards, setting up businesses, banks and taking over the ownership of the enterprises where they worked.

The capitalist revolution was, in fact, a revolution by the elite, for the elite.

>>4223306
That's a good summary, but it misses a few key points. Namely, I think you overstate the strain of defence spending on the Soviet economy, as well as the scale of both the stagnation and popular discontent within the USSR. This isn't to deny that there weren't serious, serious problems (else why would the black market that the post-1991 capitalists came from exist at all?), but rather to make the case that the real problem was primarily Gorbachev. He didn't simply open up the media, he in fact specifically appointed anti-communists to powerful media positions. He undermined the CPSU at every turn in a bid to secure his initially shakey position, and in doing so broke both the Soviet economy and Soviet society.

Of course, he was a product of the black market, of Khrushchev and of revisionism, as much as one man. Those were the forces that brought the Soviet Union down. I'd go further than you and not call the capitalist revolution a revolution at all - it was a coup, and not in the sense of the laughable, harmless 1991 non-event that Gorbachev inflated into significance. The black market ate the Soviet state, rendered defenseless by a well-meaning idiot.

>>4223316
I just got that from a website, but thank you for a different perspective. I'm reading about it now.

>>4223316
The CPSU needed to be destroyed. The last chance for it to have been brought onside was the 1956 debate over the Hungarian revolution.

Mikoyan and Zhukov lost that debate. As did the working class of Central and Eastern Europe.

Because russkies are natural slaves who can't manage without teh fuhrer. No matter how hard you try to make this country civilized, it's fucked.

>>4223226
Communism relies on the fear that people are not inherently good, and that because of this we have good reason to fear the consequences of capital. Communism does not have, at its goal, the attainment of a society that consists of "mere equals" who own nothing themselves; instead, it simply proposes to free people from the tyranny of having to rely on things owned by other individuals.

>>4223297
I very much agree, this century is a far more appropriate time to transition into communism then that last, especially given the rate of development and also inequality in Asia.

I think communism failed because the revolution was forced externally where as the problems it tried to cure were created by the internal state of the individual. Having said that, I suppose if there was an internal revolution changing enough people's mindset towards altruism, trust and progress some sort of communism would occur naturally.

>>4223221
This old tired argument.

>tfw you're from a post-socialist country and some retard from usa or sweden argues with you about how misunderstood communism is

>>4223207
It is yet to come...
Or are you referring to stalinism , leninism, maoism etc.? That would be another story, they indeed failed, because they were shit.

>>4223747
>maoism failed
Idiot, check out the naxals.

China is still going strong

>>4223753
cause they got the market

>>4223743
>tfw you're from a post-socialist country
Me3

>and some retard from usa or sweden argues with you about how misunderstood communism is

http://www.systemiccapital.com/60-percent-of-russians-want-communism-back/

http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130422/180785765.html

http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/11/03/better-red-than-unfed-a-survey-of-post-communism/

>>4223753
China is an authoritarian capitalist country.

>>4223743

You're an idiot. Which country are you from?

>>4223207
>Why did communism fail?
That's like asking 'why did the Kingdom of God fail'.

Communism, by definition, is a millennial apocalyptic belief, except cloaked in secular language.

Communism is something you believe in (or don't believe in), not something you can implement.

Also, history lesson: _no_ government ever claimed to have implemented communism. (That would be like claiming to be a 'Kingdom of God'.)

Soviet-aligned states were socialist or "people's democracies".

>>4223769
Sad thing is that some people still believe.

We had elections here in Czech Republic on Friday. Communist party was third strongest and got 14,91 % which translates into 33 mandates (out of 200) in the lower house of parliament. Which is 7 more than last time.

>itt: no one mentions books only their unsourced opinions

>>4223822
>>4223743
>tfw eastern europeans are still butthurt

You were going to be geopolitical pawns no matter what. Get over your butthurt national pride.

>>4223822
>We had elections here in Czech Republic on Friday
>Czech Republic

kill yourself

>>4223853
>butthurt national pride

>>4223855
Why?

Because like most ideologies doomed to fail it is idealist. It doesn't start from the viewpoint on how things are, such as with Marx's far more cogent economic criticism, but how things ought to be in their view.
That sort of thinking is very apparent in the modern succesor left's insistence on "educating" normal people on the right way to think rather than accomodating their politics to their already held views.

>>4223822
Jó, v prdeli to je pořádně.


Anyway, my take on why communism failed is that all the communist states were too theocratic. Running the state was about propaganda and leader worshiping.

>worshiping the leader
>censorship
>propaganda
>secret police
I know shit, but that's enough reasons for me to try and fuck up everything possible just to bring down the government.

>>4223889
>>4223915
These two combined.
Václav Havel put it best in The Power of the Powerless. It forced people to live a lie.

BECAUSE GREED IS A THING

>>4223218
lol

>>4223915
>>4223933
Yeah.
Look at China and North Korea now.
It's pretty much the same, but the difference is that in this age of mass media, it's getting debunked.

And nobody realizes it was the same with Stalinism. (I'm saying "nobody" because some people really enjoy being ignorant, see the election results >>4223822)

>>4223889

The idea of 'educating' the rabble, false and true conciousness, is extremely old. It is the idea of Plato's Republic, Rousseau's Social Contract. I think Marcuse calls them 'educational dictatorships'.

Communism cannot fail because it is an eternal notion of the primordial unconscious. As Jung would say, it is a mytho-poetic archetype. It is the idea of universal human brotherhood.

>>4224017
>It is the idea of universal human brotherhood.
For a supposedly universal belief it holds a lot of people to be outside of it. Bourgeoise, reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries seem even more universal terms than the proletariat in practice.

>>4224039

But Marxism is only a particular formulation on the theme of communism. Gerard Winstanley did not require dialectics to conclude with the idea of communism.