/lit/ - Literature

>>5626197
>Disinformation or lack of information?
neither

>>5626197
I ask myself the same question about monarchy every day.

>tfw there will never be another real king in Europe

Fuck the modern world.

>>5626197
>Why are so many people so vehemently against communism?
Question belongs on >>>/pol/

Also, why are you posting a bourgeois state's iconography in relation to communism?

Stockholm syndrome. People are used to Capitalism, they can't imagine anything else.

Granted, it dosn't help that we haven't had actual communism, just Fascist Dictatorships with Marxist rhetoric.

>in b4 untrue scotsman.

Because Communism is blaspheme. It rips everything off from the Bible, and removes the most important part: Faith.

Communism is Godless religion

>>5626225

>implying any of the 'communist' states were fascist.

lel.

What do you even mean by communism

These terms (capitalism, socialism, communism) are absolutely meaningless when thrown around without specification like that because literally nobody uses the academic definition of them anymore

If you're talking about Soviet Union type of shit they're against it because it sucks

I feel that as the absolute ideal of any system won't work, while many communist elements would be very good in implemented into modern political systems, true communism, just like true capitalism, is impossible, and any attempt to reach it will end in a lot of pointless suffering.

>>5626197
You posted thread on /int/ a couple of hours ago.

In answer to your question people are really not that interested in ideology. How many people understand the implicit ideology of capitalism? Few. The guy before me said Stockholm syndrome. But it's more like you don't really know you are being held captive, because captivity is only implicit in the ideology of your captor.

>>5626274
it's almost like they're manufacturing our consent if you know what i mean

>>5626238
Economy controlled by the state, people controlled by ideology, casual genocide. The "Communist" dictatorships of the 20th century are just fascism with different Rhetoric.

>>5626274
it's almost like they're manufacturing our consent

>>5626280
Hearing a leftist say this in 2014 is grimly hysterical

>>5626230
that's retarded.
you're retarded

>>5626216
Hobbes pls go

>>5626284
as someone who likes to read Chomsky but doesn't know shit what's wrong with Manufacturing Consent

>>5626284
And it's just capitalism with a different rhetoric too. The economy is controlled by people that the state represents. People are controlled by the ideology of consumerism.

>>5626285
>>5626280
Yeah it might sound like I'm espousing Chomsky but I have more of a Zizek point of view.

Has communism ever been applied in a meaningful way? Historical accounts of communist nations read like comedies of error. I feel like I can't judge the concept because it has never actually been implemented without mass murder and famine. It would be like basing my opinion of democracy on a failed African state.

>>5626319
>Has communism ever been applied in a meaningful way?

Do you even read, bro? Seriously? Do you read at all? What do you read?

>>5626197

Muh leftist opinion: Centralizing the economy under a single branch of power and expecting it to effectively determine what is to be produced, while simultaneously *centralizing* power is noooo gooood.

An insurance of equality of opportunity and a minimum livability in a society are pretty great, at that point it's harder to justify circumscribing individual freedoms for group benefit.

>>5626319
>>5626319
From what I've read, the ideal time for communism to be implimented is after industrialization takes place under capitalism. The reason that communism did so bad in the Soviet Union was that, apart from Stalin being fucking insane, Lenin and also Stalin had to industrialize a horrible, war-torn, unindustrialized country, which is nearly impossible without some degree of totalitarianism.

Because it killed 100 million people in less than a century.

>>5626319
According to marx pre-agricultural societies were a form of communism. That might be Noble Savage bullshit, but there is evidence that hunter-gatherers get more leisure time and have better health than primitive agricultural societies.

One could say that all complex forms of society are just an attempt to effect a hunter gatherer mode of production (just take whatever you want whenever you feel like) for a ruling elite. In that view, only a post scarcity society can achieve communism by building machines to provide this lifestyle for every human.

>>5626338
>According to marx pre-agricultural societies were a form of communism. That might be Noble Savage bullshit, but there is evidence that hunter-gatherers get more leisure time and have better health than primitive agricultural societies.

You've misinterpreted this completely

>>5626336
No, the ideal time is in a state of post-scarcity.

>>5626319

Revolutionary Catalonia, the Paris Commune and Zapatista controlled Chiapas were all good implementations of communism/socialism.

>>5626338
Where is the evidence for hunter gatherer societies?

ITT: Center-left people who never read Marx but intend to one day make ineloquent and misinformed statements in defence of it

>>5626362
Given that this is a bait thread nobody who has seriously engaged with Marx will engaged with this thread.

>>5626338
No, hunter-gathererism is not Communistic, it simply also has public ownership. However, this stage of society has public ownership for exactly the opposite reason.

Marx is talking about how material conditions changing cause the perceived ideal system of government to change. When resources are scarce, there is no guarantee that you will find your next meal or shelter, or indeed that your competitor will take it away from you (I am aware this is currently sounding like a social contract). Pre-agricultural societies had to have public ownership due to scarcity of resources.

That is entirely different from public ownership when goods are no longer scarce, which is Communism.

>>5626354
Analysis of bones reveals prehistoric hunter gatherers were more healthy than prehistoric agriculturalists, and ethnography reveals that current hunter gatherer societies spend less time working than their more 'advanced' neighbors.

The problem with this mode of production however is that it can only support small populations. Agriculture requires more labor, but it can also support larger groups of people. A hundred malnourished farmers will still beat a dozen well fed hunter gatherers. Which is why the only ones who still exist live in jungles and deserts.

>>5626380
That's not evidence.

>>5626380
Given that this has absolutely nothing to do with what any socialist ever has based his worldview upon - so there's nothing at stake here - let me kindly warn you that this is probably the most stupid argument I've ever read and advice you to abandon it immediately

>>5626398
Are you suggesting Engels wasn't socialist?

>>5626398
I can understand that the progression of hunter gatherer society into agricultural society is worth evaluating from the viewpoint of historical structuralism.

>>5626284
>>5626309

>>5626447

Evola is like baby's first steps outside of Marxis-centred erudition.
Read Jünger and Spengler instead.

>>5626447
>essential
>implying essences

>>5626447
>taking evola serious

>>5626470
>implying Evola is the only person to say this

>>5626388
>Evidence isn't evidence.

>>5626447

One thing he is right about, both our left and right wing agree upon the same materialist narrative.

If our material thirst is queunched = utopia.

>>5626482
That quote isn't shit I know, but have you read his books?
>muh kali yuga day
>RIDE THE TIGER LOL DON'T CARE ABOUT NOTHING RIDE THE TIGER

Not to mention all that esoteric word salad.

>>5626470
why that fucking cat looks so smug?

>>5626497
Eh, I've read a few of his essays and they're not bad and often have very good and important ideas, but reading up on his books it looks like a lot of inane raving.

Now, see pic related for my favorite reactionary writer. This man was the real deal.

>>5626497

Anything esoteric is word salad by default.
Becuz uninitiates need to fuck off.

Go back to reading your Juden giving you Kabbalah derivatives for intellectual treats.

>>5626508
Is that man checking dubs or something?
I remember reading one of his books long ago. Can't remember anything.
>>5626512
>>>/x/

>>5626508

Go read up on Nicolás Gómez Dávila.
He's also the real deal.

>>5626514
I'd recommend "Liberty or Equality" and "Leftism", wherein everybody gets BTFO.

>>5626515
He looks pretty legit.

>>5626524
thanks

>>5626455

>trying to understand Evola w/o reading Spengler first

step by step

>>5626470
>>5626497
>>5626508

>muh opinions on what is proper writing and what can be written about and whatnot

>mfw these people

>>5626284
Communism is just fascism with different rhetoric.

>>5626540
nice argument faggotron you sure showed me with those hot opinions

>>5626540

But they disagree really.
Evola proves Spengler's point that he's Western as fuck, seeing himself part of a long-extending world history with Europe at its zenith, or in his case, at its nadir.

Spengler doesn't believe in this and sees each culture/civilization as having its own life process. Evola sees a whole world spinning towards muh degeneracy.

>>5626197
Both, of course.

>>5626508

just been reading up on leddihn. sounds fascinating. will absolutely read his history of leftism.

Memories of the Cold War, personal experience, ideology, etc etc.

>>5626197
>Why are so many people so vehemently against communism?

because it destroys economies and cultures, and whenever it's experimented with it's a disaster... so people tend to not like it, specially people who have lived under it.

Because they were literally 1000x worse than the Nazis?

The question is why are people NOT vehemently against communism today? Why can you go around with a communist symbol or picture of Marx on your shirt, but not nazi symbols or hitler?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#Red_Terror

>>5626893
>Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes
You don't actually read the history of the articles you cite do you?

>>5626893

you realize that 'holodomor' it's a political tool of the modern ukraine? it was an ordinary famine, like, say, ireland had had in 19 century

also the scale of stalin's repressions was mostly overblown by the cold war era propaganda and wasn't properly fixed since then when the real data became known

>Why can you go around with a communist symbol or picture of Marx on your shirt, but not nazi symbols or hitler?

because they didn't wage a world war and their ideology is actually international, anti-sexist and socialist (i.e. that society should support its members)

>>5626989
are you trying to make a joke by mentioning the irish famine as 'ordinary'? neither of these situations was a 'natural occurrence.' the governments aren't blameless.

am i not at fault if i exacerbate a wound by ripping it further open and stuffing it with lye?

>>5626197
most people dont understand why capitalism is evil. Everybody thinks we have "equal chances."

>>5627011
Firstly, the famine in question was pan-Soviet in nature, not uniquely Ukrainian.

Secondly, while the Soviet government had a policy of mass population dislocation from rural settlement by dispossession, this policy was not intended to operate by starvation. Compare and contrast with Ireland where there was no policy, of the 1943 Bengali famine which was famine by policy.

Thirdly, when the Soviet government became aware centrally of the famine, remediation efforts began. These were grossly and criminally insufficient, but it again demonstrates that mass starvation of peasants, or Ukrainians in particular, was not policy.

Fourthly, the members of the Soviet Government should have been held personally criminally liable for the famine. The fact that it was not intended, nor policy, nor that remediation efforts were enacted does not lessen in anyway the fact that bourgeois state officials should be personally liable for incompetence.

Fifthly, the peasantries of the Soviet Union bear some responsibility for the famine due to their deliberate underproduction at any market price. The only sectors of the market that produced to price point were the actual Kulaks proper: small agricultural capitalists.

>>5627019
>evil
Fuck off liberal scum.

>>5626989
>it was an ordinary famine, like, say, ireland had had in 19 century
Ireland had suffered other famines before, but each time the Crown had closed the ports to keep food from being exported and driving the price up. This time however, merchants complained, and convinced the crown to keep the ports open.

As a result, the price of food rose higher than people could afford, and millions starved to death. Both the Potato Famine and the Holodomor are considered genocides.

>>5626989

>holodomor denial
>downplaying communist atrocities

>cold war propaganda

You mean Soviet archives that became available once the USSR collapsed.

>>5627035
>Both the Potato Famine and the Holodomor are considered genocides.
Considered such by arseholes, cretins, and the Ukraine state.

>>5627043
>You mean Soviet archives that became available once the USSR collapsed.
Oh look, its the chap who doesn't understand what an archive is.

>>5626893
It is weird that Communism is so socially acceptable, while Nazism is so taboo. I mean, I'm personally contemptuous of them both. Still, is it simply that Nazism was anti-Semitic, whereas Communism was basically very pro-Jewish?

>>5627050
It is more that Soviet Communism had a close relationship to working class movements for 70 years, and actual communism (including that espoused by many a soviet communist rank and filer) was admired and desired by many workers for about 200 years now.

The anarchist / communist / labourist impulse is deeply embedded in working class communities and a major modern structure of desire.

>>5627035
sorry but when it was done without intention to massively murder people it's merely a grave/criminal/whatever incompetence and its genocide status is a political tool

>

I admit I'm not terribly well-read in the subject, but Marxism seems like an impressive and internally-consistent ideology that excuses itself from discussion outside of its theoretical framework.

I can't say it wouldn't work if it were ever truly put into effect, but that has never happened. The bastardized attempts have been disastrous, and I think the intermediate steps advocates want to take toward Marxism are incompatible with the present capitalist system. You can take steps toward anarchocapitalism within capitalism with positive results (a position taken by ancap thinkers, few would say abolition of the state is the only way to improve our situation), but trying to make a Marxist sandwich out of capitalist potatoes is detrimental.

>>5626197

It is a culture eater. It is an economy destroyer.

>Holodomor considered genocide by 25 countries
>2.4 to 7.5 million starved to death

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_repressions_in_Mongolia

> 27,000 Monglians massacred
> 17,000 priests/monks killed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
>22,000 polish massacred


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
>20-40 million died due to failed economic policies.
>Dikötter estimates that at least 2.5 million people were summarily killed or tortured to death during this period
>1.5 million killed during "cultural revolution"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
>20,000 mass graves
>2million killed

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Republic_of_Romania
>deaths in custody are estimated in the 200,000

>North Korea
>1.5 million deaths through concentration camps and slave labor, 500,000 deaths from famine, and 1.3 million killed in the Korean war

Communist genocide history is downplayed and marginalized these days. You can be a marxist/communist professor and teach their idiotic ideology just fine, you can wear Marx t-shirts and wear soviet logos and no one cares. You can go to rallies with your Communist symbols and it's socially acceptable...

Should you be able to do this? Sure, freedom of speech, but we have a huge double standard in our society. Specially European countries. They won WW2 and allied with the UK/USA/France so they are "normalized" in a way. You can't represent them as pure evil because then the Allies would get a bad reputation.

You can deny the holodomor all you want, no one gives a shit about communist atrocities for some reason, they don't "tarnish" communism. Go challenge and question facts about the Holocaust and you'll be thrown in jail in some European countries.

>>5627130
Would you judge Christianity based on the actions of the KKK?

Not everyone who claims to be representing Marxism actually represents Marxism. Every leader whose acts you have cited clearly deviates from Marxist doctrine.

inb4 the no true scotsman bullshit

>>5627104
Unlike anarcho-capitalism (really just Manchester school), Marxism is not an idealist ideology, but a theory of the movement of history. A Marxist doesn't necessarily desire communism: it is simply the implicit requirement of our present society.

>>5627130
>Go challenge and question facts about the Holocaust and you'll be thrown in jail in some European countries.

Questioning it is explicitly or implicitly illegal in 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Romania

Also Canada is pretty anal about it too.

>>5627104
The other thing is that Marxist analysis doesn't say "do this to be virtuous", it says "workers are already doing this, without regard to what the think or idealise"

>>5627130
>death
>killed

you say these like they're bad things

>>5627139

we see a historical pattern emerging when countries apply communism.

I don't care about individuals and the "true communist individual"...I mean as it is practiced as a political structure/mechanism. The pattern is clear.

And the fact is it's downplayed and normalized in our world. While other schools of thought, who are far far less destructive, can literally be banned and get you sent to jail.

>>5627160
marxism seems to be wrong but non-marxist socialism is viable and is already applied in a few 1st world countries, real communism will probably need a post-scarcity society, those countries which are called 'communistic' have in fact some kind of marxist sample of socialism (and they don't call themselves communistic too, it's their ruling party which is 'communist', not the country, people's republic of china, union of soviet socialist republics, republic of cuba, democratic people's republic of korea etc)

>>5626989
> famine being "nature"

>>5627025
The famine was created by the government. The government confiscated grain from the people, and sold it to buy industrial machines from abound.

Do you have downs syndrome?

>>5626197
Propaganda?
The reason people are vehemently against anything?

>>5627044
The English saw the Irish as subhuman. They enslaved them. The famine was genocide. So were all the communist famines.

>>5626289
Good one.

>>5627044
The English saw the Irish as subhuman. They enslaved them. The famine was genocide. So were all the communist famines.

>>5627058
Lol, the Nazis did more to help the common worker than the Communists even if. Getting driven into battle without a weapon is better thought, because if you're dead you'll never be hungry again.

>>5627065
The true anus of the internet.

>>5627139
Yes the KKK is just following the Bible to the letter.

>>5627211
Socialism and communism aren't really different. They are both just as violent and oppressive.

>>5626197
Because they became un-manly faggots. Stalinists are the real communists, not some faggot retards that rebel in a capitalist discourse.

>>5626197
Because communism and all forms of governments that try to push marxist views are a disease.

The only path to wealth and equality is a free-market economy coupled with some minor socialist measures.

Don't agree with me? Look at Hong-Kong. Or Taiwan. Or Australia. Or Chile.

>>5627371
But... but... marxists are the only ones that are smart!!!

>>5627422
>Look at Hong-Kong. Or Taiwan. Or Australia. Or Chile.
This is next level trickery.

>>5626197
>Why are so many people so vehemently against communism?
Because they are adults, and not socially inept NEETs who want the government to fund their isolation.

>>5627438
These four countries have some of the freest economies and also, not coincidentally, score very-high at the HDI and literacy rates while having low unemployment, almost no poverty and universal health-care. How is this trickery?

>>5626197
>>5626893
>>5627130
>>5627442


“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.”
― Karl Marx

>>5626216
Neoreactionaries aren't welcome here. You have a containment board.

>>5627444

>Hong Kong
>a country

stop talking

because shit doesn't work

shit will NEVER work

we trid to make it work spent trillions of rubles on that marxis trash and could not get it to work

even chinese know it is fail they just kept the party dictatorship but changed economy

north korea a shithole

no one can make it work

>>5627139
>no true scotsman bullshit

is not bullshit it describes your post exactly

>>5627455
>separate legal system
>separate currency
>separate passport

Stay mad, commie

>>5627376
>Socialism and communism aren't really different. They are both just as violent and oppressive.

So you can't tell the difference between Soviet-style central planning junk and social democracy such as we see in the Scandinavian countries. Also,

>Yes the KKK is just following the Bible to the letter

Opinion discarded.

>>5627450
Marx was a capitalist...

>>5627104
>I admit I [don't read]
>>>/lit/

>>5627478
The communist committee or whatever isn't really that different than a country. Some say that "socialist country" isn't a thing (because they are fucking retarded children) but yea, the governments of all the countries in all of history where socialist in nature. The collective will of the communist committee is just the same as a government, the socialist countries are just communist in nature. Communism is the state.

The Bible said that slaves are property. The KKK are more Christian than most.

catcha: the matestat

>>5627478
>implying the most prosperous Scandinavian country didn't just elect a right-winged government. >implying most social democrats aren't opposed to pure socialism. >implying that the socialist party in Norway gets more than 4% of the votes. >being this lacking of political nuances. M8 you must be a burgerclap

>>5626338
So why did they switch to agriculture then, huh? Checkmate.