/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5744491]

Why are so many /lit/izens commies? What is so appealing about it? Why can't you acknowledge that the pursuit of communism has lead to the most brutal regimes in history?

>b-b-but muh perfectly theoretical utopia
>b-b-but read Marx!!

No. Fuck off. If you're incapable of being neat and explicit about how we would reach communism without having tyrannical demagogues at the top building feudalism instead and killing millions of innocents and silencing all critique then your opinions are worthless.

>no, you see, if we do it THIS way we wouldn't have anything of that.

[Anonymous No.5744500]

It's possible with robots as the ruling class run by a benevolent authoritarian AI.

[Anonymous No.5744507]

>>5744491
>>>>>>>>something was fucked up a few times therefore every idea behind it is wrong
I don't even care about this shit but your logic is ass

[o !!r3+23beQiOG No.5744508]

>>5744491

why do you think that communism is by definition incompatible with the separation of powers?

[Anonymous No.5744510]

>>5744507
Typical commie response. A total non answer

[Anonymous No.5744515]

>Why are so many /lit/izens commies?
Degeneration.

>witness the ever madder howling of the libertarian dogs who are baring their fangs more and more obviously and roam through the alleys of western culture. They seem opposites of the peacefully industrious democrats and ideologists of redistribution, and even more so of the doltish philosophasters and brotherhood enthusiasts who call themselves socialists and want a “free society;” but in fact they are at one with the lot in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every other form of society except that of the autonomous herd (even to the point of repudiating the very concepts of “master” and “servant”—ni dieu ni maître runs a socialist formula). They are at one in their tough resistance to every special claim, every special right and privilege (which means in the last analysis, every right: for once all are equal nobody needs “rights” any more). They are at one in their mistrust of punitive justice (as if it were a violation of those who are weaker, a wrong against the necessary consequence of all previous society). But they are also at one in the religion of pity, in feeling with all who feel, live, and suffer (down to the animal, up to “God”—the excess of a “pity with God” belongs in a democratic age). They are at one, the lot of them, in the cry and the impatience of pity, in their deadly hatred of suffering generally, in their almost feminine inability to remain spectators, to let someone suffer. They are at one in their involuntary plunge into gloom and unmanly tenderness under whose spell the west seems threatened by a new Buddhism. They are at one in their faith in the morality of shared pity, as if that were morality in itself, being the height, the attained height of man, the sole hope of the future, the consolation of present man, the great absolution from all former guilt. They are at one, the lot of them, in their faith in the community as the savior, in short, in the herd, in “themselves”—

>>5744500
>futurism
So it's not possible.

[Anonymous No.5744518]

>>5744510
>I don't even care about this shit

[Anonymous No.5744522]

That's not Marx's Communist, because otherwise it would be stateless.

[Anonymous No.5744523]

Being a commie is dumb, social democracy is less dumb, still, people have to learn there's only benefits to privatizing all the shit and free-market

[Anonymous No.5744527]

>>5744515
Rand? Her essays must be superior prose to
the novels.

[Anonymous No.5744530]

>>5744522
I'm perfectly aware that communism is stateless, I'm a fucking anti-statist myself, that's why I wrote "pursuit of communism", as in I didn't conflate socialism with communism

[Anonymous No.5744532]

>>5744523
2/10

[Anonymous No.5744697]

>>5744491
>implying /pol/ Pot had anything to do with communism

He was an ultranationalist and a stock reactionary, eager to force archaic religious ideals on his people.

Lenny, Stally, and Moomin belong in the pic, though, although it should be noted that all of them were agrarian communists

[Anonymous No.5744708]

>>5744491
>Why are so many /lit/izens commies?

it's more of a mix than you think: I'm a Goldwater Republican. Any other right-wingers want to speak up?

[Anonymous No.5744717]

If you're not willing to read marx you shouldn't be posting about communism on the literature board.

>Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established...
i.e. not a perfect utopia

[Anonymous No.5744723]

>>5744491
All they really have is that Capitalist governments have committed similar atrocities, citing people like Pinochet when he killed an order of magnitude less people than the socialists that never achieved the economic and social reform that he did.

[Anonymous No.5744726]

>>5744717
Exactly what I was talking about.

[Anonymous No.5744727]

Educated people like the readers of /lit/ aren't commies, we're all Libertarian Socialists. Intellectuals stopped being Commies after Hungary was invaded

[Anonymous No.5744731]

>>5744515
>So it's not possible YET.

Fix'd

[Anonymous No.5744734]

>>5744717
Yeah dude, totally, those incidents are capitalism ;)

[Anonymous No.5744736]

>>5744717
capitalism, for all its faults, isn't a system of governement. There is no Capitalist Party. You can be a republican, democrat, libertarian, socialist, liberal or conservative and take itor leave it. Its an economic system based on private ownership of property and free participation (in the ideal case) and competition within that system. Political parties and governments might oppose it, but they're not opposing a set of ideals so much as a way of making markets work.

[Anonymous No.5744738]

because rightwingers can't into culture

[Anonymous No.5744751]

>>5744736
I'm a capitalist.

[Anonymous No.5744757]

>>5744751
cool. me too. i own property and exploit it for my personal benefit. But politically I'm a Republican, not a capitalist.

[Anonymous No.5744760]

>>5744717
>strawmanning this hard

top lel commie. Maybe you should read upon som anti-statism by carl menger and the austrian school, you might actually learn something as opposed to reading marxist fantasies

[Anonymous No.5744765]

>>5744738
I'm pretty sure the right wing is all about preserving culture.

[Anonymous No.5744770]

>>5744738
>still using left-right paradigm like it holds any meaning

what the fuck is a rightwinger? Apparently ayn rand and hitler are both rightwingers... that makes a lot of sense

[Anonymous No.5744782]

>>5744708
Fascist Reporting in. (Following Sir Oswald Mosley his methods.)

[Anonymous No.5744787]

>>5744736

Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Liberals and Conservatives are all Capitalists (when using the typical American understanding of those terms). You can not be a socialist capitalist, those are opposites, socialists oppose private property.

Capitalism is a set of ideals, you named two of them, private ownership and free participation.

You're falling for the Jewish "Capitalism is the natural way, there is no alternative" trick.

[Anonymous No.5744804]

I read Nietzsche, I can't be a commie!

[Anonymous No.5744806]

>>5744491
I like how all the people killed in the pictures are said to be innocents, when all of the four leaders emerged in civil wars against right wing authoritarian forces.

[Anonymous No.5744809]

>>5744765
And preservation is what kills culture.

[Anonymous No.5744814]

>>5744770

Right-wingers are people who think that hierarchies are some combination of inevitable or desirable. If you read anything by those two people it would be glaringly obvious to you why they are both considered right wing.

[Anonymous No.5744816]

>>5744491
Artists like the idea of getting free things

[Anonymous No.5744824]

>>5744491
>Why are so many /lit/izens commies?
Because many of them are failures who rely on government handouts to stay alive. So obviously, they'd be leftists.

[PhilosopherDirtbike !TL2lHmOhmw No.5744827]

The problem is not a political system.

The problem is that humankind is sinful and does not want to admit this.

[Anonymous No.5744828]

no castro no cuba in op's pic

nice try op

[Anonymous No.5744844]

communism works all the time, you just can't force people into it, which means that only small groups of hippie weirdos will ever successfully transition into it, which means that standard of living will always be lower than the larger and more highly specialized surrounding capitalist society, which means that growth of the number and size of communes is going to be limited until capitalism reaches the point of failure (when growth collides with finite resources), and even then, there are cultural limitations, meaning that even communism becomes more attractive due to scarcity issues, there will still always be a surrounding capitalist society that offers the possibility of higher standard of living for some

communism works it's just it will never be a new world order

[Anonymous No.5744885]

>Why are so many /lit/izens commies
>Why are so many people in /biz/ pro free-market
>Why are so many robots in /r9k/ pro prostitution

The answer is all the same, they all cling to positions that give them power.

Under a communist system, intellectuals and bureaucrats (which is what /lit/ is or plans to be) are the rulers, even if they are not part of the all-powerful nomenklatura, they are still regarded as the "engineers of the human soul" and privileged accordingly. What is there not to like in it?

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

[Anonymous No.5744886]

>>5744518
more non answer

[Anonymous No.5744900]

>talk bad about communism
>commies assume your a capitalist and have a million canned arguments
>counter with glorious natsoc arguments
>get insulted for being a fascist while avoiding any actual argument.

Commies have NO counter argument to National Socialist economics.

[Anonymous No.5744913]

>>5744787
>You can not be a socialist capitalist, those are opposites, socialists oppose private property.

Didn't stop socialist countries from having capitalist production in the form of black markets, though. Every single one of them.

>You're falling for the Jewish "Capitalism is the natural way, there is no alternative" trick.

That's besides the point. The difference here is that capitalism is a historical phenomenom, not a ideology. It existed for centuries before someone even bothered to systematize it in words. And the guy who did it, Adam Smith, wasn't a ideologue, an inventor of rhetorical symbols willing to build a new future out of thin air in favour of the ambitions or this or that class. He was a scientist ellaborating hypothesis to describe and explain an existing reality.

Compare that with socialism, which millenia before existing already had it's ideologues, it's propagandists, it's aestheticians interested in justify the interests of certain ambitious groups. That's why the conflict between socialism and capitalism is not a conflict between ideologies, the defense of socialism is always based on the attribution to itself of the imaginary merits of an possible future, while the defense of capitalism (with the exception of some free-market fundamentalists and libertarians, i don't like them either) is based on analysis of existing economic processes and the means to mitigate it's failings and improve it's efficiency.

[Anonymous No.5744917]

>>5744885
How would communism give people who like books power?

[Anonymous No.5744932]

>>5744917
Instead of being the guy that has to work in a plant all day, /lit/ would obviously become the artists.

[Anonymous No.5744938]

>>5744717
i bet these guys killed more than 80.000.000 people

[Anonymous No.5744939]

>>5744917
Communism is based on the works of an very prolific XIXth century german writer and it's interpretators. The one who controls the "meaning" of the book, controls the reality, which is basically how the Church mantained power in the Middle Ages, or the Brahmin in Vedic India, the Magi in Sassanid Persia, Rabbis in Talmudic Judaism etc.

Communism is better understood as a theocratic project for intellectuals than anything else (is no coincidence that many prominent communists came from priestly families, beginning with Marx being descended from rabbis).

>"Probably the intellectual has more difficulty than the common man in freeing himself from this ideology which, like the State which derives from it, is his especial handiwork. The Soviet government rules in the name of a doctrine elaborated by an intellectual whose life was spent in libraries and interpreted for the past century by countless other intellectuals. Under a Communist régime the intellectuals, sophists rather than philosophers, rule the roost. The examining magistrates who unmask deviations, the writers coerced into socialist realism, the engineers and managers who are supposed to execute the plans and to interpret the ambiguous orders of the central authority—all must be dialecticians. The Secretary-General of the Party, master and arbiter over the lives of millions of men. is also an intellectual: at the end of a triumphal career he offers to the faithful a theory of capitalism and socialism—as though a book represented the highest accomplishment. The emperors of old were often poets or thinkers; for the first time the emperor actually reigns qua dialectician, interpreter of the doctrine and of history."

Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals

[Anonymous No.5744941]

>>5744932
Thats more utopic than becoming rich in a capitalist system.

[Anonymous No.5744948]

Every major western country has a mixed economy.

Mixed economy counter cyclical policy masterrace.

[Anonymous No.5744949]

>>5744491
I thought most were anarchists

[Anonymous No.5744956]

capitalist brutality is still hidden in the third world, and in the factories, and in the slums. it's not in the history books and it's still ongoing

[Anonymous No.5744962]

>>5744530
your image and your argument seem to contradict each other

[Anonymous No.5744963]

>applying dogmatic horseshit like historic dialectic materialism to a society
>expect anything other than complete failure

By the way, this goes for any flavor of dogmatic horseshit presented as some kind of infallible, flawless revelation.

[Anonymous No.5744967]

It's alright, 'cause the historical pattern has shown
How the economical cycle tends to revolve
In a round of decades three stages stand out in a loop
A slump and war then peel back to square one and back for more

Bigger slump and bigger wars and a smaller recovery
Huger slump and greater wars and a shallower recovery

You see the recovery always comes 'round again
There's nothing to worry for things will look after themselves
It's alright, recovery always comes 'round again
There's nothing to worry if things can only get better

There's only millions that lose their jobs
And homes and sometimes accents
There's only millions that die in their bloody wars, it's alright

It's only their lives and the lives of their next of kin that they are losing

[Anonymous No.5744977]

>>5744900
I think Nazi Germany's war booty economy is a good counter argument to National Socialist economics.

[Anonymous No.5745001]

>>5744977
Elaborate please. Most of the nazi economic reforms were pretty good from a text book econ perspective.

[Anonymous No.5745018]

>>5744913

The black markets weren't involved with producing something, nothing was made on the black market, there was a poor distribution of goods in the Socialists countries which led to black markets forming. Just because a market exists doesn't mean that Capitalism does, there was no private ownership of the means of production in Socialist countries.

Adam Smith was an ideologue (not that there's anything wrong with that). Capitalism did not exist before Wealth of Nations, Mercantilism was at most a precursor. Did you even read the book (or any book for that matter)? He's arguing about what needs to be changed the entire book. Private ownership was a policy that was applied to the current world at the time, slowly but surely communal land was broken up into private plots, and rules regarding what aristocrats could do with their land were lifted (after the French and American revolutions in those countries, and not until the 20th Century in countries such as England and Germany).

Socialism didn't have ideologues millenia before 1917, it arose in the early 19th Century and didn't exist as a political movement until the late 19th Century. It existed alongside Capitalism for the bulk of the 20th Century. Of course Socialists based analysis on existing economic processes. What do you think the Soviet economists were doing all those years? There were way more rational than Capitalist economists, who either do things empirically or base their findings on models (while Soviets could say "this much will be produced this year, and this much will be produced next year" with much greater accuracy).

You seem to be confusing socialism with communism, the latter is certainly a Utopian belief of an imaginary future, an ideal to work towards whether or not it is possible according to its proponents.

[Anonymous No.5745023]

>>5745001
Not only did their attempt to make Germany an autarky fail, by the 40's their entire economy basically ran on loot from the countries they invaded. Also corporatism is fucking stupid. You fucking idiot fascist. Sorry for insulting you.

[Anonymous No.5745031]

>>5745023
It ran on deficit spending from the government m8. They lowered interest rates to zero and fiscal stimulused the fuck out their economy. That's exactly what we should be doing now.

They used all that to shit on surrounding countries and be jackasses, but other than that it was pretty solid.

[Anonymous No.5745032]

>>5745001

What reforms are you talking about, there were very few (taking shit from Jews was about it). The main thing they did to change the economy was start a bunch of wars, which worked very badly for Germany.

[Anonymous No.5745034]

/lit/ is marxist because marxist literary criticism is still a key piece of curriculum is just about every english department in the West. it's engaging and easily taught.

[Anonymous No.5745037]

>>5744491


One day in the great jury room of the Grand Jury of the Southern District of New York, a juror leaned forward slightly and asked me: “Mr. Chambers, what does it mean to be a Communist?” I hesitated for a moment, trying to find the simplest, most direct way to convey the heart of this complex experience to men and women to whom the very fact of the experience was all but incomprehensible.

Then I said:

“When I was a Communist, I had three heroes. One was a Russian. One was a Pole One was a German Jew.”

“The Pole was Felix Djerjinsky. He was ascetic, highly sensitive, intelligent. He was a Communist. After the Russian Revolution, he became head of the Tcheka and organizer of the Red Terror. As a young man, Djerjinsky had been a political prisoner in the Paviak Prison in Warsaw. There he insisted on being given the task of cleaning the latrines of the other prisoners. For he held that the most developed member of any community must take upon himself the lowliest tasks as an example to those who are less developed. That is one thing that it meant to be a Communist.”

“The German Jew was Eugen Levine. He was a Communist. During the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919, Levine was the organizer of the Workers and Soldiers Soviets. When the Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed, Levine was captured and court-martialed. The court-martial told him: ‘You are under sentence of death’ Levine answered: ‘We Communists are always under sentence of death.’ That is another thing that it meant to be a Communist.”

“The Russian was not a Communist. He was a pre-Communist revolutionist named Kalyaev. (I should have said Sazonov.) He was arrested for a minor part in the assassination of the Tsarist prime minister, von Plehve. He was sent into Siberian exile to one of the worst prison camps, where the political prisoners were flogged.”

“Kalyaev sought some way to protest this outrage to the world. The means were few, but at last he found a way. In protest against the flogging of other men, Kalyaev drenched himself in kerosene, set himself on fire and burned himself to death. That also is what it meant to be a Communist.”

That also is what it means to be a witness…

[Anonymous No.5745039]

>>5745031

The deficit spending was to fund being jackasses to other countries.

[Anonymous No.5745043]

>>5745037


Few men are so dull that they do not know that the crisis exists and that it threatens their lives at every point. It is popular to call it a social crisis. It is in fact a total crisis—religious, moral, intellectual, social, political, economic. It is popular to call it a crisis of the Western world. It is in fact a crisis of the whole world. Communism, which claims to be a solution of the crisis, is itself a symptom and an irritant of the crisis.

In part, the crisis results from the impact of science and technology upon mankind which, neither socially nor morally, has caught up with the problems posed by that impact. In part, it is caused by men’s efforts to solve those problems. World wars are the military expression of the crisis. World-wide depressions are its economic expression. Universal desperation is its spiritual climate.

This is the climate of Communism. Communism in our time can no more be considered apart from the crisis than a fever can be acted upon apart from an infected body.

I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time. You will ask: Why, then, do men become Communists? How did it happen that you, our gentle and loved father, were once a Communist?

[Anonymous No.5745048]

>>5745043


Were you simply stupid? No, I was not stupid. Were you morally depraved? No, I was not morally depraved. Indeed, educated men become Communists chiefly for moral reasons. Did you not know that the crimes and horrors of Communism are inherent in Communism? Yes, I knew that fact. Then why did you become a Communist? It would help more to ask: How did it happen that this movement, once a mere muttering of political outcasts, became this immense force that now contests the mastery of mankind? Even when all the chances and mistakes of history are allowed for, the answer must be: Communism makes some profound appeal to the human mind. You will not find out what it is by calling Communism names. That will not help much to explain why Communism whose horrors, on a scale unparalleled in history, are now public knowledge, still recruits its thousands and holds its millions—among them some of the best minds alive. Look at Klaus Fuchs, standing in the London dock, quiet, doomed, destroyed, and say whether it is possible to answer in that way the simple question: Why?

First, let me try to say what Communism is not. It is not simply a vicious plot hatched by wicked men in a sub-cellar. It is not just the writings of Marx and Lenin, dialectical materialism, the Politburo, the labor theory of value, the theory of the general strike, the Red Army, secret police, labor camps, underground conspiracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the technique of the coup d’etat. It is not even those chanting, bannered millions that stream periodically, like disorganized armies, through the heart of the world’s capitals: Moscow, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Rome. These are expressions of Communism, but they are not what Communism is about.

Communists were assumed to be criminals, pariahs, clandestine men who lead double lives under false names, travel on false passports, deny traditional religion, morality, the sanctity of oaths, preach violence and practice treason. These things are true about Communists, but they are not what Communism is about.

[Anonymous No.5745049]

>>5745032
Basically low interest and government spending. That's a solid way to get out ofa depression.

[Anonymous No.5745054]

>>5745048


The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical appeal: “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain.” It is a simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy use: “Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary to change the world.” Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weaknesses of the body and the irresolution of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large measure the rest of the world has lost that power, is the power to hold convictions and to act on them. It is the same power that moves mountains; it is also an unfailing power to move men.

Communists are that part of mankind which has recovered the power to live or die—to bear witness—for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith that inspires men to live or die for it.

It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God…

This vision is the Communist revolution, which, like all great revolutions, occurs in man’s mind before it takes form in man’s acts. Insurrection and conspiracy are merely methods of realizing the vision; they are merely part of the politics of Communism. Without its vision, they, like Communism, would have no meaning and could not rally a parcel of pickpockets. Communism does not summon men to crime or to utopia, as its easy critics like to think. On the plane of faith, it summons mankind to turn its vision into practical reality. On the plane of action, it summons men to struggle against the inertia of the past which, embodied in social, political and economic forms, Communism claims, is blocking the will of mankind to make its next great forward stride. It summons men to overcome the crisis, which, Communism claims, is in effect a crisis of rending frustration, with the world, unable to stand still, but unwilling to go forward along the road that the logic of a technological civilization points out—Communism.

[Anonymous No.5745056]

>>5745039
Ya but it didn't have to be. They could have spent most of it on roads (which they actually did kinda) and infrastructure. Or just handed it out.

[Anonymous No.5745061]

>>5744787
no there are plenty of alternatives and anyone is free to pursue them. its when people try to keep others from practicing capitalism that you get friction.

[Anonymous No.5745065]

>>5745054


This is Communism’s moral sanction, which is twofold. Its vision points the way to the future; its faith labors to turn the future into present reality. It says to every man who joins it: the vision is a practical problem of history; the way to achieve it is a practical problem of politics, which is the present tense of history.

Have you the moral strength to take upon yourself the crimes of history so that man at last may close his chronicle of age-old, senseless suffering, and replace it with purpose and a plan? The answer a man makes to this question is the difference between the Communist and those miscellaneous socialists, liberals, fellow travelers, unclassified progressives and men of good will, all of whom share a similar vision, but do not share the faith because they will not take upon themselves the penalties of the faith. The answer is the root of that sense of moral superiority which makes Communists, though caught in crime, berate their opponents with withering self-righteousness…

You will ask: Why, then, do men cease to be Communists? One answer is: Very few do. Thirty years after the Russian Revolution, after the known atrocities, the purges, the revelations, the jolting zigzags of Communist politics, there is only a handful of ex-Communists in the whole world. By ex-Communists I do not mean those who break with Communism over differences of strategy and tactics (like Trotsky) or organization (like Tito). Those are merely quarrels over a road map by people all of whom are in a hurry to get to the same place.

Nor, by ex-Communists, do I mean those thousands who continually drift into the Communist Party and out again. The turnover is vast. These are the spiritual vagrants of our time whose traditional faith has been leached out in the bland climate of rationalism. They are looking for an intellectual night’s lodging. They lack the character for Communist faith because they lack the character for any faith. So they drop away, though Communism keeps its hold on them.

By an ex-Communist, I mean a man who knew clearly why he became a Communist, who served Communism devotedly and knew why he served it, who broke with Communism unconditionally and knew why he broke with it. Of these there are very few—an index to the power of the vision and the power of the crisis…

[Anonymous No.5745066]

>>5745065


It is a fact that a man can join the Communist Party, can be very active in it for years, without completely understanding the nature of Communism or the political methods that follow inevitably from its vision. One day such incomplete Communists discover that the Communist Party is not what they thought it was. They break with it and turn on it with the rage of an honest dupe, a dupe who has given a part of his life to a swindle. Often they forget that it takes two to make a swindle.

Others remain Communists for years, warmed by the light of its vision, firmly closing their eyes to the crimes and horrors inseparable from its practical politics. One day they have to face the facts. They are appalled at what they have abetted. They spend the rest of their days trying to explain, usually without great success, the dark clue to their complicity. As their understanding of Communism was incomplete and led them to a dead end, their understanding of breaking with it is incomplete and leads them to a dead end. It leads to less than Communism, which was a vision and a faith. The world outside Communism, the world in crisis, lacks a vision and a faith.

There is before these ex-Communists absolutely nothing. Behind them is a threat. For they have, in fact, broken not with the vision, but with the politics of the vision. In the name of reason and intelligence, the vision keeps them firmly in its grip—self-divided, paralyzed, powerless to act against it.

Hence the most secret fold of their minds is haunted by a terrifying thought: What if we were wrong? What if our inconstancy is our guilt? That is the fate of those who break without knowing clearly that Communism is wrong because something else is right, because to the challenge: God or Man?, they continue to give the answer: Man. Their pathos is that not even the Communist ordeal could teach them that man without God is just what Communism said he was: the most intelligent of the animals, that man without God is a beast, never more beastly than when ho is most intelligent about his beastliness. “Er nennt’s Vernunft,” says the Devil in Goethe’s Faust, “und braucht’s allein nur tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein” —Man calls it reason and uses it simply to be more beastly than any beast. Not grasping the source of the evil they sincerely hate, such ex-Communists in general make ineffectual witnesses against it. They are witnesses against something; they have ceased to be witnesses for anything.

[Anonymous No.5745071]

>>5745066


Yet there is one experience which most sincere ex-Communists share, whether or not they go only part way to the end of the question it poses. The daughter of a former German diplomat in Moscow was trying to explain to me why her father, who, as an enlightened modern man, had been extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable anti-Communist. It was hard for her because, as an enlightened modern girl, she shared the Communist vision without being a Communist. But she loved her father and the irrationality of his defection embarrassed her. “He was immensely pro-Soviet,” she said, “and then—you will laugh at me—but you must not laugh at my father—and then one night in Moscow he heard screams. That’s all. Simply one night he heard screams.”

A child of Reason and the 20th century, she knew that there is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a logic that may be more compelling than the mind’s. She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night he heard screams.

What Communist has not heard those screams? They come from husbands torn forever from their wives in midnight arrests. They come, muffled, from the execution cellars of the secret police, from the torture chambers of the Lubianka, from all the citadels of terror now stretching from Berlin to Canton. They come from those freight cars loaded with men, women and children, the enemies of the Communist State, locked in, packed in, left on remote sidings to freeze to death at night in the Russian winter. They come from minds driven mad by the horrors of mass starvation ordered and enforced as a policy of the Communist State. They come from the starved skeletons, worked to death, or flogged to death (as an example to others) in the freezing filth of sub-arctic labor camps. They come from children whose parents are suddenly, inexplicably, taken away from them—parents they will never see again.

What Communist has not heard those screams? Execution, says the Communist code, is the highest measure of social protection. What man can call himself a Communist who has not accepted the fact that Terror is an instrument of policy, right if the vision is right, justified by history, enjoined by the balance of forces in the social wars of this century? Those screams have reached every Communist’s mind. Usually they stop there. What judge willingly dwells upon the man the laws compel him to condemn to death—the laws of nations or the laws of history?

[Anonymous No.5745096]

>>5745071


But one day the Communist really hears those screams. He is going about his routine party tasks. He is lifting a dripping reel of microfilm from a developing tank. He is justifying to a Communist fraction in a trade union an extremely unwelcome directive of the Central Committee. He is receiving from a trusted superior an order to go to another country and, in a designated hotel, at a designated hour, meet a man whose name he will never know, but who will give him a package whose contents he will never learn. Suddenly, there closes around that Communist a separating silence, and in that silence he hears screams. He hears them for the first time. For they do not merely reach his mind. They pierce beyond. They pierce to his soul. He says to himself: “Those are not the screams of man in agony. Those are the screams of a soul in agony.” He hears them for the first time because a soul in extremity has communicated with that which alone can hear it—another human soul.

Why does the Communist ever hear them? Because in the end there persists in every man, however he may deny it, a scrap of soul…

[Anonymous No.5745118]

>>5744510
do you even know what logical fallacies are

[Anonymous No.5745127]

>pol pot
>communist

>building feudalism instead

lol read more.

[Anonymous No.5745134]

>>5744717
What did Frick have to do with the pinkertons?

[Anonymous No.5745173]

>>5745018
>there was no private ownership of the means of production in Socialist countries

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

>Adam Smith was an ideologue (not that there's anything wrong with that). Capitalism did not exist before Wealth of Nations, Mercantilism was at most a precursor. Did you even read the book (or any book for that matter)? He's arguing about what needs to be changed the entire book. Private ownership was a policy that was applied to the current world at the time, slowly but surely communal land was broken up into private plots, and rules regarding what aristocrats could do with their land were lifted (after the French and American revolutions in those countries, and not until the 20th Century in countries such as England and Germany).

That process began in the 16th century with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, at the time Adam Smith wrote his book, it was already going on for 200 years.

>Socialism didn't have ideologues millenia before 1917

Who are Mazdak and Thomas Muntzer, along countless others?

[Anonymous No.5745224]

Itt: pure ideology

[Anonymous No.5745247]

>>5744510
But he's right, anon.

Perhaps instead you should see it from another perspective. Does the existence of Stalin mean Liberal Capitalism is the end of history a la Fukuyama. I do not think so. I am a leftist, and an anti-capitalist, and maybe even a communist, but it seems impossible to offer up ideas of advancement without being immediately shot down because:

>muh Stalin

[Anonymous No.5745261]

>>5744806
Bud all does innosends deglared war on de communisd rah-jeems and lost...

[Anonymous No.5745268]

>>5745173

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot

You're right, I meant to say almost none, you are technically correct in that a tiny fraction of agricultural property was held privately.

>That process began in the 16th century with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, at the time Adam Smith wrote his book, it was already going on for 200 years.

No, that was not Capitalism. Obviously it was a precursor but Mercantilism was not Capitalism.

>Who are Mazdak and Thomas Muntzer, along countless others?

People seen as having proto-socialist views in the 20th century.

[Anonymous No.5745281]

>>5744913
>The difference here is that capitalism is a historical phenomenom, not a ideology. It existed for centuries before someone even bothered to systematize it in words.

I'm pretty sure commodity fetishization and bourgeois control of government have not been the status quo for centuries

[Anonymous No.5745292]

>>5744510
typical non-commie response

[Anonymous No.5745295]

>heh communism would work if people weren't so greedy!

every time

[Anonymous No.5745298]

>>5745295
Anyone who says that needs hard labor. We need to start sending our prisoners to Alaska to work on the frontiers.

[Anonymous No.5745318]

>that was not Capitalism

How? It was literally private ownership of the means of production. The social effects of the Enclosures in 17th century England are basically the same as the social effects of the expansion of private ownership of land in the Brazilian Amazon right now, and we can safely say that this expansion is motivated by capitalism.

Of course, Mercantilism can live with Capitalism, just like Socialism can live with Capitalism and vice-versa. History is not some sort of schematic shit where one economical system just displace another like that, heck, feudalism is still alive in the fucking United Kingdom.

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

>People seen as having proto-socialist views in the 20th century

Well, i think there mere fact that "people having proto-socialist views" exist in the 7th century, but not "people having proto-capitalist views" in the 7th century, strenghens my point that capitalism, unlike socialism, is not really a ideology. Of course, you can have ideological proponents of capitalism, and we got plenty of this shit in the last centuries

>>5745281
"commodity fetishization" is a buzzword and bourgeois control of government is a historical phenomenom that can be said to have begun in the 17th century in England, and in late 18th century in France.

What's your point?

[Anonymous No.5745326]

>>5745247


the real joke is that the internal teleology of enlightenment liberalism also leads to communism. when you try to square it with catallaxy its either an exercise in unprincipled exceptions (if a beneficent one), or youre not actually talking about liberalism anymore.

let it not be said that the jacobins did not intimately appreciate locke and rousseau.

[Anonymous No.5745328]

>>5744736
>republican, democrat, libertarian, socialist, liberal or conservative

uh yes, all of which all fall under the aegis of "capitalism" in america. we live in a capitalist country and all of our major parties are capitalist parties. there is no serious capitalist opposition in the country (even though small variations on capitalism like the democratic and green parties are often shrieked about as though they aren't, which is a whole separate conversation).

[Anonymous No.5745330]

>>5744765
>suppressing

[Anonymous No.5745333]

>>5745326
Which is why neo-reactionaries exist. They understood exactly that.

I, for one, wouldn't want to get rid of liberal democracy but if it's necessary to get rid of the unevitable shift towards communism in democracies, i'm ok with that. But what i really wanted was to get rid of the French Enlightenment, cherish the Scottish one and build a new philosophical basis for liberal democracy, maybe seeing it as a expansion of the old aristocratic freedoms (think Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) instead of bullshit like "general will" or "the people shall rule".

[Anonymous No.5745334]

>>5744491
i want /pol/ to go

[Anonymous No.5745335]

>>5744932

why do you think people who "like books" are only aesthetes? that's stupid and lazy.

[Anonymous No.5745336]

>>5744491
>you are somehow not away that capitalism's death count compared to communism has to be 20:1 and still climbing, and that's not even touching its environmental/species destruction.

[Anonymous No.5745345]

>>5745326
This I agree with, but the liberals no longer believe in liberalism. They are acolytes of a mass media empire, a late-capitalist Westphalian-state. That seems to be what liberalism has become.

[Anonymous No.5745358]

>>5745333


the scottish thinkers were an unusual breed, for sure. have you read humes history of england? it had a great deal of breadth in topics covered, including some of his ideas wrt good social organism.

[Anonymous No.5745360]

>>5744717
Pinochet commited mass killings before accepting capitalism as the main economic method in Chile. He was a socialist and hated the Milton Friedman and the USA.

[Anonymous No.5745363]

>>5745345
Nah, the easiest thing to do is to convert a liberal into a communist by playing into his beliefs, i've seen it done a dozen times.

And it's not like communism never had a mass media empire of it's own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willi_M%C3%BCnzenberg

[Anonymous No.5745374]

>>5745336
>'Away'
>He thinks he has a viable opinion even though he can't spell

[Anonymous No.5745375]

>>5745333
Liberal democracy is a prerequisite for a functioning capitalist economy, except maybe totalitarian state capitalism (e.g. China, Singapore) but we'll see how that pans out

[Anonymous No.5745376]

>>5745295
Who painted that? Reverse image says nothing

[Anonymous No.5745381]

>>5745360
Really, the fact that the best they can muster is Pinochet should be propaganda for capitalism. He killed, what, 3000 people, while dismantling an entire communist operation in Chile, with parallel state and a whole army (the MIR)? That's fucking few. Stalin would kill 3000 in a day while fighting a unexistant entity like the ones his spies invented to justify his purges.

[Anonymous No.5745386]

>>5745360
>[Pinochet] was a socialist and hated the Milton Friedman and the USA.
You learn something new everyday

[Anonymous No.5745392]

>>5745376
lifeiniambs.tumblr.com

Don't think there's any art on that page though, I just know that's who painted it

[Anonymous No.5745409]

>>5745375
>a functioning capitalist economy is a prerequisite to support liberal democracy

FTFY

[Anonymous No.5745430]

daily reminder that capitalism is literally feudalism

[Anonymous No.5745438]

>>5745374
>typos wipe away facts

You're only fooling yourself.

[Anonymous No.5745516]

>>5745430

>daily reminder that capitalism is literally feudalism

sounds like a vote of confidence to me!