One of communism’s claims to legitimacy was its basis in so-called scientific inevitability. For every thesis, Marx said, there is an antithesis. When these realities collide they consume each other to develop a new synthesis. The synthesis becomes a new thesis with a corresponding antithesis, and after a long series of iterations the end result – it was supposed – was communism. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. And so on.
Quite why it was thought that the material dialectic would cease at communism was never sufficiently explained to me.
But it probably was explained to Red Square over at The Peoples’ Cube. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, and emigrated to the US, he still remembers his dialectic, no to mention the corresponding humor with which the sore oppressed Russian people dealt with the austere glories of socialism:
The six dialectical contradictions of socialism in the USSR:
- There is full employment – yet no one is working.
- No one is working – yet the factory quotas are fulfilled.
- The factory quotas are fulfilled – yet the stores have nothing to sell.
- The stores have nothing to sell – yet people got all the stuff at home.
- People got all the stuff at home – yet everyone is complaining.
- Everyone is complaining – yet the voting is always unanimous.
Funny enough as far as it goes. But it goes further. Read on to see how the dialectic is applied in modern day America.
Do I honestly believe that we as a nation are moving towards the statist economic and social model finally rejected by the Russian people?
No, of course not. It’s different this time.
It may or may not be different this time, but #27 on lexidiem’s list is a necessary lie… to wit:
Unless you really enjoy getting beat about the head and shoulders… physically or mentally. Discretion… valor… and all that.
Amen, brother Buck!
Red Square’s post simply confirmed that the horrible deja vue I am having is not a result of my allegedly warped perception of the hopen-change…
Most smart women don’t ask their significant others if a new outfit makes them look fat. They know they’ll be lied to. Only if a man volunteers a favorable comment without being asked will they believe it. And love him to pieces for it.
That’s reasonable, isn’t it?
Marianne
My favorite joke from the old Soviet days was this:
“It’s a good system. We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us…”
Must be the age of O’Brobin Hood. As a corollary to your Soviet joke there Tim, #1 on the list “The check is in the mail” is why I am suing the contracting company that employs me…. for 5 months of back wages.
Assuming (and I will agree with that assumption for the time being) that Obama will/is moving the US towards more of a socialist model, there is still a big difference between socialism and communism. Which difference somehow seems to often be missed around here. And which I really don’t get given what a well-read intelligent group inhabits these parts.
So even though I know you must know, I will say it anyway:
As I understand it, although both socialism and communism are based on the principle that the goods and services produced in an economy should be owned publicly and controlled and planned by a centralized organization, even a purely socialist society (and there aren’t many, if any, of those around) would assert that distribution should take place according to the amount of an individual’s production efforts, as opposed to communism which would assert that goods and services should be distributed according to an individual’s needs.
Communists would assert that both capitalism and private ownership of means of production must be done away with as soon as possible in order to make sure a classless society is formed. As opposed to socialists, who not only believe that socialism can exist in a capitalist society but that everyone within the society will benefit from capitalism as much as possible as long as the capitalism is controlled somehow by a centralized planning system.
So, given all that, I don’t get it. Why always the blurring of the line between socialism and communism? Why paint every country outside the US with a red brush? It’s enough to make a person question whether Obama and his crew are the only ones with an agenda at play.
And much like my flabergastation (yes, a new word) when I was told that you can believe in God, Jesus and that the Bible is God’s word, but if you don’t believe in the Trinity, you’re not a Christian (leaving you a heathen, I suppose), I am equally at a loss to understand why living in a country that combines elements of capitalism with elements of socialism makes me a person a Communist. But that’s just me, I suppose…
Darn, Lex, you really need to hang a sign out before you turn the comment edit function off… which apparently is back on for this comment. Okay, colour me
redembarassed, if you must.Well, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union didn’t claim to be ruling a communist country, only a socialist one (the second “s” in USSR). They were *building* communism as a synthesis of the friction between capitalism and socialism. For a while there were those who thought they could do it all on their own, but the persistent deficit between what their ideology told them should be happening and what actually was convinced most of them that communism would have to happen everywhere (the comintern) before it could really happen anywhere.
After capitalism fell away – I much prefer “free markets”, by the way, we concede an early defeat once we allow our adversary to define the terms for us – communism would take place, and we’d all happily labor away in our soviets for the common good, with such nasty innovations as national boundaries and currencies falling by the wayside.
That’s the thing about your true progressive: He never quite gets there, does he? There’s always one more dragon to slay, one more person who has a bit more than all the rest.
So long as that person is not holding the reins of power, he’ll always be a target for the class warriors and levelers.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was never communist. Even they never called what they had comunism.
Socialism was supposed to be the intermediate step to true communism and true communism was always one or two socialist five-year plans away…
The USSR was a Socialist Dictatorship. Just like the National Socialist German Worker’s Party lead a socialist dictatorship.
From the Navy list…
“If you pull this off it will look great on your record, if you don’t no one will hold it against you..”
Socialism, Communism, whatever. Semantics don’t interest me, particularly in a world where words are bent at will to mean whatever it is expedient for them to mean at any given juncture.
All I know is that we of the producing class are headed towards the same relationship with our government that I grew up with as the younger brother: what was his was his, and what was mine was… his.
A communist is a socialist in a hurry with a gun!