Is there any good reason for anyone on the left to denounce "Communism" anymore?

The European CPs have written quite a bit about this recently. I'd be happy to summarize more extensively what they've written a little later when I'm less busy.

babblers can read what I read over HERE and HERE and ...

Suffice it to say that:

a) there is a large EU anti-communist campaign on right now that is increasing and accelerating;

See, for example, the Statement by the Greek Euro Parliamentary group from earlier this year ...

Quote:

It applauds and openly supports the legal arsenal which a series of EU member-states have created such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Latvia. These countries have also banned communist symbols and criminalized communist ideology and the free expression and dissemination of ideas ... At the same time the Commission is still threatening to create an EU-wide criminal legislation which will openly persecute communist ideology and declare that the defence of socialism is a crime.... This anti-communist campaign above all targets the consciousness of the youth. It goes hand in hand with the barbaric attack of the plutocracy on the life and rights of the working class throughout the EU....

b) this campaign includes pretty well ALL of the non-communist political parties in Europe, including "the left";

c) this campaign has included the recent banning of communist organizations, eg, Czech Republic and so on;

d) this campaign goes along with a calculated effort to trivialize the role of the former SU in defeating Nazi Germany. for example, May 9 is now some "Euro Day" in which the anti-fascist victory of May 9, 1945 is erased from history and replaced with Euro bigotry;

e) Aug 23 is another "holiday" coming up this summer in which fascist attempted genocide against the Slavs and the Jewish Holocaust are EQUATED with the crimes under the Stalin regime. The anti-Semitism of the latter regime is well known and documented but equating that with Nazi extermination plans trivialize the horrors of the latter. Socialism and Communism are well known to be ideologies based on solidarity and social justice; Nazism is an ideology based on xenophobia and hatred.

Incidently, membership in some of the so-called "left' organizations in Europe is conditioned on denouncing Stalinism. There is no similar requirement to denounce fascism. Very strange for organizations calling themselves "left".

On the same topic, the Russian government put forward and was successful in getting the UN General Assembly to pass a motion denouncing the current rise in the glorification of the Nazi regime and the desecration of WW2 monuments.

Quote:

UN, November 19 (RIA Novosti) - The UN General Assembly on social and humanitarian issues has adopted a draft resolution proposed by Russia on tackling a rise in the glorification of Nazism and the desecration of WWII monuments.

The draft resolution on "combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," is aimed at tackling the practice in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Estonia of honoring SS veterans who fought for Nazi Germany during WWII.

"Nazi monuments are unveiled in a ceremonial atmosphere and the dates of liberation from the Nazis are proclaimed as days of mourning," Russia's UN representative, Grigory Lykyantsev, told the UN, adding that "this attitude towards anti-fascist veterans plays into the hands of those who call for 'a pure race.'"

The resolution was passed with 122 countries voting in favor, while 54 delegations abstained, including Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia. Only the U.S. voted against. The resolution is now practically guaranteed to be adopted at the next UN General Assembly session in December.

Parades in honor of Waffen-SS veterans, involving veterans from the Latvian Legion and the 20th Estonian SS Division and their supporters, are held annually in Latvia and Estonia. Russia has repeatedly criticized the Baltic States for allowing these parades to take place.

UN General Assembly adopts Russian Resolution

The USA is the only country to vote against this resolution.

Anyway, there is plenty more. Let me finish my remarks here by saying that these campaigns have a number of goals including slowing down popular struggles and depicting the struggles for social justice as doomed to failure. They want people to believe that capitalism will last forever, that TINA, and so on. Everyone who is on the left should care about such things.

Catchfire wrote:

Quote:

I am a communist. You might call me a Marxist, a socialist, an eco-socialist, a radical, a revolutionary, a Trotskyist or number of other names, but I prefer ‘communist’. Though I am not a Communist. However, while rejecting utterly the Stalinist aberration, it is not possible to also erase that legacy. Including what might have been inherent in the Bolshevik experience that allowed for the part of the bureaucracy, including Stalin, to emerge from its ranks. It has to be embraced and subjected to context and critique in order that we might understand it with the imperative of avoiding such future cataclysms, so profoundly criminal and obfuscatory.

‘Communism’, nowhere in the entire canon, practice and traditions that armed the working class movement in the decades before the Soviet experiment, those same traditions that helped guide the Russian working class in forging that revolution, could have been taken to mean anything like the Stalinist nightmare that came. Stalinism, in too many ways, became the antithesis to the vision which made the revolution. So I remain a communist without contradiction. It is in Stalinism that contradiction, grotesque contradiction, is held.

 

Communism was blamed for revolutionary regimes who chose to subvert its principles in order to maintain the same totalitarian regimes they claimed to overthrow.  This criticism of communism originated with people who probably never read Marx and had no understanding of the stream of political thought, originating with Hegel's dialectical materialism, nor ever understood that Marx's communism was just a theory of what might occur after capitalism reached its maximum expansion and exploded like a balloon filled with too much air.

Rebecca West wrote:

Communism was blamed for revolutionary regimes who chose to subvert its principles in order to maintain the same totalitarian regimes they claimed to overthrow.

Stalin's regime bore some superficial resemblance to Tsarist capitalism, but it was an entirely different animal.

Quote:

...Marx's communism was just a theory of what might occur after capitalism reached its maximum expansion and exploded like a balloon filled with too much air.

Marx's communism was not just a theory of what might occur after capitalism reached its maximum expansion. There was never any suggestion in Marx that socialists had to wait for capitalism to reach any kind of maximum before a revolution could occur; if there had been, it would have been obviously disproven by the revolution that occurred in the capitalist backwater of Russia.

Nor was communism a blueprint for a future post-capitalist society. Marx and Engels wrote about capitalism - its historical origins, its economic basis, its class dynamics, its irreconcilable internal contradictions, its culture and ideology, and its ecological destructiveness, but they did not seek to prescribe in any but the most general outlines what post-capitalist society would be like. It was not a matter of Stalin's failing to follow a script written by Marx, as there was none. Each revolution must write its own script.

The recent anti-communist campaigns in Europe has had the effect that prospective members of the European Left are expected to swear out oaths declaring their anti-communist credentials in order to be considered for membership. I'm not sure how widespread this but it was significant enough for the Greek CP to take note.

A number of European countries have banned communist organizations and symbols altogether and there are efforts to generalize this to all of Europe by EU political bodies. The same political bodies have Communists elected to them but that doesn't stop the European authorities. 

This is all about silencing a fightback. Before there were communists those who (in our part of the world) organized unions and working class political organizations were invariably characterized as "foreign agitators" and such, treated as treasonous, or criminal, or both. With the development of communist organizations the names changed but not the general purpose of such denunciations.

There's nothing wrong with looking carefully at everything that went wrong in the (so called) socialist countries. This is probably a necessity for Communist Parties today - at least the Greek CP takes that view - for them to move forward, still be advocates of some sort of socialism, understand in their own terms what went wrong in 1989-1991, and so on. Characterizing all of these countries as some sort of unform Stalinism seems to be a way to avoid that very hard work.

I don't think anti-communism is going to go away any time soon. It's proved very effective in silencing the left and in putting the brakes on upsurges of more radical and left mass political movements. And some elements of the left are going to be opportunist and use the same strategy of the political right for their own short term benefit.

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Capitalism has bred fascist "solutions" time and again when the system has been in crisis; this is an ever-present danger as long as this mode of production is subject to such crises. The danger will never truly completely go away. OTOH, despite all the problems and disasters under socialism in this historical period we know that socialism has no such inherent tendency towards this sort of authoritarianism. In fact, socialism can only survive and become permanent by radical democratization in social life that is head and shoulders above anything capitalism has to offer. Each experience of genuine working class power - not just some temporary parliamentary result - teaches us more about this radical democratization: the French Paris Commune taught that the old state had to be broken up and replaced by a new one, that the right to recall was essential; others showed that a revolution must be able to defend itself; Soveit failures show the necessity of making electoral units based on workplaces rather than by geography; Soviet failures also showed what happened when the working class was decimated by civil wars and world war in terms of political leadership failures; they all show the dominant role of politics and the possibility of the rise of priviledged strata that can undermine and even overthrow the revolution, and so on and so on.

Which five communist countries have been run in a manner that closest reflects the Marxist ideal in practice?  What are the those five sterling beacons of light?

Cuba must be on that list.  Maybe Venezuela?  Although, it's not technically "communist" and, besides, with about 80% of Venezuela's exports dependent on petro-chemicals (not very green, is it?), the long-term viability of Venezuela's current political regime is yet to be determined and, in my opinion, highly in doubt.

So, who are those beacons of communist or Marxist light?

Ken Burch wrote:

3)There are no societies on the Earth that actually exemplify the most positive or admirable values of any religion [or of any political philosophy]...

I agree with that.  There are no perfect countries and no country reflects the ideal of any philosophy (religious, political, or otherwise).

My question is: What five countries have come closest to meeting the communist or Marxist ideal?

It's pretty clear based on evidence presented on this thread, that pathological anti communism is alive and well - especially in Europe - and playing the same role pretty well as it always has: silencing the broad left and acting as a brake or obstacle to any unsurge in resistance to the current neo-liberal atrocities that, unfortunately, conservative, liberal and social democratic regimes in the EU seem to share in common.

Finding a "perfect" country seems like a thread derailment into some pointless and theological cul-de-sac. We have enough of that already with the right wing market idolatry or market fundamentalism that has only a passing relationship to the hardships that many are facing today.

I read somewhere that an existing system will 'exhaust its possibilities' before finally dying. Communists have claimed that capitalism is 'in its death throes' for quite a while, yet capitalism still seems to survive (and prosper) in various political forms whether they call themselves "Conservative", "Liberal', "Social Democrat", "Socialist", or even "Communist" (as in the case of West Bengal and China).

All in all, "Communism" is just a word, which could mean "Everything I like" or "Everything I hate". Like "Socialism", "Communism" means Stalinism on the lips of most people in North America. "Communism" is now not a very good word, as you have to explain to most people that you are not a Stalinist.

I think just identifying as "Left" gives me more room to move...

Ken Burch wrote:

Nicaragua in the 1980's was doing pretty well, and avoided most of the repressive measures that the Cubans felt obliged to impose(remember, the Cuban Revolution's choices were informed heavily by the brutal U.S.-orchestrated overthrow of the democratic left-wing government of Guatemala.  Had the U.S. left Jacobo Arbenz alone, I doubt the Cuban Revolution would ever have had the block committees or the early period of executions.)

Bolivia under Evo Morales has brought a lot of the best values of the socialist ideal into play, not without problems(problems largely caused by the arrogance of the European minority within the country who still refuse to accept that the indigenous majority have any right to hold political power).

Venezuela, with its flaws, has brought in the local council structure that, if the western capitalists will finally leave the place alone, represents the most democratic decision-making structure possible.  I don't endorse everything Chavez has done, but the poor have made gains there and there's no reason to assume that a "free market" government would have done any more to diversify the economy OR bring in green values(capitalists generally have no interest in environmental protection whatsoever, as any Alaskan who's had to live with what the oil industry did to Prince William Sound can tell you).

Those are some I personally would name. 

I'm not really sure of the relevance of the question though.

I think exemplars are useful points of reference.  They add some concreteness to what would otherwise be a purely abstract discussion.

Ken Burch wrote:

And China isn't in any sense communist or socialist anymore, so I don't understand why you brought them into this debate.  They're simply a free-market police state now.

Indeed.  China has morphed from a Communist police state to a free-market police state.  Although it's continued police-state status is abhorrent, China's dramatic shift towards a more free-market-based economy has resulted in a massive economic boom for that country, which has raised tens of millions of people out of the abject poverty they were wallowing in prior to that economic shift.

Uncle John wrote:

...the Communist Party of China will murder proletarian activists until they are overwhelmed.

I think that, for the near term, the Chinese people will continue to be generally satisfied with the current status -- as long as the standard of living continues to increase as it has in the recent past (i.e., since the opening up of China's economy to more free-market forces).  But, eventually, a wealthier citizenry will turn its attention to policial and civil rights reforms.

ikosmos wrote:

It's pretty clear based on evidence presented on this thread, that pathological anti communism is alive and well -

What kind of anti-communism, would, in your view, count as other than pathological?

Meh. Anti-communism is a political strategy of the right. It always will be. The whole aim is to silence activism and the left in general. So, you have to question people who claim to be on the left but participate in the latest campaign with the enthusiasm of a typical rw thug.

We have rather an enormous amount of evidence in this continent for my general claim here and we see plenty more in Europe nowadays as well. So let's go back a step; how many babblers if they lived in the EU would support or remain silent about making Communist organizations illegal, criminalizing what the Greek CP calls the defence of socialism (i.e., assert positive things about the former socialist countries), treating fascism and communism as interchangeable, erasing history, and looking the other way when WW2 monuments are blown up and replaced with odes to the Nazis and their supporters? That is what is happening RIGHT NOW, in Europe. The links I've provided can assist any babbler wanting to investigate further, find secondary sources, and confirm that these claims aren't just "communist propaganda" .

Most babblers know, I think, about the horrific repression going on in Europe associated with the attempt to impose neo-liberal and savage cuts to social programs, education, and so on. Greece, the UK, you name it. The citizenry is to be made to pay for the plutocrats, bankers, corrupt politicians, and so on in the Euro-bailout. And there is, naturally enough, an associated political campaign with a rich dose of anti-communism, Muslim bashing, and all the rest of the pearls of wisdom from the political right. The real task for the 'left" is to bring together all the threads of resistance, in Europe and across the world, to fight back against the efforts to impose the costs of the capitalist crisis on the ordinary people. There is an alternative, it's still there despite having been seriously tarnished since 1989-91, and it's called socialism. And it's not going away.

Bully for the Greek CP, and others, who aren't willing to throw the socialist baby out with the Stalinist bathwater and are willing to face up to their whole history, all the positives and negatives, and continue to honour their heroes from the past. It's a pity that Canada does't have such an organized group on the left in this country - we would be so much farther ahead.

Ken Burch wrote:

The non-pathological kind, of course.

Great. So we have one person who (maybe) thinks that the set of non-pathological anti-communists is non-empty. Do we have a second?

Ken Burch wrote:

I wasn't actually saying that it was, in fact, non-empty.  Simply that, if such a set existed, that's where such people would be found, 

And that's why I said "maybe" - I thought your answer might be on the verge of trickiness. 

The Greek CP leader expressed the view on behalf of her party that the Soviet version of socialism was undermined by the replacement of factory or workplace based electoral units by the typical geographical units we see in capitalist countries. (your quote: " Marx once wrote that the state should be subservient to the factory councils ... ") We see that the Cubans did not make this mistake; they still have workplace based electoral institutions. This conclusion, as you point out, comes from quoting one of the few predictions about socialism that Marx made. The problem and the solution don't need any help from a theoretician who thought that the urge to destroy was a creative one.

I can't agree, furthermore, when you trot out the usual twaddle about some inherent evil in people ("Human beings don't behave well when placed in positions of power over other people ... ") . If you oppose fundamental social change then just say so directly and without ascribing your own conservatism to some inherent quality of people in general. I don't see how such claims are any different from the conservative ones that claim that people are incapable of the kind of change  required of them in any fundamental social change. Yet revolutions happen and people, and the world, change forever.

We see in life, on the contrary, how valuable great public administrators can be. We see it on a smaller scale every time someone in charge of a big event does a good job. Perhaps they just haven't read enough anarchist theoreticians to know that what they're doing is doomed to failure?

"We see it on a smaller scale every time someone in charge of a big event does a good job. Perhaps they just haven't read enough anarchist theoreticians to know that what they're doing is doomed to failure?" 

That would depend on whether the person "in charge" is being held accountable in some way.   The more accountability, the more likely they are to do a "good job", and the best way of ensuring accountability for people "in charge" is for them not to be in charge at all, but rather serving as a representative of a group, who can be replaced if necessary.

Actually, that's exactly what you wrote.
Quote:
Human beings don't behave well when placed in positions of power over other people ...

If you want to claim that the history of hierarchical power is one of benevolence that’s your prerogative.    In any case, saying that power is indeed capable of acting for the common good is not the same thing as saying that people in positions of power are encouraged to do so by virtue of these arrangements; rather the opposite is true, as I believe should be obvious at this point.  

For example, politicians are held accountable for their actions by corporations; therefore they tend to serve corporate interests; they have very little accountability to the public, therefore they tend not to serve the public.   This does not mean that politicians never do anything positive, but it does mean -- because of the power configuration -- that the public will usually get the short end of the stick. 

Since I'm not a Marxist and do not subscribe to silly "iron laws of history" and other pseudo-scientific quackery, I do not claim these observations to be universal rules -- they are simply obvious trends, repeated ad naseum. 

Attributing some quality to human beings to substantiate an ideological claim

Again, you have it exactly backwards -- the so "ideological claim" is an observation based on a mountain of empirical data.   Your claim, in contrast, that “We see in life, on the contrary, how valuable great public administrators can be" seems to be based on some form of idealism for which I see very little evidence.  

And representative democracy is better than no democracy.

If by "representative democracy" you mean liberal capitalism then I am in firm agreement.  Of course, the fact that Stalin called the Soviet Union a "democracy" didn't actually make it so.   Actual, ie direct and participatory democracy would be something more akin to the Iroquois Federation, which had "representatives" in the proper sense of the term. 

I'm sorry. Other than glib platitudes what lessons have anarchist governments taught us? That we should eat our vegetables?

And you accuse anarchists of being glib?   For one thing, anarchist "governance" is the way we survived for 99.9% of our time here.   The other models haven't proved very successful.

The anarchist ideology that you've defended so far seems to overlap a great deal with the anti-communism of the EU which

I don’t understand what you’re saying.  

whose best contribution is as a brake or anchor or cautionary note to the revolutionary aims and goals of others.

It is a vital contribution, as it will serve to prevent further expressions of state capitalism, and therefore the destruction of real revolutionary movements of the people.  But to suggest the anarchist critique of Marxism is its "best" contribution shows ignorance or stubbornness.

The biggest problem of the left in this country - and by the left I include some anarchists of course - and many others is that it's not united and not big ENOUGH. Lectures from anarchists about the harmfulness of bigness just seem really, really stupid (or malevolent and conservative) in such a context.

There is a huge difference between a large, centralized state and a large population.  

The increasing complexity of society is making anarchism MORE and NOT LESS relevant to modern life. It is precisely this complexity and diversity, above all their overriding concern for freedom and human values that led the anar-chist thinkers to base their ideas on the principles of diffusion of power, self-management and federalism. The greatest attribute of the free society is that it is self-regulating and "bears within itself the seeds of its own re-generation" (Buber)

Lectures about the harmfulness of disunity would be more helpful.

I'm not particularly fond of "unity".  It implies a lock-stop conformism that I find repellant.  I do like the concept of harmony, however, which is all that's necessary to bring about a just society. 

Most anarchists are not at all dogmatic in political affairs.  Unlike Marxists, or neoliberals, who think they have some sort of "scientific" solution to mankind’s problems akin to the laws of gravity, anarchists tend to be fairly down to earth, supporting policies that help people and opposing those that don't, while also trying to build networks that contain the seeds of the new society.  Anarchism is just a set of basic principles.   However, since anarchists invariably challenge what they view as unjust power systems, they are universally despised by authoritarians of all stripes.

The "concept" of harmony is all that is required for a "just" society? Really?

You misunderstood.   Perhaps I worded that sentence poorly.  I meant that harmony amongst leftist groups is indeed required to build movements necessary to replace capitalism, whereas strict "unity" and ideological conformity are not only not required (and unrealistic), but antithetical to freedom, as (eg) the experience of Stalinism and Maosim aptly demonstrate.    

Unity here, of course, means people with different views working together for common cause.

If unity is used in this context then I have no problem with it.   However there are radically different ways of interpreating the word, as I just did, and which are highly relevant to the history of leftist movements.   A high degree of "unity" under a supposedly "socialist" government was achieved under Stalin (which in turn had a major influence on communist groups worldwide, including in the United States), but the Russian people were anything but socialist or "free".  

So, no need to worry about social conflict? Antagonistic social groups and classes? Revolutions needing to defend themselves from counter-revolution?

Of course these issues are important.  I never suggested otherwise. 

So, I read from you about the bliss of social harmony, vague words about justice, politicians accountable to corporations

You didn't read any of this, you chose to read it as such.  I used the example of the politician being accountable to corporations as a demonstration of the fact that we DON'T have "democracy" in any real sense.    

You seem to be going out of your way to mischaracterize my comments while creating an atmosphere of hostility.    If this is your idea of creating "unity" between people of differing viewpoints then you have a lot of work to do.

provocative trolls

Hmmm.  So I'm a "troll" because I made a post discussing the denunciation of Communism in a thread about the denunciation of Communism.   Seems to me that "troll" in this context just means someone who disagres with you.     

I'm not impressed with what seems to me to be your sloppy use of terms and so on. The one about social harmony was to me a real whopper.

By the same token, I'm not terribly impressed with your ability to discern the meaning of different words and concepts.  For example you don't seem to understand the difference between representative and direct democracy.  Unity vs. harmony is another good example.   Since you appear to be demanding unity of opinion on this and other topics the difference should probably be of concern to you.   Yet rather than ask for clarification or help in expanding your understanding you dismiss such concerns as irrelevant.  

The virtual uniformity of opinion demanded by political groups throughout history, whether by a political party or news organizations like Fox or the Stalinists is not something to be tossed aside as an irrelevant distraction or "waste of time".    

The differences between unity and harmony are not new to political philosophy, and have been discussed in detail by figures like Orwell, E.F. Schmacher, Kirkpatrick Sale, Leopold Kohr and classical anarchists such as Kropotkin, just to name a few.

Since you claim that "for some important social critics precise understanding and analysis of language and the words used is critical", and apparently count yourself amongst this group, why the hostility toward expanding your awareness on the meaning of different words as interpreted by different people?   You seem to regard differences in opinion as a "provocation", a word you explicity used; it reminds me of the usual claptrap by authoritarian communists about "counter-revolutionaries" aka anyone who doesn't subscribe to the party line.

You end by suggesting I go elsewhere becaues you yourself seem incapable of having anything approaching a polite conversation.   Again, is this an example of the "unity" you would like your future socieity to embrace?  Because it seems rather like the old kind.

What I was saying is that we don't really need to speak of large-C Communism as if it's something that ever has any possibility of returnin

I agree for the most part.  It's interesting to note however that a recent poll in Hungary showed a majority favoring the previous form of tyranny over the current "free market" variety.   I also note that one of the most popular socialist websites, the WSWS, comes close to deifying Trotsky.  While Trostky was hardly in the same league as Stalin, he was a villain in his own right.  So are there still small minorities in the socialist movement that have yet to come to terms with the past. 

You are correct though that the vast majority of the left is not interested in the "Communism" of the SU or China.   My only real concern is that current and future revolutionary movements may unwittingly take on aspects of state capitalism due to a failure to acknowledge the problems with entrenched hierarchy and centralized power.   That's why I consider it useful to have these sorts of discussions, even if it's just within leftist groups.    

It's not something that any part of the current Left should still bear a stigma for.

No indeed.  I don't really see anything "leftist" or "socialist" in the tyrannies we are describing anyway.   Indeed the fact that the leadership in the SU was able to transition so easily to capitalism, and that "Communist China" transitioned to the world's sweat shop within a matter of just a few years is rather telling.