Americans who grew up during the Cold War against the Soviet Union will be shocked to learn that the old toxicity of the words socialism and communism are gone now. Even candidates for judge in Texas are running as self-described socialists. It’s all a reflection of the polls. It turns out that now the only demographic left that continues to believe that capitalism is superior to either socialism or communism are Americans over 50 years of age. As the country continues to age and old people die, so will capitalism or at least support for it. Of course, when you look at the way Millennials live, you can’t really say it’s all that surprising.
As Millennials Age and Boomers Die, Capitalism Is Inevitably Doomed
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Millenials might not know, not having been taught it in their history classes, that communism is not really the road to the good life. It is a failed system.
If only there was some way to impart knowledge to these millennials about economic systems. Maybe we could invent some kind of occupation that is a public good and is used to help these inexperienced individuals to not be so stupid. What would you recommend we call them?
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
– Geroge Carlin
350 million Americans. Average IQ is 100. 175 million Americans average IQ is 50!
How many of them can grasp Bakunin? Are they arguing for Collectivist Anarchy?
Or is being a Socialist just as cool as “get jiggy with it” was?
«350 million Americans. Average IQ is 100. 175 million Americans average IQ is 50!» I fear there rests here a grave misunderstanding on your part, EvilWizardGlick, The fact that IQ test results are normalised so that the average score is 100 does not mean that the average score of the lower half of those tested is normalised to 50. In fact, 99.5 % of test takers score over 60 on this normalised test, and a score between 50 and 70 is considered an indication of «mild mental retardation»….
Henri
@teacher
> communism is … a failed system.
Given that true communism has never been tried on the planet earth it seems rather unlikely that it has ever failed.
However, if you truly want to discuss economic theory – please demonstrate that you are qualified to do so:
1) “What is the primary distinguishing characteristic that differentiates communism, socialism and capitalism?”
Fifty words or less.
“Given that true communism has never been tried on the planet earth it seems rather unlikely that it has ever failed.”
that’s not correct. I posted above regarding Anarchist communities past and present.
Here some links to Communist communities
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/marinaleda-spanish-communist-village-utopia
Spain’s communist model village
https://www.rt.com/usa/us-american-communist-community/
Communist commune in US prospers while economy flounders
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/utopia-erik-reece/494741/
Actually, there are, though these days they prefer to call themselves “egalitarian” or “intended” communities. The Fellowship for Intentional Community lists more than 300 such examples of communal living in the United States and thousands worldwide. Only seven of those American sites qualify for recognition by the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC). To achieve that rarefied status, a commune must hold land, labor, and income in common, advocate nonviolence and ecological sustainability, and practice some form of direct decision making. Of the FEC’s seven member communities, three reside in Louisa County, Virginia. The reason for their choosing Louisa County is simple: lax zoning laws and modest real-estate prices. If 100 counterculture types want to plop down on some cheap farmland and not get harassed by the locals, Louisa has historically been the place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_Utopian_communities
List of American Utopian communities
@Wiz –
I see your multi-link post got approved.
As I mentioned above, yes, small communes have indeed existed throughout history. It’s just that the model doens’t scale very well.
I’m not against communism in theory – it’s the application that I question.
I am hoping that what are, or will be, dead are the “ism”s. No one simplified political solution will suffice. There are good and bad aspects of every system that has been tried or proposed. We need to decide what underlying principle should dominate (and I hope it has something to do with humanity and justice) and then we should combine the best of each system to achieve that underlying principle.
To American Teacher:
Let us stipulate your claims on the history curricula of the average American high school.
Given that, therefore, Millennials, did not have to endure the decades of America’s anti-communist*** propaganda that was a profound torment for precedent generations.
Thus, to their credit, Millennials have been able to directly examine their own system (with much less extraneous, purposeful media/government distraction) and have come to the conclusion that their own system is a craven and depraved failure for the VAST Majority of Americans.
—————
*** of course anti-capitalist-Russia propaganda is in full swing. We can only hope that Millennials also see, and reject, that utter hypocrisy.
Can someone point out Utopia on the world map to me?
To the best of my knowledge EVERY nation has it’s flaws. Every nation leaves a percentage of it’s populace behind to fall through the cracks.
Government exists to keep government in power.
Myself I want an enlightened despot. I’ll gladly leaving the governing to the despot to have arts and science funded. To have laws that apply to ALL people not just the poor.
The world exists in a place where UGLY people go to jail for longer than ATTRACTIVE people. We can’t even move beyond the social construct of beauty.
Interesting – but the question remains : are they socialists ? What do they have to say about the ownership of the means of production ? About surplus value ? About the withering away of the state ? Or are they rather New Deal epigoni – think Bernard Sanders – who wish to preserve the capitalist system by regulating some of the worst corporate excesses and redistributing a small portion of the wealth ?…
Of course, even the above is enough to give «American Teacher» and her/his ilk apoplexy – let us hope it downs them before they reach their capacious arsenals !… 😉
Henri
“In order to put voting in its proper perspective, imagine that you are a prisoner in a state penitentiary. But it’s a democratic prison, in which the inmates are allowed, every four years, to select who is to be the warden. The prison system presents you with two choices: candidate A, who promises larger cells and less crowding, and candidate B, who promises better cafeteria food and extended exercise periods. You may vote for either candidate, but implicit in the process is the understanding that you will remain a prisoner. If a fellow inmate decides to run for the job as a “Prison Liberation Front” candidate who promises to tear down the prison walls, his name will not appear on the ballot. Indeed, he will likely be sent to solitary confinement. He will have learned, as will you, the real lesson implicit in every election: no matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected, for if voting could change the system it wouldn’t be legal.” -Butler Shaffer
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
You are Henri and you know everything, especially about American Teacher.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/was-the-soviet-union-really-a-socialist-country-noam-chomsky-dispels-this-propaganda-in-1-minute/
“Both America and the Soviet Union called the Soviet Union a socialist system, but for different reasons. America called it a socialist system because it wanted to defame and demonize socialism. The Soviet Union called their government socialist because that was a popular and celebrated term in Europe, despite totalitarian control having nothing to do with true, democratic socialism.”
Drug dealers love Capitalism.
I find it fascinating that everyone falls into the same trap. Why must “a system” be Communist. Or Socialist. Or Capitalist? Why not a hybrid form? For instance, healthcare. Surely everyone can imagine a form of universal healthcare involving socialist, communist and capitalist aspects that would be superior to what we have now?
Dude, check out Collectivist Anarchism.
Hell that didn’t even make the top two choices here and it may be the fairest of them all.
By the way the people who practice Faithism, follow the OAHSPE, are taught pretty much Collectivist Anarchism. As well as Veganism.
The late 1800’s early 1900’s was a blooming time for religious and Social idealism around the world. Even REAL pacifism was practiced.
Imagine if that type of fervent Pacifism was used today to protest the never ending wars? If people had REAL ideals instead of socially accepted ones?
“Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested – for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.” Emma Goldman
And Faithists are Pacifists.
> Dude, check out Collectivist Anarchism.
Thanks for the tip. I never bothered to look it up before. It sounds a lot like communism but with a reward system based on contribution rather than simple citizenship.
Okay, that’s a good thing – people tend to complain when others get the same pay for less contribution. (contrast to capitalism where CEOs get *much* better pay for much less contribution 😉
They’d do away with ‘money’ and replace it with ‘labour notes’ – which is simply a rose by any other name. It doesn’t matter what you call the score keeping: wealth is, was, and always will be labour + land + capital.
But I believe that all stateless states are doomed if they are even possible at all. They certainly sound attractive – but you still need some sort of centralized administration. 300 million people can’t whistle ‘Yankee Doodle’ in unison, there’s no way they could collectively deal with the day-to-day minutiae of running a country.
You need roads, and you need people to decide where to put the roads and people to coordinate the building and maintenance of the roads, etc. (water, power, urban planning, parks, schools, libraries …)
You need someone to make the call between economic growth and quality-of-life. Until we have perfect people we’ll need police and courts and some sort of plan for dealing with offenders. (preferably a plan for dealing with the victims as well) Until we have a perfect world, we’ll need a military …
… and damned if that doesn’t start looking like a government.
> Why not a hybrid form?
+1.
I’ve been suggesting same for quite some time. Unregulated capitalism has pitfalls that we see on a daily basis. Communism won’t work with real, live, humans, and socialism puts too much power in the hands of too few people.
Our government is a hybrid of a republic and a democracy. Why can’t our economic system mirror that?
There is probably still enough political and economic space in the US for groups of people to organize themselves into socialist, communist, anarchist, or other types of communities, with close to zero reference to the government, its class system, its bureaucracy, its fixation on war and profit. Indeed, many people are doing so, or at least planning to, However, they are far from the majority who continue to seek the good leader, the good master, the good boss, thus ensuring yet another cycle of class exploitation. Another world is possible, but only if people want it badly enough to do something about it.
Read my reply to CrazyH.
Especially the Wiki part regarding the Anarchist community in Michigan.
I forgot these Danes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania
Freetown Christiania, also known as Christiania (Danish: Fristaden Christiania[needs IPA] or Staden), is a self-proclaimed autonomous anarchist district of about 850 to 1,000 residents, covering 34 hectares (84 acres) in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen.[1] It was temporarily closed to residents in April 2011 by the Danish government, but later re-opened.[2]
Christiania has been a source of controversy since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971. Its cannabis trade was tolerated by authorities until 2004. In the years following 2004, measures for normalizing the legal status of the community led to conflicts, police raids and negotiations
Why is there an assumption that Millennials are actually interested in the abstract of politics instead of the selfishness of being cared for?
You, sir, are indeed an evil wizard 😉
Where to begin? First, politics isn’t abstract, it’s the sum total of the most concrete social engagements. What people spend their time doing, how we construct and maintain our surroundings, how we coordinate, who wipes the asses of those that can’t…
Second, is it selfish to want to live integrated in a community where one is indeed cared for by immediate family and friends as well as wider circle of people living in solidarity with one another?
The statement itself presupposes that there is a normative model to achieve (financial) security isolated from most everyone else – which is visibly true for fewer and fewer people. Admittedly perhaps if “neoliberal capitalism” had offered a better deal to my generation we would perhaps be less open about “communism”.
> the old toxicity of the words socialism and communism are gone now.
I’m gonna have to take your word on that. I still wince whenever I hear the word “communism” even though I know better on a cerebral level. Growing up with the drumbeat of “evil empire” and TV bad guys with Russian accents left me with a permanent distaste for the word. Likewise the Hammer & Sickle: at a visceral level that emblem will always be associated with evil in my mind.
Societal change is a generational thing.
At the time & place I grew up you didn’t call a man “black” that was nearly as bad as “nig”- the socially acceptable term was ‘negro.’ But in the Sixties, African-Americans reclaimed & rebranded the word with “Black is Beautiful.”
Okay, that is goodness. But I still have trouble saying the word out loud because of ideas absorbed in my childhood. So, anyway – good luck to the newer generations who can describe people as black communists without wincing.
That’s progress.
“That’s progress”
This is kind of Old by Ishmael Reed. Read it.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/01/14/ma-and-pa-clinton-flog-uppity-black-man/
Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man
In the 60’s the Black Panther party fed and educated Black folk. Can you show me the Black lives matter soup kitchen? The classes run by Black lives matter?
Ever listen to Whitey on the moon by Gil-Scott-Heron? Johnny guitar Watson’s Ain’t that a bitch? Or just plain old blues.
NOTHING has changed for Black people. Nothing has changed for poor people.
Middle class whites are dropping like flies because hood drugs and joblessness has finally hit their communities.Then again white folk got pissy when crack slipped from the ghetto to the burbs.
While the US had the best propaganda regarding how vile Communists were, I watch modern tv where black site kidnapping and torture is normal for the US. The EU frowns upon it but still turns a blind eye for flights and sites in countries like Poland.
Jimmy Carter funded the Taliban and Rambo 3 idolized them.
Today we guard poppy fields for warlords because the CIA and BIG PHARMA make a fine profit. The Taliban nearly eradicated the Opium trade and the older man young boy thing.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
TPTB has their stooges firmly planted from the top down. Doesn’t matter which regime is power when the lower level bureaucrats remain for decades running the same background ops and keeping the old ties handy for restarting.
“good luck to the newer generations who can describe people as black communists without wincing.”
What you miss on the younger generation is it has become safe for them to ONLY criticize fat white women at Walmart.. Underneath they are a seething cauldron of hatred.They explode where they are pointed. They lack the ability to reason.
Blame their parents and the never grow old hippy mentality which destroyed parenting and replaced with friendship. Parents who never want to grow old, never grow up.
As fare as Black Communists people missed this Che criticism “The Negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.” Or this by Ghandi (http://originalpeople.org/mahatma-gandhi-racist-quotes/) “Sept. 26, 1896
“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.” ~ Vol. I, pp. 409-410”
Idols, who knew.
CrazyH
Read and enjoy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities
List of anarchist communities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumbullplex
The Trumbullplex is a housing collective and showspace in the Woodbridge neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan, USA.[1] It was created in 1993 when members of the collective established a nonprofit corporation and purchased the property, two Victorian houses on either side of a single-story art space,[1] previously operated by Perry Mallette as the Trumbull Theater.[2] The two houses are occupied by a fluctuating group of resident collective members, as well as like-minded short-term traveling artists, musicians, and activists. The resident collective members, along with other committed community members, work together to maintain the show space and provide accessible, meaningful community experiences to locals and travelers alike. The Trumbullplex has since grown to also include three adjacent, undeveloped side-lot properties, following a well-publicized bidding war with a local developer in 2016.[3] These side lots function as community greenspace for potlucks, herb walks, and arts based events.
The collective’s mission statement asserts that they “want to create a positive environment for revolutionary change in which economic and social relationships are based on mutual aid and the absence of hierarchy.”[1] It acts on the basis of consensus decision-making and serves as a home, theater, art gallery, infoshop, meeting space and temporary residence for traveling activists.[1][4] The art space is run on a donations-only basis, and members pay an equal portion of the costs involved in the property’s upkeep each month.
The Trumbullplex has been an institution and hotbed of creative anarchism that has influenced those who have had residency and visited the Trumbullplex. The Trumbull Collective has a history of positive and unique exchange with activism happening internationally by bringing traveling plays, music, puppet shows, performance art, and workshops to the space. Members of the collective and surrounding community run the operations within the theater and meeting space and also participate in alternative schools, such as the high school for teenage mothers, the Catherine Ferguson Academy and CFA farm, The Hub of Detroit (a cycling non-profit located in the city’s Cass Corridor), to Detroit organizations promoting urban agriculture such as Earthworks, and to a variety of other causes and organizations.
In 2011, the Trumbullplex completed the addition of a free zine library located within the showspace, which houses over 2,000 independently published books, pamphlets, and fanzines. Many of these publications were donated to the Trumbullplex following the closing of the now defunct Idle Kids infoshop in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. In addition to providing access to the zine library during events in the showspace as well as during regularly scheduled open hours, the Trumbullplex zine library has also provided pop-up versions of the collection at such local events as the Allied Media Conference and the Dally in the Alley festival.
It is not correct to say that communism has never been tried. There have been and are many successful communist communities. By ‘successful’ I mean people want to live in them and succeed in doing so.
Allow me to clarify – Communism has never been tried on a national level. We have had small communities of like-minded individuals living peaceably together for years at a time.
The hippy communes of the sixties come to mind. The longest-lasting was probably the Love Family, but they never passed their system on to their next generation. (Nor were they as egalitarian as the advertising suggested; but that’s a story for another day.)
‘National’, as the word is ordinarily used, invokes the idea of the state. Communism and the state are antithetical, because communism requires equality and the state requires inequality: a state must be created by a government, and where there is government some govern and others are governed. That is, there are at least two classes, one with more power than the other, with the expected results. Attempts to implement communism through state power, that is, by force, are doomed to fail and tend to degenerate into the open totalitarianism which the claims of statist ideology imply.
There are a lot of communes in existence today, but they tend to lie pretty low in order to stay out of trouble.
Okay, then “with a population of hundreds of millions.”
I didn’t say it didn’t work, but rather that it doesn’t scale well.