Just curious, how do you feel about communist states that have highly centralized governments that may not be as democratic as they should be?
Narratives are sometimes hijacked by the people in power. It also didn’t help when Marx talked about the idea of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” So due to some unforced and some forced errors, the notion of communism got perverted from what it was originally meant to be.
Marx should have never included “dictatorship” of any kind as an intermediate step, imo.
At the same time, the Soviet and Chinese apparatchiks were corrupt and they used the rhetoric of “communism” in a completely cynical manner. In the USSR “communism” was a perpetually receding promise, like a carrot that was forever moving away from the donkey. They had a “communist party.” But they’ve never called their socioeconomic order “communism.” I think the situation is similar in China, where they have a communist party, but they probably wouldn’t call their socioeconomic order “communism.”
The “USSR” stood for “the United Soviet Socialist Republics.” So it’s in the name too. There was enough honesty there not to call their order “communist.” But, considering how rigged the elections were in the USSR, I guess they never gave any (or many) actual fucks about either socialism or communism. It was just a convenient label that the people believed in.
The USSR had nearly free public transportation, and all kinds of free sports and hobby clubs for the youths, and a much more relaxed culture around property so that you could fish or gather mushrooms in a forest without worrying about permissions and licensing. So there were some upsides even from their authoritarian and admittedly fucked up (not enough freedom of conscience, speech, etc.) way of doing things.
We shouldn’t fear the labels like “a communist” or “a socialist” but instead we should look at the concrete policies promoted by the people who either self-identify or are identified by the others as “a socialist,” etc… If you like a policy, you can support said policy.
For me democracy is non-negotiable (I’m pro-democracy), and I take the idea of distributed power pretty seriously. I don’t believe the power can ever become perfectly distributed, so I am not an anarchist myself, but to me, the more distributed, the better, and distribution of power (or its concentration) is a spectrum.
Narratives are sometimes hijacked by the people in power. It also didn’t help when Marx talked about the idea of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” So due to some unforced and some forced errors, the notion of communism got perverted from what it was originally meant to be.
Marx should have never included “dictatorship” of any kind as an intermediate step, imo.
At the same time, the Soviet and Chinese apparatchiks were corrupt and they used the rhetoric of “communism” in a completely cynical manner. In the USSR “communism” was a perpetually receding promise, like a carrot that was forever moving away from the donkey. They had a “communist party.” But they’ve never called their socioeconomic order “communism.” I think the situation is similar in China, where they have a communist party, but they probably wouldn’t call their socioeconomic order “communism.”
The “USSR” stood for “the United Soviet Socialist Republics.” So it’s in the name too. There was enough honesty there not to call their order “communist.” But, considering how rigged the elections were in the USSR, I guess they never gave any (or many) actual fucks about either socialism or communism. It was just a convenient label that the people believed in.
The USSR had nearly free public transportation, and all kinds of free sports and hobby clubs for the youths, and a much more relaxed culture around property so that you could fish or gather mushrooms in a forest without worrying about permissions and licensing. So there were some upsides even from their authoritarian and admittedly fucked up (not enough freedom of conscience, speech, etc.) way of doing things.
We shouldn’t fear the labels like “a communist” or “a socialist” but instead we should look at the concrete policies promoted by the people who either self-identify or are identified by the others as “a socialist,” etc… If you like a policy, you can support said policy.
For me democracy is non-negotiable (I’m pro-democracy), and I take the idea of distributed power pretty seriously. I don’t believe the power can ever become perfectly distributed, so I am not an anarchist myself, but to me, the more distributed, the better, and distribution of power (or its concentration) is a spectrum.