The older I get (85 in a month), the more I think Marx was right. And that means the Communists in China and Russia were wrong. I will stick with Orwell, whose critique of totalitarianism (1984/Animal Farm) exposes the lies of the monster (as Khruschev called Stalin) who ruled the Soviet Union for decades in total defiance of Marx. And as for Mao, he was a another psychopath who, fortunately, has been succeeded by wise rulers who have brought China out of the cesspool created by Mao and rule with patience and moderation.
I am closer to being a communist (in the Marxian sense) than ever in my life, but those who ran things in China and the Soviet Union did so in total disregard for Marx's view that communism could only arise in a mature capitalist society, never in a poor, semi-feudal backwater like Russia or China.
I think the Soviet criticism of the West was basically correct and the Western criticism by Orwell and others was correct about the terrible flaws of the Soviet Union. Today's communist leaders are moderate and pragmatic, playing the long game. They understand that before there can be communism, there must be industrialization, concentrations of wealth, and the contradictions of capitalism must play out. Neither Stalin nor Mao understood this and their ignorance led to vicious criminality.
If we say the communists were right, it is imperative to say which ones: those most right were eliminated as traitors. Trotsky got an ax in the skull; and in China, hundreds of thousands of CCP officials were persecuted; many died through execution, suicide under duress, or prison abuse.
See The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976 — Frank Dikötter
Focus: Ground-level purge violence
Strengths:
Based on newly opened Chinese archives.
Shows how mass denunciations and killings unfolded locally.
Details torture, struggle sessions, executions.
Part of Dikötter’s trilogy on Maoist campaigns."
I suggest avoiding blanket generalizations and defining terms. I suggest not taking sides. In doing so we betray the truth, for both sides lie alongside some accurate criticism. There is only one thing worth fighting for, and that is peace (Camus), and there is only one party worth joining, and that is the party of truth. And all the while, let us be humble and admit that we make mistakes and then learn from them. That is what the best in the West (democratic socialists et al) and in the communist universe have done.
If you put this in context with what capitalist nations have been doing during the same time, and ignore Western-biased sources, you find that much of this is propaganda, and represents and incomplete story.
Mao is the reason China is an independent state and not languishing in poverty like India. Stalin, for being a dictator, in context defeated the Nazis who invaded the USSR and killed 20+ million people, while also facing hostile Western isolation, and eventually remilitarization for Europe, the creation of NATO absorbing the remains of Nazi West Germany into it. Tense times.
"Mao is the reason China is an independent state and not languishing in poverty like India."
Not following you here... China languished in poverty from the time Mao took over, all the way until his death more than a quarter-century later, and then some.
First, Mao is the reason China is independent and the Century of Humiliation didn't continue.
Second, look at every single metric from life expectancy, literacy, wealth, etc etc all took off with Mao. Look at China before Mao, and after. The dividing line is right there.
People always say that it was Deng "embracing" capitalism that changed everything. Yet India embraced capitalism from its independence, and look at it now.
"Mao is the reason China is independent and the Century of Humiliation didn't continue."
But it did live in poverty for many decades. With a continuation of th famines that drove people to flee, as well as that lovely re-invigoration, the "Cultural Revolution", until...
"People always say that it was Deng 'embracing' capitalism that changed everything... "
But it did. This is the thing that it appears Marxists studiously ignore. I can only conclude that the cog-dis must be overwhelming.
"... Yet India embraced capitalism from its independence, and look at it now."
Cultural differences. Also, India's globalist upper classes are doing very well, thank you.
Look, Marxism simply does not address any number of facts about human nature. And, believe me, I have less than zero love for unfettered capitalism.
Again, China started in extreme poverty, coming out of colonial domination and a brutal war, and was isolated from the world economic system at behest of the capitalist powers. They had to build from essentially zero. Not sure why you think it's some kind of win that it took them a while to dig themselves out of that hole after they broke the colonial chains.
India is not because of a cultural difference. It is because Deng specifically introduced controlled markets as a way of having trade integration with the world (which was cut off) and generating wealth with the global system that exists, so that they could direct it to their development priorities. This was always led by the communist party and under their control. Without Mao building the foundation, they would have been just as unable to control their destiny as India, they would have been overrun, kept in poverty and without development.
"Not sure why you think it's some kind of win that it took them a while to dig themselves out of that hole after they broke the colonial chains."
That's not quite what happened, or what I mean...
The transition away from Communist dictatorship could only occur, and did occur, only (a few years) after a specific person -- Mao -- was removed. That is not an organic process of growing out of poverty, five-year plans notwithstanding (or are they rewriting *that* history, too?) For example, the new rulers quite consciously removed restrictions on low-level internal trade (e.g. street vendors).
The important thing about that had an *ideological* effect on the common people, specifically to question what communism was actually advocating, if all of a sudden they could themselves participate in the same free trade that was previously demonized. This was (known to be) a proven-successful path to *material* success, even if cultural aspects, including materially equality, could suffer. But the powers-that-be had already made such a horrific mess of that in the Cultural Revolution, it was a rather easy choice.
As a teenager, I asked my dad why he was a commie, and got the answer which later in life made me a commie too, and still am, after so much studying and fighting; he said, smiling: " because Communism is justice. And freedom".
George Orwell was a rat for the OSS and sold out a bunch of his comrades, also called Paul Robeson “very anti-white.” The British caused famines that murdered millions of Indians during the same time as famines ravaged China.
Mao also raised life expectancy by almost 40 years during his leadership. And China has developed into the most responsible global power on the planet under communist leadership. Many of the crimes against Stalin were made up, the Big Black Book of Communism that alleges his body count exceeds that of Hitler has been thoroughly discredited. They counted Nazis killed during WW2 against him.
Of course, both these men committed atrocities, as all world leaders do. They got a lot of shit wrong, but they were ruling nations during a postwar period where the entirety of the world lived under authoritarian conditions cause they just had two global wars during a 30 year period. Comparing them to the likes of people like Hitler, or even white supremacist Churchill, is mostly the product of western propaganda. The west formed NATO post war, immediately attacked the Soviets who were their allies, and then spent the next several decades building neo-imperialism and capturing now some 75% of the world’s resources. They’ve also committed countless genocides since then, in Korea, Vietnam, Palestine, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, etc.
Doesn’t mean we can’t rightfully criticize what the communist leaders did get wrong and when they did overstep their bounds and have people murdered, but their societies also improved the lives of multiple millions of people. The Soviet Union went from a peasant serf nation living under autocracy to a global superpower with great education, healthcare and housing during Stalin’s rule. China ended foot binding and made divorce legal, liberating millions of women from abusive marriages.
I’d suggest reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. Cause the most fuming commies were right about Stalin and Mao too.
It's often forgotten that Stalin had to deal with Trotsky and the like who were installed by the ancestors of the modern banking "elite", and most of the "communist" atrocities attributed to Stalin actually took place during their rule (the ritual murder of Russian poet Sergey Yesenin comes to mind). Stalin was no saint either, but it can be argued that the main reason he was demonized was because he kicked out the bankers' cartel puppets (similar to Putin) and changed the course of WWII. Ironically, the first country to recognize the communist revolution in 1917 was USA.
I don’t know that Stalin was a psychopath. He was certainly driven paranoid by all the constant western intervention in his society and their funding counterrevolutionary and fascist forces and spreading propaganda everywhere. I think he was under more pressure than maybe any world leader in history, and made a lot of mistakes because of that and didn’t have good solutions. Considering what we now know about the Epstein files and how the vast majority of people executed by the Soviet govt were fascists and capitalists, like there weren’t good solutions for how to deal with all of that. Basically, gulags or death. You can’t put pedophiles and sadist torturers in general society. Also, Stalin was one man in a country of hundreds of millions, there was a vast body of local and state officials also involved in all of that. It was maybe the most difficult time any country has ever had, recovering from losing 27 million people while rebuilding and industrializing. Most leaders would not have held that nation together.
Oh yeah, and when the Soviet Union fell, the people the west put in charge put child slavery rings into practice, something communists had somehow been holding back. Because yeah, if you’re fighting capitalists who have rape and murder parties on secret islands with everyone else’s kids, like yeah, you might need to use some authoritarian measures to protect people. None of what happens in the world happens in a vacuum. Trump is a psychopath. Stalin is a man who lived through several mass trauma events and was obviously affected deeply by it. He also tried to resign multiple times and they wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t a power hungry monster. He was the first brown leader of a European power on a continent run by white supremacists who were scared communists would dismantle their power and make them stop killing people for profits.
"the vast majority of people executed by the Soviet govt were fascists and capitalists,"
Tens of millions of people were "fascists and capitalists" who deserved *death*?
"... [T]here weren’t good solutions for how to deal with all of that. Basically, gulags or death."
"Trump is a psychopath. [In contrast..] Stalin is a man who lived through several mass trauma events and was obviously affected deeply by it." !!!
"He [Stalin?] wasn’t a power hungry monster. He was the first brown leader of a European power on a continent run by white supremacists" !!!!
Poor Stalin! /s The best way I can think to respond to this breathtaking rationalization of Stalin's manifest psychopathy is the well-known Nietzsche quote, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."
Is this what is going on in so-called "Leftist" minds today? Holy cow! No wonder the US is going mad and on the verge of civil war! And goodness knows I have no love for Trump, capitalism, or Rightism...
----------
"You can’t put pedophiles and sadist torturers in general society."
Side note: Paranoia, pedophilia, sadism, and psychopathy are all different conditions, and can occur in any combination.
Funny that you quote the favorite philosopher of Nazis to make that very anticommunist point. Stalin didn’t murder tens of millions of people. There are no historical sources that corroborate that number. He did defeat the Nazis though. Nothing in there is rationalization. It’s historical analysis that accurately understands what the global and national conditions were then and now. The problem isn’t psychopathy. It’s capitalism.
Stalin improved the lives of millions of people and oversaw the fastest growing economy on the history of the planet. He was adored by millions upon millions of poor brown people and scholars alike, like WEB DuBois who wrote a eulogy to him calling him a Black Legend. Yes, he also made some brutal errors. And abused his power. But I promise you, if you read the historical narrative from global south and socialist perspectives and find the accurate accounting of that particular time in human history, you find a truly different portrait of the man. Sure, you can continue to believe the one taught to you by the same people that tell you alive breeding child rapists like Thomas Jefferson were bad men with good ideas. But read Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds, or Domemic Losurdo’s Stalin: A History and Critique of a Black Legend. The latter is free from Iskra Books.
The same people who taught you Stalin was a monster are the people who taught you Christopher Columbus was a hero. Why were they so afraid of him? Maybe because his methods were effective at stopping psychopaths.
You are three years older than me and I have concluded that our societies must be a mixture of ideologies as none are complete in themselves. Capitalism has ruined the West, liberalism is dead, and socialism has to be resurrected and conservatives are a fraud having sold their souls to capitalism and its forever wars. Neoliberalism has done horrendous damage to democracy and our values. I have no party affiliation and vote strategically for the best person or lesser evil. Elections are no more than dog and pony shows.
China was wrong? China had ended poverty in 2021...meaning that 800+ million people now live a decent life. Democracy? There is too much to say about that...May I suggest reading Pino Arlacchi's "China explained to the West", for a start? He us a illustrissimo scholar, not a journalist
Having read Simon Sebag Montefiore's books about Stalin, I don't think Stalin's cruelty and crimes were because of communism, but because of flaws in his own personality. Stalin had a rotten upbringing with an abusive mother. History might have turned out very differently if not for that. He was extremely intelligent, but had strong streaks of antisocial personality disorders.
It is as though any leader of the dominant party in revolutionary Russia claiming a Soviet Union of larger land mass than any nation state for centuries preceding it and languages and values systems that when merged under an alien ideology so ripe for feudal monarchical corruption and nepotism any such leader of such a wide variety of cultures that could arise could protect themselves while rebuilding systems the Soviets had thoroughly and ideologically trashed as regressive! Not to mention most of the land mass being at arctic latitudes!
Careful examination of such multi-cultural consolidation into our modern concept of procedural liberal or neo-liberal societies in hostile climates will find few well-adjusted leaders attaining a critical mass of supporters to keep such an international venture from eating itself or being sectioned off from more stable royal orders or heavenly disciples of absolute 'psychopathic' if revolutionary\predatory leaders that manage the trick of Cult of Personality.
Much more study is needed of the role of industrial scale advertising and Public Relations in stabilizing such forcibly and militarily consolidated lands, peoples and tongues at a finer level of attention and study than the U.S. school systems have ever attempted.
That will be required to understand the transition of the vast British Empire into the English language dominant yet relatively stable system of internal and institutional checks & balances that allowed for both the personal freedoms (except for those of inferior gender, skin color, tribal tongue and systems of math, navigation, social and environmental balance in maintenance of settled lands) and institutional cohesion necessary to attain our own highly wealth and opportunity stratified far from perfect national project. Replete with Predatory Economics as were practiced by the British Monarchs.
We also have some more benign 'head cases' who have risen through the ranks of our filtered systems of electoral majorities into ranks that nearly matched those of absolute power and privilege seen by our own chain of colonial rule. Mass media as we all have experienced is no guarantor or safe-guard of the "Public Interest" where auto-pillage is the only setting that has ever ruled over our auctioned off most powerful means of mass communication as was developed in the past centuries of the spread of the old Anglo Social orders into a New World of intercontinental Private Wealth holdings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aK4OztueuE&t=586s
"From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism | DiEM25"
Yanis Varoufakis
"697,413 views Jan 26, 2021"
A lecture organised by University of Tübingen economics students, delivered on Monday February 3, 2020, on the theme "From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism". With lively lecture hall Q&A in English despite this being a German University!
"Mainstream economic models lack some important features of really-existing capitalism, including money, time and space. Its models offer ideological cover for a capitalist system that has usurped competitive, free markets."
"The result? Unbearable inequality, climate catastrophe and permanent stagnation. A fork on the road is approaching: It will take us either into deeper stagnation and environmental degradation or to a society with markets but no capitalism. Prof. Yanis Varoufakis talks about the future of our economy and the current state of economics with special regard to pluralism in economics."
We haven't even begun following the money from Swiss banks and Caribbean Islands High Finance Electronic HQ store-houses of raw wealth and portable accounting. Or of the Military Industrial Complex infrastructure and early stages of that international order of 'development' and Global Trade. Bring your most reliable erase-able writing implements and recording devices. Rough weather and the paradoxes of any genuine search for truths that can hold water and remain afloat and then construct healthful and affordable infrastructure without Top Down Psychopathology Transference may be expected.
"[T]here is only one party worth joining, and that is the party of truth."
You talk about humility, yet you do not acknowledge that there is no such thing as (accessible) truth. ALL is perception, thought, communication, that is, human-centric things -- and thus ALL is eternally subject to reconsideration and revision.
It's in the very nature of human beings, who are universally and eternally limited and imperfect. All of this differs from person to person, and society to society. Accordingly, there never can or will be any static, complete Grand Unified Theory -- of anything.
Thank you for a disclosure we are sorely lacking in all of our Thought Control-devised and advertiser-sponsored broadcasting and even wireless communications Systems of Mass Distraction here in the 'developed and capitalized world.'
It's clear to me that Marxists (and libertarians, for that matter) simply cannot see the forest for the trees.
The biggest problem with human collectives of any ideological stripe is our inability to control psychopathy. That is, to successfully identify and contain people who do NOT care about other people, from those who do, and those in between for whatever reasons.
Until that happens, it does not matter if Marx was correct about anything economic, positively or normatively. Until that happens, we will continue to see the very parade of antidemocratic monsters acting *in Marx's name* -- the ones you openly acknowledge! -- destroying societies with far more tears than capitalism every produced.
Get real, or we'll just keep repeating a hell, no matter what it is, or what it is called.
It helps when you don't have a system that selects for psychopathy, which capitalism does. It incentives people who will ruthlessly advance the demands of private capital.
If you think Marxists have caused far more tears, you've been living in a bubble.
Look, there is no system that "selects" for psychopathy, consciously or not.
The objective of an intelligent psychopath is to learn the system they swim in, and game it, as far they can up the ladder. It's a variant of the iron law of oligarchy, and a consequence of the (actual) range of human nature. Thus this happens in EVERY system. And it will keep happening until a system is *consciously* designed to control it, before the fact.
If you think any of the systems that have called themselves Marxist have escaped this, you're certainly deluded.
Capitalism literally selects for psychopaths, it requires people who are willing and able to serve the narrow and anti-social interest of capital (a ruthless abstraction with no moral obligation) over human beings. Militarism often does a similar thing, promoting the most effective killers. The two make good friends.
Whatever you want to say about power, corruption, etc etc inherent in all systems, you have to acknowledge that the very least one can hope for is a system that isn't looking to actively promote people with no conscience or empathy and strong ambition because they embody the values of the system and keep it running. That is what we have.
"Modern governments literally select for psychopaths, as they require people who are willing and able to serve the narrow and anti-social of power over human beings."
FIFY
How you're able to institute a Marxist system that -- for the first time in history, for ANY system, Marxist or not, over a large population -- is able to bypass the psychopaths is beyond me.
Power is going to exist, and corruption is always a danger. Should it be organized around serving the needs of the people, or the accumulation of an abstract thing that doesn't care about people? That's all this is, the shape of the incentive structure, not whether power exists or not, or if it can or is abused. Better to have an incentive structure that isn't inherently poisonous as a start, your odds of sick people is lower.
Been a commie most of my life. It’s a tough journey at times but the tools of analysis that bring broad theory and practical everyday knowledge to life are very useful. Like any science doubt is a valuable friend. ✊🏼
Caitlin, you are one brave lady. My thoughts exactly. For more good analysis see Prof. Richard Wolff, Marxist economist at R.D. Wolff.com and Democracy at Work.info.
Political maturity has to do with the fact the West only constitutes 12 % of the world population. The dominance we have held economically and militarily is gone and Western ruling classes are terrified of the fact they are going to be in a minority position. It is time to quit fighting wars and accept the fact we have to partner with the rest of the world. The age of empires is over and we have to adopt whole new strategies. We have to see the world as it is not through eyes of BS propagandists and half-baked demagogues who refuse accept that we must live in a state of constant progressive adaptation. How we govern ourselves is more important than ever. Political systems have to be purged of corruption and incompetence.
As my favourite anarchist, Emma Goldman, said, communism is a step in the right direction, but it isn't the whole answer. Try reading some Enrico Malatesta, George Woodcock, Proudon, Kropotkin, Paul Goodman. Anarchy is not chaos as those who dictate what is "right" to us would have us believe. Anarchy reverses the pyramid so that we, the people are at the top and the shitcans are at the bottom.
I don't think it can be more. It fills a radical niche in Western societies precisely because it is inert and doesn't threaten the system. I've seen so much totally ineffective activism in the US and Pacific Northwest based around anarchist ideology. Was down at the Occupy encampments. Nothing was accomplished.
The logic should be clear: To challenge organized power, you need organized power. Leaderless ad hoc collections of individuals doing whatever they want does not challenge power.
Unfortunately leaders can be eliminated which causes whatever movement the leaders were leading to fall apart. JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X immediately come to mind. As well as the many lesser known leaders who were murdered by TPTB from Walter Reuther to Patrice Lumumbu to Fred Hampton to Dag Hammerskold and on and on.
Anyone who gains any traction as a threat to the system gets whacked. If we could be like ants or bees and be able to do what needs doing without being led (the queen doesn’t lead, she just lays eggs and when she starts lagging the workers kill her and create a new queen) we’d have a chance.
Unfortunately humans don’t operate that way. I really don’t see a way out.
I don’t think anarchism is about not having leaders at all. It is ensuring there isn’t centralization of power. There’s enough rotation of it. Because any level of organization of power needs intact for too long is too much decisional autonomy in a single hands or a few hands — which really isn’t a betterment in the condition of political freedom, even though it might better the material conditions.
Well, whaddaya know? An endorsement from Caitlin Johnstone! I'll take it! Thank you very much!
Seriously, it took me a long time to admit those annoying commies who seemed to actively enjoy giving me cognitive dissonance were right about how capitalism works and how it treats people as commodities, without which you can't have colonialism. No colonialism, no Israel...
That's why communists and anarchists alike are not surprised that Epstein could happen.
The problem is figuring out how to organise your society in such a way as to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in individuals, cliques and social classes. Marxism has provided useful theoretical and practical frameworks, but this fundamental problem has not been solved. Humans evolved for hundreds of thousands of years in small groups—nomadic hunter-gatherers. When we shifted to sedentary agricultural societies, the exploitation started. So keeping the scale small as much as possible is one of the keys, imho. But we still need to solve the issue of large-scale projects and how to prevent them from being hijacked by psychopaths.
I support this. Their structural critique has always been correct, which is probably why it’s so taboo, while facile and useless liberalism, constantly try to soften and accommodate around the edges of the status quo, is a constant letdown. And the desperate cope of "free market" fundamentalists who think they can save capitalism by letting it run wild is so frustratingly sad.
There are particular communists, and brands of communism that I really dislike. Especially those that don’t like art and music, what they see as bourgeoisie vices, and think human liberation is a one-size fits all of everyone miserable slaving out in the fields. Or those who think that inner experience, spirituality, and consciousness are empty diversions from material struggle.
But the thing that I like is that none of those identity-larping guys can own the core issue of removing control of society from private capital and a capitalist class, and giving it to regular human beings and their priorities. It’s obvious that this is the only way humanity survives. Unless we can fully take power back, our system is like a fast car with no brakes on a winding mountain road.
We can choose our values for a post-capitalist future, that need not be austere and harsh, but humane, creative, and empowering people to be the best version of themselves and do what the things they were meant to do. In fact, as capitalism hits the inevitable contraction phase, the only way to preserve freedom, quality of life, and human potential is to de-throne capital.
"Political Maturity Is Realizing The Commies Were Correct".
Bravo! Caitlin & Tim, you are brilliant! The best you have written. The world needs communism as never before. Did the average person stop to think ever why it was the communists who were slaughtered every time the empires old and new went on a rampage.
Growing up I imbibed communism listening wide-eyed to my big brother ( already noted as a public intellectual) and his likeminded friends. I wouldn't say I was brainwashed but they opened my eyes.
"Capitalism" is not the same thing as "free markets". Capitalism is Rockefeller economics, where corporations and politicians work together to monopolize and destroy competition ("crony capitalism" or "corporatism"). Communism is Satan's apostate and evil version of the Law of Consecration, where agency is removed. Conflating "capitalism" with "free markets" is a slight of hand to justify communism. The "fascism" of the right, and the "communism" of the left is the greatest trick of all, where both outcomes lead to the same thing - total government control and the total removal of economic agency. #two-partyillusion
There is such a thing as hybrids...it's a continuum, not necessarily the stark extremes at either end. Richard Wolff explains that China has a hybrid ECONOMIC system...private and public ownership. The political system is authoritarian - like ours IS NOW. I continually hear people conflating the two....economic and political.
Free markets are not a real thing. They've never existed, and never will, because they posit an economic playing field that isn't shaped by money or power!
Right on Caitlin. Anticommunism has been at the root of the pathetic impotence of the so-called “Left” in the US-led West: by swallowing and regurgitating the anti-Stalin propaganda of the capitalist ruling class, the reformist “Left” has justified itself in rejecting all actually existing revolutionary socialist projects (USSR, China, Cuba, N. Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua) and, therefore, has no real-life alternative to offer to capitalism, which keeps proving itself irreformable and irredeemable.
We do not have "free markets." Read Robert Reich....astute understanding of the wealth/poverty divide. Poverty is A POLICY CHOICE. The system is RIGGED. It has always been rigged. Wish you were here, George Carlin, RIP...
If you follow the line of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky, are you a socialist or a communist or both? For that matter, if you are a Marxist, same question. I am still not clear on this even after studying some Marx/Engels/Lenin/Trotsky and reading hundreds of contemporary articles.
Anyway -- of course Marx was totally right. The more you observe, the more clear it is. What is really striking is the tremendous effectiveness of capitalist indoctrination. I know plenty of people who are educated and intelligent, and still believe the shit they read in the New York Times.
People have said to me they don't care for the World Socialist Webste (https://wsws.org) because it's too "ideological". Didn't Marx say the predominant ideology is the ruling class ideology? The NY Times is drenched in capitalist ideology, but these well-educated people never notice that.
The older I get (85 in a month), the more I think Marx was right. And that means the Communists in China and Russia were wrong. I will stick with Orwell, whose critique of totalitarianism (1984/Animal Farm) exposes the lies of the monster (as Khruschev called Stalin) who ruled the Soviet Union for decades in total defiance of Marx. And as for Mao, he was a another psychopath who, fortunately, has been succeeded by wise rulers who have brought China out of the cesspool created by Mao and rule with patience and moderation.
I am closer to being a communist (in the Marxian sense) than ever in my life, but those who ran things in China and the Soviet Union did so in total disregard for Marx's view that communism could only arise in a mature capitalist society, never in a poor, semi-feudal backwater like Russia or China.
I think the Soviet criticism of the West was basically correct and the Western criticism by Orwell and others was correct about the terrible flaws of the Soviet Union. Today's communist leaders are moderate and pragmatic, playing the long game. They understand that before there can be communism, there must be industrialization, concentrations of wealth, and the contradictions of capitalism must play out. Neither Stalin nor Mao understood this and their ignorance led to vicious criminality.
If we say the communists were right, it is imperative to say which ones: those most right were eliminated as traitors. Trotsky got an ax in the skull; and in China, hundreds of thousands of CCP officials were persecuted; many died through execution, suicide under duress, or prison abuse.
See The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976 — Frank Dikötter
Focus: Ground-level purge violence
Strengths:
Based on newly opened Chinese archives.
Shows how mass denunciations and killings unfolded locally.
Details torture, struggle sessions, executions.
Part of Dikötter’s trilogy on Maoist campaigns."
I suggest avoiding blanket generalizations and defining terms. I suggest not taking sides. In doing so we betray the truth, for both sides lie alongside some accurate criticism. There is only one thing worth fighting for, and that is peace (Camus), and there is only one party worth joining, and that is the party of truth. And all the while, let us be humble and admit that we make mistakes and then learn from them. That is what the best in the West (democratic socialists et al) and in the communist universe have done.
If you put this in context with what capitalist nations have been doing during the same time, and ignore Western-biased sources, you find that much of this is propaganda, and represents and incomplete story.
Mao is the reason China is an independent state and not languishing in poverty like India. Stalin, for being a dictator, in context defeated the Nazis who invaded the USSR and killed 20+ million people, while also facing hostile Western isolation, and eventually remilitarization for Europe, the creation of NATO absorbing the remains of Nazi West Germany into it. Tense times.
Can't separate any of this from context.
"Mao is the reason China is an independent state and not languishing in poverty like India."
Not following you here... China languished in poverty from the time Mao took over, all the way until his death more than a quarter-century later, and then some.
First, Mao is the reason China is independent and the Century of Humiliation didn't continue.
Second, look at every single metric from life expectancy, literacy, wealth, etc etc all took off with Mao. Look at China before Mao, and after. The dividing line is right there.
People always say that it was Deng "embracing" capitalism that changed everything. Yet India embraced capitalism from its independence, and look at it now.
"Mao is the reason China is independent and the Century of Humiliation didn't continue."
But it did live in poverty for many decades. With a continuation of th famines that drove people to flee, as well as that lovely re-invigoration, the "Cultural Revolution", until...
"People always say that it was Deng 'embracing' capitalism that changed everything... "
But it did. This is the thing that it appears Marxists studiously ignore. I can only conclude that the cog-dis must be overwhelming.
"... Yet India embraced capitalism from its independence, and look at it now."
Cultural differences. Also, India's globalist upper classes are doing very well, thank you.
Look, Marxism simply does not address any number of facts about human nature. And, believe me, I have less than zero love for unfettered capitalism.
Again, China started in extreme poverty, coming out of colonial domination and a brutal war, and was isolated from the world economic system at behest of the capitalist powers. They had to build from essentially zero. Not sure why you think it's some kind of win that it took them a while to dig themselves out of that hole after they broke the colonial chains.
India is not because of a cultural difference. It is because Deng specifically introduced controlled markets as a way of having trade integration with the world (which was cut off) and generating wealth with the global system that exists, so that they could direct it to their development priorities. This was always led by the communist party and under their control. Without Mao building the foundation, they would have been just as unable to control their destiny as India, they would have been overrun, kept in poverty and without development.
"Not sure why you think it's some kind of win that it took them a while to dig themselves out of that hole after they broke the colonial chains."
That's not quite what happened, or what I mean...
The transition away from Communist dictatorship could only occur, and did occur, only (a few years) after a specific person -- Mao -- was removed. That is not an organic process of growing out of poverty, five-year plans notwithstanding (or are they rewriting *that* history, too?) For example, the new rulers quite consciously removed restrictions on low-level internal trade (e.g. street vendors).
The important thing about that had an *ideological* effect on the common people, specifically to question what communism was actually advocating, if all of a sudden they could themselves participate in the same free trade that was previously demonized. This was (known to be) a proven-successful path to *material* success, even if cultural aspects, including materially equality, could suffer. But the powers-that-be had already made such a horrific mess of that in the Cultural Revolution, it was a rather easy choice.
As a teenager, I asked my dad why he was a commie, and got the answer which later in life made me a commie too, and still am, after so much studying and fighting; he said, smiling: " because Communism is justice. And freedom".
Saying the Communists are right about capitalism is not the same thing as saying that Stalin and Mao made no mistakes.
We all make mistakes.
Like America in Vietnam, Iraq, slavery, Indian genocide, neoliberalism, big oopsies. But at least we aren't the bad guy like those guys.
Well, were they Communists or not? Were they right?
dale ruff, nothing much to say!.
🥱🙂↔️🙄☹️🙂↕️🥱
You might as well say that the people that are right are your beloved Obamas and Clintons, since you always vote democrap amiright dale?
George Orwell was a rat for the OSS and sold out a bunch of his comrades, also called Paul Robeson “very anti-white.” The British caused famines that murdered millions of Indians during the same time as famines ravaged China.
Mao also raised life expectancy by almost 40 years during his leadership. And China has developed into the most responsible global power on the planet under communist leadership. Many of the crimes against Stalin were made up, the Big Black Book of Communism that alleges his body count exceeds that of Hitler has been thoroughly discredited. They counted Nazis killed during WW2 against him.
Of course, both these men committed atrocities, as all world leaders do. They got a lot of shit wrong, but they were ruling nations during a postwar period where the entirety of the world lived under authoritarian conditions cause they just had two global wars during a 30 year period. Comparing them to the likes of people like Hitler, or even white supremacist Churchill, is mostly the product of western propaganda. The west formed NATO post war, immediately attacked the Soviets who were their allies, and then spent the next several decades building neo-imperialism and capturing now some 75% of the world’s resources. They’ve also committed countless genocides since then, in Korea, Vietnam, Palestine, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, etc.
Doesn’t mean we can’t rightfully criticize what the communist leaders did get wrong and when they did overstep their bounds and have people murdered, but their societies also improved the lives of multiple millions of people. The Soviet Union went from a peasant serf nation living under autocracy to a global superpower with great education, healthcare and housing during Stalin’s rule. China ended foot binding and made divorce legal, liberating millions of women from abusive marriages.
I’d suggest reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. Cause the most fuming commies were right about Stalin and Mao too.
It's often forgotten that Stalin had to deal with Trotsky and the like who were installed by the ancestors of the modern banking "elite", and most of the "communist" atrocities attributed to Stalin actually took place during their rule (the ritual murder of Russian poet Sergey Yesenin comes to mind). Stalin was no saint either, but it can be argued that the main reason he was demonized was because he kicked out the bankers' cartel puppets (similar to Putin) and changed the course of WWII. Ironically, the first country to recognize the communist revolution in 1917 was USA.
"Of course, both these men committed atrocities, as all world leaders do."
All world leaders commit atrocities because no world leaders get to where they are without being psychopaths. Psychopathy is the problem.
I don’t know that Stalin was a psychopath. He was certainly driven paranoid by all the constant western intervention in his society and their funding counterrevolutionary and fascist forces and spreading propaganda everywhere. I think he was under more pressure than maybe any world leader in history, and made a lot of mistakes because of that and didn’t have good solutions. Considering what we now know about the Epstein files and how the vast majority of people executed by the Soviet govt were fascists and capitalists, like there weren’t good solutions for how to deal with all of that. Basically, gulags or death. You can’t put pedophiles and sadist torturers in general society. Also, Stalin was one man in a country of hundreds of millions, there was a vast body of local and state officials also involved in all of that. It was maybe the most difficult time any country has ever had, recovering from losing 27 million people while rebuilding and industrializing. Most leaders would not have held that nation together.
Oh yeah, and when the Soviet Union fell, the people the west put in charge put child slavery rings into practice, something communists had somehow been holding back. Because yeah, if you’re fighting capitalists who have rape and murder parties on secret islands with everyone else’s kids, like yeah, you might need to use some authoritarian measures to protect people. None of what happens in the world happens in a vacuum. Trump is a psychopath. Stalin is a man who lived through several mass trauma events and was obviously affected deeply by it. He also tried to resign multiple times and they wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t a power hungry monster. He was the first brown leader of a European power on a continent run by white supremacists who were scared communists would dismantle their power and make them stop killing people for profits.
"the vast majority of people executed by the Soviet govt were fascists and capitalists,"
Tens of millions of people were "fascists and capitalists" who deserved *death*?
"... [T]here weren’t good solutions for how to deal with all of that. Basically, gulags or death."
"Trump is a psychopath. [In contrast..] Stalin is a man who lived through several mass trauma events and was obviously affected deeply by it." !!!
"He [Stalin?] wasn’t a power hungry monster. He was the first brown leader of a European power on a continent run by white supremacists" !!!!
Poor Stalin! /s The best way I can think to respond to this breathtaking rationalization of Stalin's manifest psychopathy is the well-known Nietzsche quote, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."
Is this what is going on in so-called "Leftist" minds today? Holy cow! No wonder the US is going mad and on the verge of civil war! And goodness knows I have no love for Trump, capitalism, or Rightism...
----------
"You can’t put pedophiles and sadist torturers in general society."
Side note: Paranoia, pedophilia, sadism, and psychopathy are all different conditions, and can occur in any combination.
Funny that you quote the favorite philosopher of Nazis to make that very anticommunist point. Stalin didn’t murder tens of millions of people. There are no historical sources that corroborate that number. He did defeat the Nazis though. Nothing in there is rationalization. It’s historical analysis that accurately understands what the global and national conditions were then and now. The problem isn’t psychopathy. It’s capitalism.
Stalin improved the lives of millions of people and oversaw the fastest growing economy on the history of the planet. He was adored by millions upon millions of poor brown people and scholars alike, like WEB DuBois who wrote a eulogy to him calling him a Black Legend. Yes, he also made some brutal errors. And abused his power. But I promise you, if you read the historical narrative from global south and socialist perspectives and find the accurate accounting of that particular time in human history, you find a truly different portrait of the man. Sure, you can continue to believe the one taught to you by the same people that tell you alive breeding child rapists like Thomas Jefferson were bad men with good ideas. But read Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds, or Domemic Losurdo’s Stalin: A History and Critique of a Black Legend. The latter is free from Iskra Books.
The same people who taught you Stalin was a monster are the people who taught you Christopher Columbus was a hero. Why were they so afraid of him? Maybe because his methods were effective at stopping psychopaths.
You are three years older than me and I have concluded that our societies must be a mixture of ideologies as none are complete in themselves. Capitalism has ruined the West, liberalism is dead, and socialism has to be resurrected and conservatives are a fraud having sold their souls to capitalism and its forever wars. Neoliberalism has done horrendous damage to democracy and our values. I have no party affiliation and vote strategically for the best person or lesser evil. Elections are no more than dog and pony shows.
China was wrong? China had ended poverty in 2021...meaning that 800+ million people now live a decent life. Democracy? There is too much to say about that...May I suggest reading Pino Arlacchi's "China explained to the West", for a start? He us a illustrissimo scholar, not a journalist
Having read Simon Sebag Montefiore's books about Stalin, I don't think Stalin's cruelty and crimes were because of communism, but because of flaws in his own personality. Stalin had a rotten upbringing with an abusive mother. History might have turned out very differently if not for that. He was extremely intelligent, but had strong streaks of antisocial personality disorders.
It is as though any leader of the dominant party in revolutionary Russia claiming a Soviet Union of larger land mass than any nation state for centuries preceding it and languages and values systems that when merged under an alien ideology so ripe for feudal monarchical corruption and nepotism any such leader of such a wide variety of cultures that could arise could protect themselves while rebuilding systems the Soviets had thoroughly and ideologically trashed as regressive! Not to mention most of the land mass being at arctic latitudes!
Careful examination of such multi-cultural consolidation into our modern concept of procedural liberal or neo-liberal societies in hostile climates will find few well-adjusted leaders attaining a critical mass of supporters to keep such an international venture from eating itself or being sectioned off from more stable royal orders or heavenly disciples of absolute 'psychopathic' if revolutionary\predatory leaders that manage the trick of Cult of Personality.
Much more study is needed of the role of industrial scale advertising and Public Relations in stabilizing such forcibly and militarily consolidated lands, peoples and tongues at a finer level of attention and study than the U.S. school systems have ever attempted.
That will be required to understand the transition of the vast British Empire into the English language dominant yet relatively stable system of internal and institutional checks & balances that allowed for both the personal freedoms (except for those of inferior gender, skin color, tribal tongue and systems of math, navigation, social and environmental balance in maintenance of settled lands) and institutional cohesion necessary to attain our own highly wealth and opportunity stratified far from perfect national project. Replete with Predatory Economics as were practiced by the British Monarchs.
We also have some more benign 'head cases' who have risen through the ranks of our filtered systems of electoral majorities into ranks that nearly matched those of absolute power and privilege seen by our own chain of colonial rule. Mass media as we all have experienced is no guarantor or safe-guard of the "Public Interest" where auto-pillage is the only setting that has ever ruled over our auctioned off most powerful means of mass communication as was developed in the past centuries of the spread of the old Anglo Social orders into a New World of intercontinental Private Wealth holdings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aK4OztueuE&t=586s
"From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism | DiEM25"
Yanis Varoufakis
"697,413 views Jan 26, 2021"
A lecture organised by University of Tübingen economics students, delivered on Monday February 3, 2020, on the theme "From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism". With lively lecture hall Q&A in English despite this being a German University!
"Mainstream economic models lack some important features of really-existing capitalism, including money, time and space. Its models offer ideological cover for a capitalist system that has usurped competitive, free markets."
"The result? Unbearable inequality, climate catastrophe and permanent stagnation. A fork on the road is approaching: It will take us either into deeper stagnation and environmental degradation or to a society with markets but no capitalism. Prof. Yanis Varoufakis talks about the future of our economy and the current state of economics with special regard to pluralism in economics."
We haven't even begun following the money from Swiss banks and Caribbean Islands High Finance Electronic HQ store-houses of raw wealth and portable accounting. Or of the Military Industrial Complex infrastructure and early stages of that international order of 'development' and Global Trade. Bring your most reliable erase-able writing implements and recording devices. Rough weather and the paradoxes of any genuine search for truths that can hold water and remain afloat and then construct healthful and affordable infrastructure without Top Down Psychopathology Transference may be expected.
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
"[T]here is only one party worth joining, and that is the party of truth."
You talk about humility, yet you do not acknowledge that there is no such thing as (accessible) truth. ALL is perception, thought, communication, that is, human-centric things -- and thus ALL is eternally subject to reconsideration and revision.
It's in the very nature of human beings, who are universally and eternally limited and imperfect. All of this differs from person to person, and society to society. Accordingly, there never can or will be any static, complete Grand Unified Theory -- of anything.
Thank you for a disclosure we are sorely lacking in all of our Thought Control-devised and advertiser-sponsored broadcasting and even wireless communications Systems of Mass Distraction here in the 'developed and capitalized world.'
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
Who gives a damn that you are closer to being a Communist than ever in your life? Trotskyite fool
It's clear to me that Marxists (and libertarians, for that matter) simply cannot see the forest for the trees.
The biggest problem with human collectives of any ideological stripe is our inability to control psychopathy. That is, to successfully identify and contain people who do NOT care about other people, from those who do, and those in between for whatever reasons.
Until that happens, it does not matter if Marx was correct about anything economic, positively or normatively. Until that happens, we will continue to see the very parade of antidemocratic monsters acting *in Marx's name* -- the ones you openly acknowledge! -- destroying societies with far more tears than capitalism every produced.
Get real, or we'll just keep repeating a hell, no matter what it is, or what it is called.
It helps when you don't have a system that selects for psychopathy, which capitalism does. It incentives people who will ruthlessly advance the demands of private capital.
If you think Marxists have caused far more tears, you've been living in a bubble.
Look, there is no system that "selects" for psychopathy, consciously or not.
The objective of an intelligent psychopath is to learn the system they swim in, and game it, as far they can up the ladder. It's a variant of the iron law of oligarchy, and a consequence of the (actual) range of human nature. Thus this happens in EVERY system. And it will keep happening until a system is *consciously* designed to control it, before the fact.
If you think any of the systems that have called themselves Marxist have escaped this, you're certainly deluded.
Capitalism literally selects for psychopaths, it requires people who are willing and able to serve the narrow and anti-social interest of capital (a ruthless abstraction with no moral obligation) over human beings. Militarism often does a similar thing, promoting the most effective killers. The two make good friends.
Whatever you want to say about power, corruption, etc etc inherent in all systems, you have to acknowledge that the very least one can hope for is a system that isn't looking to actively promote people with no conscience or empathy and strong ambition because they embody the values of the system and keep it running. That is what we have.
"Modern governments literally select for psychopaths, as they require people who are willing and able to serve the narrow and anti-social of power over human beings."
FIFY
How you're able to institute a Marxist system that -- for the first time in history, for ANY system, Marxist or not, over a large population -- is able to bypass the psychopaths is beyond me.
Power is going to exist, and corruption is always a danger. Should it be organized around serving the needs of the people, or the accumulation of an abstract thing that doesn't care about people? That's all this is, the shape of the incentive structure, not whether power exists or not, or if it can or is abused. Better to have an incentive structure that isn't inherently poisonous as a start, your odds of sick people is lower.
Been a commie most of my life. It’s a tough journey at times but the tools of analysis that bring broad theory and practical everyday knowledge to life are very useful. Like any science doubt is a valuable friend. ✊🏼
What is the materialist account for humility and virtue? Can we find a humility molecule somewhere to put under a microscope?
Caitlin, you are one brave lady. My thoughts exactly. For more good analysis see Prof. Richard Wolff, Marxist economist at R.D. Wolff.com and Democracy at Work.info.
Professor Wolff absolutely rocks!
Political maturity has to do with the fact the West only constitutes 12 % of the world population. The dominance we have held economically and militarily is gone and Western ruling classes are terrified of the fact they are going to be in a minority position. It is time to quit fighting wars and accept the fact we have to partner with the rest of the world. The age of empires is over and we have to adopt whole new strategies. We have to see the world as it is not through eyes of BS propagandists and half-baked demagogues who refuse accept that we must live in a state of constant progressive adaptation. How we govern ourselves is more important than ever. Political systems have to be purged of corruption and incompetence.
As my favourite anarchist, Emma Goldman, said, communism is a step in the right direction, but it isn't the whole answer. Try reading some Enrico Malatesta, George Woodcock, Proudon, Kropotkin, Paul Goodman. Anarchy is not chaos as those who dictate what is "right" to us would have us believe. Anarchy reverses the pyramid so that we, the people are at the top and the shitcans are at the bottom.
The problem is Anarchism is a total dead end, achieves nothing and ends up preserving capitalist status quote. It's been a diversion since the 60s.
Oh. And when have you had the experience of living in an Anarchist State? So far, anarchism is an ideology. I would like to see it be more.
I don't think it can be more. It fills a radical niche in Western societies precisely because it is inert and doesn't threaten the system. I've seen so much totally ineffective activism in the US and Pacific Northwest based around anarchist ideology. Was down at the Occupy encampments. Nothing was accomplished.
The logic should be clear: To challenge organized power, you need organized power. Leaderless ad hoc collections of individuals doing whatever they want does not challenge power.
Unfortunately leaders can be eliminated which causes whatever movement the leaders were leading to fall apart. JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X immediately come to mind. As well as the many lesser known leaders who were murdered by TPTB from Walter Reuther to Patrice Lumumbu to Fred Hampton to Dag Hammerskold and on and on.
Anyone who gains any traction as a threat to the system gets whacked. If we could be like ants or bees and be able to do what needs doing without being led (the queen doesn’t lead, she just lays eggs and when she starts lagging the workers kill her and create a new queen) we’d have a chance.
Unfortunately humans don’t operate that way. I really don’t see a way out.
I don’t think anarchism is about not having leaders at all. It is ensuring there isn’t centralization of power. There’s enough rotation of it. Because any level of organization of power needs intact for too long is too much decisional autonomy in a single hands or a few hands — which really isn’t a betterment in the condition of political freedom, even though it might better the material conditions.
Correct has nothing to do with it. This is a question of power. Nothing more.
...power...made supreme by WEALTH.
Well, whaddaya know? An endorsement from Caitlin Johnstone! I'll take it! Thank you very much!
Seriously, it took me a long time to admit those annoying commies who seemed to actively enjoy giving me cognitive dissonance were right about how capitalism works and how it treats people as commodities, without which you can't have colonialism. No colonialism, no Israel...
That's why communists and anarchists alike are not surprised that Epstein could happen.
The problem is figuring out how to organise your society in such a way as to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in individuals, cliques and social classes. Marxism has provided useful theoretical and practical frameworks, but this fundamental problem has not been solved. Humans evolved for hundreds of thousands of years in small groups—nomadic hunter-gatherers. When we shifted to sedentary agricultural societies, the exploitation started. So keeping the scale small as much as possible is one of the keys, imho. But we still need to solve the issue of large-scale projects and how to prevent them from being hijacked by psychopaths.
Read the World Socialist Web Site. Support the Socialist Equality Party.
I support this. Their structural critique has always been correct, which is probably why it’s so taboo, while facile and useless liberalism, constantly try to soften and accommodate around the edges of the status quo, is a constant letdown. And the desperate cope of "free market" fundamentalists who think they can save capitalism by letting it run wild is so frustratingly sad.
There are particular communists, and brands of communism that I really dislike. Especially those that don’t like art and music, what they see as bourgeoisie vices, and think human liberation is a one-size fits all of everyone miserable slaving out in the fields. Or those who think that inner experience, spirituality, and consciousness are empty diversions from material struggle.
But the thing that I like is that none of those identity-larping guys can own the core issue of removing control of society from private capital and a capitalist class, and giving it to regular human beings and their priorities. It’s obvious that this is the only way humanity survives. Unless we can fully take power back, our system is like a fast car with no brakes on a winding mountain road.
We can choose our values for a post-capitalist future, that need not be austere and harsh, but humane, creative, and empowering people to be the best version of themselves and do what the things they were meant to do. In fact, as capitalism hits the inevitable contraction phase, the only way to preserve freedom, quality of life, and human potential is to de-throne capital.
"Political Maturity Is Realizing The Commies Were Correct".
Bravo! Caitlin & Tim, you are brilliant! The best you have written. The world needs communism as never before. Did the average person stop to think ever why it was the communists who were slaughtered every time the empires old and new went on a rampage.
Growing up I imbibed communism listening wide-eyed to my big brother ( already noted as a public intellectual) and his likeminded friends. I wouldn't say I was brainwashed but they opened my eyes.
Thank you. You make some excellent points in your writing.! Especially about communists. We have been indoctrinated in greed and consumerism.
"Capitalism" is not the same thing as "free markets". Capitalism is Rockefeller economics, where corporations and politicians work together to monopolize and destroy competition ("crony capitalism" or "corporatism"). Communism is Satan's apostate and evil version of the Law of Consecration, where agency is removed. Conflating "capitalism" with "free markets" is a slight of hand to justify communism. The "fascism" of the right, and the "communism" of the left is the greatest trick of all, where both outcomes lead to the same thing - total government control and the total removal of economic agency. #two-partyillusion
There is such a thing as hybrids...it's a continuum, not necessarily the stark extremes at either end. Richard Wolff explains that China has a hybrid ECONOMIC system...private and public ownership. The political system is authoritarian - like ours IS NOW. I continually hear people conflating the two....economic and political.
Free markets are not a real thing. They've never existed, and never will, because they posit an economic playing field that isn't shaped by money or power!
If I hadn’t realized how wise you are before, and subscribed as a result, I would know it now, after reading these cold, hard truths.
Right on Caitlin. Anticommunism has been at the root of the pathetic impotence of the so-called “Left” in the US-led West: by swallowing and regurgitating the anti-Stalin propaganda of the capitalist ruling class, the reformist “Left” has justified itself in rejecting all actually existing revolutionary socialist projects (USSR, China, Cuba, N. Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua) and, therefore, has no real-life alternative to offer to capitalism, which keeps proving itself irreformable and irredeemable.
We do not have "free markets." Read Robert Reich....astute understanding of the wealth/poverty divide. Poverty is A POLICY CHOICE. The system is RIGGED. It has always been rigged. Wish you were here, George Carlin, RIP...
And you never will. There is no such thing as a free market.
If you follow the line of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky, are you a socialist or a communist or both? For that matter, if you are a Marxist, same question. I am still not clear on this even after studying some Marx/Engels/Lenin/Trotsky and reading hundreds of contemporary articles.
Anyway -- of course Marx was totally right. The more you observe, the more clear it is. What is really striking is the tremendous effectiveness of capitalist indoctrination. I know plenty of people who are educated and intelligent, and still believe the shit they read in the New York Times.
People have said to me they don't care for the World Socialist Webste (https://wsws.org) because it's too "ideological". Didn't Marx say the predominant ideology is the ruling class ideology? The NY Times is drenched in capitalist ideology, but these well-educated people never notice that.