I’ve read up a little bit about it, fascinating indeed. Although one could argue that it sounds more like anarchism, and that apparently there indeed were groups that had various kinds of class division / hierarchy (age, gender, status etc). Aspects found in Communism and Anarchism seemingly were most prominent though. I guess my view on it is tainted by what I unfortunately see most (which is glorification of the USSR, Mao Zedong, Cuba etc. - unfortunately way too many of those nutjobs are running around in Germany’s CCC as well).
Now that I think about it I remember how euro-centric as fuck school history class was… So thanks for the insight.
Old white guy with name and face is still an upgrade over “random person on the internet”. For all I know you could be an LLM (no offense).
According to the anarchist philosophers, anarchism and communism are the same thing. According to the marxist philosophers, marxism and ccommunism are the same thing. The USSR and China are marxist, so marxism is the version of communism you’re gonna have more familiarity with.
Let Me explain the Marxist vision of history real quick: According to Marx, humanity began in tribes practicing “primitive communism”, like the First Australians and specifically the Iroquois of North America did. Then came cities, and with them, kings. This was the age of feudalism, when all power was concentrated in the hands of tyrants. Marx lived in the aftermath of the French revolution, a period when Europe was transitioning from feudalism to capitalism. He saw that change happening around him, and theorised that it was a natural, inevitable progression. He then tried to imagine what the future would be like, based on the past two transitions. He thus imagined two more transitions: first, the workers would rise up against the owning class and take over the government for themselves, creating what Marx called socialism, “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. A fair society where the workers use the state apparatus to ensure equality and plenty for all. And finally, the state would become unnecessary and “wither away”, leaving humanity with a idyllic communism akin to primitive communism, but with the benefits of modern science and technology. And not to sound like a broken record, but this is pretty racist with the way it portrays the new world Indigenous peoples as less developed than europeans. Marx was a big fan of the Darwinian, linear theory of evolution, and he wanted to chart and predict the evolution of civilisation, so he saw the Iroquois as evidence of europe’s evolutionary past.
Anyway, the USSR were marxists. They claimed to have a communist ideology, but they never claimed to have a communist economy. They claimed to have Marx’s socialist economy; the transition period between capitalism and communism. They styled themselves as Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and they said their plan was to ensure equality and prosperity for all, and then simply wither away over the next hundred years. That was the propaganda.
It was America who called the Soviet economy communist. Because they had a growing movement of communists at home, and they wanted a propaganda tool to accuse their home-grown left-wing radicals of being foreign spies. Thus increasing their own control.
I’ve read up a little bit about it, fascinating indeed. Although one could argue that it sounds more like anarchism, and that apparently there indeed were groups that had various kinds of class division / hierarchy (age, gender, status etc). Aspects found in Communism and Anarchism seemingly were most prominent though. I guess my view on it is tainted by what I unfortunately see most (which is glorification of the USSR, Mao Zedong, Cuba etc. - unfortunately way too many of those nutjobs are running around in Germany’s CCC as well). Now that I think about it I remember how euro-centric as fuck school history class was… So thanks for the insight.
Old white guy with name and face is still an upgrade over “random person on the internet”. For all I know you could be an LLM (no offense).
According to the anarchist philosophers, anarchism and communism are the same thing. According to the marxist philosophers, marxism and ccommunism are the same thing. The USSR and China are marxist, so marxism is the version of communism you’re gonna have more familiarity with.
Let Me explain the Marxist vision of history real quick: According to Marx, humanity began in tribes practicing “primitive communism”, like the First Australians and specifically the Iroquois of North America did. Then came cities, and with them, kings. This was the age of feudalism, when all power was concentrated in the hands of tyrants. Marx lived in the aftermath of the French revolution, a period when Europe was transitioning from feudalism to capitalism. He saw that change happening around him, and theorised that it was a natural, inevitable progression. He then tried to imagine what the future would be like, based on the past two transitions. He thus imagined two more transitions: first, the workers would rise up against the owning class and take over the government for themselves, creating what Marx called socialism, “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. A fair society where the workers use the state apparatus to ensure equality and plenty for all. And finally, the state would become unnecessary and “wither away”, leaving humanity with a idyllic communism akin to primitive communism, but with the benefits of modern science and technology. And not to sound like a broken record, but this is pretty racist with the way it portrays the new world Indigenous peoples as less developed than europeans. Marx was a big fan of the Darwinian, linear theory of evolution, and he wanted to chart and predict the evolution of civilisation, so he saw the Iroquois as evidence of europe’s evolutionary past.
Anyway, the USSR were marxists. They claimed to have a communist ideology, but they never claimed to have a communist economy. They claimed to have Marx’s socialist economy; the transition period between capitalism and communism. They styled themselves as Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and they said their plan was to ensure equality and prosperity for all, and then simply wither away over the next hundred years. That was the propaganda.
It was America who called the Soviet economy communist. Because they had a growing movement of communists at home, and they wanted a propaganda tool to accuse their home-grown left-wing radicals of being foreign spies. Thus increasing their own control.