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Comment by telaelit | Hacker News Reader

If you haven’t already read The Communist Manifesto I highly recommend that you do, it’s super short and easy to understand. Even if you’re an anti-communist you should read it to get a better understanding of what communism is. There has been so much anti-communist and anti-socialist propaganda for decades in the US that many people don’t even know the first thing about communism and socialism and will just shut their minds to any possibility that maybe communists and socialists are advocating for good, just, and equitable things.

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Funnily enough, there's also a whole lot of people spreading supposedly "communist" ideas who haven't read an inch of Marx and the likes. They often tend to congregate towards campuses but sometimes you even got tenured professors who seem to only output such verbiage for the social benefit they gather from it (being seen as warrior of justice). The marxist narrative seems to be a social practice more than an established theory (and I get it, it's great to have a reason to gather under the same banner, I did this for some time). On this topic, the pamphlet "Militancy: highest stage of alienation" offers some good points.

I live in France and many old classic 'marxianists' I know have come to despise the unread and uncultured new generation. Tell a young "marxist" what Das Kapital says of e.g. immigration and watch them decompose before your eyes... Anyway, no judgement here, just a personal observation.

>Tell a young "marxist" what Das Kapital says of e.g. immigration and watch them decompose before your eyes... Anyway, no judgement here, just a personal observation.

Marx's view on immigration was largely that capitalists use it to pit the working class against itself, and that the nation state was a construct of capitalism. I'm curious why you think a Marxist would take an issue with that.

At least in the US self-proclaimed comunists are on the same side of those that want to completely decriminalize undocumented immigration and stop deportations (which arguably is almost exactly what capitalists want, an entire class of non-citizens ready to be exploited with less legal protections that they can point toward as a distraction).

The problem with comunism is not that it is a faulty ideology, but that even if you tried to start a reasonable organization about it you will be overrun by mindless ideologues.

I have to imagine US communists want those undocumented immigrants to gain citizenship too, putting them firmly opposed to the wishes of the capitalists. Many of them would also view immigrants as a reaction to capitalist influence on foreign policy, putting the two sides even further apart.

I come from a culture that is comparatively pro-comunism, but my personal reaction to people promoting comunism is the same as when a religious person claims that their religion is based on love, understanding, and inclusion.

In the case of religion (whether or not I believe it is positive or negative) I know that there are many many dark corners that the "it is all about love" person is not talking about.

Same thing with comunism, I have known in my life people I would be slightly afraid to see holding power flying that banner and we all know what happened many times in history, and while this can be said of many ideology in my opinion the comunism cluster looks like it is trying to sweep the dust under the rug.

I am sure that there are a lot of people that are trying their best to rehabilitate comunism from the curse that Stalin and many many others have cast and I wish them the best of luck, but I do not think that their job is close to being done.

> Same thing with comunism, I have known in my life people I would be slightly afraid to see holding power flying that banner and we all know what happened many times in history, and while this can be said of many ideology in my opinion the comunism cluster looks like it is trying to sweep the dust under the rug.

Having spent much of my early twenties embedded with some of today's more prominent socialist activists in the US, I can tell you that behind closed doors the only subject that ever crossed their lips was "power".

It was enough to terrify me off of such thoughts and ideals. All these years later and I still wake up in a cold sweat at night having nightmares about the people I knew getting what they wanted.

Surely socialist activists are no closer to having any sort of power now than they did when you were in your twenties?

Also, would you mind to be a bit more specific about who these people are? In my experience Americans aren't particularly good at identifying what constitutes a socialist to the rest of the world.

Comunist are also quite bad at that, I have met moderate reasonable people under the comunism banner that were sorta ok with other people calling themselves stalinists.

For example for all the criticism that you can point against religion most religious communities openly and clearly oppose and denounce terrorism.

In my view comunism was never able to separate itselft from a revolutionary mindset, and so agitators and extremists were always (since Marx, at least) considered a planned and likely step.

>can tell you that behind closed doors the only subject that ever crossed their lips was "power".

So you talked to politicians?

The one thing I did take away though is neither economic system is good or bad. A good emulsion of both is the ideal. But one thing is certain, at least in my opinion. Both systems require violence to keep civil society in check. A standing military is a subtle threat by the state. Its hard to think about it. The state spends a lit of money on violence and projecting it. Why?

Some people are violently opposed to communism/socialism because they were taught that was the right way. This is ideology. Others, myself included, who have educated ourselves about the consequences of communism/socialism are violently opposed to it because we hold the consequences of communism/socialism to be of more significance than its high minded ideas about what is 'good'.

That is still ideological. You are choosing capitalism despite it’s incongruities, excesses, and consequences, because you find more significance in what it sees as ‘good’.

Pretending to be non-ideological is disingenuous.

I am choosing capitalism because it doesn't end with shooting pregnant women and children in empty fields.

So if I can prove capitalism led to shooting some pregnant women and children in empty fields, what position do you plan to switch to?

Hopefully whatever alternative proposed wherein that doesn't happen.

There have been countless alternatives proposed. If you're judging this based on consequences rather than ideology the decision to pick capitalism makes no sense. Something untested is the obvious choice

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