Communism: a viable alternative? (1 Viewer)

[Katie P]

Good article, but human greed and absolute equality are mutually exclusive and there will always be a Napoleon (Orwell's) or two.

Nice dream, but has never worked in practice.

Thats the first argument everyone comes up with against communism, why do we keep acknowledging greed as human nature and therefore dismissing the possibility of communism working. Maybe its a learned behaviour in a capitalist society?

 

[Shorty]

I don't get it either, I've always seen some form of enlightened self interest as a prerequisite for any form of social change.

 

[Pedronimus]

Oops I just opened the big words thread.

 

[hugh]

Congratulations on the article Oh Shit ... that must be a good buzz.

 

[potlatch]

Well done Oh Shit. Good article, and I'm green with envy that you were at the conference.

I've been trying to comprehend Alain Badiou for the past month or so. Jayiziz. I shouldn't have given up on him 5 years ago, I might have got somewhere by now. I'm really not sure if he's contributing anything radically new, though. But it's the rumblings of something again.

Anyway, how much was that conference a love-in for those crazy, cult-like Lacanians?

 

[egg_]

Don't think so, squiggle - nomadic hunter-gatherer societies were/are pretty much completely egalitarian, and that's how most behaviourally modern humans lived for around 90% of our history

source?

I don't think I'm making a disputed claim here, I think it's widely accepted that in a society where there's no way of establishing ownership over anything you can't carry it's not possible for a long-lasting hierarchy to develop

Have a look at more-or-less anything written about north american plains indian societies (hunter-gatherers now mind, like the Sioux, not farmers), or Tierra-del-Fuegians. Or even wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer ... or here's a good article by Jared Diamond http://www.awok.org/worst-mistake/

 

[egg_]

It may work just fine at a community level - a small community of people is self-policing.

See my last post - it's nothing to do with policing, and everything to do with the impossibility of accumulating property. Anyway, this is kinda off-topic - nomadic hunter-gatherer societies are anarchist rather than communist

 

[egg_]

why should we exclude coercion into communism just because it offends some idea of human nature? if anything, it just reinforces the case for a strong state communism

Haha. People argued that communism was impossible even when I was in school and half of Europe was communist. What they meant (and what squiggle etc mean), of course, was communism without coercion. Nobody wants USSR style coercive communism, thank you very much

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

trust egg on this one.

 

[potlatch]

Oh Shit, or anyone: are the papers from this symposium available online?

 

[Carlow Punks!]

Hey Oh Shit,
why did you go with 'Bernard Keenan' and not 'Oh Shit' for the guardian article?

sell out

 

[oh shit]

Hey Oh Shit,
why did you go with 'Bernard Keenan' and not 'Oh Shit' for the guardian article?

sell out

so i can still get into the states on my 'oh shit' passport, duh

potlatch - some stuff here
http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/

and i've heard it's on youtube too...

 

[oh shit]

Haha. People argued that communism was impossible even when I was in school and half of Europe was communist. What they meant (and what squiggle etc mean), of course, was communism without coercion. Nobody wants USSR style coercive communism, thank you very much

i was being faecitious,
however the serious point is to ask about how much we are coerced into capitalism, and the way that capitalist liberal democracies deal with those who do not conform to its own standards.

we could also ask how much the people of chile, for just one example, wanted the capitalism that was imposed upon them by the good general pinochet. again, we're talking about singular, different political processes that all have 'communism' in common, not some monolithic eternal 'same thing'. like capitalism, actually.

 

[Carlow Punks!]

as they like to say around here: 'fixed'

 

[Shorty]

Mark Fisher, of k-punk blog, has a review with youtube videos up on frieze.

http://www.frieze.com/comment/article/a_return_to_communism/