what if the soviets(councils) had survived?

Warsie

Banned
That does remind me how popular willl the Maknovists spread through their 'free territory of ukraine or w/e it was.
 
I thought we were discussing the circumstances surrounding the retention of political power by workplace soviets in the early RSFSR. This board doesn't appear to be a news or political discussion board.

Back on soc.history.what-if many of the Australians held to a rule called the "Ban on Politics" or "BoP", as a ban on the discussion of contemporary politics. They did so because by discussing history, rather than politics, they managed to discuss alternate history.
It wasn't about politics, it was about economics. But otherwise I agree with you in principle, though I think that sometimes it might be useful to compare current and historic political developments

Exactly, it was bloodily suppressed by reactionary forces. Theirs was a lying sonofabitch according to Marx, and no doubt he was on a power trip. What if A 'Commune of France' was created?
Given the current political situation in France at this point of time, a 'Commune of France' is ASB territory.

Then look at capitalist exploitation of its own people such as in India. Then tell me Marxism is not such a good idea.
Well, until 1991 India wasn't very capitalist. Or do you want to imply that the liberalisation since 1991 was a bad thing, despite it being accompanied by increases in economic growth, life expectancy, food security, literacy rates, etc.?

And why Marxism isn't a good idea? Because the underlying assumptions of his theory are wrong, which means his deduced conclusions are wrong and don't mach how reality works.

India is a hell hole. On one hand you have the richest sectors of society who fuel all the growth, while on the other you have slum dogs(That movie was great), This is what the naxals are fighting against. The rich raping society. I hope one day the Naxals enter New Delhi... that will show them!

I hope not. It might be emotionally satisfying to destroy those whom you feel oppressed by, but it doesn't feed you.

As for the NPA-they along with the naxals are winning the wars in their receptive nations. the naxals predict they will rule India by 2025 If i recall.
No, they won't! Because, as my neighbour has predicted, the world will end in 2012.

But seriously, athe insurgency is going once since 1967. If they haven't been able to make any serious progress in the laste 45 years, which leads you to believe that they will be successfull in the next 15 years?

so explain to me why Marxism is a horrible idea. What communist works have you read? How much do you know about past and current revolutions?
I've never said, that it is a horrible idea. I said it's a bad idea, bad as in bad math, or bad physics, not in bad as evil.

His errors? For a start:
- that assumption, that in a capitalist mode of production, class struggle and a proletarian revolution are inevitable.
- that production for use could work in a modern society and achieve a similar standard of life as in a profit-driven free market economy.
- that planners could better determine what products a society needs than the forces of the market. It's just to complex

Therefore a society and economy as envisaged by him could not work. If private property and a legal market would be abolished, a black market would come into being. So you either need to suppress such a development, which in time will lead to the state becoming more and more oppressive, or you won't be socialists very long.



fails to account for human nature? sense when? Again look at the Paris Commune. People who represented the working class actually gave themselves worker salaries instead of the usual high political salaries WILLINGLY.

You can't generalise from an exceptional situation (united against a common enemy, restricted to a single town, war, etc.) like in Paris, and assume that it would be a possible stable long-term working mode for a much larger society in peacetime.

I encounter this lame argument so much its not even serious to me anymore. The want by the [majority] to exploit was a phenomenon created by the phenomenon of capitalism itself. If you don't compete, you won't survive mentality is a capitalist creation shoved down people's throats sense the day they learn to walk.
It's not about the exploitation of the masses by a small minority, its about the human tendency to go the way of the least resistance. With only a few exception, none of us would work if we didn't have to earn a living. And if people don't profit, if they put extra effort into something, they probably won't do it. To make profit has been the main drive behind almost all innovations during the last few centuries.

Look at Greece and its overall selflessness. People are willingly helping their fellow man. and yet the state seeks to destroy the Greek Revolution, which is rather socialist in its own right, as they fear a people's uprising, which is what it is. The state is a tool to keep the ruling elite in power.
Isn't Greek ruled by the Panhellenic socialist movement. They don't try to destroy a revolution, they are a democratically elected government trying to keep order. In my opinion the protests don't make much sense. The government is bankrupt and doesn't have much choice anymore. Where were all those demonstrators when the government was spending much more money on social welfare and military armament?

But we are stumbling into politics again. Nonetheless, the Greek protests have no connection to the claim that a democratic socialist society could work.

I'll point to India again. If they have so much growth then why is a shit load of its people living in dire poverty? How can the government fund space programs when It can barely feed the Indian people?
Because the population of India is growing enormously to. But despite this, a large part of the Indian population is better off than their parents have been and that trend continues. They still have a lot of room for improvement, but you can't deny that their is progress.

If they had true democracy, then there would be no space programs. the money would be spent on food and housing for the poor.
One can certainly argue whether it makes sense for India to have a space program, but to conclude that this means that India isn't a true democracy is a fallacy. Democratic governments can make stupid decisions as well. It's also wrong to assume that space programs are squandered money.

If we had true democracy there would be no tobacco lobbying.
Sorry, that doesn't make sense in this context. I can't find any connection.

im getting off track here. Basic point is, people can willingly live in communes. Look at the Amish. People can willingly spend their money on social and public programs to help society, not themselves.
1) The Amish live in close communites of a restricted size. We know from psychology that altruism is far more prevalent towards people closer to us. So you can't just scale up such a society to several million people.

2) With only using what the Amish are able to produce themselves, their standard of living cannot match those of the overall Western society. If you want to live in a preindustrial society, fine, but don't expect many to follow you. And even the most conservative Amish rely on products of the outer world in certain areas (health), when they can't produce something themselves.


Its a generalization to say that all people are greedy and therefore capitalism is the only system
No one has said this. Socialism doesn't work, because if you have more than a dozen people, non-communal ownership will show up, with all that comes with it. Socialism failed and will always fail because it can't motivate people enough to put enough effort into their work or to produce enough innovation to create an economically prospering society.
 
/excellent argument

This.

By this point in history, there are over 90 communist states that have existed. Of those, five still remain, and four are in a state of seroius decline. CHina is doing alright, because it doesn't push a lot of the main tenants of communism.

Move on, Pintobean. Its obvoius that communism is an unworkable system. Capitialism is far from perfect, too, and is in fact a rather corrupt system, but we will use it until something better is found. And communism is not that better system.
 
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Warsie

Banned
>communism
>unworkable

yeah, Yugoslavia showd otherwise..,,,,but perhaps we should change the subject to keep this from being moved.
 
The war had not all to do with communism, Ferre. Nationalism was a major key.

Social-democracy seems the best gov. for now, to me.
 

Warsie

Banned
Last time I checked Yugoslavia ended in a blood and nasty war. But your mileage might vary...

That was due to nationalist sentiments fanned up by some politicians due to Tito not allowing the airing of past grievances to go through well - which lead to Serbs thinking they were victimized by Albanians and Croats, which lead Croatians to feel victimized by Serbs, which lead everyone to remember what their parents & grandparents told them about what happened during the WW2 & open their history books, and well....
 
Pinto, if you're really looking to write a TL where there's a viable and non-horrifying communist state, your best bet would be a successful German Revolution(either the OTL revolution goes better or you cook up another one. If you want a real challenge). Germany is already an industrial state(so less of a forced industrialization problem, which will turn out badly whoever is in charge probably), there was distrust IOTL of Lenin's authoritarian tendencies, and (this is probably related) the SPD was to some extent a mass party in a way that the pre-revolutionary communists weren't. While power can screw things up(and I may be misremembering things), this seems like a more promising route than changing the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution.
 

Warsie

Banned
^Rosa Luxembourg wrote on the Bolshevik revolution and critized Lenin's actions a bit, so that is true. We need to make them able to deal with Freikorps though. Maybe make Freikorps some punk-ass bitches :p

Or have them too busy dealing with Polish insurgents and militias in Silesia and nationalists in the Baltic States. Instead of the UK doing the assistance, have Poland do the assistance or something
 
Pinto, if you're really looking to write a TL where there's a viable and non-horrifying communist state, your best bet would be a successful German Revolution(either the OTL revolution goes better or you cook up another one. If you want a real challenge). Germany is already an industrial state(so less of a forced industrialization problem, which will turn out badly whoever is in charge probably), there was distrust IOTL of Lenin's authoritarian tendencies, and (this is probably related) the SPD was to some extent a mass party in a way that the pre-revolutionary communists weren't. While power can screw things up(and I may be misremembering things), this seems like a more promising route than changing the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution.

Hm, I don't think a German revolution could ever have been successful. The red scare was quite a big thing in the West already, and if Germany hadn't got the situation under control herself, I'm pretty sure France and Britain would have intervened. They did support the Whites in the Russian Civil War in OTL and Russia was generally considered a backward country. Now consider their reaction towards a Communist revolution in Germany, which was not only already industrialised and directly next to them, but whom they had just fought a very costly war against.
 
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