Communism
The back in forth in the other thread about Jesus being a commie got me to thinking about Communism in general.
What are your thoughts? Any Communists here? What strain do you believe in, if so? Anti-communist thoughts welcome, as well.
I remember when I was a kid and I heard about Communism and how evil it was, cause I lived in Florida and we'd hear about Castro from Cubans who moved there. And when I asked my dad what Communism was, he was like it's a system where everyone has the same amount of money, no matter what they do. And I was like really? That doesn't sound so evil. And he was like yea nah trust me it's bad. He wasn't a very political guy but he did grow up in the cold war.
It wasn't till years later that I found out more about the history of the Soviet Union etc. And even then, for years I didn't see the connection between a classless society and the kind of totalitarian madness that resulted in Communist countries.
I feel like now I do. It seems like the basic problem is something like this: Communism tries to replace Capitalism with something better. As such, they need some structure to replace “the invisible hand” of the free market. Which is an enormous responsibility, and extremely complex. Because of this, the government essentially owns everything and distributes it accordingly. For that to even happen the government has to be virtually limitless in its authority and power. Meaning civil liberties go right out the window, as do the right to any sort of individual concerns that are not in line with the official concerns of the state.
Once a regime reaches this level of totalitarian power, pretty much the same thing always happens. They fight desperately to maintain it, using whatever means necessary. Almost instantly, when you grant a state the kind of power a communist state wields, you can guarantee that “the needs of the people” are not their top priority. Their top priority is protecting, using and bolstering their own power.
This isn't unique to Communism, by any means. It's a basic property of totalitarianism in general. But this is the basic reason why I think every Communist state has gone down this totalitarian path. It's really hard to conceive how you would possibly have an entity on the scale of China or the Soviet Union which was organized voluntarily and democratically to share all of the resources of that society. That might not make it impossible, but it seems so politically infeasible that it might as well be. And as I've said, I think there is a good reason for the common path that actual Communist states have tended to take.
I know there are people who believe in anarcho-communism... Which doesn't seem like it has the same tyrannical structure. But it's also something that is basically non existent in terms of serious real world examples (please don't pull up some obscure commune, I'm talking about massive societies like Russia and China). And IMO it really strains credulity how any sort of anarchist society would really organize and perhaps more importantly, protect itself. But that's a different topic entirely.
Anyway.. what does KMC think about Communism?
Also, a bit of a semi related tangent... but I've been listening to podcasts/youtube videos with intellectual types in them debating this kind of shit and it struck me.. “bourgeois” is possibly the worst English adoption of a foreign word ever. The funny thing is when you hear some academic say it like they're trying to establish some sort of bond with the working class. Nobody poor says ****in “bourgeois.” It's not in the vocabulary. Except some blacks, who use a derivative term, “boojie.” Which basically means the same thing. Stuck up, orderly, middle class, etc. But even though they apparently like the meaning of the term, they still had to change the word to make it sound decent. There aint no ****in rappers coming out with a song that goes“My ***** Is Bad and Bougeois.”