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Is Che Guevara or Soviet-style Communism trendy for the left?

Andy_Ross said:
To people of a certain age in the UK this version of the famous t-shirt is just as familiar.

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Freedom for Tooting (and Fulham for the cup)!
 
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Silly Green Monkey said:
Even worse, Marx was writing at the same time a large number of Utopian writers were, and his ideal society isn't unusual for the field. Unluckily for communism, some nation decided to try out the ideal, but as in all idealized and fictional societies, it's not something real humans can manage. What would the world be like if someone had tried something like Erehwon or something even more far-fetched?
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Let's be honest. Russia/USSR/China/Cuba have very little in common with Karl Marx's ideas. It's almost as different as Hitler's National Socialsm is to Socicialism.
 
acbytesla said:
Let's be honest. Russia/USSR/China/Cuba have very little in common with Karl Marx's ideas. It's almost as different as Hitler's National Socialsm is to Socicialism.
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In the 1950-90s were in 'Western' communes able to function for any length of time under Marxist ideas?

(other than the Vatican)
 
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Andy_Ross said:
But they were very much run on Trotskyist 'soviet' style rather than Russia/USSR/China/Cuba style centralised command
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I think this was already covered:


acbytesla said:
Let's be honest. Russia/USSR/China/Cuba have very little in common with Karl Marx's ideas. It's almost as different as Hitler's National Socialsm is to Socicialism.
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Right wingers always gave the whole International Communism thing way more credit than actual reality merited. The reality on the ground is that, while many of these communist or socialist states tended to have varying degrees of alliances or cooperation with one another, they were just as prone to nationalist and other squabbling among themselves as any other nation. Ironically right wingers find themselves interpreting these things in a way that is more aligned with naive, lefty ideologues who think that proletarian revolution will sweep away all other conflicts and division. Nixon was treated as some kind of foreign policy genius because he stopped making these dumb assumptions and realized that China was actually pretty open to warmer relationships with the US and that the USSR/CCP relationship was quite strained.

The South American lefty nationalists were certainly happy to receive whatever aid that the USSR or other communist countries were willing to provide, but that speaks more to the desperate need of their anti-imperialism campaigns than any deep friendship or ideological alignment. Many of these countries probably could have been pulled more closely into the US orbit had we not supported such viciously exploitative regimes in their countries, and the US origin story of driving out the British is an obvious parallel to these other independence struggles that could easily have been the foundation of good relations.

The Viet Minh famously were quite open to friendship with the US, but that would have required the US not supporting France's continued colonial domination of their country. Who knows what might have happened if the US actually had the courage of their supposed liberal convictions.
 
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acbytesla said:
Kibbutz in Israel.
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Andy_Ross said:
But they were very much run on Trotskyist 'soviet' style rather than Russia/USSR/China/Cuba style centralised command
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How many are left and how commie are they anymore? There were at one time a lot of utopian communes in the US, most lasted abuot one generation.

TurkeysGhost said:
Right wingers always gave the whole International Communism thing way more credit than actual reality merited. The reality on the ground is that, while many of these communist or socialist states tended to have varying degrees of alliances or cooperation with one another, they were just as prone to nationalist and other squabbling among themselves as any other nation. Ironically right wingers find themselves interpreting these things in a way that is more aligned with naive, lefty ideologues who think that proletarian revolution will sweep away all other conflicts and division. Nixon was treated as some kind of foreign policy genius because he stopped making these dumb assumptions and realized that China was actually pretty open to warmer relationships with the US and that the USSR/CCP relationship was quite strained.

The South American lefty nationalists were certainly happy to receive whatever aid that the USSR or other communist countries were willing to provide, but that speaks more to the desperate need of their anti-imperialism campaigns than any deep friendship or ideological alignment. Many of these countries probably could have been pulled more closely into the US orbit had we not supported such viciously exploitative regimes in their countries, and the US origin story of driving out the British is an obvious parallel to these other independence struggles that could easily have been the foundation of good relations.

The Viet Minh famously were quite open to friendship with the US, but that would have required the US not supporting France's continued colonial domination of their country. Who knows what might have happened if the US actually had the courage of their supposed liberal convictions.
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Probably Trumans dumbest decision, also, kind of at odds with most of US foreign policy. We've mostly opposed colonialism by other countries.
 
smartcooky said:
Hilarious. I promise you this is not the first time I have heard about that happening!

[qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fbowdhnt89ne6to06hnti/Carlos-Guavara.jpg?rlkey=hc2bawy9281q3u7mba7d91kql&raw=1[/qimg]
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Santana also became a follower of ruthless totaltarian system; in his case it was called the Chruch of Sciencetology.
 
dudalb said:
Santana also became a follower of ruthless totaltarian system; in his case it was called the Chruch of Sciencetology.
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But like Tom Cruise or Michael Jackson, my interest in Santana has nothing to with their religions.
 
dudalb said:
Santana also became a follower of ruthless totaltarian system; in his case it was called the Chruch of Sciencetology.
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False.

Add: Based on my not having heard of it, nor the internet having heard of it.
 
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Hans said:
Last week I looked up the CPUSA, the Communist party of the USA - which currently has a massive 5,000 members......in 1947 it was 75, 0000
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I dunno about trendy, but this right here is exactly what I'm talking about. Talk about donating to a communist party in America, nobody bats an eye. Talk about donating to a fascist party in America... well, you'd have to find one, first.

Communism is more widely tolerated - more widely accepted, even - than fascism, in the US. Even though they're quite similar in theory and practice. A lot of people like the idea of totalitarian statism. A lot of people like the idea of nationalizing important industries. A lot of people on the left really like the idea of being able to declare an industry important for moral or ideological reasons, in order to justify nationalizing it. A lot of Americans really like the idea of not only telling other people how to govern themselves, but of actually overriding their self-government.

Fascism should be at least as tolerated, at least as popular, as communism. It should be competing with communism as an improvement over liberal democracy and late-stage capitalism. But it's not. I tend to attribute this to Hitler's rabid extremism and genocide, but Lenin brought a lot of that same energy to Communism. Stalin just perfected it.
 
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theprestige said:
I dunno about trendy, but this right here is exactly what I'm talking about. Talk about donating to a communist party in America, nobody bats an eye. Talk about donating to a fascist party in America... well, you'd have to find one, first.

Communism is more widely tolerated - more widely accepted, even - than fascism, in the US. Even though they're quite similar in theory and practice. A lot of people like the idea of totalitarian statism. A lot of people like the idea of nationalizing important industries. A lot of people on the left really like the idea of being able to declare an industry important for moral or ideological reasons, in order to justify nationalizing it. A lot of Americans really like the idea of not only telling other people in other how to govern themselves, but of actually overriding their self-government.

Fascism should be at least as tolerated, at least as popular, as communism. It should be competing with communism as an improvement over liberal democracy and late-stage capitalism. But it's not. I tend to attribute this to Hitler's rabid extremism and genocide, but Lenin brought a lot of that same energy to Communism. Stalin just perfected it.
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The CPUSA is widely considered a laughingstock. People absolutely bat their eyes at such things
 
acbytesla said:
Kibbutz in Israel.
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Kibbutzes aren't Marxist.

Marxism postulates a global collapse of capitalism, replaced by a new world order based on workers owning the means of production. He predicted it would happen naturally. Lenin tried to jump-start it in Russia artificially. Kibbutzes have nothing to do with either the Marxist theory, nor Marxist-Leninist practice.
 
Years ago, when I had just started my campus-police career, the local “Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade” would show up on campus with their red berets and a stack of flyers and a small bullhorn.
That was in the early 80s….

Our law and business-school students would pass these dedicated youngsters by as if they were lepers or plague carriers…… Eventually they quit coming.

More recently, an enthusiastic young lad set up a table on the sidewalk with a big sign… “Ask me about Marxism”. As far as I could tell… No one did.
 
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