soulman said:
It's a good definition of a sort of utopian socialism or communism (I use socialism/communism to mean the same thing rather than the marxist concept of stages) but it's idealistic in that it supposes that everyone will embrace the gift economy. Now if they don't what happens then. Do you make people accept it, impose it by force, hard labour for the dissenters? As I see it that's the danger of political ideologies.
The ideal I suppose is the end result of the building work beforehand, the organisational changes before the state of affairs described by my short definition of what communism is. My point was that my definition can not be pigeon holed really into any specific poltical strand because of it's vagueness. It is how to bring about this state of affairs that will colour that definition, put more meat on it's bones so to speak. And that would be through socialism, in my opinion, of some kind. If you talk about people not accepting it, then that is a good question. But my definition, in my mind is the end result, of which I can not go any further into. Even "experts" and Marxist revolutionary thinkers of the last century were hazy and ambiguous about the future society they believed could be brought about by their efforts in Socialism building a new society. And I would guess that the state, and it's role in this transformation is of controversy too. If you go along the road of state Socialism, and you have for example a world where most countries, lands, have undergone Marxist revolutions, there is no guarantee that the groups in power in their respective areas will agree on how to build for the future both economically and culturally. How to build a new morality, culture in a world of revolutions, consisting of hundreds of diverse peoples, histories, developments, languages, social mores.....With huge difficulty and tension. Even Kalinin, when not shagging teenage ballerinas, saw that when writing about education in a Socialist society.
Take the Khmer Rouge. Orwell, into the bowel of hell with that society. One of the cruelest ironies of that nightmare, was that you had a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group, filled with not only it's own sense of resentment at it's self-conscious dependancy on a seperate county (Vietnam) during it's formative years, a group whose success relied a large part on events happening outside of it's influence; but placing people into a huge social experiment, to
free them, by Leninist methods, it's leaders educated and familiar with western culture and politcs, at the same time forbidding the people from using any similar knowledge and education or aquiring it from "outside" influences as it would be damaging to the freedom of their lives and future. Probably no society in the last century went so far in such a short space of time- abolishing banks and money (except for outside trade with agricultural produce they could sell to foreigners in exchange for money or equipment), placing people into huge farming collectives. In some ways abolishing the family. No walk up to Communism, but a leap. Enforcing this (with paranoia about the Vietnamese and the Soviet Union aside) was nothing to do with protection of people from harmful things to the revolution, but protecting the CPK from the people.
I can give you a vague definition, but I can't give the answers of how to bring things to that. I can't. I have not chosen any movement, or social/poltical ideology through a need for more self-education and understanding, and secondly a suspicion of various political views and ideologies, ways of socially organising. I have too many questions that fill my head now. But I can understand other people's attempts at it, and let that inform me also on what I will choose to take part in. I am not a communist, although the subject interests me greatly. I am not an anarchist. But I am willing to acknowledge that there are myriad ways, thoughts, ideas, writings, methods of how to make society based on mutual aid. How that is done........
That is why I was interested by your confidence in asserting a real political defintion of communism.
As I have said, my life is quite open for people to obseve should they want to; they can live with me for a week or so.
