Thursday 21 July 2011

Communism for the 21st century


To understand what it means to be a communist is of great importance today. We do not have a proper understanding; the view widely accepted is highly controversial. It is seen as a destructive force which, once challenged this global capitalist world and shook it to its core. Stalin was and will remain a catastrophe of the past. He lived as a corrupt gangster and brute during his youth and was a brutally ruthless mercenary dictator till his death and beyond 

The contours of the question what does it mean to be a communist today is interesting... three hypothesis lie within: 
  1. That Communism was an intrinsic result of the type of Marxian political economy that emerged under Stalin and any movement trying to implement such theories into reality will result in a Stalin figure, or rather even if Lenin had survived or Trotsky had managed to come to power, similar results would have occurred. 
  2. That Stalin distorted the political economic maxims of Marxism and thus what occurred under the rule of Stalin was a horrific distortion and resulted in the worst human catastrophe of the 20th century. 
  3. Or  That the type of socialism created was doomed from the start. The wrong questions were being asked which resulted in total catastrophe.
The message that the third hypothesis teaches us is that, the left that existed at that time were fighting for the same things we fight for today, to end the class struggle, a struggle which necessitates a redefinition of the spheres of politics and economics, which ultimately means a new socio-structural engagement which deals with the current global structuring of the world. From the UN, IMF, EU, ASEAN, to state to state relations, and fundamentally, the way person to person social environments are constructed.

Today across much of the world gated communities exist, separating bourgeois affluence from proletarian slums. The construct of Western states is such that its citizens are not capable of engaging with the ways their state functions, as seen from the limited capabilities of the state to enact upon bankers or the Murdock Mafia .The true sentiment of the people, is not transferred from common sentiment into reality for one fundamental reason. The British establishment is structured in such a way as to literally cater for bourgeois capitalists in a brutally efficient manner, from upper-class schooling segregation to internships and beyond, it’s a section of society where social relations can only function through an incestuous nature and in particular the ways in which our conceptions of what is best in the world have been distorted to such an extent that there is a hegemonic hold over what our world is, and should be.

Our contours have been manipulated to sustain the global social domination of those who do not represent the majority. Is not this the task and the purpose of living to live in a world which, exists for and of itself, to not subscribe to any big other? Should not this be what we as a species strive for? There is only one majority and that is - all those who subscribe to class struggle.

Capitalist neo-liberalism is a perverse distortion of human relations and should be opposed if humans really wish to achieve a society which exists for the whole and to strive for a society in which society intuitively enacts a higher civilisation than the West inhabits today. Surely this is not radically different vision from the mission capitalism embodies. The false purpose of capitalism is to have a higher society for the rich; as such to completely dismember and rebuild human social productive capacities, to completely re-imagine the ways in which a political economy can be re-structured in such a way as to truly cater for the mass of society thus reaching a high civilisation, this is the pure and ultimate transition for capitalism, it is the next step.

Problems within capitalism are endemic and although capitalism is resilient and able to transform itself, to engulf what it needs and when, suggesting its power to be a true force - this is where the danger lies. What we have learnt over the past decade is that capitalism becomes ever more restricted in times of ‘terror’ and ever more limited in times of financial crisis. The end result is an ever-increasing authoritarian character which would seem to be, at this epoch in history, the only way to sustain growth, and maintain the current status quo for the megalomaniac bourgeois. It must not be under stated that the West has learnt this lesson from East and South East Asia; China, Singapore, Indonesia and so on. China is a supposedly crude Communist state but they have shown the world how to be ruthlessly efficient Capitalists. The cut back of the welfare state and social institutions here in Britain are the emerging signals of this new type of economy. The futures not bright and it is China. China are currently colonising Africa. I would rather the West take the recourses of Africa than the Chinese government, or rather Africa would actually what to sell its resources to the West rather than to China.

But here ends the of story capitalism. It is all too predictable, how capitalism has engulfed its worshipers to believe that to hold an indifference stance to political economy then they are somehow devoid of responsibility, in other words it is a fallacy to think that being non-ideological implies no ideological stance! On the contrary it is exactly the opposite. To dismiss ideology is acceptance of the dominating ideology, neo liberal capitalism. Now comes a huge dose of the fetishist disavowal, I know very well BUT.

This is the embodiment of the limits of the true lack in western civilisation; it’s complete inability to recognise its revolutionary potential. The system is running on default, the current structures of western economies have failed and are beginning to de-scale all the real vestiges of western civilisation, the arts. The transformation of universities should be the clearest sign that what policies are being enacted upon the population are destructive and violent, all in the name of making money, what will a philosopher earn? a novelist? a Sociologist? If one cannot see beyond this form of perverse wealth then one is truly lacking. Subjects are now all about specialising for specific ways to fix a specific problem. You do this one intricate niesh degree so that you can stop a gap leaking in the matrix. This is not what we should be doing when our civilisation is continuously driving strait past turn offs to a world where communism is the establishment of a new idea, to strive for a radical new re-evaluation of humanity, whilst always bearing the scar of Stalin and that this mission has the potential to go disastrously wrong, it is for this reason that the name communism should be attached to the radical left. 

The acceptance of our current circumstances and inability to imagine a world far better than the reality humanity inhibits is to be no member of the class struggle, and as such a regressive actor in the progression of civilisation.

2 comments:

  1. I like this post Joe, especially the identification of capitalism tending towards authoritarianism, and the over specialisation of university subjects.

    I seem to remember something from philosophy about not confusing existence for itself and existence of itself though - something satre-esque.

    Also I think you have typo in the title - centaury has that extra a!

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  2. Nice one Greeney, you would think I would know how to spell by now just corrected it. cheers. Ive got a book by Satre - clearly not read it yet but keep coming across him gunna give it a read.

    Really appreciate your comments!!

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