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Rioter in Venezuela. Photo: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Soviet experiment, the New York Times op-ed page has been publishing a regular series on communism. The overall tone of the essays runs toward wistfulness, and the latest contribution, by Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the left-wing journal Jacobin, presents communism as tanned, rested, and ready. Sunkara sees a new future for Marxism, only this time without the purges, gulag, mass starvation, and other unpleasant features.

Sunkara argues that the original Bolsheviks had good intentions, but their project somehow took a wrong turn along the way. We may reject the version of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as crazed demons and choose to see them as well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis, he argues, but we must work out how to avoid their failures.

Like many Marxist apologias, this fails to grapple with the inherent authoritarianism that is embedded in an illiberal thought system. This is why every Marxist government in history has monopolized power. An ideology that describes a large segment of society as an enemy class that must be eliminated is never going to respect political rights for its opponents. The Bolsheviks had plans to brutalize their opponents from the outset. As early as 1917, Lenin wrote, Only in Communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely broken only then the state ceases to exist, and it becomes possible to speak of freedom. Lenin may have been well-intentioned in the most abstract sense of imaginingpeaceful egalitarian paradise as the final stage of his vision. But he always envisioned the journey to that destination traversing a river of blood.

Older leftists often defined themselves by their relation to existing communist states. Some Social Democrats maintained a fierce anti-communism, while others defended some or all aspects of the totalitarian horrors in places like the Soviet Union or China.

Jacobin has existed for less than a decade, and Sunkara is young enough that he can confidently assert that his version of Marxism would never descend into the brutality of the 20th-century version.

That does not mean, however, that its disposition toward left-wing authoritarianism is entirely theoretical. There is one experiment in Marxist, or quasi-Marxist, government recent enough to gauge Jacobins tolerance for left-wing repression: the Hugo Chvez regime in Venezuela.

The left-wing populist government established by Chvez and his successors may not be as brutal as the regimes of Stalin or Mao, but its ruthlessness is beyond serious dispute. Under the leadership of President Hugo Chvez and now President Nicols Maduro, the accumulation of power in the executive branch and erosion of human rights guarantees have enabled the government to intimidate, persecute, and even criminally prosecute its critics, says Human Rights Watch. Human rights defenders and journalists frequently faced campaigns to discredit them, as well as attacks and intimidation. Political opponents and critics of the government continued to face imprisonment, notes Amnesty International. A 2015 State Department report cites, among other human-rights violations, abuse of political prisoners; interference with privacy rights; lack of government respect for freedom of assembly; lack of protection for Colombian migrants; corruption at all levels of government; threats against domestic NGOs. Maduro has neutralized the opposition-dominated National Assembly elected in December 2015 and decimated the judiciarys independence, reports the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Readers of Jacobin have gotten a very different sense of things. The magazines coverage of Venezuela, at least as far as I was able to find online, dates back to the immediate aftermath of Chvezs death. Even by that relatively late date, when the authoritarian nature of the regime was already clear, Jacobin was defending it against its perfidious neoliberal critics.

The tone of the nearly two dozen Jacobin stories on Venezuela I was able to find ranges from celebratory to defensive. Today we mourn the death of Chvez, tomorrow we return to the grind for socialism, concludes one 2013 piece. Much of Jacobins early criticism of the regime laments that Chavism has not gone far enough. The Jacobin line in 2014 was that, Only a deepening of the Bolivarian Revolution can save it. Or, What is needed today, and what is more urgent than ever, is not dialogue or reconciliation, not harmony and understanding, but a radical commitment to press decisively forward. Indeed, the counterrevolutionary dissidents needed to be crushed: To the extent that the Bolivarian Revolution has problems, the solution to them wont come from chats with those looking to overthrow it, but rather the organization of workers trying to fulfill its potential. There can be no neutral ground between those two positions. The so-called human-rights abuses were merely a pretext for Yankee imperialism.

This is all the same rhetoric Marxists used to justify the bloodshed in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. The revolution is not a dinner party, etc., etc.

As the Venezuelan economy has tumbled into crisis and the regimes failure has grown harder to deny, Jacobins coverage has softened, but only incrementally. Demands for more fervent adherence to Marxist dogma have given way to criticisms of the regimes critics. If you have read the mainstream conservative analysis of Donald Trump, which focuses heavily on pushing back against the media and his opponents, the tone will be familiar.

In mainstream accounts of last weeks protests in Caracas, the opposition is depicted as an essentially peaceful force, complains one story. Strangely missing from the narrative of the Venezuelan oppositions peaceful march to victory over a cruel dictatorship was the small detail of the murder of a Venezuelan police officer by demonstrators Wednesday evening, insists another article, assailing a double standard: In most cases, blue lives apparently matter an awful lot except when theyre serving under a self-declared socialist national government that has been branded an unusual and extraordinary threat by the United States. A procession of stories has dismissed reports of failure in the country. Western journalists are wrong, FiveThirtyEight is wrong, even Bernie Sanders is wrong.

Sunkara may want to work out why Marxist principles failed in the past, but he seems determined not to arrive at any conclusion that implicates the ideological principles that caused those failures.

In his Times op-ed, Sunkara suggests, The threat to democracy today is coming from the right, not the left. That is correct, but only because in the United States today, Marxism represents a minuscule faction with no plausible opportunity to obtain national-scale power. Those on the left who care about safeguarding democracy should work to keep it that way.

The president started raising money for his 2020 campaign with an event held at his own D.C. hotel and the press was forced to crash the party.

In a deal with prosecutors, Brian Encinia agreed never to work in law enforcement again.

The repeal of taxes on the wealthy enacted along with Obamacare is under attack by Senate Republicans. That is a very bad sign for Mitch McConnell.

Three days after the Supreme Court lifted the injunctions against the ban, the U.S. will begin barring visitors from six Muslim-majority nations.

Citing two big procedural bars to enactment of a single-payer plan, Speaker Anthony Rendon stopped action on it, inviting attacks from proponents.

Trump wont file a complaint against James Comey for leaking (for now), as a gesture of goodwill toward Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

It came out of nowhere, and the backstory was even stranger and more alarming.

Heres how the enticements to wavering GOP senators might be doled out.

The Texas senator has a doppelgnger.

The president implicitly threatens Jeff Bezos with higher taxes, for owning a newspaper that reports critically on the White House.

The real-estate developer cited the financial hurdles to taking out an incumbent.

Marxists say theyve learned their lesson and are ready for another chance.

A new poll finds that only 10 percent of Republicans want a less generous version of Obamacare but Mitch McConnell is trying to pass one, anyway.

The A, B, C, and D lines have resumed, but if you guessed thats with extensive delays, that would be correct.

Nancy Pelosi has done good work. But in an era where Congress is chronically unpopular, 16 years in leadership is too long.

A hair-raising report from the presidents meeting with Republicans enrages Trump.

Putting his inexperienced son-in-law in charge of Mideast policy was a shocking act of nepotism by Trump. Were starting to see the consequences.

Trumps former campaign manager confirms he worked as a foreign agent of a pro-Russia political party.

Hes already misjudged the politics surrounding the Senate legislation, and he might not like the bill if he learns whats in it.

Judging by todays performance, theyre still interested in holding live daily briefings if the press is in the hot seat.

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100 Years After the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism Hasn't Changed - New York Magazine

The Socialist Republic of Romania fell in 1989, early in the life of game developer Cristian Diaconescu. Living under communist rule is a childhood memory, but one that has stuck through adulthood, much like it did in the minds of his friends, colleagues and contemporaries. In 2014, he decided to make something from the recollections.

We were having discussions back then about us as a nation, about how important the communist period was for us as a generation, Diaconescu tells me over the phone. I think a part of what we are today was constructed in the early years of our life. So that's why we thought this could be a great theme for a game. It would give us the opportunity to explore our childhood.

Black the Fall is the result of a collaboration between Diaconescu and artist Nicoleta Iordanescu, along with a team of designers and developers, to work on a project that expressed the realities of communism in Romania. Rather than a documentary, the team at Sand Sailor Studio decided to make a puzzle-platformer video game. And instead of creating a digital simulacrum of pre-1989 Romania, they decided to blend scenes pulled from reality with science-fiction robots.

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In a style reminiscent of Oddworld Inhabitants pioneering platform game, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, the player of Black the Fall moves from left to right across a screen, solving puzzles that will extract them from a sinister complex. In Abes Oddysee the player must liberate their character and his fellow slaves from a satirically hypercapitalist meat-processing factory. In Black the Fall, the target is communism, and the player must learn to manipulate others to escape a building lined with pictures of Lenin and Stalin.

We tried to make puzzles that are inspired by manipulation, says Diaconescu. This is something that people used to do back in the day. You didn't have any friends. You didn't know whom to trust. The only way to survive was by manipulating others.

Visually, the game also brings to mind Playdeads 2016 titleInside, another game that took the puzzle-platformer form and used it to tell the story of a lone individual struggling against a vast, mysterious system. Whereas that game shies from iconography that ties it to a particular political ideology, Black the Fall is laden with scenes and images pulled from the developers memories of Bucharest under communist rule. This connection to reality is, according to community manager Andreea Vaduva, part of the games strength.

There is a hunger for authenticity, she says. I think the greatest art is very authentic. There are other big games that are formed around metrics: what people like most, what they play most, et cetera. They're successful and entertaining, and some of them are really good. But the success for an indie game is solely based on authenticity.

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Crucially, both Vaduva and Diaconescu pitch their game as a piece of personal expression. Much of the game is pulled from their own experiences, and from what theyve heard from parents and grandparents who lived day to day under a repressive regime. I ask them why, if thats the case, did they decide to mix this historical authenticity with robotic companions and a visual aesthetic that wouldnt look out of place in Terry Gilliams 1985 film Brazil. Why not keep the whole thing grounded in the realities of communist Bucharest?

Because we wanted to make something that's unique and deeply ours, Diaconescu replies. We decided to let all the cultural aspects that influenced us be part of the game. He mentions the effect of seeing Star Wars as a child, and reading books like George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four. For someone who was a child during the final days of the Socialist Republic of Romania, it makes sense for his memories of Bucharest to fuse with those of fiction, of Darth Vader and Big Brother. As a piece of self-expression, Black the Fall is therefore more an impressionistic sketch than a historically accurate document.

Will the games cocktail of fantastic and actual oppression work out? Will it give an insight into a still tender chapter of Romanian history, or will the generalised tropes of dystopian fiction drown out this authenticity? Well be able to tell for ourselves when the game is released on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, on 11 July 2017.

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Playing with Romanian communism in Black the Fall | Alphr - Alphr

During the 2016 presidential election run, as parties candidates were competing for their presidential nomination, now-President Donald Trump lashed out at former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to cheering crowds.

This socialist-slash-communist Trump said. I call [Sanders] a socialist-slash-communist, because thats what he is. Hes going to tax you people at 90 percent; hes going to take everything!

It was clever political hit to dress Sanders up as a Cold War-era bogeyman, but it displayed a crude one might say calculatedmisrepresentation of the ideology that the Vermont senator holds.

Although Sanders is not currently running for president, the self-identified democratic socialist has become a guiding light among progressives. And many on the left are now pushing ideas like universal healthcare, raised minimum wages, and taxes on the wealthiest Americansideas that have roots in socialism. As a large portion of the American electorate gravitates toward these ideas, lets take a look at what socialism meansand what it could mean for America.

Socialism is a political ideology that advocates for an egalitarian redistribution of wealth and power in society through a democratic ownership and distribution of societys means of production (or means of making money). Socialism, in the simplest of terms, involves making more of an effort to balance the scales between the rich and the poor.

Nowadays, the term refers to a wide swathe of the left-wing political thought. Some socialists believe that workers or communities should manage businesses as stakeholders, what is known as a cooperative, while others advocate for varying degrees of governmental ownership and administration.

Likewise, throughout history, socialists have disagreed over how this change should come about. Revolutionaries called for a sudden violent overthrow of capitalism, while reformists actively worked to evolve the model of government to a more socialist system.

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The ideology emerged in the mid-19th century as a reaction to the rise of early capitalism and the economic inequality it induced.

Capitalism, or liberalism, focuses on private property and profit. Perhaps the most prominent economic theorist to define modern capitalism, Adam Smith, famously laid out this philosophy in his book,The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, which described how a free market could regulate itself through competition and with little government interference. This idea would revolutionize how society was structured in the centuries that followed. It began a transition from mercantilismcolonial-era state regulated trade through chartered trading companiesto commercial capitalism.

By the time the 19th century rolled around and industrial capitalism was in stride, working conditions were inhumane. Children were forced into the workplace, workers days were long and difficult. With few rights, workers had no safety provisions and minimal pay. This was reflected in the abject conditions and poverty that working-class people lived in.

Socialism was a reaction to all this, and as an intellectual idea, first found its footing among the French elite,where two schools of socialist thought emerged: utopian and revolutionary. While the former group advocated reform, the latter believed that capitalism could only be overthrown through violence.

In the early 20th century, socialist ideals would change the world, as working people began to organize through trade unions and, later, in political parties. The writings of German philosopher Karl Marx also served to spread and define socialist ideals.

Is socialism the same thing as communism? In short, no. Trumps criticism of Sanders is either wrong or simply exploiting a confusion that stems from the Cold War. At the time, communism and socialism were used virtually interchangeably in U.S. politics to vilify leftist thinkers.

There is, however, a distinct difference. Although Marxs writing was a school of far-left socialist thought, it was also a rejection of it and denounced many socialists as part of the problem. Marx instead imagined the ideals of socialism absolutely as communism. Marx believed communism, in which all class boundaries and notions of private ownership would eventually end, was the endpoint of all socialism.

Communism required the state own and manage the distribution of wealth and property according to need. There were many countries throughout the 20th century that tried to implement communism, from the Soviet Union to Vietnam, Cuba to China. When economic difficulty continued, however, the dream of a classless utopia often fell to a violent authoritarian regime in which an opportunistic ruling political class and, often, a dictator commanded all material wealth and violently oppressed dissenters.

Socialism is a more moderateyet still radicaleconomic philosophy that seeks to empower the worker through co-ownership of industrial and production capacity and through consensus, whether governmental mechanism or through smaller syndicates.

Within current European democracies, however, socialisms principles exist alongside capitalism. In these countries, citizens pay higher tax rates to the government but benefit from universal pre-paid healthcare, free college tuition, and social welfare programs. This broad social welfare system exists complementary to a free economy with lightly regulated businesses that sometimes pay lower corporate tax rates than U.S. businesses.

This is the kind of democratic socialism that Sanders professes. He has consistently praised Denmarks model of government. In 2013, he wrote an essay praising the extraordinary security and opportunity that the Danish government offers its citizens, describing it most recently as a very different understanding of what freedom means ending the enormous anxieties that comes with economic insecurity.

In a way, its already taking hold. Sanders stands as the most successful democratic socialist ever within American politics; his race to become the Democrat nominee drew the support of more young Americans than Trump and party rival Hillary Clinton.

For the generation without memory of the Soviet Union, socialism is not a dirty word, and Sanders nuanced political perspective holds strong appealespecially to those who came of age in the economic insecurity and injustice caused by the 2008 financial crisis.

A 2016 poll by Pew Research Centershowed that while only 31 percent of Americans overall viewed socialism positively, almost half of those aged 19 to 29 viewed the ideology positively. The statistics were backed up by a separate Harvard survey, which found that within that same age group, half of young adults rejected capitalism.

However, holding socialist views remains a risk for U.S. political candidates. The Clinton campaign and her supporters attempted to attack Sanders socialist ideas during the 2016 Democratic primary season. And Republicans viewed an election against Sanders as nothing short of a gift.

Republicans are being nice to Bernie Sanders because we like the thought of running against a socialist. But if he were to win the nomination the knives would come out for Bernie pretty quick, Ryan Williams, aformer spokesman for Republican Mitt Romneys 2012 presidential campaign, told Bloomberg. Theres no mystery what the attack on him would be. Bernie Sanders is literally a card carrying socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. Thered be hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican ads showing hammers and sickles and Soviet Union flags in front of Bernie Sanders.

Still, more than 12 million people voted Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary, about 3.8 million fewer than Clintons primary vote total.

So, is socialism about to sweep the U.S.? Not likely. But the fact that those interested in socialism or socialistic ideas constitute a large minority in American politics, its clear that Americans are beginning to question the fundamentals.

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What is socialism? - The Daily Dot

JUNE 27, 2017

BINI ADAMCZAKS Communism for Kids isnt just for kids. The book is meant for readers of all ages, but its style is deliberately nave. Adamczak addresses everyone as children in order to awaken their childlike sense of imagination and ability to dream. She reminds them that the world has not always been this way, and need not stay as it is. Adopting the language of make-believe, Adamczak introduces the problem posed by capitalism so those still young at heart might arrive at a solution. [G]enuine fairy tales, the Marxist critic Siegfried Kracauer maintained during the Weimar years, are not stories about miracles but rather announcements of the miraculous advent of justice.

Part of the confusion about the books intended readership is due to the English version of its title, which was chosen by MIT for promotional purposes. First published back in 2004 as Kommunismus, the book was split into halves of around 35 pages each. While the first half unfolds in a fairly standard manner with chapters dedicated to work, capitalist crises, the market, and primitive accumulation the second half proceeds by trial and error. Having established the issues at stake, Adamczak guides readers through a series of attempts to answer Chernyshevskys and Lenins perennial question, What is to be done? Kommunismus, Adamczaks debut, proved a surprise success. Unrast Verlag reissued it 10 years later, along with a 30-page epilogue added by the author. Adamczak uses this afterword, more essayistic in tone than the original text, to sketch a few subtler theoretical points.

Communism for Kids is a translation of the updated 2014 rerelease. Jacob Blumenfeld and Sophie Lewis have rendered a great service by making it accessible to Anglophone audiences. Reception of the book thus far, however, has been frantic, to say the least. Elizabeth Harrington of The Washington Free Beacon accuses The MIT Press of trying to corrupt the youth with a new book that teaches children the tenets of Karl Marx with fairy tales. Breitbarts Colin Madine, meanwhile, laments that [Marxists] havent yet figured out that their ideology leads to nothing but ruin. But theres hope. If Glenn Beck inadvertently gave The Coming Insurrection the best [] review it will ever receive a decade ago, then perhaps Alex Joness insane rant about Satanism, British intelligence, and commie indoctrination will do the same for this book. Liberal outlets are hardly better, with Ron Capshaw sarcastically commenting in The Daily Beast that [a] Berlin-based author and MIT have published a kids book making the case for Communism using fairy tales minus all the mass murder, of course.

One wonders if any of these reviewers actually read Communism for Kids before passing judgment, or even bothered to thumb through it. If they had, they would know that Adamczak rejects calls to leap over the barrier between generations by seeking immediate, untainted access to Karl Marxs original manuscripts. She doesnt flinch before the troublesome image of the past, not simply disavowing the failed revolutions of the last two centuries, no matter the stigma, but forcefully criticizing those who coyly refuse to take responsibility for the legacy of Stalinism and its victims [] Gestern Morgen, her 2007 study of Soviet history, deals precisely with this theme. Moreover, she refuses to romanticize precapitalist forms of life: People suffered a lot before [capitalism], too, although for different reasons.

And yet the criticism persists. The likely crux of the matter, as far as the general public is concerned, is the very word communism, which still conjures up grim memories of totalitarian regimes. Adamczak insists several times in the course of her text (four, to be exact) that communism names the society that gets rid of all the evils people suffer under capitalism. And indeed, for many contemporary Marxists, the word recalls evocative passages from Marx and Engelss early writings: communism as the riddle of history solved, the real movement abolishing the existing state of affairs, and so on. At the same time, communism represents a discrete political model, which distinguishes itself from socialism, anarchism, and other modes of nominally anticapitalist politics. It has been used in this latter sense for going on a hundred years, since the renaming of the Bolshevik party in Russia and the foundation of the Comintern in 1919. Many regard the subsequent years as decisive; to them, the word is all but irredeemable. Mark Fisher, the late author of Capitalist Realism, may have been right that it is forever tied to the nightmares of the 20th century.

In that light, Adamczaks attempt to rescue the precepts of communism is admirably fearless. And the central precept she considers is the role of commodity fetishism, or reification, in capitalist society. Its called capitalism, Adamczak writes,

because capital rules. This isnt the same as saying that capitalists rule, or that the capitalist class rules. In capitalism, there are certainly people who have more power than others, but there isnt a queen who sits on a throne high above society commands everybody. So if people no longer rule over society, who does?

Adamczak admits that [t]he answer may sound a little strange. Things do. Indeed, it is a strange, abstract sort of rule. Of course we dont mean this literally, since things cant do anything, least of all rule people. After all, theyre just things. And not all things have this power; only special things do. Or to put it better, only a special form of things do. This special form Adamczak alludes to is none other than the commodity-form discussed by Marx in the first chapter of Capital (i.e., goods produced for exchange).

Adamczak also touches on Marxs characteristic procedure of inversion. [Commodities are] just the things that people create to make life easier, to serve them, she explains. Strangely, over time, people forget that they made those things, and soon enough, people begin to serve the things! Or, as Marx puts it, the rule of the capitalist over the worker is the rule of things over man, of dead labor over the living, of the product over the producer. Ventriloquizing through a couple of nameless protagonists, Adamczak drives this point home in a subsequent chapter: You know what? Its all these things! We make them in order to serve us, but [] we end up serving them [] Its these dumb thingamajigs, this damned thinga- thinga- thingification [Verdinglichung]. This thingification is, of course, better known to Anglophone Marxists as reification, from the Latin res. Elegant and engaging as Adamczaks explanation is, her most brilliant analogy really throws the occult properties of capitalism into relief:

To play the [Ouija] game, a group of people sits in a circle around a board with a glass in the middle. All the letters of the alphabet are written on the board. Everyone puts a hand or finger on the glass, and because everybody is unconsciously trembling a tiny bit, the glass begins to move, as if pushed by an invisible hand, slowly, from one letter to the next. The people dont realize that they moved the glass themselves, because their individual trembling could never have moved it alone. Instead, they think it was a spirit channeling some kind of message through them.

The Ouija board illustrates pretty well how life works under capitalism. As a matter of fact, the people playing the game are pushing the magically moving glass all by themselves, although not one of them could do it alone. The glass moves only because people act together rather than separately. But they dont even notice they are cooperating. Their own cooperation happens secretly, behind their backs, so to speak. If those people instead consciously came together to think collectively about what they actually wanted to write, then the outcome would probably be very different. At least, there wouldnt be any uncertainty about who wrote the text, thats for sure. With the way things stand now, though, the text seems to be written by an invisible hand.

Later, Adamczak returns to this analogy, after her characters have conducted a sequence of communist experiments. Society, Adamczak says,

[is] just like the Ouija board. Theres no magic without the glass [dead labor or constant capital], but theres even less magic without us [living labor or variable capital]. The glass didnt move because of an invisible hand but rather because we cooperated together [] We made everything ourselves [] All these things are as much a part of us as we are a part of them. That means we can change them whenever we want.

Historically, human beings have participated in a process much bigger than any one of them could alter or truly apprehend. Men make their own history, Marx once observed, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

Engels expanded on this motif in 1881: With the seizure of the means of production by society, he claimed, the extraneous objective forces which have hitherto governed history pass under the [subjective] control of men themselves. Only from that time will men, more and more consciously, make their own history. This dovetails neatly with Adamczaks image of the Ouija players deciding together what to write, rather than just letting the message be written for them. From that day forth, they will write history as they deem fit. Communism for Kids thus borrows a page from the Communist Manifesto: In bourgeois [capitalist] society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.

In the middle of the book, Adamczak presents six trials to demonstrate how certain past attempts to achieve this goal had fallen short. Adamczak explores state-administered redistributionist schemes, self-management, and technocratic utopianism, which views automation as a cure-all. These and other strategies of reducing labor-time a prerequisite of communism, expressed by Marxs son-in-law Paul Lafargue as the right to be lazy just end up reproducing the same old patterns of capitalist labor. No, no, no, goes the refrain. This isnt communism. Her characters move on to the next trial.

Adamczak suddenly breaks this off with a quote from Horace, which Marx had used in the first preface to Capital: De te fabula narratur! [This tale is about you!] An angry crowd bursts through the bottom of the page. Stop telling our story! they yell at her. We decide what happens next. Because this is our story now, and were making history ourselves. Here Adamczak encourages readers to finish her story, since it belongs to them. El Lissitzky began his own 1922 Soviet childrens parable About Two Squares, in which a pair of intergalactic rectilinear shapes fly down from outer space to sweep away the ancien rgime, with the injunction: Dont read this book. Take paper. Fold rods. Color in blocks of wood. Build! A black square symbolizing pre-Revolutionary avant-garde art (namely, Kazimir Malevich) provides the destructive impulse, while a red square symbolizing communism supplies the constructive impulse, but the story closes on an open-ended note. Lissitzkys elliptic last line (So it ends, further on ) is meant to spill off his pages onto the pages of history. This coda could just as well be appended to Adamczaks book.

My one quibble with Communism for Kids concerns the section on communist desire [kommunistischen Begehren]. Over the last 20 years or so, this phrase or rather, its Italian equivalent, desiderio comunista has sporadically appeared in books by Antonio Negri and interviews with tienne Balibar. Jacques Broda has written articles on dsir communiste for major French newspapers, while Jodi Dean has given the most comprehensive account in any language. But the notion that radical social transformation can only take place when motivated by desire for revolution, or that desire itself is somehow revolutionary, derives from philosophers and psychoanalysts such as Gilles Deleuze, Flix Guattari, and Jean-Paul Doll. Despite what some revolutionaries think about [it], desire is revolutionary in its essence, argued Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus. [It] does not want revolution, [but] it is revolutionary in its own right [] Revolutionaries often forget, or do not like to recognize, that one wants and makes revolution out of desire, not duty. Adamczak accepts this premise, stating, If communist criticism aspires to move beyond its habit of bitter negation, then it needs to add a blueprint of desire to its toolbox of analytic scalpels and rhetorical dynamite. It needs to generate desire communist desire.

The crucial reference for Adamczak is Deleuzes colleague, Michel Foucault. She quotes him as saying that the role of intellectuals today must be to restore the same level of desirability for the image of revolution that existed in the 19th century. Foucault wavered on this, though, unsure if revolution was really so desirable after all (citing Horkheimers doubts). He told Bernard-Henri Lvy that something quite different is at stake in Stalinism [than the viability of revolution]. You know very well [] that the very desirability of the revolution is the problem today. Asked whether revolution was something he desired, Foucault refused to commit himself. Regardless of Foucaults wavering, traditional Marxism frames revolution not in terms of desire, but of objective class interests and universal needs. Revolution is a historical necessity, and Marxism is the consciousness of this necessity. Communism is more than just the riddle of history solved; it also knows this to be the case. By advancing desire as a cause of revolution, Deleuze, Guattari, and their followers put the cart before the horse. Whether a desire [Begierde] becomes fixed or not, Marx pointed out, depends on whether material circumstances [] permit the normal satisfaction of this desire and, on the other hand, the development of a totality of desires. Only successful revolution will lead to conditions that allow for the full development of all our potentialities.

Revolution will not result from merely wanting it more, and the idea that it will is usually a sign of desperation. Daniel Bensad, the French Trotskyist, recalled in his Memoirs:

[I]n a climate of renunciation, denial, and repentance, revolution tends to be reduced to a matter of desire [] Vaguely post-1968, and falsely juvenile, this emotional desire for revolution gave off the bitter fragrance of flowers scattered on a tomb. Mere desire is all that remains when the initial lan and fervor are exhausted: a wishfulness without will, a greed without appetite, an erotic caprice or a phantom of freedom a subjectivity enslaved to an impractical sense of the possible.

Adamczaks book demands that desire itself become desirable, when what is really required is an understanding of necessity. Luckily, Communism for Kids offers abundant insight into this necessity. For the moment, Adamczak is relatively unknown outside Germany. Communism for Kids will change this. Readers of the world, rejoice!

Ross Wolfe is a writer, historian, and architecture critic living in New York.

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This Tale Is About You!: On Bini Adamczak's Communism for Kids - lareviewofbooks

When Cristian Diaconescu and Nicolete Lordanescu started working on what would become the atmospheric puzzle-platformerBlack the Fallthey weren't trying to make a commercial video game, but an art project that usedgames as the medium. The two creators shared the goal of somehow using interactive media to communicatetheir feelings aboutthe not-so-distant past of their homeland, Romania.

From the end of World War II the former Axis state of Romania was occupied by the Soviet Union, who steadily established communist rule in the country. By 1947 the Romanian King was forced to abdicate, and the Romanian People's Republic was formed. Until 1989 Romania was gripped by communist totalitarianism, and it is only in recent times that the people of Romania have been able to experience freedom from an incredibly oppressive regime.

Diaconescu and Lordanescu's original art project was verywell-received, inspiringthe duo to consider a full-sized project. After gathering some like-minded developers and running a successful Kickstarter campaign, the newly formed Sand Sailor Studios began work on the full-fat version ofBlack the Fall. Fans of Playdead and particularly the wonderful Inside will instantly see the similarities in approach, but this is coming from a very different place.

"For my generation, we were the last to catch communism in the later stages," says Diaconescu, speaking to me from Sand Sailors' Bucharest-based studios. "We were kind of young when it crumbled, but we were old enough to understand and to feel the idiosyncrasies of it in Romania. The project was supposed to be something neo-expressionist using the medium of video games, talking about not only communism as it was in Romania, but also our memories of communism."

Of the 9-strong team at Sand Sailor Studios, almost all designers, artists and programmers are old enough to remember the country's communist regime in full swing, and eventhe younger members have plenty offamily stories. "We were kids back then. It was tough, life was tough. There were shortages of food, and a lack of music and TV," Diaconescu remembers."Looking back it's a mixture of melancholy and also frustration. We understand now that these shortages placed us in a difficult position, and the effects are still there today, especially when compared to the west."

The creators' memories of the time meanBlack the Fallcan't help but be something deeply personal, though it's also not a straight presentation of 'Romania under communist rule.' The game's atmosphere maycome from the real world, but it's set in a dystopian future.

"The game itself does not have any written text or spoken language, but the background and the actions of the protagonist are filled with our memories about how you are supposed to conform, and not speak your mind,"says Diaconescu.

"As kids we weren't even allowed to speak to our friends about what we had in the house... we were all living in fear. Some of the neighbours might want to rat you out to the police you can see that scattered all over the background of the game. We have a very powerful background narrative that speaks about the oppression, about the fear of being open to one another.

"But of course the game is not historically accurate. It's mainly about the people who made it, everyone on the team had something that they put in at one point."

Sand Sailor Studios have woventhis narrative throughevery aspect of the game, including importantmechanics. Early on in the game you'll be handed a 'designator', a device that allows you to control both machines and NPCs. On the face of it this seems like a handy puzzle-solving tool that helps you progress, but the whole concept of 'control' in this landscape has an eerie resonance.

"Even those who had just a little power were very manipulative," says Diaconescu. "I remember the grocery stores particularly we didn't have privately owned grocery stores, they were all owned by the state, so whoever had access to bread, meats and vegetables also had power. They used to ask people for 'favours'... they were like small kings of the neighbourhood. We wanted to add that into the game. Basically, the way to survive back then, as I remember it, was to have enough influence over the others, so if something went wrong, you could do what you had to do to escape. It was a very dehumanising experience.

"I think that was the basic rule of surviving. You either went corrupt and worked for the government, spying on your neighbours and your coworkers, or you tried to outsmart them by playing nice, by dodging enquiries, by bribing officials. Our character is not a superhero. It is a metaphor for what you had to do back then to survive."

When you're creating a game like this, so deeply entwined in personal experience and political history, surely you can't help but draw comparisons to modern-day life. I ask Diaconescu if he could see any of his game's themes returning in the current global climate.

"It's a funny question because we were talking the other day about the new changes that were taking place in Europe, and the rise of autocratic leaders, such Erdoan in Turkey, and of course Trump in the US. It kind of resembles what happened in the past before communism came to power in Romania.

"Communism didn't start at once and democracy cannot die at once, it takes a period of time. But we kind of see the signs again and it's rather disturbing; especially for Romania. The game can feel very real, like its happening today, but it's also very important to remember that it is a dystopian vision."

The trailer for Black the Fall has receivedsome attention and, interestingly enough, Sand Sailor tell me they see trends in the comments section depending on where in the world viewers are watching from. Apparently Eastern Europeans have become very pro-western in their views, but Russians comment in a more anti-capitalist fashion. There's also pro-socialist opinion coming in fromsome parts of the US and Western Europe, and a wave of pro-communist support in South America.

"One thing that I can say is that Eastern Europeans, when they see the images of the game if they are old enough, they are instantly transported back to their childhood and that's amazing," says Diaconescu. But in the makeup of the game's potential audience, there was one last twist of the knife.

Younger Eastern European players, thoseunder 30 years old, don't have thesame reaction. Diaconescu says theysee Black the Fall as justa dystopian sci-fi game, rather than a reflection of their region's recent past. Perhaps that'sthe most inadvertently chilling thing about the game how quickly the world moves on, and how soon we forget. Then again, that's why humans create things like Black the Fall. This is both videogame and cultural document, an effort to make an entertainment that resonates and in some senses educates about its inspiration. It's a way of trying to make sense of the world even if that particular time and place is never coming back.

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Black the Fall and Eastern Europe's Communist Past | Kotaku UK - Kotaku UK (blog)