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The idea of communism. Debate Callinicos Zizek and Holloway

By: ashok pursani

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The idea of communism. Debate Callinicos Zizek and Holloway - Video

Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, socialism and communism were synonyms. Both referred to economic systems in which the government owns the means of production. The two terms diverged in meaning largely as a result of the political theory and practice of Vladimir Lenin (18701924).

Like most contemporary socialists, Lenin believed that socialism could not be attained without violent revolution. But no one pursued the logic of revolution as rigorously as he. After deciding that violent revolution would not happen spontaneously, Lenin concluded that it must be engineered by a quasi-military party of professional revolutionaries, which he began and led. After realizing that the revolution would have many opponents, Lenin determined that the best way to quell resistance was with what he frankly called terrormass executions, slave labor, and starvation. After seeing that the majority of his countrymen opposed communism even after his military triumph, Lenin concluded that one-party dictatorship must continue until it enjoyed unshakeable popular support. In the chaos of the last years of World War I, Lenins tactics proved an effective way to seize and hold power in the former Russian Empire. Socialists who embraced Lenins methods became known as communists and eventually came to power in China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Indo-China, and elsewhere.

The most important fact to understand about the economics of communism is that communist revolutions triumphed only in heavily agricultural societies. Government ownership of the means of production could not, therefore, be achieved by expropriating a few industrialists. Lenin recognized that the government would have to seize the land of tens of millions of peasants, who surely would resist. He tried during the Russian Civil War (19181920), but retreated in the face of chaos and five million famine deaths. Lenins successor, Joseph Stalin, finished the job a decade later, sending millions of the more affluent peasants (kulaks) to Siberian slave labor camps to forestall organized resistance and starving the rest into submission.

The mechanism of Stalins terror famine was simple. Collectivization reduced total food production. The exiled kulaks had been the most advanced farmers, and after becoming state employees, the remaining peasants had little incentive to produce. But the governments quotas drastically increased. The shortage came out of the peasants bellies. Robert Conquest explains:

Agricultural production had been drastically reduced, and the peasants driven off by the millions to death and exile, with those who stayed reduced, in their own view, to serfs. But the State now controlled grain production, however reduced in quantity. And collective farming had prevailed.

In the capitalist West, industrialization was a by-product of rising agricultural productivity. As output per farmer increased, fewer farmers were needed to feed the population. Those no longer needed in agriculture moved to cities and became industrial workers. Modernization and rising food production went hand in hand. Under communism, in contrast, industrialization accompanied falling agricultural productivity. The government used the food it wrenched from the peasants to feed industrial workers and pay for exports. The new industrial workers were, of course, former peasants who had fled the wretched conditions of the collective farms.

One of the most basic concepts in economics is the production possibilities frontier (PPF), which shows feasible combinations of, for example, wheat and steel. If the frontier remains fixed, more steel means less wheat. In the noncommunist world, industrialization was a continuous outward shift of the PPF driven by technological change (Figure 1). In the communist world, industrialization was a painful movement along the PPF; or, to be more precise, it moved along the PPF as it shifted in (Figure 2).

The other distinctive feature of Soviet industrialization was that few manufactured products ever reached consumers. The emphasis was on heavy industry such as steel and coal. This is puzzling until one realizes that the term industrialization is a misnomer. What happened in the Soviet Union during the 1930s was not industrialization, but militarization, an arms build-up greater than that by any other nation in the world, including Nazi Germany. Martin Malia explains:

Contrary to the declared goals of the regime, it was the opposite of a system of production to create abundance for the eventual satisfaction of the needs of the population; it was a system of general squeeze of the population to produce capital goods for the creation of industrial power, in order to produce ever more capital goods with which to produce still further industrial might, and ultimately to produce armaments.

Stalins apologists argue that Germany forced militarization on him. In truth, Stalin not only began World War II as Hitlers active ally against Poland, but also saw the war as a golden opportunity for communist expansion: [T]he Soviet government made clear in its Comintern circular of September 1939 that stimulation of the second imperialist war was in the interests of the Soviet Union and of world revolution, while maintaining the peace was not.

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Communism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library ...

When many of us were growing up in the 50s and 60s the word communism was looked upon as the replacement of democracy by the totalitarian state; the loss of individual freedoms. Today the term communism has been pushed aside by references such as radical Islam. But sadly communism is alive and well and on the march again and its a word that our lame stream media avoids.

For those of us who spent our youth in New York City its hard to believe that at the helm of Americas greatest city sits a communist supporter; a sympathizer. But thats exactly whats happened.

Mayor Bill De Blasio was considered just a run-of-the-mill liberal until the New York Times on Sept. 23 ran a profile of the candidate, disclosing in a matter-of-fact manner his travels to Cuba and Nicaragua, involvement in a communist solidarity movement, and embrace of Islam as an emerging political force.

Bill de Blasio spent time as a left-wing supporter and activist for Nicaraguas ruling Sandinista party at a time when the Reagan administration characterized it as tyrannical and Communist.

Today he is at war with the NYPD over his initial support of the street demonstrators after meeting with race baiter Al Sharpton and ending in the death of two of New Yorks Finest. Its also not surprising that members of the Revolutionary Communist Party are in among those demonstrators holding pre-printed signs with RVCOM at the bottom.

A name you wont hear is that of co-founder of RVCOM Carl Dix, who in October 2014, called for a month of resistance to mass incarceration, police terror, repression and the criminalization of a generation. A search under the name of Carl Dix found that Carl Dix is a longtime revolutionary and a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. In 2011, he co-issued a call for a campaign of civil disobedience to STOP stop and frisk which proved effective in New York City and contributed to lowering the crime rate.

In the city that never sleeps, as in other big cities across our nation, the cancer of communism continues to grow following the words of the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel who said, Never let a serious crisis go to waste ... its an opportunity to do things you couldnt do before.

It illustrates what happens when so many uninformed voters go to the polls and give no thought to the outcome of their actions.

But there is hope now that a new Congress has been sworn in and its our job to see that they take their oath of office seriously when they raise their right hands and state that, I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

And its our job to raise our voices when an executive order is used to do an end run around our Constitution. We are a Republic and as such it is the Congress that carries out the will of the people, not one man in the oval office.

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Letter: Little-used word

Long walled off from world trade and modern technology, Cuba has developed a robust culture of DIY engineers who turn household items into useful inventions. Water pump motors propel bicycles, clothes dryers are repurposed into coconut shredders. Cuban artist Ernesto Orza has spent the last decade photographing and collecting many of these creations. Read more about Cuban inventions in our Science Wednesday piece, How communism turned Cuba into an island of hackers and DIY engineers.

Lamps made from household items like glass jars and toothpaste tubes. Photo by Ernesto Oroza & Penelope de Bozzi

LEFT: Cuban inventor Yolando Perez Baez demonstrates his engine-starting device which can work in the place of a starter motor-a component that frequently fails. A large weight is hoisted up and dropped to spin a flywheel to start motors around the farm. Photo by Desmond Boylan/Reuters RIGHT: Farmer Carlos Frachi invented a crop irrigation system using soda bottles. Photo by Enrique De La Osa/Reuters. Read more about Cuban inventions in How communism turned Cuba into an island of hackers and DIY engineers.

The electric engine from the widely-owned Soviet Aurika washing machine is commonly repurposed. Clockwise from left, in the photos above, the motors have been repurposed as coconut shredder, a key duplicator, a grinding wheel, and a shoe repair tool. Photos by Ernesto Oroza. Read more about Cuban inventions in How communism turned Cuba into an island of hackers and DIY engineers.

Childrens toys built from glue bottles and plastic bottle caps. Unfortunately, all of this creativity is motivated by profound poverty and desperation. For this reason is it hardly enjoyable for anyone involved, Oroza says. Photos by Ernesto Oroza & Penelope de Bozzi. Read more about Cuban inventions in How communism turned Cuba into an island of hackers and DIY engineers.

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Photo essay: The bizarre, brilliant and useful inventions of Cuban DIY engineers

Just outside Havana, in the childhood bedroom of illustrator Edel Rodriguez, a washing machine engine welded to a boat propeller has become a makeshift fan. This kind of cobbled-together contraption is common in Cuba. So are stoves that run on diesel from trucks, satellite dishes made of garbage can lids and lunch trays, and taxi signs consisting of old fuel canisters.

Cubans are masters of invention. They have to be. In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower slapped the first trade embargo on the country, and in 1961, just before leaving office, he broke off diplomatic relations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the loss of oil imports, shortages got worse. The country lost about 80 percent of its imports, and the economy shrank by 34 percent.

A market started with people who can rig things up, said Rodriguez, who was born and raised in the small Cuban farm town, El Gabriel. In 1980, at age 9, he fled to Miami with his family on the Mariel boatlift, and he now lives in New Jersey. Its what Cubans have been in the last 60 years just really inventive with things.

Ernesto Oroza, a Cuban-born designer who now lives in Miami, said several factors played a role in the DIY phenomenon. A high percentage of Cubans had engineering degrees, thanks to a system of free education. Many became intimately familiar with the mechanics of the standardized socialist products found in most homes the Soviet-designed Aurika washing machine, for example, and the Orbita fan. Plus, no one was untouched by the crisis.

Musicians, medical doctors, workers, homemakers, athletes and architects all had to dedicate themselves to making their own things and meeting the emerging needs of the family, Oroza wrote over email in Spanish. The Cuban home became a laboratory for inventions and survival.

Oroza, who has spent decades collecting, studying and writing about these objects, has a name for the phenomenon: technological disobedience. Cubans, he said, werent deterred by complexity or scale, and they learned to disrespect the authority of objects. That meant rethinking their original purpose and life cycle.

People scoured the city for plastic objects and industrial discards and swiped garbage from city dumpsters, which theyd grind up and inject into molds to make toys, dishes, electrical switches and footwear. The magazine Popular Mechanics was a hot commodity on the island.

Industrial products were tinkered with and examined by hand, Oroza said. Cubans dissected the industrial culture, opening everything up, repairing and altering every type of object.

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How communism turned Cuba into an island of hackers and DIY engineers