Commie says hi!

[Red Economist]

Theists and religious people can be communists, but they can't be Marxists as Marxism is inherently atheist (when it's logically consistent at least). There are exceptions as there always is, which is Islamic Marxism which started in central asia in the 1920's and 30's and spread amongst academic circles for a bit. the latter had a vague influence over Islamism/political Islam, and they borrowed the Leninist theory of the vanguard and state. I don't know too many details other than there was actually an influence.
There were also the "god builders" in the early bolshevik party and in Russia in the 20's who wanted to turn communism into a religion; it was a fascinating idea and for a breif period there were some odd experiments (e.g. babies weren't baptized but were "octobered"). I have had some sympathy with them but it was not overall consistent with Marxist ideology at a philosophical level as Lenin pointed out. it's rests on the same ideas as saying atheism or science is a faith.

Just as I thought - There is also this doctrine named Christian Communism that says Jesus Christ was the first communist ever and they believe Christianity is compatible with communist ideology - They just ignore the materialist atheistic part. Would you say that someone like a pantheist or deist (some of those folks are technically atheists) can be a Marxist?

Marxism divides into natural philosophy (dialectical materialism) and social philosophy (historical materialism). Dialectical materialism specifically excludes the possibility of a deity and is profoundly anti-religious in so far as the existence of a spiritual/supernatural realm is beyond our control/comprehension and it's existence poses serious problems to a system based on economic planning.
Historical Materialism can and does exist without employing dialectical materialism and you will find it in sociology and history departments as it is relatively harmless and compatible with liberalism. The dialectics matters because it expresses itself in class struggle and reduces the need for an external cause for understanding phenomena in favor of 'internal contradiction', thereby taking 'god' out of the equation.
Marxism places a heavy emphasis on logical consistency as (courtesy of Hegel) logic is considered a science in the same way physics uses mathematics. So it is possible, but given the logical contradictions involved I seriously doubt it is a sustainable position.

I've been a communist sympathizer for nearly ten years, and it is only recently that I've started to "understand" it. I think Marxism is widely misunderstood and misrepresented, but that is a reflection of the complexity of "dialectical" thinking. I think Stalin won over his opponents, notably Trotsky, as he took the more pragmatic root; Socialism in one country was the best they could do at the time although it did strongly diverge from the original internationalist goals of communism as a movement.

Can I ask where are you from? I'm always curious to know because there's some countries where you can find a higher number of communist sympathizers. I am Portuguese and my country lived in an authoritarian fascist leaning (not as fascist as Mussolini) regime for 60 years so communists were hated. After the revolution in 1974 some militant communists who back then had finally freedom of expression to speak their minds tried to forcibly take the country down the path to socialism - It worked poorly and moderate, centrist, liberal-capitalist left-wing leaning parties won the elections and then Portugal signed up for the EU, so the opportunity for communism was lost. However, there's still a lot of members in the communist party and it gets about 10% votes every election depending if it's local or national.
I agree with you that's widely misrepresented - The typical strawman argument of "everybody gets the same shit", when realistically speaking if you wanted more you only needed to work more - The difference is that you would get the fruits of your labour directly.
Socialism in one country seems to me a more plausible and realistic, perhaps even pragmatic option - If I was ever to become a communist I would probably be a Stalinist with some Leninist influences, but I would never worship Joseph Stalin or think everything he did was right.

I'm from the UK.

I would strongly advise you against being a Stalinist, unless you have a really good background knowledge of communist history to know what you are getting yourself into. In thinking you would 'never' worship Stalin or 'think everything he did was right', I think you grossly under-estimate the power of ideology to change a persons behavior. ideologies can tell us what is and is not possible and give us a set of rules to work with; we then operate within those rules. Whilst an ideology is not inherently evil or anything like that- it does change how we think, feel and behave. it is therefore best to treat it with skepticism and caution.
Speaking from personal experience, the better I understand Communism, the more I have come to agree with Anti-Communists that Stalin's atrocities were not an accident of the system, but were- to one extent or another- a necessary product of it in some form. I've also noticed how my own thought patterns have changed to fit into a "system" and whilst this has some benefits on an individual level as it can be very empowering, I am less certain about the aggregate effect on a society would be. there is a long process of maturation that goes with understanding a system of ideas and it takes time to see it's pitfalls.

Most of the stuff about totalitarianism is nonesense, but there is a grain of truth in it; a libertarian views 'ideas' and 'thoughts' as the private property of the individual. an individual creates their ideas by free will and spontaneous process of thought, and are therefore considered their 'property'. From this an individual has a 'right' to own/think their own thoughts.
Communism doesn't accept this view; it does have a conception of individuality, but it is subordinate to the rights of the 'collective'. In the Marxist view, Ideas are the product of social activity and social labor. Our ideas are determined by our physical interaction with the environment in the labour/production process and by our social interaction with other people. Ideas are therefore 'social', not individual. Under a Communist system of government, the ideas of society- like it's wealth become common property; to protect this common property, the 'group' has the right to decide which ideas a person can or cannot hold. Those that advance the communist cause are "progressive", those work against it are "reactionary". The 'rights' of the individual do not belong to the individual, but are given to them by the state. Consequently, the individual does not have an inherent right to 'liberty of thought' but only has the 'freedom' to think what is considered 'good' for the society. This has some extremely bizzare effects on ethical ideas in that they are no longer derived from the individual, but from the interests of waging the class struggle and of the state as the protector of the common property of society; someone who is openly stalinist would say that it is in the common good to eliminate certain ideas hostile to the cause of socialism from society (such as religion). it is a very small step indeed to seeking to eliminate the people who hold those ideas.  

I wouldn't chuck liberalism out just yet as there is a long way to go before communism- or indeed any alternative system- becomes credible. Stalinism (or Marxism-Leninism) was what worked and it is where any future communist ideas are going to have to drawn from. I nevertheless hope that any future communist system would be less bloodthirsty. From an intellectual point of view, that Marxist-Leninist also worked out the ideology more and so I'm drawing from them a lot.

Certainly - Theoretically the one party system violated Marx's proposal because the dictatorship of the proletariat wasn't supposed to be a dictatorship in the literal sense of the word. Apologies if I'm about to make a mistake, but since communists are anti-capitalism they are also, by definition, anti-liberalism (liberalism is the root of capitalism), right? I think people mistake being anti-liberalism as being anti-rights and anti-compassion - We could organize society without liberalism and capitalism and still keep the people's rights - It wouldn't make sense otherwise.

it is true that Communism is not anti-rights; it is simply that these rights are the common property of society (as they are dependent on the social wealth) and are given to people by the state. In theory Communism is not nihilistic, but there is a considerable difference between a liberal and a Marxist conception of rights.
Anti-Communists and Communists agree that private property (and therefore capitalism) is the basis of individual liberty (liberalism). By getting rid of private property, communist have and would change the conception of freedom from being a property of the will of the individual, to the freedom of action in society (and therefore possibly the state).
The problem is that all forms of collectivism could be described as totalitarian, even if they led to desirable outcomes. (this is a major issue for moderate centre-left politics which are clearly not totalitarian, but are accused of being so, particularly in the US). This doesn't factor into anti-communist ideas, but the change in how freedom and ethics is defined does mean that the very definition of "desirable" outcomes for society changes to. all forms of communism from an individualistic and liberal perspective are considered dictatorial because they hold the rights of the group as being more important than the rights of the individual. But there is significant variation in the 'degrees' of collectivism and dictatorship under a communist society.
Marx didn't argue for a one-party state, but it does logically follow on; if you eliminate competition in the economic sphere, it follows that the necessity of planning economic activity as a common resource necessitates a single economic-political authority and a single party.

Despite being a Trotskyist in my very early days,  getting closer and closer to being a Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist by default. I think you're friend made a wise choice as being a Stalinist has the advantage of sticking with more orthodox ideas and learning the history and also having be honest enough about the mistakes that were made. the latter is hard and being an out and out supporter of Stalin, etc is political suicide, but there are good reasons to be skeptical about how far the history can be evaluated according to western-liberal moral standards particularly when you consider the influence of Judea-Christian morality which would be incompatible with atheism and materialism.

Of course it is, many people think being a Stalinist means you support murdering people arbitrarily or a totalitarian State - She does not worship Stalin or think he was a good moral person, she just believes his writings on the "socialism in one nation" idea and some pragmatic approaches are better than the internationalist harder to achieve proposal. She also says that we need to place ourselves abstractly back in the way in Soviet Russia to understand that much of the killings were not Gulags or deliberate executions but simply side effects of policies that still weren't perfect like people starving, etc.

from what I've said so far, it should be clear that traditional concepts of individual responsibility DO NOT APPLY to Communism. it is easy for anti-communists to demonize the 'system' of government or the 'ideology', but the reality is far more complex; it was the ability of a communist system to turn millions of people into it's accomplices that enabled them to commit atrocities on that scale.
Totalitarianism was a new historical phenomena unique to the twentieth century and the great fault of liberalism is that it is abjectly refusing to try to understand any of these systems on their own terms and from the inside. we still trying to under what happened in 18th and 19th century terms.
Overall, it mattered very little whether a persons individual intentions were good or bad, as all that needed to happen was that they went along with the 'system'; language itself changed to reflect the need for 'shared' meanings and became highly politicized. it was the ability of the system to get you to join in, in what it was doing that mattered. The group and not the individual was the source of ethics and so if the group felt it was necessary to "liquidate" those who did not belong; so be it. it was in the interests of the group to do so and the rights of individuals were subordinate to the group.

Two other replies to further points you made to other members:
- I think that for the most part human nature is ambiguous and the reason we think capitalism is human nature is because we are used to it. I'm tired of telling people that no one before liberalism ever thought such system would ever exist or be invented by some lone writer in a cubicle - Just like no one thought the classical period would ever end and Rome would fall to the barbarians. People are severely limited by the ideas and mentality of the time they are born in, so it's productive to be impartial and consider that we don't know everything. Quite honestly, we have seen people commit acts of greed and cruelty but there's also many historic and contemporary figures who did acts of good, charity, compassion and cared for other human beings. To say that a 300 years old system is going to stay forever is childish and naive. From where I'm standing, we are largely a product of nurturing and if we grow up in a society that values success, competition and greed we will become greedy and egotistical.
- Yes, I post in a forum for politics discussion and I see fascists getting along with Marxists/communists because they share extreme ideologies and that means other members are not nice to both groups. I think fascism isn't racist in it's original conception (Mussolini said 95% of race is a myth) - Hitler liked the idea, but contemporary neo-nazis are not fascists because they don't support imperialism. Portugal had a kinda fascist political period and our leader allowed interracial mixing in the colonies and gave Portuguese citizenship to mixed race children of interracial couples (I guess we aren't very racist, historians say without any intent of joke that Portuguese created mullatoes). My biggest problem with fascism is the fact modern fascism (very underground) supports eugenics to a degree I cannot stand - Not to mention their fetishism for conquering the world and being emperors.

Marxism is largely an attempt to hijack the process of socialization that spontaneously forms human behavior and consciously employ it for political ends. So I agree with you on what you've said; shamefully a great deal of what we believe in our society know is the product of mass media and popular culture changing our behavior, and making consumption a value which we measure our self-worth by. this runs contary to notions of individual liberty of thought and does represent a massive shift towards shared ideas, values and patterns of behavior. I hope it can be used for good, but as with everything else- the conception of "good" itself changes depending on the system and the context.

Communists and Fascists do share a similar set of collectivist values in common and given both of them are stigmatized by the 'liberal' majority, it's not surprising we can get along from time to time on an individual level. on a larger scale, the differences are too extreme for anything more than a temporary departure from conflict as where we want to go are simply too different. That's especially true regarding, race, eugenics, and imperialism.

She also says that we need to place ourselves abstractly back in the way in Soviet Russia to understand that much of the killings were not Gulags or deliberate executions but simply side effects of policies that still weren't perfect like people starving, etc...

...the reason we think capitalism is human nature is because we are used to it. I'm tired of telling people that no one before liberalism ever thought such system would ever exist or be invented by some lone writer in a cubicle - Just like no one thought the classical period would ever end and Rome would fall...

So how is Mr. Silva doing in Portugal with the North/South thing in the EU Bailout Era? I admit my ignorance regarding political theory and the mechanics of the world system. The historical failure of imagination you speak of, combined with knee-jerk hostility to Marx, blinds us to his demonstration that capitalism predicates for its stability on unlimited economic growth. That just about guarantees capitalism will share the fate of all bacteria growing in finite petri dishes. It will have to be replaced by something else once it exhausts its resources. I don't know if that entails abolition of private property, but it will mean the slaying of its status as a sacred cow. The Australian Aborigines did fine without private property for more than 40000 years.

I'm less willing to see innocence in the killing phenomena of Soviet Russia; the famine in the Ukraine was imposed. We have long been condemning it from our own position of comfort, however, as if this is a thing that monsters do which couldn't happen to us. It may well have went beyond what even Stalin intended, without his full control over it all. Nor was it in the original 1917 game plan, which was ruthlessly cruel yet not unmeasured as the purges came to be. The Gulag was a machine capable of grinding meat on its own, with enough inertia to make it hard to stop.

On the latter paragraph; I'd say that's a fairly wise position. but mainly because I agree with it.