Ask a communist economist

[The Barefoot Bum]

I think you said this isn't your first rodeo or similar, could you elaborate? 

I just meant this is not my first time on a message board. I used to post extensively at the erstwhile Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

Do you like yourself some communism, or is it just how things are where you live?

I do like me some communism. I live in the United States, so, no, it's not really how things are here.

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If you do indeed prefer communism as an economic system, is there a particular franchise of it that suits you?

On my blog, I'm developing a theory of democratic communism. Google "The Barefoot Bum" and click on the democratic communism tag on the right.

Keep in mind that, at least as Marx described it, communism per se is a distant goal. From Part I of "Critique of the Gotha Programme":

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

I tend to be syncretic rather than doctrinal. I admire Marx and Lenin considerably, and I have some sympathy for the utopian socialists (as does Engels) and anarchists.

I'm less of a fan of Stalin and Mao, but I think some criticism is grossly exaggerated (that Stalin killed 60 million people strains my credulity), and they made some notable achievements. I'm not sure, for example, what I would have done differently with a war-torn horse-drawn agrarian economy facing the world's greatest industrial and military nation bent on conquering my territory and enslaving my people. 

Mobo Gao's book, The Battle for China's Past, makes a good defense for Mao, who, like Stalin, was working with an agricultural economy even more technologically delayed than Russia's, considerable destruction from the Second Imperialist War, and had a long history of devastating famine.

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Which underlying core philosophy/principles do you connect with as a commie? (I mean that in the nicest possible way ...I realise it's not 1950)

I agree with Marx's historical materialism, that social relationships derive from economic relations, which derive from the technical means of production. This general principle is pretty much a standard basis in sociology and anthropology.

I'm a utilitarian humanist: there are no "natural" or objective ethical or political principles; there is only the difficult and complicated project of maximizing human happiness and reducing suffering.

I agree with Lenin in The State and Revolution that to create a revolution means to smash the existing social relations that inherently support and reproduce capitalism. However, no one is wrong all the time, and there are bourgeois institutions (e.g. an independent judiciary) that I think are valuable and could be adapted easily to socialism.