Commie says hi!

[polar bear]

Welcome Red!

I look forward to hearing something other than liberal/conservative rhetoric.  We may not agree on everything but I bet we are closer than I think right now 

[Alex K]

I definitely have a little communist in me that sometimes wants out. I'm just a bit put off by the perceived dogmatism. When I was in NY a friend took me to a local campus communist meeting, and it was pretty interesting, but I had the feeling that certain things were not discussed and simply held as truths. I think the topic back than was what one should do in Iraq.

[Hatshepsut]

I'm currently active on ReligiousForums.com and ...

Howdy. Or should I say jj.tj "be come." We probably have three forums in common though I quit using ReligiousForums.com and RevLeft. Nothing against them. The former is just too "loud" and the latter too invested in political ideology unlikely to fly in the USA and which I only partly concur with. I'll probably quit this one soon as well, when I get bored of it.    

Do enjoy.

[*Deidre*]

Greetings Atheist Forums,

I'm currently active on ReligiousForums.com and thought I might get involved here to be around more of my fellow atheists. I am a strong atheist, but currently thinking over how I can establish that as true and what it's implications would be. I am a communist in that I accept Marxist philosophy of nature (dialectical materialism) and society (historical materialism). There aren't many Communists left, so I'm ok with disagreeing with people and respecting others views so long as it's relatively civil.

I will save some time by saying that I am not an apologist for Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot etc and a great deal of my time is spent trying to understand why they did what they did and how far it was an inherent characteristic of the system/ideology as a way to find out if it could have been done better. I am familiar to many anti-communist criticisms (and have read F. Hayek's Road to Serfdom from cover to cover) and whilst they often true to a greater or lesser extent, they are often very simplistic and rely on specific political/philosophical assumptions which I don't share as a Marxist. As such I am not an orthodox Marxist, but share enough in common with those who went before to call myself a 'commie'.

I look forward to debating everyone here and learning things from you.

regards,
Red.

I know you! Yay, you've joined here! Welcome  

[Nope]

Welcome to the forum.

[Red Economist]

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. I'm never 100% sure what to expect, so I'm happy to see it's been good so far.

I'll try to get back to you on some of your points and questions. if i miss something, my apologies as it's not intentional.

Hey Red, welcome to the forums.

It's good to have a Marxist on board to share a different viewpoint on things. Personally I grow skeptical of liberalism, the founding system of our societies, and as such I'll pretty much vote for anyone who wants to rebuild everything from scratch - If that happened to be a Marxist, so be it. I think Marx, like Darwin, was greatly misunderstood. One thing I agree with communists is that those who control the means of production and the economy control society - No doubt about that.

What do you think of Stalin's idea (let's leave the violence he did aside for a while) to build communism inside one country following a more nationalistic idea as opposed to Marx's internationalist proposal? Do you think communism inside a country has higher chances to work? I have a Stalinist friend in real life.

BTW, do you think theists and religious people can be communists?

Well, I hope you stick around and reply to more threads.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hey there red, welcome

To me, the best argument for strong atheism is to attack the claims. Except for trivial claims such as "the sun is God", at least one of these is almost certainly true:

-The concept of God is not well defined
-The concept and/or claim is unfalsifiable

In either case, the claim is irrelevant and useless so can be dismissed. It's based on a stance called ignosticism. Check this out for much more detail:

http://www.strongatheism.net/library/ath...gnitivism/

I don't know much about politics and such, but I think an ideal society would follow a communist/socialist model. However, human nature does not currently seem compatible with it.

I'm probably going to add that site to my favorites and read large chunks of it, so thanks. I'm still unsure exactly how communists became so confident that they could dismiss religion altogether, and it seems to be something more appropriate to an 19th century belief in the power of science than today. we are a lot more uncertian of ourselves.

Ironically, I couldn't use the "unfalsifiable" position as when Karl Popper developed it, he specifically used it against the Marxist philosophy of History (and psychoanalysis). The difference between a weak and a strong atheist appears to be whether atheism- as an objective truth- can be 'known' at all.

I think most people would support a communist-socialist model for an ideal society if they believed it was possible. As Marxism is materialist, the same set of questions regarding objective knowledge of atheism come into play regarding objective knowldge of ethics, future social development and the nature of man. For the most part, it is believed that consciousness or spirit is believed to be outside of the realm of sense-perception and hence scientific inquiry, so there are major philosophical issues regarding the possibility of communism.

(see below for reply on 'human nature'; it's easily the most common objection to Communism)

Welcome Red!
I think all those communist regimes failed because of the human element in them.... how can you remove that from any form of government is beyond me, so we're left with this crappy liberalism/capitalism, tempered by some weak socialism that can be found throughout Western Europe... seems to get the job done, even if it consistently deteriorates the people's ability to live comfortably... Then you get a revolution and it all starts over... some lose a lot of money, others gain... most improve a bit only to then start the declining road all over again.

The "human element" in a system of government is the belief that people are inherently selfish and therefore tend towards political corruption in a communist society. At it's most basic, the idea of "human nature" is equivalent to the "soul" and therefore has deeply theological roots; the selfishness of man in liberal politics is partly derived from the idea of original sin in Christianity and the belief that the pursuit of pleasure is immoral/sinful. mankind worst kept secret is that power is exhilarating, enjoyable and a major-turn on, so for my part I've borrowed ideas from Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm (both Freudo-Marxists) to look at the psychology involved as Marxism itself doesn't have a clear statement of the problem or it's solution.
Trying to show that the soul, and therefore it's distant intellectual cousin, 'human nature', doesn't exist is hard. It is however possible to argue that they are an illusion, in so far as it is assumed that this 'nature', the essence of man is supposed to be fixed irrespective of the time and place people live. individuals change and develop over their lifetime, and society's clearly evolve in their moral understanding. the conundrum is "revolutions" which are massive leaps in moral understanding and social development. I'm confident there is an answer, but I'm not 100% confident of what it is. Wilhelm Reich argued that Fascism was the product of the repression of healthy sexuality and it then being sublimated into sado-masochistic sexual perversions. I think the same rationale can be at work behind explaining communism's capacity for violence, irrationality and corruption. that's my best guess so far.

Welcome to the forums!
Finally a communist to compensate for all the Nazis!
Kidding, kidding, great to have you here. Looking forward to your defense of Marxist natural philosophy.I'm always weary of philosophy of nature by people who didn't even live to really see modern physics and biology

The Soviet Union had some real problems trying to work out a consistently atheist/materialist view of nature and it meant that science became highly politicized. From a historical point of view, it's fascinating, but- if I actually had a better knowledge of the scientific concepts- is also intriguing because it conflicts with current ideas regarding the big bang, genetics, quantum mechanics and in some ways evolution.

I lean towards a live and live attitude towards Fascists as there is no point trying to point score on the internet (unless it's some hideous). I'm friends with a Fascist on religious forums and ironically I seem to be the only person he doesn't fall out with. good humor and tongue in check references to being corrupted by power keep keep the conversation civil. he's not a racist though and when you take that out of the equation communists and fascists can get along up to a point; we arrive at similar conclusion but from totally opposed premises about the nature of the world. it depends on the person and the ability to respect each other even when we disagree.

I'm currently active on ReligiousForums.com and ...

Howdy. Or should I say jj.tj "be come." We probably have three forums in common though I quit using ReligiousForums.com and RevLeft. Nothing against them. The former is just too "loud" and the latter too invested in political ideology unlikely to fly in the USA and which I only partly concur with. I'll probably quit this one soon as well, when I get bored of it.

Do enjoy.

Hey, Hatshepsut. Yeah, we share them in common; I was on Revleft too. I signed up a couple of years ago, but only really got active a few months last year. I left and after a while decided to use religiousforums.com instead. it has been a lot of fun and there are a lot of great people on there, but it is very limited for subjects relating to atheism.

---

Greetings Atheist Forums,

I'm currently active on ReligiousForums.com and thought I might get involved here to be around more of my fellow atheists. I am a strong atheist, but currently thinking over how I can establish that as true and what it's implications would be. I am a communist in that I accept Marxist philosophy of nature (dialectical materialism) and society (historical materialism). There aren't many Communists left, so I'm ok with disagreeing with people and respecting others views so long as it's relatively civil.

I will save some time by saying that I am not an apologist for Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot etc and a great deal of my time is spent trying to understand why they did what they did and how far it was an inherent characteristic of the system/ideology as a way to find out if it could have been done better. I am familiar to many anti-communist criticisms (and have read F. Hayek's Road to Serfdom from cover to cover) and whilst they often true to a greater or lesser extent, they are often very simplistic and rely on specific political/philosophical assumptions which I don't share as a Marxist. As such I am not an orthodox Marxist, but share enough in common with those who went before to call myself a 'commie'.

I look forward to debating everyone here and learning things from you.

regards,
Red.

I know you! Yay, you've joined here! Welcome  

HEY D!

[pocaracas]

Welcome Red!
I think all those communist regimes failed because of the human element in them.... how can you remove that from any form of government is beyond me, so we're left with this crappy liberalism/capitalism, tempered by some weak socialism that can be found throughout Western Europe... seems to get the job done, even if it consistently deteriorates the people's ability to live comfortably... Then you get a revolution and it all starts over... some lose a lot of money, others gain... most improve a bit only to then start the declining road all over again.

The "human element" in a system of government is the belief that people are inherently selfish and therefore tend towards political corruption in a communist society.

Actually, you'll find that sentence works even if you take the "communist" word out.

At it's most basic, the idea of "human nature" is equivalent to the "soul" and therefore has deeply theological roots; the selfishness of man in liberal politics is partly derived from the idea of original sin in Christianity and the belief that the pursuit of pleasure is immoral/sinful.

errmmm... yeah... sort of...

mankind worst kept secret is that power is exhilarating, enjoyable and a major-turn on, so for my part I've borrowed ideas from Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm (both Freudo-Marxists) to look at the psychology involved as Marxism itself doesn't have a clear statement of the problem or it's solution.

I don't think it's a solvable problem, so no political approach is perfect.

Trying to show that the soul, and therefore it's distant intellectual cousin, 'human nature', doesn't exist is hard. It is however possible to argue that they are an illusion, in so far as it is assumed that this 'nature', the essence of man is supposed to be fixed irrespective of the time and place people live. individuals change and develop over their lifetime, and society's clearly evolve in their moral understanding. the conundrum is "revolutions" which are massive leaps in moral understanding and social development. I'm confident there is an answer, but I'm not 100% confident of what it is. Wilhelm Reich argued that Fascism was the product of the repression of healthy sexuality and it then being sublimated into sado-masochistic sexual perversions. I think the same rationale can be at work behind explaining communism's capacity for violence, irrationality and corruption. that's my best guess so far.

I think a communist style organization can work well enough at small scales... cooperatives, clubs... town hall, at most. Take it to the country level and... everyone becomes a pig.

[Alex K]

The Soviet Union had some real problems trying to work out a consistently atheist/materialist view of nature and it meant that science became highly politicized. From a historical point of view, it's fascinating, but- if I actually had a better knowledge of the scientific concepts- is also intriguing because it conflicts with current ideas regarding the big bang, genetics, quantum mechanics and in some ways evolution.

Indeed. As soon as a political movement thinks it can have a say about the findings of science, all red flags go up. I honestly think that this is the first step on the way to catastrophe, an Orwellian denial of reality. Lysenko is of course a drastic example, but there are more subtle ones, where the soviets tried to tell physicists that relativity or quantum mechanics or what have you are not compatible with whatever ideology they currently embraced, because of some hare brained ideas about how political principles should be reflected in the laws of the universe.

[Hatshepsut]

...The concept of God is not well defined...

I'll buy that. Every time we use that word we have no idea what we really mean by it.

...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...that people are inherently selfish and therefore...political corruption in a communist society...explaining communism's capacity for violence, irrationality and corruption.

So that Khruschev and his successors remained Stalinists after the 20th Party Congress. But I wonder if they got over Russia's  propensity for violence and corruption, much less communism's? Somehow I don't feel they were ever able to solve the problem of establishing a governance tradition for that country. Selfishness and its irrational sequelae of course occur everywhere but it seems that the Soviet Union was overly dependent on personal relationships for getting things done, as Russia still is now. The worst thing about Stalin is they had no way of curbing this guy or showing him the door before he could do his dirty deeds. Stalin outmaneuvered rivals and built a patronage network around himself that became impenetrable.

Nixon tried to a lesser extent to do that here, but was doomed from the start. Even without Watergate, he would have been gone in 1977 anyway. That 8-year time limit, plus the fact that all the U.S. power players support and enforce it, is important. We could have a Bush/Gore thing but we didn't have a Bush-for-life. Often I think the communist way might have succeeded if they had been able to introduce effective limits on personal power and patronage, a goal they were starting to push toward at the end but when it was already too late for them.

[Red Economist]

I think a communist style organization can work well enough at small scales... cooperatives, clubs... town hall, at most. Take it to the country level and... everyone becomes a pig.

there is a long history of hair-brained utopian experiments and communities in the 19th century. Robert Owen is probably the most notable because he was (I think) pretty much the founder of the co-operative movement. As a political movement, Communism was on a completely different scale.

The Soviet Union had some real problems trying to work out a consistently atheist/materialist view of nature and it meant that science became highly politicized. From a historical point of view, it's fascinating, but- if I actually had a better knowledge of the scientific concepts- is also intriguing because it conflicts with current ideas regarding the big bang, genetics, quantum mechanics and in some ways evolution.

Indeed. As soon as a political movement thinks it can have a say about the findings of science, all red flags go up. I honestly think that this is the first step on the way to catastrophe, an Orwellian denial of reality. Lysenko is of course a drastic example, but there are more subtle ones, where the soviets tried to tell physicists that relativity or quantum mechanics or what have you are not compatible with whatever ideology they currently embraced, because of some hare brained ideas about how political principles should be reflected in the laws of the universe.

Yeah; the relationship between Science, Philosophy and Politics is problematic. The idea that Marxism was a 'worldview' encompassing both natural and social sciences was something specific to Russian Marxism (Plekanhov I think). It's a logical position, but throws up some real issues as it means the philosophy/politics takes precedence over the evidence and therefore places ideological restriction on science. Western Forms of Marxism (such as the Frankfurt school) didn't have this position and kept Marxism in the social sciences. The Russian Variant becomes part of the Leninist model and then spread across the world in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. There is an excellent book (Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars) which deals with the Party's interventions into Scientific matters in the early 50's. what a mess! I think China still has these issues as Maoism shares the same ideas but they've receded from the days of the cultural revolution era.

If you're interested, I recently found this on the internet; it makes some fascinating reading about Soviet Physics and the problems with the origin of the universe (there is a brief mention of China at the end);
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.1625.pdf

---

...The concept of God is not well defined...

I'll buy that. Every time we use that word we have no idea what we really mean by it.

...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...that people are inherently selfish and therefore...political corruption in a communist society...explaining communism's capacity for violence, irrationality and corruption.

So that Khruschev and his successors remained Stalinists after the 20th Party Congress. But I wonder if they got over Russia's  propensity for violence and corruption, much less communism's? Somehow I don't feel they were ever able to solve the problem of establishing a governance tradition for that country. Selfishness and its irrational sequelae of course occur everywhere but it seems that the Soviet Union was overly dependent on personal relationships for getting things done, as Russia still is now. The worst thing about Stalin is they had no way of curbing this guy or showing him the door before he could do his dirty deeds. Stalin outmaneuvered rivals and built a patronage network around himself that became impenetrable.

Nixon tried to a lesser extent to do that here, but was doomed from the start. Even without Watergate, he would have been gone in 1977 anyway. That 8-year time limit, plus the fact that all the U.S. power players support and enforce it, is important. We could have a Bush/Gore thing but we didn't have a Bush-for-life. Often I think the communist way might have succeeded if they had been able to introduce effective limits on personal power and patronage, a goal they were starting to push toward at the end but when it was already too late for them.

it is a real headache. Whatever I might think about Stalin, I can recognize that this was someone with serious political ability, and the ruthlessness to get what he wanted done. The idea on 'limits to power' run contrary to the communist conception of "freedom" which easily equates with maximizing the power of the state in it's less subtle readings of the theory. the cruder Marxism is as a theory, the more destructive it is as revolution is supposed to be a simultaneously process of creation and destruction, as the 'workers state' is also supposed to be simultaneously dictatorial and democratic depending on which class you belong to.