The Fatal Flaw of Communism - by Frank Zappa

[Seth]

"voluntary altruism" is an oxymoron

tautology

But we can all identify a moron when he posts.

I don't see why such attacks are necessary. To get personal about a philosophical or political debate belies an inability to discuss the issue rationally. Seth didn't attack anyone here. He made a point. Even if the point isn't sound, does that mean he deserves to be called names?

Hi Coito. The following is the sentence directed towards me immediately before I put that one in:

"When it comes to truth and socialism, it's more a dog returning to his own vomit, to lap up the regurgitated lies of Marxism and spew them forth all over again to a new audience."

So, I'm just to accept that, am I?

Sure, since it wasn't directed personally at you, it was directed explicitly at "socialism" as regards socialism's ability to expound "truth," which ability socialism has none of.

[John_fi_Skye]

tautology

But we can all identify a moron when he posts.

I don't see why such attacks are necessary. To get personal about a philosophical or political debate belies an inability to discuss the issue rationally. Seth didn't attack anyone here. He made a point. Even if the point isn't sound, does that mean he deserves to be called names?

Hi Coito. The following is the sentence directed towards me immediately before I put that one in:

"When it comes to truth and socialism, it's more a dog returning to his own vomit, to lap up the regurgitated lies of Marxism and spew them forth all over again to a new audience."

So, I'm just to accept that, am I?

Sure, since it wasn't directed personally at you, it was directed explicitly at "socialism" as regards socialism's ability to expound "truth," which ability socialism has none of.

[Coito ergo sum]

If a person is enlisted in an "army" do they have the right to choose their assignments?

Leaving aide the fact that the word "army" is being used metaphorically,

Well, now, there is a possibility, but it is not apparent from the context, nor is it expounded upon to be as such in the work itself. The work is a political work, and there isn't much reason for hyperbolic metaphors to be used. The point of his writing is to be clear on what he means, not to create clouds of ambiguity. What makes you think it is being used metaphorically?

yes most people who choose to join the army get to choose their career (assuming they have the required skills). They may go for engineering, comms, infantry, tanks... etc., etc.. They obviously don't get to choose their "assignment" once they're in a regiment as that's at the whim of fate, but they knew that when they signed up. But then, office workers don't get to choose their "assignment" either, they just have to do the work that lands on their desk.

They do get to choose whether to take the job in the first place, and in communism that is not contemplated to be the case. A person will do what the community finds is in the common good. If he doesn't, then he's not acting toward the common good, and it is foundational in communism that people work toward the common good (not their own version or opinion as to what that common good is). If that means you are a bricklayer instead of a writer - then you're a bricklayer, not a writer.

Just so you know, I'm not a supporter of Communism, I just keep seeing these interpretations of yours that I feel are inaccurate and extreme.

They aren't though. They are accurate and in line with what the writers of the foundational works of communism espoused. What is inaccurate is the milquetoast, watered down version of communism propounded colloquially, which makes it sound like it's something akin to "everything good for everybody and everybody equally prosperous." The suggestion that communism increases people individual autonomy and ability to choose life-paths and such is absolutely inaccurate. Communism is not about increasing individual autonomy and choice. Communism suggest that an individuals autonomy is irrelevant.

[Seth]

We're pretty much going over old ground here, but where exactly do Marx and Engles suggest people would have their job assigned to them? An obligation to work doesn't imply that work would be assigned without any free choice of career. Saying "wherever we've seen this in practice" is irrelevant because we've never seen a true communist societies on anything other than very small scales, just a bunch of failed attempts that were dragged into totalitarianism as soon as they were born.

The problem with Marx and Marxists and the interpretation of Marxism by Marxists is that Marx spoke in platitudes and generalities and spouted ill-considered theories that ignored utterly the realities of human behavior and the necessities of governance.

Marx did not speak about how people would be assigned their jobs, or that they would be assigned them at all. He presumed (falsely and stupidly) that people would obey their Marxist leaders and do those jobs assigned to them for the betterment of the collective. Marx implicitly acknowledged the value of the craftsman and specialist for their knowledge, but made no accommodations in his rhetoric for choosing who does what. Such details were beneath his mighty intellect, along with all the other mundane details of how the society he envisioned would actually come to pass and be operated.

Well, we found out how it comes to pass and how it's operated with Lenin and Stalin, who first tried the direct jump to "workers councils" and quickly discovered that, due to human nature and self-interest, that sort of collective decision making quickly ground production of essentials (like food) to a halt as communes bickered over who would do what, how much they would do, and when. The tractor factories bickered with the agricultural communes over who was "froming" and who was "needing" and how much. The agriculturalists bickered with the urban communes over the allocation of the scarce food they produced to "non-needy" urban populations while the urban workers demanded more food in return for their "froming" of clothing and implements.

And that, my friend, is how the Central Committee came into being. Lenin and Stalin and the rest of the Marxist elite quickly figured out that while communism is a nice utopian ideal, actual living human beings have this thing called "self-interest" that cause them to look to their own Maslowvian needs first and foremost before they even consider the needs of the collective. This natural instinct for self-preservation causes people to collect more than they "need" against future privation and for present comfort, and it causes them to expend the least amount of energy possible in acquiring those resources for survival.

So, the agriculturalist expends his labor growing crops, and first he puts aside the best of the crop for his own use, and he always puts away more than he actually "needs" against the threat of future privation and for the purposes of trade for those things he needs but cannot himself manufacture.

But in the Soviet model, the agriculturalist who does so is a "counterrevolutionary" and is summarily shot for "hoarding" and denying the full value of his labor to the collective, in which all members are to be subject to the dictates of the Central Committee as to what their "need" is and what their "ability" must be.

In Soviet factories there were charts of how much each cog in the great Soviet machinery of Marxism were worth. This labor was worth one potato, that worth two, and if you failed to input the required amount of labor, you got no potatoes at all.

And that is how Marxism always works in real life, outside the abstract philosophical idiocy of Marx.

[PsychoSerenity]

Do you think the ends would ever justify the means?

Generally, no. Or rather, certainly not when taken to extremes, as that question generally refers to. Obviously in moderate circumstances it does, otherwise you would have to question every action in that way. In this particular context I'm very much against forceful revolution and despotic measures - but nowadays I don't think they'd be necessary anyway. Today I think (from the very little I know) a communist revolution (or whatever might pass for it in the modern world) would mostly take place in the minds and attitudes of society and the laws, and the majority of the relevant property i.e. that which is used to exploit others, is immaterial; intellectual property and debts.

[Coito ergo sum]

Point 9 of Marx's "10 points": "The combination of agriculture and manufacturing industries with the gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by the more equable distribution of the population over the country." - so, right there you see what communism envisions.

Point 8 of Marx's "10 points": "The equal obligation of all to work and the establishment of an industrial and agricultural armies." - Think of that - the equal OBLIGATION of all to work. You only get what you need -- and you have an OBLIGATION to work -- and people will be part of "industrial and agricultural ARMIES." ARMIES. That is what Marx wrote himself. Autonomy? Do armies let their soldiers do as they like? Or, do they ASSIGN THEM DUTIES? Whither choice to do what one wills? Whither choice to follow one's dreams? What of the individual who could be a lumberjack but wants to try his hand at ballet? When the "general" of the "industrial and agricultural ARMY" decides you'll be a lumberjack -- that individual will do it, yes? For the good of the community....

And again Coito, you are taking things out of context. I've just read through a good chunk of the Communist manifesto, and these 10 points are not a description of what a communist society would be like. They are short term measures that might have been needed, depending on the society, on the way towards communism. Seeing as our technology today has massively reduced the need for human labour in agriculture, the concept of agricultural armies is clearly irrelevant.

Here's the context:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... o/ch02.htm

The 10 Points are Karl Marx's statement of the means to achieving communism in developed countries. You can't seriously be suggesting that he was saying that countries should enact those 10 measures in order to achieve communism, but then abandon those measures once it is achieved. He's suggesting the 10 points because they are part of what communism is. Communism entails the abolition of private property, and the centralization of credit and production in "the community" (whatever that is).

Marx advocated the use of any means, especially including violent revolution, to bring about "socialist dictatorship." As part of the process he suggested ten political goals for developed countries such as the United States and western Europe. Those are the 10 Points.

If there is one thing that will give pro-communism folks no succor or assistance, it's the context of any quote from the Communist Manifesto. What an abysmal work of tyranny that thing is...

[PsychoSerenity]

Read it as you will. I'd say phrases like "in the beginning" are relevant, as are concepts of lower and higher stages of communism which I've heard about before. A concept that seems to run through the whole thing is ending the exploitation of one group by another. I don't see how that's a work of tyranny. It's about ending the class struggle. It doesn't seem to say much (from what I've read so far) about what route society as a whole should take, after that class struggle is over. Perhaps that's written somewhere else.

[Seth]

Do you think the ends would ever justify the means?

Generally, no. Or rather, certainly not when taken to extremes, as that question generally refers to. Obviously in moderate circumstances it does, otherwise you would have to question every action in that way. In this particular context I'm very much against forceful revolution and despotic measures - but nowadays I don't think they'd be necessary anyway. Today I think (from the very little I know) a communist revolution (or whatever might pass for it in the modern world) would mostly take place in the minds and attitudes of society and the laws, and the majority of the relevant property i.e. that which is used to exploit others, is immaterial; intellectual property and debts.

Please explain what you mean by "property...which is used to exploit others" and how, exactly, property is used to exploit others?

[Seth]

Read it as you will. I'd say phrases like "in the beginning" are relevant, as are concepts of lower and higher stages of communism which I've heard about before. A concept that seems to run through the whole thing is ending the exploitation of one group by another.

Who, today, is being "exploited" by some group, and how are they being "exploited?"

I don't see how that's a work of tyranny.

It's precisely a work of tyranny, the tyranny of the Proletariat, as Marx himself admitted was his goal.

It's about ending the class struggle.

How is "ending class struggle" productive or useful? What is the long-term ultimate result of "ending class struggle" and how does Marxism propose to so end "class struggle?"

It doesn't seem to say much (from what I've read so far) about what route society as a whole should take, after that class struggle is over. Perhaps that's written somewhere else.

No, it's not written somewhere else, and therein lies the problem. Marx exploited the proletariat and it's historical position in HIS PARTICULAR TIME, which was a time of severe class division that was legally mandated and supported by the aristocracy and it's hold on the laws. His political theories are abstract and general, without regard to how, practically speaking, such a movement to the ultimate "classless" society of communism will actually be created and sustained. He charts the general course from aristocratic bourgeoisie mercantilism and hereditary legal privilege through violent and bloody revolutionary overthrow and expropriation of the "ill-gotten" gains of the bourgeoisie (as CES cogently quotes Marx himself as admitting) through naked force and murder, and he theorizes that the socialistic structures of central control and planning will eventually be replaced by the classless, leaderless society of communism, but he does not explain how that will actually happen, or what the physical mechanisms of operating such a classless system will be. He merely presumes that people will gravitate towards utopian communism. Problem is, he ignores basic human nature in his presumptions, which is why Marxism always, always, always fails at State Socialism and ultimate brutal repression of the dissatisfied proletariat that's angry at the failed promises of their Marxist intellectual betters.

The particular social structures that Marx lived under are not a problem today, so Marxism is an ideology in search of a problem. We do not face, either in the UK or in America, a landed hereditary aristocracy which enjoys legally defended privileges over their vassals and servants. In neither country does an average citizen owe fealty to a king or lord. All persons are created equal in their political dignity to all others, and none may claim control or political/social superiority over another by virtue of either birth or aristocratic laws.

The "class struggle" of today is nothing more than classless economic competition wherein anyone with the skills and determination to excel and prosper and improve their economic or social condition can do so without the obstruction of the law, subject only to their own limitations and the vicissitudes of fate. And socialists and communists alike misuse and misapply Marx in an attempt not to deconstruct a hereditary monarchy and highly class-structured society to free the lower classes to prosper, they use it wrongly to deconstruct the only economic model in the history of earth that has actually freed people both socially and economically to prosper, in many cases beyond their wildest dreams: Capitalism.

They do it because they see economic inequality not as a stimulator of personal industry and improvement in a business climate that rewards innovation and hard work by the individual, they see it as "unfair" to those who are unable or unwilling to work hard to prosper, so they seek to take what others have worked for and achieved by virtue of their own skills and labor and redistribute it to those who are not as successful, because it's "only fair" that everyone should have equality of OUTCOME. But capitalism doesn't pretend to supply equality of outcome, it only provides equality of opportunity to success, by which is meant that capitalism does not place legal or social obstacles in the way of any individual to prevent him from prospering economically or socially by dint of his own labor. But neither does it guarantee success, and it in fact sees failure and lack of success not as negatives but as positive learning experiences from which individuals must take the lesson that capitalism only rewards those who work hard to prosper, and it allows those who sit in sloth and idleness to fail as a motive to greater individual effort and industry.

Today's socialists are not idealistic champions of the downtrodden, they are cruel exploiters of the downtrodden who spur them to action and then leave them swinging in the wind once they've gotten what they want from "the rich." They are selfish, self-interested, cruel, inhumane, intolerant, cupidinous, greedy and morally bankrupt scum who simply want what someone else has worked hard to achieve at no cost to themselves, merely because they think it's unfair that they have not prospered in their idleness and sloth and that life is somehow guaranteed to be "fair" to them even when they refuse to work for success.

[Coito ergo sum]

Read it as you will. I'd say phrases like "in the beginning" are relevant, as are concepts of lower and higher stages of communism which I've heard about before. A concept that seems to run through the whole thing is ending the exploitation of one group by another. I don't see how that's a work of tyranny. It's about ending the class struggle. It doesn't seem to say much (from what I've read so far) about what route society as a whole should take, after that class struggle is over. Perhaps that's written somewhere else.

Read it as I will? I'm just reading it as it is written, and working with a plain reading of its plain language using primary meanings of words. I really don't see how you can just toss the 10 Points aside as if they don't mean what they say, or that they aren't there because they are things that Marx suggests are part of Communism. Why are they necessary, if they aren't part of Communism?

In any case, other pieces of communist literature bear me out.

From Principles of Communism:

Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.

It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.

Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.

In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... in-com.htm

That "common plan" referred to above is imposed. It's the "central plan" in Stalinist regimes. There is no way to have a single common plan without it being dictated. I don't see how you can read the principle I just quoted as anything other than the elimination of individual rights and the subjugation of the individual to the community. It's tyranny, by definition.

Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:

(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.

(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.

(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.

"Rebels against the majority of the people" -- in other words - once there is a "common plan" you tow the line or the confiscate everything you have, and if you try to leave the country, they take all your stuff. Again, there is no individual right here -- you are a cog - you will get what the common plan tells you you will get, and you will do what the common plan tells you to do. I don't know where in the world you folks are getting the idea that communism is some fostering of individual choices. It isn't. It isn't meant to be. They flat out write openly that it is the opposite of individual choice, and yet people want to read into it the opposite of what it says.

(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.

(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

There is that word again -- we're supposed to read that as not meaning what it says?

(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.

(vii) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under cultivation – all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.

(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production together.

(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.

Look at that -- shove the people into "great palaces as communal dwellings for associated groups." Huge tenement houses! There's no provision here for people "choosing" to go live there. They're GOING to live there, because if the common plan says they're going to live there then they're going to live there. If one doesn't like it, then one is a "rebel against the majority of the community" and all your stuff gets confiscated.

(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in urban districts.

(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.

(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... in-com.htm

[PsychoSerenity]

- in other words -

Yes, read it as you will. Unlike you I don't claim to know exactly what is meant by it all. But I'm far from the only one who disagrees with your interpretations.

[Seth]

- in other words -

Yes, read it as you will. Unlike you I don't claim to know exactly what is meant by it all. But I'm far from the only one who disagrees with your interpretations.

You accept it without knowing what it means? That's actually pretty typical of the proletarian Marxist dupes and useful idiots actually. They like the pretty-sounding words and the idea that they will get something for nothing and that "the rich" will have to pay, but that's just class envy at work, not intellect and reason.

If you want to understand Marxism, just look at history and see how it's worked out in the past. That's how it always works out, and the fact is that it just beggars nations and economies and kills people by the millions in the most brutal ways imaginable.

Learn from history or repeat it.