It has been done before. and successfully, but only if you factor in prior versions and classes of Communism.
Marx derived his ideas from the French, and them, going far back enough, you can find the root source of inspiration for Communism, which were Christian monasteries. Koinonia - shared life - as described in Acts of the Apostles. That's basically the principle of Communism and it's lifted wholesale from something they argue society is better without (religion). That's basically the groundwork and circumstances which enable communism to begin with: shared moral system, small and self-contained community, able to provide everything for itself. Engels called the Anabaptists during the Reformation "proto-Communists", which means you actually can see what he was talking about because it's still a tenet of one of these groups. In the USA, the Amish are basically the ideal.
Marx was essentially trying to apply on a macroscale something which is doable scaled way down, but it's not something you can just do intuitively. That's his German creeping in. This is the etymology of the word to begin with. Communism -> Communisme -> Common + practice. The French believed the state was necessary to make the practices proffered in mutualism become common and then it'd be possible to run a whole country as though it was a community, with people caring and feeling kinship with one another regardless of distance between them. It's attempting to apply it on a macroscale it naturally falls apart and why French communism just became anarchism, because self-preservation would force the atomised state and its numerous communities to work with one another. Personally, I think the more complex a system is, the less use it offers, and it's not long before shit falls apart or becomes stagnant but I digress.
Because everybody needs to abide by the moral principle, and the population being sustained has to actually be sustainable with the resources available, it makes attempting to do that on a broadscale untenable for the same reasons you can imagine now for why not everyone would want to become Amish. Because Marx is German, and the foundation of German philosophy is idealism, and Hegel inspired him, the actual way this would come about when everyone pursued it as a shared goal would emerge intuitively. This is in the same spirit as Hegel's "national spirit" meant a country and its people would naturally veer towards the most freeing and thus most correct choice available. People who were awoken to "class consciousness" when then intuitively become Communist.
To get back to the quoted question, Marx actually argued the opposite. Communism has been tried, and was in fact successful for thousands of years. Marx called it "Primitive Communism" i.e. humanity in the neolithic and prior. Hunter-gatherer communities. So, in technicality, the mass move away from those societies into centralised kingdoms and republics could act as an argument for Communism failing for thousands of years given in modern times it's probably still only being practised by those on North Sentinel Island. Though in terms of pure longevity, I'm sure they take the prize.
Given I only recall Trump's use of "hoax" was after he came to office, I think it's plausible he also believed there was some sort of convenient list of names that was simply withheld from the public, only to discover there wasn't one.
Whatever part of the Epstein thing Trump recently began referring to as a "hoax," it's something that seems to make him too pissed off to properly explain.
I'd guess somebody found some anti-Trump forgery in the "files" (whatever that means). The weirdly un-proffered birthday card thingy was a good candidate. Maybe one "file" is some FBI style made up shit about Trump selling his daughter to a list of Jews. There's a dishonest-seeming campaign against Virginia Giuffre that even her death hasn't fully ended, and Trump may have found out about it (the "hoax" then being an op against the pro-Trump witness). Who knows?
He just has to fucking say it. He won't, maybe because just putting the words out in the world will make it stick (like "Bubba") or maybe because it's something he's not even allowed to deny. In which case, Jews.
Hunter-gatherer communities were generally entirely homogenous and consisted of a few dozen individuals. Individuals were either entirely on board with the culture or killed or exiled. You just can't have this on a national level. It doesn't work outside an environment where every single member of the society both knows all the others and is completely on the same page as to practices.
There's a reason these societies, like the North Sentinelese, have often had stable societies for as long as tens of thousands of years.
Hunter-gatherer communities were generally entirely homogenous and consisted of a few dozen individuals. Individuals were either entirely on board with the culture or killed or exiled. You just can't have this on a national level. It doesn't work outside an environment where every single member of the society both knows all the others and is completely on the same page as to practices.
There's a reason these societies, like the North Sentinelese, have often had stable societies for as long as tens of thousands of years.
Like I said, the framework for communism already exists, but the conditions which enable it are fundamentally at odds with the moral philosophy of the ideology. It has a size requirement also which is why Marx required self-abolishment of the state, because you cannot co-ordinate millions of people upon millions of people towards a common good with an equivalent level of bureaucracy and tyranny/authoritarianism to ensure cooperation and cohesion. There, self-preservation and a lack of greed would gap things afterwards (hypothetically). Of course in order to get the conditions that are supposed to come about prior to abolishment, you'd probably require that level of bureaucracy and tyranny just to handle redistribution but in the ideal scenario everyone is on board anyway. Marxist-Leninism acknowledged the hypothetical requirement for the state to implement redistribution via a dictatorship of the proletariat but then the self-abolishment just never arrived. Chinese Communism is Marxist-Leninism but with built-in propaganda since Mao thought world revolution was necessary but "revolution of thought" was viable, and so by emphasising the pros of Communism and presenting an outward image of prosperity and success, other states will natrually become communist. The thought process and intricacies of the individual iterations of the ideology are interesting. in the same way Warhammer lore might tickle someone's brain.
Marx picking hunter-gatherers was also an odd choice given, at the time, we hardly knew anything about them other than supposition. The term "palaeolithic" came after areological discoveries of these old societies. Logically the homogenous, tight-knit requirement must have been regarded at some point but German philosophy is very "mind over matter" when it comes to conclusions. We can have knowledge of things without personal experience/observation so a lot of conclusions were predicate on the idea we'd simply "know" what to do after the prerequisites were achieved. Given the French communists put a lot of stock into the state to help implement it, and saw the framework of some government existing after their version of communism was implemented (it didn't have Marx's class conscious elements). Lenin, in effect, combined the requirement of state (French) with the class conscious elements (German) with the foundational Russian concept of Pravda, to get a totalitarian form of Communism that is objective in its operation. Chinese Communism I need to do more research on, but it's effectively Marxist-Leninist with an injection of corporatism and mercantilism and a weaponised PR team.
If you want Communism as Marx envisioned: homogenous, small society which is self-sustaining.
If you want it as the French envisioned: highly decentralised state with local resource organisation and management.
Otherwise you require extreme centralised authority which effectively gets you the furthest from either the French or German and compromising somewhere on "the vision".
You can also just take the Hunter-gatherer's as a framework and go Anprim. At the very least you'll be interesting..
Marxist-Leninism acknowledged the hypothetical requirement for the state to implement redistribution via a dictatorship of the proletariat but then the self-abolishment just never arrived.
That's because power structures tend to be self-sustaining. Both the structure and the individuals in it are always going to be unwilling to abolish the "dictatorship of the proletariat" which invariably becomes just a dictatorship of the elite.
Chinese Communism I need to do more research on, but it's effectively Marxist-Leninist with an injection of corporatism and mercantilism and a weaponised PR team.
Hence the term Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, which always reminds me of an old hippie I knew who told me the tale of how he was thrown out of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist commune because he was just a Marxist-Leninist and that was apparently too weird for them.
That's because power structures tend to be self-sustaining. Both the structure and the individuals in it are always going to be unwilling to abolish the "dictatorship of the proletariat" which invariably becomes just a dictatorship of the elite.
Hence the term Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, which always reminds me of an old hippie I knew who told me the tale of how he was thrown out of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist commune because he was just a Marxist-Leninist and that was apparently too weird for them.
The problem with political theory is that it's all predicate on nothing veering off course. The ends justify the means, but the means will continue in perpetuity until the now-mythical end arrives.
There have been instances of structures abolishing themselves but to memory that was only when power was vested within an individual and not spread out amongst many people. Logic states that if an individual is unwilling to sacrifice power, then a collection of individuals aren't any more likely to do so. The big notable instance of this occurring in a "bestowed power" position is Cincinnatus (it's kind of worrying that the most notable example of such a thing occurring is over two-thousand years old lmao). You had abdications, Charles V, Diocletian - thought "giving up power" (for health or stability) isn't the same as abolishing the power structure.
Power structure abolishing itself is much rarer and in the notable example, has to be created and then deletes itself after the occupant has vacated it. The English Commonwealth invited back the monarchy in leiu of a Lord Protector which meant the Prime Minister could effectively have dictatorial power, so abolishing that position to replace it with a monarch could possibly could, even if the monarch took on a far weaker role than before the Commonwealth and with less overall power than the Lord Protector position it replaced.
Francisco Franco, in part of the compromise that allowed the Nationalists to have a unified front in the civil war (Fascists with Monarchists with Ultranationalist Conservatives), was a "regent for life" so the position would end with him. He stepped down due to health and so the position was abolished and all power was given to the king. That could, maybe, qualify. He could've potentially done something between the end of the civil war and his stepping down to cement the position, but I can imagine why he didn't take steps towards doing so since I imagine Nato and neighbours barely tolerated him as-is. Then funnily enough the monarch who replaced Franco, who took on the role of an absolute monarch, then transitioned towards a republic so that's potentially a 2-for-1 example.
Interesting topic.
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist is an odd term because it doesn't actually describe the way China runs itself, it describes groups inspired by the Chinese variant of Marxism and view it as the next step in Marxism ala Marxism -> Marxist-Leninism -> Marxist-Leninist-Maoism. China itself is adamant with "Marxist-Leninist with Chinese characteristics," the more accurate terms being "Mao Zedong thought" or "Maoism". The "Maoism" is typically absent because Deng veered away from how Mao did things and it remains more or less the strange fascho-communist status quo of modern China.
I'm not going to pretend I didn't just learn this, but apparently Mao had his own depiction of, "1st world", "2nd world", "3rd world." which is a major point of contention with Marxist-Leninists because it proffered the idea that the Soviet Union was an exploiter similar to the USA. He didn't invent the terms but the way he used it is pretty much how it's used generally nowadays.
Not to sound like a broken record, but has anyone told trump that the epstein files aren't real and why are we talking about a pervert like epstien, he's dead?
Has anyone told trump that the epstien files that aren't real are actually real?
Has anyone, at all, on either side of the political isle called out the flip flopping and blatant bullshit surrounding this whole shit show?
It's absolutely weird. Why does everyone involved keep flip-flopping and telling obvious lies about this shit?
I don't care if it hurts Democrats, I don't care if it hurts Republicans, if it hurts child rapists, I'm totally okay with it. Let the chips fall where they may.
This is something that shouldn't remotely be political or partisan, and the fact that it is shows that our entire society is degraded beyond belief.
The "files" as we want them (an easily-digestible list of associates that likely molested girls on Little Saint James and had evidence utilized against them to influence political and business decisions) does not exist, it needs to be created and curated from records that the Department of Justice (FBI) currently holds.
Because we've been paying taxes to pedophiles that were likely under Israel's thumb and legislating according to Israel's interests. The sooner Epstein's accomplices and/or blackmail victims are exposed, the sooner we can give them the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor treatment, strip them of power, let them rot in shame, and the sooner we can end a foreign government's stranglehold of control over us.
It's absolutely weird. Why does everyone involved keep flip-flopping and telling obvious lies about this shit?
I don't care if it hurts Democrats, I don't care if it hurts Republicans, if it hurts child rapists, I'm totally okay with it. Let the chips fall where they may.
This is something that shouldn't remotely be political or partisan, and the fact that it is shows that our entire society is degraded beyond belief.
We might get a situation where the files don't contain child rapists, because they were either all caught already, died of old age, or would prompt a collective "who?" from people.
I think realistically we're going to become privy to the fact that a lot of people who aren't necessarily pedos were still perfectly fine with communicating with Epstein well after it came out he was a sexual predator. Situations like with Stacey Plaskett or Bannon. It's not enough cause to call them a pedo just through mere interaction but the fact they were speaking at all with Epstein in any context that wasn't judicial is contemptable. We'll probably see a lot of people named, but then collective disappointment when that alone doesn't warrant mass arrests or something. That's assuming this doesn't just become a partisan shitshow like I keep saying will happen.
Regarding Plaskett: House Republicans’ attempt to censure Democrat over texts with Epstein fails from the Guardian
If a bunch of congressmen or committee people are revealed to have been in regular communication, then we'll probably see a flurry of censure votes and attempted removals that get blocked along party lines with the occasional defector or abstainer preventing an actual removal taking place ever.
Any actual molester/rapist/noteworthy figure probably won't get namedropped if they're under investigation, given that was a stipulation of the upcoming release, We might just be getting a load of chum for the legislative bodies for a crap ton of performative voting that ultimately goes nowhere. I imagine a lot of normies will go, "that's it?" then forget about it. The uber-invested will concoct grand conspiracies that forget the stipulation of the release. Epstein will likely fade from relevance, and what to some will be a "memory hole" will be, to me personally, the political forces no longer seeing use in using Epstein to imply the other side are pedos.
I don't recall any plays, but Plato does make vague reference to something that does sound similar to Communism. This would be a form of living exclusive to the "Guardian" class, the rulers and soldiers, in order to keep them being corrupted by wealth, would live a communal lifestyle to keep them focused on their duties.
Book V, 457c–457d
“These women are to be common to all these men; no one is to have a private wife of his own, and children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.”
“The greatest of all evils in a state is when the citizens say not ‘mine’ of the same things, but ‘not mine’ of the same things… When all pursue the same end, the community is most perfectly one; and this unity is secured in the guardians by the community of women and children.”
“The greatest of all evils in a state is when the citizens say not ‘mine’ of the same things, but ‘not mine’ of the same things… When all pursue the same end, the community is most perfectly one; and this unity is secured in the guardians by the community of women and children.”
(The abolition of family is remarked on in the Communist Manifesto.) Communist Manifesto, 24
Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of
the Communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private
gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this
state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians,
and in public prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both
will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime
we plead guilty. But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by
social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which
you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, The
Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
Plato then gives an explanation of how this society declines, which is pretty much the same criticism of communism used today. Book VIII, 546a–547a
“The guardians will begin to neglect the rule of music and gymnastic; and then, at some time when the guardians are not watching, there will enter into the constitution a faction… this new element will begin to seek private property and land of its own. Wealth will be valued, and the virtuous order of the city will decline.”
They'll start to neglect their duties, and then some of the guardians will factionalise, and then the faction will seek to acquire wealth and private property and wealth will once again be valued, then the city [society] will decline.
You can draw comparisons to the unity seen in a lot of early Communist states prior to their breakdown and in-fighting along ideological schisms and the like. Stalin ("Marxist-Leninist"/Stalinist) vs Trotsky (Orthodox Marxism/Trotskyism). Wang Ming (Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist) vs Mao (Maoism). Tito (Titoism/cosmopolitan/Anti-Soviet) vs Rankovic (Titoism/Serbian-nationalist/neutral), Kim Il-Sung ("Monarcho-Communism"/personalist Marxism-Leninism) vs Ya'an faction (Maoism), & Soviet Koreans (Marxist-Leninist), Ho Chi Mihn (Nationalist Marxist-Leninist) vs Truong Chinh (agrarian socialist, I think)/Le Duan (militant reunifier), Castro (Personalist, quasi-Stalinist revolutionary nationalism) vs Escalante (Orthodox Marxist-Leninist along pre and post-Stalinist lines), Largo Caballero (Orthodox workerist Marxism/"Spanish Lenin") vs. Negrín (Marxist-Leninist/Soviet-aligned)
Outside of the last example (Spain, already in a state of civil war, had the Left break down into a further civil war centred out of modern day Catalonia/Barcelona) the revolution itself is the priority and sees the most unity. Once the government was in place,, all hell breaks loose ideologically.
Communist ideology presumes that not all participants in the revolution will be suitable for the socialist stage. Some will be unreliable, self-interested, or influenced by old-class thinking. Because of this, every revolutionary movement eventually divides between “true” and “false” revolutionaries, producing internal purges once power is secured. Marxist-Leninism made dealing with these people integral to securing the post-revolution order and thereafter the state's focus ends up divided between governance and dealing with these types thereby making an actual advance towards self-abolishment untenable given the "selfish"/"self-interested"/"old-order thinkers" will pretty much always exist thereby making the transitory stage of "temporary dictatorship" into full-blown, "true communism", last in perpetuity.
Aristotle also criticised the communal system Plato spoke of in his work, Politics.
Book 2 specifically. Politics II.3 (1262b)
“That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own; hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfil… And so in the community of wives and children, the tie between them will be but slight.”
“There is no reason to suppose that a man will love what is common to a thousand or ten thousand persons; he will love what is his own in much the same way as he loves the individuals who are nearest to him. The same principle applies to the affection of children toward parents and parents toward children; such affection will not exist under this system.”
“To require the whole city to have the same feelings of joy and sorrow, and to say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ at the same things, is to make the state into one family; and to carry this principle to the utmost is to reduce the state to a single human being. A state is not made up of so few.”
Politics II.5 (1263b) (This one makes an interesting point about obliged service vs voluntary, where the incentive to help selflessly and offer use of private to others is better than obliged. There's modern comparisons to voluntary charity/aid vs taxes or mandatory service.)
“It is better that property should be private, but the use of it common… There is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or comrades, which can only be rendered when property is private. These generous actions will be entirely lost… when fellowship is undivided.”
I think Marx tried to address the final extract by reinforcing the idea that your labour is itself valuable and thus yours, so by rendering service to someone voluntarily, you could extract the same level of pleasure in doing so. This is true anecdotally, but there's still the care for/don't care for problem which you can't really do. You can superficially say you care for everybody equally, but it rarely if ever manifests in practice. It's how things such as this heat map exist.
You can say you love a stranger as much as family, but it cannot manifest in equal intensities in practice, at least in the long-term. It's how Stalin purge some of his long-time comrades after becoming general secretary, or how Hitler and Co were able to go through with the night of long knives and kill people he was laughing and smiling with when they unfurled the first swastika flags together.
TLDR: The elements which comprise Communism and are meant to come about during the process have been criticised for thousands of years.
Whilst they may have had plays mocking the idea of common/communal ownership (the more I type this, the more certain I am you're right, I just don't know what it is) there is more explicit criticism of such by the big-name philosophers in their works that do more or less apply to Communism. They highlight how individuality is a necessity to make a state a state since a state is a collective of individuals who work together for mutual self-interest. People cannot be obliged to love/care for those they don't, and even still the greatest individual pleasure is derived from helping those you care for in some capacity. In the event of no care, there is still a sense of pleasure to be gained from doing a kindness to someone else with stuff you own rather than stuff that technically belongs to everybody (might explain the China liveleak videos lmao?) The decline of the "guardians" (politburo/high soviet/worker's council, etcetera) is painted as inevitable unless the offending element is excised but will probably not happen if those same people are in charge.
As said in a prior post, Communism is only workable in very small/sequestered parts of society but it's not a guarantee. Plato argued in favour of the "Guardians" probably in part that the elites were a smaller component of the overall society than the lower classes. The things which afflict the elites (corruption, self-interest) and the things which afflict the common people (lack of sincere care, common property depleting a sense of duty) are probably why you shouldn't have the two in conjunction.
Having communal ownership with both the ruling class and the lower class would effectively lead to corrupt ineffective leadership with a lower class induce into the "bystander effect" as everybody neglects their civic duties and basic human decency , so you end up in a society more self-interested than before. I brought up China's liveleak videos because they often had people walking by as someone is dying horrifically. I don't attribute this to the Chinese being bugmen or whatever, I think Aristotle had a point. Nobody owns anything, they have nothing to preserve, nothing to live for (family is secondary to country), so you wind up with a whole society that ultimately only has an obligation to live for the state, or rather, live. So if putting yourself in harm's way puts you life at risk, you're risking the only thing you technically own: your life.
China's social credit system wasn't just meant to keep people compliant. it was also meant to incentivise selflessness and civic duty which Chinese society was otherwise missing. "Help a stranger? We'll approve that bank loan!" and shit like that.
They'll start to neglect their duties, and then some of the guardians will factionalise, and then the faction will seek to acquire wealth and private property and wealth will once again be valued, then the city [society] will decline.
It's all news to me. I did mention I was sure various savage tribes across the New World and the frontier of the Old World (North Asia) have practiced something similar in the past 160,000 years of Homo Sapiens' existence, but I've been under the impression that Marx basically theorized Communism. I admittedly have neither read Das Kapital nor The Communist Manifesto and I have no desire to do so. I know that neither the Romans, Greeks nor English practiced something that resembled Communism, though obviously @>IMPLYING's wall of text shows that he is very knowledgeable about antiquated and protohistorical civics.
You should definitely read at least the Manifesto. It's basically a pamphlet. It's important to know exactly what ideologies have fucked the world you live in so you can avoid them. Same with Mein Kampf.
"Surely we'll be the ones to do it right this time!"
t. prophet of a doomed ideology with precedent of continued failure
In Das Kapital, Marx speaks about Plato society ruled by Guardians. He emphasised that the problem with this old-communalist/shared ownership societies place too much emphasis on the quality rather than the value of things and Plato's concern about class when Marx intended one without class. He essentially thought, "if you tweak this one thing, then it'll work!"
The main issue is that something approached from a philosophical point of view was then pushed for to be applied in practice, which isn't very similar to how a scientist can hypothesise, theorise, and then put the theory to practice. This attempt to transition from conceptual thought experiments rooted in subjective morals and thinking with complex conditions to carry out said "experiment" (Classless, stateless society) and then attempting to realise those concepts based on what effectively amounts to nothing, is insanity.
When Plato spoke of "The Guardians", he created arguments for and against the concepts of communal ownership, and whilst he was on the side of "for" he didn't then try to carry out this concept because it was basically a fun thought experiment. This is a general practice in philosophy and moral theory. It's necessary to argue against yourself over and over to arrive at the optimal conclusion. Marx does not do the this., Either because he didn't view his work as philosophy (probably because of the math shit, but it was by every other metric) or he didn't even consider the opposing arguments, if he could fathom any. You see in the extract from the Communist Manifesto, the most that amounts to criticism are the strawman rebukes which he then goes, "this is a good thing actually. The economic one is based an math shit which would take forever to go into, but the political shit was a means of achieving the math shit in the first place.
Speaking of, there's nobody out there as far as I know proposing this theory but: I think Marx was autistic.
I don't even mean that as a pejorative, I think his mode of thinking was so unlike most normal people that he wrongly assumed people could easily switch to assigning a number value to everything measured via his particular methodology and equations in assigning value. When you break it down, the entire motive for class revolution can be summed as, "we're not getting paid the exact worth of the good being sold." And he also must've believed too strongly in fiction given his description of the Bourgeoisie is straight out of a Dicken's novel. Most people focus on the "revolution"/"Classless society" aspects, and not the esoteric math shit that influenced his politics moreso than complete alignment with particular politics. This was a guy who argued with the hundred+ years dead Thomas Locke about how value of goods was assigned, and said Locke was wrong because he wasn't using Marx's method, which Marx speaks about matter-of-factly as though the methodology Marx uses was common knowledge.
Also, which country did he move to? Britain. What did Britain have lots of during the industrial revolution? Trains.
It's all news to me. I did mention I was sure various savage tribes across the New World and the frontier of the Old World (North Asia) have practiced something similar in the past 160,000 years of Homo Sapiens' existence, but I've been under the impression that Marx basically theorized Communism. I admittedly have neither read Das Kapital nor The Communist Manifesto and I have no desire to do so. I know that neither the Romans, Greeks nor English practiced something that resembled Communism, though obviously @>IMPLYING's wall of text shows that he is very knowledgable about antiquated and protohistorical civics.
"The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes"
Communism is a collection of ideas, with each individual idea having at one time been criticised or put into practice at some point in time. The individual concepts of Communism have been ruminated and thought about for centuries by tons of people, and have been practiced in very specific scenarios to a very specific end.
Marx is best described thusly: he is to Communism what Oreos were to Hydrox - the more popular alternative which is regarded as being the original.
He didn't invent Communism, he just had the financial backing many others lacked which helped to spread his name and thus his popularity, which generated the idea that he was who invented it (though he didn't exactly try to dismiss the idea, more on that later) he invented the self-named, massively masturbatory, "Scientific Communism" - because he believed that he had proven objectively and free of moral influence the best way of assigning value to goods and products alongside proving the inevitability of Communism. Lmao (I'm not even bringing up the fact he calls it "scientific" but makes use of metaphysical concepts like "class consciousness" which is just Hegelian bullshit amounting to everybody being apart of an invisible web that links them. He calls it scientific to cover the fact it's anything but.)
Communist Manifesto, 25p, Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of
production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that
the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as
mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the
community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the
Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed
almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal,
not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the
Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for
a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is selfevident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of
the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
You can really tell here that his ideology has definitely not mired his objectivity and moral assessment. These are just statements of fact, not subjective judgements.
Anyway: Proletariat, bourgeoisie, etcetera, are rather old. It's ironic you bring up the Romans in the context of Communism, because "Proletariat" comes from the Latin, "Proletarii " who were Roman citizens with little to no wealth. Literally translated, it means, "Producer of offspring" i.e. "The most value these people bring is producing children."
The Roman Republic saw an attempted push for land reform by the Gracci brothers. They are considered by many to be proto-socialists.
Land redistribution from the wealthy to the poor? Where've I heard that before?
For as long as there's been social classes, there's been attempts to appeal to social classes via policy and actions aimed specifically at benefiting them over all others. Land redistribution, special consideration for the poor, etcetera. Communism could arguably be the peak version of populism/utilitarianism, as it's meant to cater specifically to the greatest number of people. It's biggest drawback IMO is the batshit inclusion of German metaphysical concepts and unironic "mind over matter" stuff which basically ended up resulting in trannies but I digress.
The bourgeoisie gives a clue as to where Communism originates from, given that the word comes from the old French for "Town/City dweller". Prior to... 1700s? 1800s? If you lived in a city over the countryside/rural areas, you were probably better off financially as a given.
Communist Manifesto, 32p, Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given
voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal
excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then
undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its
emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending
bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of
the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and
social levelling in its crudest form. The Socialist and Communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen,
and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle
between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section I. Bourgeois and Proletarians).
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the
decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy,
offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political
movement.
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the
economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social
laws, that are to create these conditions.
The Communist Manifesto is basically collection and summary of other, older concepts and ideas largely talked about by French and Swiss thinkers with the occasional platitude by Marx. What was different between Marx and the French thinkers he cites is Marx had a wealthy patron who could help translate and mass distribute his work abroad whilst also keeping Marx well off enough to keep up his thing. Basically, the French guys lacked an Engels.
Engels had a "West has fallen. Billions must die." moment at age 25 after spending less than a year in England (Understandable). He met Marx at a newspaper office and thought he was visionary and the rest is history. After the failed '48 revolution in France Engels sort of got hyped for the "inevitable end of capitalism" that Marx (amongst many others) spoke about and thus supported Marx financially for pretty much the rest of Marx's life, either through being the one to reach out to other contacts for financial support, or through one of his father's numerous holdings. Engels was probably also just a really good, if somewhat naïve/gullible friend.
The individuals Marx mentions in the above extract (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen) basically created the ideas that Marx collected together and presented to the reader as Communism. The thing I take most issue with Marx, moreso than anything else, is he renamed the original version of Communism into "Utopian Socialism/Communism" i.e. it was too unrealistic, which is the pot calling the kettle fucking black if I ever saw it.
His actual major contributions to Communism as stated previously was the means of proving Communism correct objectively, which was done via an economic theory laid out in Das Kapital. I've already wall text'd enough so I won't go into it, but given that you probably don't know what it is, or have heard about it even through osmosis, means that Marx's actual contribution to "Marxism" is ironically fucking nothing lmao. The other contribution is something called "Material dialectic" in which he proved that throughout history the entire opus mundi of society and civilisation has moved forward due to constant battle between the social classes (never mind that this entire concept was unravelled when Napoleon III came to power on the back of a coup d'etat with popular support i.e. poor + would-be monarch vs ruling class which is hilarious and I won't ever stop mentioning it - he also just this from Hegel basically) but this is more of a philosophical concept and can just as easily be discounted by other perceptions of history so it's ultimately just up to individual preference.
Marx's popularity and spread thanks in part to financial backing made him the defacto inventor of Communism, even though he isn't, and the ideas that Communism is made up of predate him by quite a while. Marx effectively supplanting the old Communists thanks to having financial backing is oddly reminiscent of many modern bullshit artists being able to proliferate their ideas thanks to inexplicable financial support.
TLDR: Marx was basically a regurgitator of other people's ideas and passed off his largely apolitical economic and dialectic theories as supportive of communism when they were just basic bitch observations at best. His economic theory amounts to, "Capitalism allows for people to sell things for more value than they're actually worth" and his dialectic is, "Civilisations advance when the social classes fight with each other, and the upper classes provide the means to undo themselves to the lower classes".
Who invented Communism?
The Socialist and Communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen,
and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle
between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section I. Bourgeois and Proletarians).
He names a few names in the Manifesto, but it's none of these. Fourier is close (guy invented the word "Feminist") and so is Owen, but it's none of these guys. In fact, one name is very fucking absent and the inclusion of Saint-Simon is bizarre.
->Étienne Cabet<-
This guy goes unmentioned by Marx. Why? Because he reclassified this guy as a "Utopian socialist", which in effect means Marx stole the name implicitly given Cabet was the originator of the word "Communist" in the first place, basically obscuring the original Communism from people reading The Communist Manifesto, making the title makes seem as though Marx is writing on behalf of all Communists in then 1849. I can't really arrive at a concrete answer why, but it was probably because Cabet wasn't at all shy where he got his inspiration from.
The only difference between Marx's Communist society (Scientific Communism) and Cabet (Utopian Communism) is Marx tried to assert that it was logical whereas Cabet asserted it was moral. Otherwise you can just go the Wikipedia page for Communitarianism and see for how long the end-goal framework of Communism has been going for, which manifested primarily in Monasticism meaning Monasticism -> Communitarianism -> Communism has been practiced for centuries (2.5k years if you count the Buddhists) but was never applicable for society-wide use.
Communism, like Liberalism (Locke: God give free will, so free will good), ultimately has its basis in pre-existing Christian concepts/ideas which when you try to untether from it will ultimately cause the concept to break apart hence Marx trying to replace the faith-based/moral elements with "science".
You should definitely read at least the Manifesto. It's basically a pamphlet. It's important to know exactly what ideologies have fucked the world you live in so you can avoid them. Same with Mein Kampf.
I take notice to the phrase "keep your enemies closer" but it requires a lot of effort. It's much easier to paint them as beige-toned faggots that want equality of outcome rather than to sift through their literature and pray that I won't be convertible like Ronald Reagan was with every last person he spoke to. Or The Dude, repeating "This oppression will not stand, man" when we saw him take in that line 5 minutes previously into the movie.
Populism/collectivism is a tempting offer, I just don't trust my fellow poors to pull their weight (which is probably why Stalin and Mao both culled their herds in retrospect; eliminating their considered "leech class" (kulaks)).
In Das Kapital, Marx speaks about Plato society ruled by Guardians. He emphasised that the problem with this old-communalist/shared ownership societies place too much emphasis on the quality rather than the value of things and Plato's concern about class when Marx intended one without class. He essentially thought, "if you tweak this one thing, then it'll work!"
I knew it. I knew that's why you've got an essay brewing on everything since I made some apparently-incorrect assertions about Communism. You've read their works, you're proabably a political expat (you seem critical of commies, despite trusting Marx' analysis of human history pertaining to his pipe dream) and I'll defer to your autistically precise judgment.
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Has there been any updates on the files? After Trump signed the bill the Senate unanimously passed?
I wonder how much involvement Epstein had in dealing with China. We've seen him and Bannon acting against Belt and Road. It's honestly very strange seeing Epstein doing all of this for the Trump administration. Was he playing every side? Or was he truly trying to make certain changes in the world? Was the TDS stuff just a face for the Democrat pawns? If not, why did he have a falling out with Trump that made him go full TDS? Again, more reasons if I were Trump, I'd want this buried.
It's really hard to know Epstein's actual agenda. My guess is that above all he's interested in money and power, and really enjoys being the one pulling the strings. I do get the feeling that he actually agrees with the more pro western / nationalistic movement Bannon is representing though. My impression is that he admires Trump for some of the things he accomplishes and feels a bit of kinship with him in some areas, but sees him as an idiot who can be useful and his contempt for Trump really shines though when things aren't going his way.
This is another log with Bannon, from september 2018:
It seems like they are discussing how Trump should be defended against attacks. Epstein seemingly calls Trump the lion more than the tinman or scarecrow - No brain nor heart, but a lot of courage. Bannon and Epstein compares him to Lincoln.
Epstein brings up the Duke Lacrosse case, says the "believe the woman mantra lead to chaos".
Epstein brings up Terje Rød-Larsen, a norwegian diplomat who was quite instrumental during the 1993 Oslo Accords. Lead International Peace Institute in 2018, and after Epstein died it was revealed that he had at one point owed Epstein $130000 USD, and that he had authorized a payment of $100000 through IPI to Epstein.
Epstein says that Bannon should be in New York at the end of the month, since Miro and Terje "with every foreign minister" will be there then. He then mentions "Davos guys, China guys, middle easterners etc".
Epstein empathizes with Brett Kavanaugh getting "harangued" by the dems, but calls it a good political move.
Epstein again tells Bannon to take blood tests.
Epstein says Chomsky (presumably Noam) called together with Lula who was still in prison. Bannon says to tell him "my guy is going to win". Epstein answers that "Bolsoanro the real deal", presumably meaning that Bannon thinks Bolsonaro is "his guy".
Epstein again compares a white house situation with his own problems.
We probably despise Communism in this world more than any other society in history, but here we are on the brink, again. I don't think there's any immunizing of a society from this stuff. At a certain point we just have to accept that this is a part of human nature. We were always going to have these thoughts and ideas as a reaction to good and better systems. So we'll always be burdened with crazies who are hellbent on implementing them. Crazies may not be smart, but they are the loudest and they reach the young and dumbest, which is who ultimately matters. That's what's been occurring since the 90s. Now we have radical communists in government because that's just what time does. You can't purge entropy and rot, and there will always eventually be more age classes like the Boomers who show no regard for the future and extract everything they can at its expense. The rot will only get worse and when it's finally gone, and one generation does fix it, it'll start again with their great great grandchildren.
