I am interested in politics, and even tho i am not a communist, i am interested in what can be learned from it and i also want to learn more about political ideologies as a whole, instead of speaking out of my ass whenever someone mentions communism and potentially say some bullshit. What do you think?
Edit: thanks for all the answers! I swear i read them all, i just don’t know how to answer to each of them, but thanks for all the recommendations!
Back when I was still on reddit (and r/askreddit wasn’t a cesspool of AI ragebait) someone asked if there were books people recommended, everyone should read, and I came up with this list of 6 if you want a good basis for reasoned philosophical thought:
Plato’s Republic
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations
Machiavelli’s The Prince (Machiavelli also wrote an “Art of War” and that’s also worth reading)
Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto
The Republic defines what society’s goals should look like
The Art of War defines how to resolve conflict
Meditations teaches one how to remain objective under pressure
The Prince defines that what is OBJECTIVELY TRUE is not always what is MORALLY CORRECT
The Wealth of Nations lays out a case against Feudalism and how a functional economy should operate.
The Communist Manifesto details the natural rights of everyone to equality and shared prosperity.
Marxist Communism is a bit myopic as it really deals with factory work, and the failures of a Capitalist system to deliver on the promise of class mobility. He and Engels envisioned a classless society, and while that is a fine ideal, historically, achieving that though strictly amicable means is a bit pie in the sky, not to mention the arguments against it citing human ambition as a stumbling block aren’t without merit.
Marxism did not deal strictly with factory work, but with proletarianized labor, which persists today as the dominant form of labor. Further, I am really not sure what you mean by saying communism is “pie in the sky” or that human ambition is in opposition to communism. The manifesto is a pamphlet for agitation, it isn’t really the core of Marxism.
What i mean is that those who say Communism fails because of “human nature” aren’t exactly wrong, but fail to see that the vast majority of people are at least attempting to be “good.” (at least in their own mind). That’s why I always delineate that there is a difference between socialism and communism. Communism is like a duck and Socialism is like birds: All ducks are birds, but not all bird are ducks.
More than attempt, the socialist countries run by communist parties, the ones attempting to build towards communism, have been responsible for some of the most rapid improvements in living conditions in history. Socialism and communism aren’t like birds and ducks, but more like a sprout and a tree. Socialism is a transitional process between capitalism and communism, where production and distribution are gradually collectivized into communism.
I’ve always seen the end state as too difficult to stabilize. Mixed systems where Socialist ideals keep capitalist ones in check seem to work best long term because it satisfies natural human ambition without allowing the monied interests to acquire to much social and political power. (the New Deal, Nordic model)
Under most communist systems, especially in democratic societies, ironically, the proletariat still lacks true power as the operators of the means of production (the foreman or the managers) end up also being the leaders of the government. This is no different than oligarchy, just inversed.
In a proper system, there should be a separation of business and state just as there is a separation of church and state; for precisely the same reason.
The Nordic Model isn’t “socialist ideals” keeping “capitalism in check,” it’s welfare capitalism using the spoils of imperialism to placate the working classes. As it is a capitalist system, it has structural contradictions that run into boom and bust, crises of profitability, and problems like the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. This is all not to even speak of imperialism, which is where these social democracies rely on.
The proletariat is in power in socialist countries run by communist parties. You are treating job positions as though they are classes, but that’s not how Marxists see class. Class is a relation to ownership of the means of production, not simply a managerial position being a class.
There is no hard line between church and state, or business and state. Interconnection exists between all things. The idea that businesses are free and independent really means that the state does not interfere in their ability to run, only in protecting them.
I read it a long time ago, but my memory is that the Manifesto (and its writers in general) discard the idea of ‘natural’ rights, arguing that legal / moral principles arise from the economic conditions of the time.
Marx’s biggest scientific contribution is the development of a ‘materialist’ (here meaning ‘physical’) theory of history. I feel that his specific stages are too eurocentric, but the general principles are universal.
The Manifesto is a call to action, so it is somewhat simplified theoretically and deals specifically with the issues and conditions of the time.