Hi there folks,
While trying to learn about communism, I’m having problems finding literature that provides and example life under Communism. What I do find is propaganda either against or for it, involving unrealistic and bombastic content that is clearly not rooted in reality.
I’m not looking for historical content because I’m just trying to figure out what a life that the group is striving for would be like.
Thanks for your time!
Could you clarify what you mean when you say you are ‘not looking for historical content’?
If it’s not an historical example, won’t it necessarily be speculative?
Marxists aren’t utopian. To paraphrase, communism is the real movement of the abolition of the current state of the world. Marxists obviously have an idea of what might come next. But Marx and Engels didn’t really flesh that out. It’s impossible to predict the specifics. It’s hard to even imagine what socialism will look like.
All we can really say is that socialism will come out of and resolve the contradictions of capitalism. Communism will come out of and resolve the contradictions of socialism.
That said, all history is the history of class struggle. Socialism involves a dictatorship of the proletariat. The class that is currently exploited will become the ruling class. There will still be exploitation for a while. Perhaps for a long while. But the intention will be to create the conditions to end exploitation. Socialism, and thus communism, will be whatever the working class wants it to be, collectively.
Examples from the USSR, China, Cuba, the DPRK, Laos, Vietnam, and depending on the definition, Ghana, Chile under Allende, and a host of other states will show you what communists try to achieve when they get into power. They struggle because they get attacked (literally invaded, carpet bombed, sanctioned, and/or couped). Due to that, the legacy of the previous system, and material limits to what’s possible, actual examples (AES) are all flawed. Still, they tend to manage to: abolish illiteracy, massively increase industrial output, and abolish homelessness. They build roads, hospitals, schools, houses. And they keep going until they are defeated, which ranges from a few months to several decades to not yet.
Sorry, my OP wasn’t very clear in my hope. By not historical, I should have said “distant historical, more current so I could understand how communism would interact or be influenced by today’s technological advancements and influence”.
Are you saying that we’ve yet to see a long-established communist system in recent history so all examples will be less than representative, since they are tainted by the previous systems or abolished prior to being able to fully establish the system?
I can only imagine how muddled my part of the discussion is and I’m sorry for that. I’m basically starting at ground 0 and don’t even really know what to call what I’m looking to learn about yet so I call things by the wrong terminology, making it hard for you guys to help me.
i will try to put what highalectical said in simpler terms, and starting pointing out that this discussion is very very important to new people.
so, how communism itself will look in the future will be determined by the material conditions of the future, since we are not there yet, we can’t say for sure, only speculate. but you can say you dream of a society that has x characteristic.
the same goes for socialism itself, how its gonna look for each country, will be determined by said country, for good or bad. that is why soviet socialism is different from chinese, that is different from yugoslavia, that is different from korea and so on.
but if we take all of those and try to dawn similarities, we can note a certain tendency, and that tendency is a uplift on quality of life, like the other comrade said in another comment, drastic reduction or extinction of illiteracy, full employment for long periods of time, agrarian reform, reduction or extinction of homelessness and so on.
and why that discussion is important, there are some revisionists line that throw materialism out of the window and create an abstract form of socialism, and they use that abstraction to shit on former socialists and current ones, for example abolition of family and moneyless economy, no socialist country ever came close to both of these, so these lines spew that there was never a “true socialist country”, all were horrific oriental despotism dictatorship and etc.
Thanks for taking the time to simplify it. I really appreciate it.
there are some revisionists line that throw materialism out of the window and create an abstract form of socialism, and they use that abstraction to shit on former socialists and current ones, for example abolition of family and moneyless economy, no socialist country ever came close to both of these, so these lines spew that there was never a “true socialist country”,
Could you further exemplify this? I’m finding it a challenge to understand the mechanism of manipulation.
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I know you said you aren’t interested in historical content, but I would like to recommend “The Human Face of Russia”, which was a documentary produced by the BBC in 1984. They travel throughout the Soviet Union and speak to people about their daily lives in the context of a communist society. It’s easily found on YouTube.
Thanks very much for that. I’ve loaded it up and will watch it. That’s exactly the type of thing I’m looking to find.
Glad to help! It’s honestly a little heartbreaking when watching it, knowing what happens just a few years later, but it’s still a great watch.
Another one I might suggest is “Minning Town”. It’s a Chinese TV Drama about their poverty alleviation efforts for the Hui people in Ningxia. It’s a legitimately great show, and covers a lot of aspects of communist society. It focuses on internal workings and ideals of the communist party, and a slice of life for the Hui minority. It’s also available on YouTube, although the subtitles can be a little sketchy.
Glad to help! It’s honestly a little heartbreaking when watching it, knowing what happens just a few years later, but it’s still a great watch.
That was an incredible film. The final scene of the comedy show was really sad, in the context you mentioned. They seemingly had no idea what was going to happen. I don’t yet understand the fall but to watch such a content group of people unaware of the inevitable hardships about to be thrust upon them is heart wrenching.
It was a dark day. And it’s only gotten worse.
It is a fictional story though, and probably not what OP was looking for. Still a good watch to get the general “vibe” of how things work in a socialist society though.
It is fictional, but based on real people and events. I would compare it something like Peaky Blinders, which I thought was a pretty decent representation of Victorian England and the gangs of the time. I thought Minning Town was a pretty good representation of what the CPC is all about, and an example of what a currently existing communist country can be like.
Highly recommend reading This Soviet World which is a first hand account of life in USSR in 1930s https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2909935
Seconded. This takes what’s laid out in ML theory and shows what it looks like in practice from an outsider’s perspective (a US citizen who moved to the USSR). It’s a great read and I found it very enlightening.
It was written in the 1930s, but one of the most important aspects of this account is that it compares and contrasts the lives of people 1) before the revolution, 2) after the revolution, and 3) in a capitalist state in the same time period. Just because it’s old does not mean it doesn’t contain a valuable perspective. Everything written in this is still relevant to today, which you can see for yourself if you give it a shot.
This should be in the top most recommended reads for any communist. Along with Strong’s “When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet”. Imo you can get so much more from reading first hand accounts like these than you can from any amount of second hand history. I would put these works up there with the central works of ML theory in terms of importance.
agreed
I’ve added this to my reading list thank you for linking it.
👍
The Marxist-Leninist YouTuber Hakim has made some videos with book recommendations, and this specific video is about how the USSR worked. I’m particularly interested in the Soviet Union since it’s the first Socialist state to exist, and it shaped the history of the 20th century in Europe as well as much of Asia and America, as well as because it’s one of the most “far from modern capitalism” examples of states that there have been in the past century.
Other than that, I read a small pamphlet by the Soviet minister of economy A. Zveriev, written in 1959, about what soviet workers receive besides their salaries. It talks about access to housing, to healthcare, to education, pensions, etc. in the USSR at the time. I have a physical copy in Spanish and I haven’t been able to find a digital one in English, if you’re interested in the Spanish one I could scan it and send you.
Best of luck!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
If by ‘Communism’ you mean the people’s republics, then yes.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wRzUh9CXT7IP1NoPwE3mBIEKPvRoztqz
https://archive.org/stream/garb-paula.-they-came-to-stay.-north-americans-in-the-ussr
Maybe check out Everyday Utopia by Kristen Ghodsee? She writes about different egalitarian communities in history
I will grab that, thank you very much for your help.
Im not sure what you mean when you say you don’t want historical content, since that is what documentation is. Other than that there are fictional stories if that’s what you are looking for?
Very sorry, I’m not doing well at explaining what I’m looking for. This comment from me explains it a little better.
I would recommend the book Everything for everyone (https://www.commonnotions.org/everything-for-everyone) which is a fictional account of a near future communist New York.
I would also recommend to not try to seek out an unbiased account of communism, which does not exist. There are a lot of assumptions that go into it and will be of course influenced by the authors biases.
I bought it and will start on it today. That seems a fantastic read.
I understand what you mean by unbiased being unrealistic. I should have just said non-propagandized.
Do you mean hypothetical examples of life when communism has been achieved?
Sorry for not being more clear. Hypothetical would suffice but I fear it would be easily tailored to whatever the author’s leaning is.
I could recommend ye this one on East Germany:
And this basic primer:
