Article discreditng the thesis that Mao "killed millions of people" in The Great Leap

[FireIceTalon]

For the record, I'm not French. I have no "bourgeois ideology.

But you do. Whether you are French or not is entirely irrelevant; one's nationality has absolutely no bearing on their political orientation.

Nor do I aspire to riches, or hedonism.

Perhaps you don't. But again, this isn't a prerequisite for identifying with bourgeois ideology. It is entirely possible, and quite common in fact, to have no desire to be super wealthy but still hold bourgeois conceptions of the world.

Do you *really* believe 6 billion people will peacefully coexist for long in a stateless, rule free, purely democratic society?

I guess that depends on how you define "peacefully". You seem to think of communism as this "free love, lets all just get along and love eachother, and sing around the camp fire" society. If so, then it is absolutely no wonder why you think its impossible. But this is a faulty conceptual premise of what communism is. It is because we have CLASSES, which have irreconcilable interests, that presupposes the necessity of a state and state imposed violence to maintain that social relationship and hierarchy, as to why we don't peacefuly co-exist now.

Indeed, there will always be people who don't like another person, or don't get along with another person, for whatever reasons. That being said, that doesn't mean that humans generally speaking, do not tend toward cooperation rather than competition. If we tended toward the latter, we would have wiped ourselves out ages ago - probably long before capitalism even came into existence. It is this tendency that has helped us manage to survive as a whole species even in a barbaric vicious system of class antagonism, a system that is a betrayal of this natural relationship and a system that encourages us to act against our own rationality - and this is true of both capitalists and workers, both of whom are alienated not just from eachother but from achieving their 'species essence'.

As for the "another view" you posted, it is chock filled with various fallacies and inaccuracies, which I will now proceed to dismantle one by one, with ease. I have no idea where you got this piece, but the person who wrote it has at best, an infantile knowledge in the understanding of political economy - to the point of it being pure comedy.

So why hasn't "true communism" ever been implemented and why out of all the attempts at communism, has it always led to authoritative regimes where the power is concentrated in the hands of an elite oligarchy?

Because as I've explained plenty of times before, and most recently to Ashock in the autism thread, the bourgeois has done everything in its power to BE SURE that this was the final outcome. Then, they could write history as they please based upon THEIR version of it so as to keep their privileged position in society legitimized by a false and misleading account of history. This argument also doesn't even bother to take into consideration that in most countries where revolution took place, the productive forces of the given society, and in many cases the mode of production, were to small or lacked the capacity necessary to even build a workers socialist state, let alone achieve communism. Marxists have noted and accurately critiqued these issues for years long before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, so this question was long answered. They have no bearing, however, on future revolutionary movements.

I think this in and of itself says something about the theory called communism, namely that it is flawed and not applicable to real life. It is an idealistic pipe dream ignorant of human nature.

And once again, there is no reason to believe of "innate" human nature. Show me the scientific evidence of this notion, or its just all philosophical circle jerking that amounts to nothing but assumptions without any concrete support.

This is because democracy, being a government based on choice and freedom

Illusion. Freedom and choice for who? Certainly not for the masses of workers. Anyone with even a middle school level education of politics knows that bourgeois democracy is both a sham and farce that is easily observable - one doesn't even need to be a Marxist to really see this. Most people are coming to realize, finally, that the state does not exist to serve them, but exists to preserve the social order and the long term interests of the ruling class.

is antagonistic to a planned economy which is based on limiting choice.

The premise of a planned economy is to produce goods for consumption and need rather than for profit. It has nothing to do with limiting choice, though the limiting of choice may or may not be a natural consequence. Much in the same way that free healthcare, education, etc would be a natural result of socialism, but not what defines it either in practice or as a political theory. Indeed, it is incompatible with a liberal democratic government, who as mentioned above, exists to preserve capitalist social relations. Thats because a planned economy based on production for human need and consumption doesn't require a state of any sort. States exist to uphold class antagonisms. You aren't saying anything that is not basic knowledge to any Marxist already, and in fact, you are only agreeing and confirming what we've said for nearly two fucking centuries already!

The material wants and needs of any populace are diverse and ever changing.

Not really. The fact people need shelter, food, clean water, clothing, etc is common to all human beings survival and doesn't ever change. LOL, its so funny that capitalist apologists seem to forget this minor detail, yet this was Marx's STARTING point which is also explained in the article I provided in my prior post.

Capitalism can meet these needs

Nope it can't, and that is the crux of the problem. If it could we wouldn't be having this conversation right now, and in fact, the entire historical socialist and communist movement would have never developed in the first place as a reaction to capitalisms inability to meet human need if it were able to accomplish this. However, it cannot and does not. It doesn't even come remotely close.

innovates, and fills niches.

No, it absolutely doesn't. Humans do these things, not capitalism. The only thing capitalism does is arrange it in such a way that these things are done for profit and not social improvement (if it does happen, it is merely an afterthought that is viewed with indifference relative to the accumulation of capital). Which leads us to....

A planned economy cannot.

Sure it can, and it has. And it will do so much more effectively and efficiently. Innovation and technology under capitalism are constrained and fostered in such a way in the direction of profitability, which is why we have problems like Planned obsolence, artificial scarcity, overproduction (which in itself has numerous consequences, including destruction of the environment), and artificial demand (i.e. the constant advertising to get us to buy crap we don't need so corporations can get ever more profits, and this is carefully tied in with planned obsolence).

When the general populace holds the political power

They don't. The ruling capitalist class does.

and the people have the freedom of expression, then they will vote to according to their wants and needs and their perception of the needs of the nation as a whole. These opinions are not uniform and differ from individual to individual and from group to group.

Ideology is false consciousness

The end result is that any fledgling communist state will be forced to choose between democracy (assuming it even had it to begin with) and its planned economy.

False dilemma here. There is no state, and there is absolutely nothing that says society cannot be ran by the very people who make it run. Who makes it run NOW? The answer is, the workers - who create all wealth in society. Who would make it run under communism? The same people who make it run now. The difference is that it would be THEY who democratically decide their life decisions and THEY who direct production for social consumption and use - instead of having to live and partake in endeavors that are predicated upon the needs of a parasitic, corporate class that lives off the labor of the masses.

In fact, a planned economy will also help people to realize the full potential of their talents and aid in helping them to utilize those talents in the best way possible; whereas capitalism misdirects talent and its utilization all the time because it creates so many useless, boring, unfulfilling and in general, shitty jobs that no one really cares about doing (but they do them because they must, or face starvation and homelessness under the threat of state enforced violence).

The following article is hardly from a Marxist perspective, but I think its useful in understanding these points better and raises very serious questions:

http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-crea...d-graeber/

Either the economy will become more capitalist to accommodate the diversity of the individual needs, ceasing to be "planned" (maintaining a democracy), or it will concentrate all power into a ruling elite who will control the economy and buffer it against the fickle desires and needs of the people.

Same false dilemma.

Thus we must conclude that the theory of communism is flawed from the beginning due to the incompatibility of both democracy and planned economies and that is why a "true communist" state has never and never will exist.

And given what I've said, I'd say this conclusion is false and has no merit. Whoever wrote this, not only doesn't understand communism, they don't understand capitalism either. Surely, you have something better than this? This was way too easy for me.