Reality is just too messy and complex,
> and some degree of
> selfishness is indeed wired into our reality, IMHO.
>
Michael, I think that what you say there is a very important point.
However, "democratic communism" is a misnomer. I think the author of that article, meant "democratic leninism". Is democratic leninism possible? I think not.
By democratic, in short, I mean that there would be freedom of speech, assembly, etc and more equitable access to the riches of society. Of course, that is just a very unnuanced definition.
(1) Let's face it. So-called democratic centralism does not lend itself to democracy. It usually ends up long on centralism and very short on democracy. We not only have the history of the Soviet and Sino bloc as evidence; we also have the history of the other communist parties, including the groupscules here in the United States as evidence of this. A hierarchy establishes itself and that hierarchy gets to decide the rules and has easier access to the wealth of society. Of course, there are some cases where this is more blatant than others, but it tends to be true generally.
(2) Leninism hasn't discovered fuzzy logic. Everything is either OBJECTIVELY "bourgeois" or "proleterian". That doesn't lend itself to democracy either. Everything that isnt branded proleterian is bourgeois and must be eradicated. And who decides what is proleterian and what is bourgeois? See Number 1. Chairman Mao wrote that essay "On Contradiction" in which he distinguishes between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradiction. That was a step in right direction, but I dont think Mao or his followers really took it to heart.
By the way, I think this lack of fuzzy thinking is a reason that some of the left groups continue to fester in left-wing ghettos. They are just to pure for this world. They are REAL proleterians and all the rest of the world is just an adumbration. Of course, they have got their newspapers to inform those of us who are just looking a mere shadows on the cave wall.
3) Michael makes a good point about selfishness. "Selfishness", according to the creed, is supposedly a bourgeois attribute that has no place in proleterian society. It must be therefore "eradicated". It should be instead recognized as a human attribute, alongside another human attribute, "selflessness". Instead, it is to be stamped out, or socially engineered out of existence. Of course, it doesn't go away and because it is not supposed to exist, it resurfaces in a most virulent form. I suspect this blind wishing away of selfishness is not particular to leninism but also of other tendancies on the left as well.
-Thomas
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