Communism on the Ruins of Socialism

• Published in: Left curve no. 36; p. 98
• Main Author: Tamás, G M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oakland Left Curve Publications 01-01-2012
• Subjects: Capitalism; Children; Communism; Gender differences; Politeness; Politics; Religion; Socialism; Society; Teachers; Teenagers; Traditions; Trotsky, Leon (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) (1879-1940); Zizek, Slavoj
• ISSN: 0160-1857

For it is communism that wishes to put an end to a whole comprehensive system of separations: * to the separation of the producers and of the means of production, * to the separation of the propertied and those without property, * to the difference between citizens and noncitizens, * to the difference between men and women, * between adults and children, * between straight and queer, * between people well and ill, * between manual and intellectual labour, * between leaders and led, * between exploiters and the exploited, * between oppressors and the oppressed, * between rich and poor, * between proletarian and bourgeois, * between coloured and white, * between 'state' and 'civil society', * between science and religion, * between theory and practice, * between 'sane' and 'insane', * between authority and subversion, * between work and leisure, * between producer and consumer, * between knowledge and ignorance, * between teachers and taught, * between soul and body, * between art and life, * between town and country, * between courtesy and kindness, * between desire and love, * between community and individuality, * between action and reflection, * between nature and artifice, * between beautiful and ugly, * between law and morals, * between tradition and innovation, * between memory and oblivion, * between identity and difference, * between 'state' and 'civil society', * between priest and layman, * between powerful and powerless, * between fortunate and unfortunate, * between strong and weak, * between armed and unarmed, * between captor and victim, * between expert and amateur, * between art and audience, * between successful and unsuccessful, * between (closed) text and talk, writing and speaking, * between friend and foe, * between 'public' and 'private', * between guest and host, * between home and abroad, * between strange and familiar, * between inner and outer. Hierarchy does not disappear from capitalism altogether, but it is frequently merely supernumerary.\n) In former "real socialism", from Berlin to Vladivostok, from Prague to Saigon - and including Red Bologna and Red Shanghai and hammer-and-sickle Billancourt - an austere and parsimonious, and disciplined and completely serious attempt at self-abnegation has been made to call people into being by subtracting anything above: anything, in other words, which was represented by an aristocracy or a clergy; a merely human community with no "outside", a world of plebeians without property faced only with a faceless state, impersonal like (and in this case identical with) capital, where "masses" were not identified contemptuously with "crowds", where no one could pinpoint the true social origin of oppression and confinement.