[SolarCross]

My son recently told me that Orwell's 1984 had been removed from the English reading list of the national education syllabus. I consider that fairly disturbing in itself but then it got me wondering why Gulag Archipelago hasn't ever been on the list? Orwell's book is a powerful intellectual vaccine against totalitarian collectivism but on the other hand it is just fiction and therefore open to the counter claim that it is just "fiction". Gulag Archipelago is however testimony by eye witnesses of actual rather than theoretical totalitarian collectivism and therefore should make for the stronger case against it.

They say those that are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it, so to prevent the chief horrors of the 20th century shouldn't our youth be inoculated with the gulag archipelago as well as 1984?

[Potemkin]

I read the Gulag Archipelago when I was 16. I was even invited by my school's Religious Studies teacher to give a talk to the other pupils about how terrible communism was, which seemed to be well-received. Then I grew up and went out into the real world. My brain collided with reality, and reality won. Lol.

[SolarCross]

I read the Gulag Archipelago when I was 16. I was even invited by my school's Religious Studies teacher to give a talk to the other pupils about how terrible communism was, which seemed to be well-received. Then I grew up and went out into the real world. My brain collided with reality, and reality won. Lol.

So you became a communist because of brain damage? Makes sense.

[skinster]

A friend of mine bought me the trilogy and I suspected that was due to his attempt to put me off communism. Is that why these books are popular?

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes, this should be required reading.

You could teach it alongside Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America.

[skinster]

^ I still need to read that.

[Sivad]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

[SolarCross]

A friend of mine bought me the trilogy and I suspected that was due to his attempt to put me off communism. Is that why these books are popular?

They aren't exactly popular, not as popular as they ought to be. If there was one big lesson that the 20th century had to teach us it would be that totalitarianism is just the worst shit thing ever. We kind of face that through contemplation of the holocaust but the practice of communism, despite being comparably heinous, weirdly seems to escape scrutiny.

[Sivad]

here's the audiobook

[Thunderhawk]

A rather large book to make required reading compared to 1984 or the plays of Shakespeare.

[AFAIK]

It's amazing how SC can make posts like these with no sense of irony.

Overthrow a democratically elected lefty and replace him with a bloodthirsty junta- Great!
Overthrow an absolute monarch and replace him with a bloodthirsty technological superpower- Awful!

[center-img]https://s18.postimg.org/qkhfmrnrd/commiekhorne2.png[/center-img]

[Potemkin]

So you became a communist because of brain damage? Makes sense.

Developing a sense of objective reality is indeed a deeply traumatic experience, so much so that most people simply refuse to do it. Can't say I blame them.

[Decky]

I was always ideologically pure. Bought up on stories of the midlands during Thatcher's Britain (and more importantly the paradise that it was before Thatcher ruined everything).

[Saeko]

Developing a sense of objective reality is indeed a deeply traumatic experience, so much so that most people simply refuse to do it. Can't say I blame them.

Seeing as how you're still a communist, I'd say you've got a long way to go.

[Potemkin]

I was always ideologically pure. Bought up on stories of the midlands during Thatcher's Britain (and more importantly the paradise that it was before Thatcher ruined everything).

Being a convert can be useful, Decky. We tend to be more fanatical and fundamentalist, and we also have an inside knowledge of how the enemy thinks, which can help us to convert others to the cause.

[Heisenberg]

@AFAIK
It really needs to be pointed out more often that the Bolsheviks didn't "overthrow an absolute monarchy" - that happened six months before with the February Revolution. If anything, they overthrew the only shot at constitutional government Russia ever had.

[Decky]

Being a convert can be useful, Decky. We tend to be more fanatical and fundamentalist, and we also have an inside knowledge of how the enemy thinks, which can help us to convert others to the cause.

Do you think entryism into the Labour party will work this time or that momentum will fail just as militant (and all the other attempts) did?

[Potemkin]

Do you think entryism into the Labour party will work this time or that momentum will fail just as militant (and all the other attempts) did?

It depends on the objective economic and class forces in society as a whole. To achieve sucess, two things must be present: the objective conditions for the socialist transformation of society (i.e., a generalised crisis of capitalism), and the subjective conditions for such a transformation (i.e., the ideas and attitudes inside people's heads). Back in the 1980s, the objective conditions existed but the subjective conditions did not (mainly because of the Cold War). Nowadays, the objective conditions do not yet exist (mainly because of the Thatcherite and Blairite crippling of the political power of the working class), but the crisis of 2008 has brought those objective conditions irreversibly closer, and the fall of the Soviet Union has paradoxically brought the subjective conditions for the overthrow of capitalism closer too.

tl;dr: it's looking hopeful.

[Rugoz]

Not really Potemkin. Socialism is practically dead. Countries which were once socialist opened up to capitalism. The crisis of capitalism will lead to more state control, but not socialism. Not anytime soon anyway.

[Decky]

tl;dr: it's looking hopeful.

I am thinking of joining Corbyn's SA. Taking the momentum pledge to grow the marrow of socialism on Corbyn's allotment of Britain, to reunite Eire and to nationalise everything in the country not nailed down. I dunno if I should. I would hate to be one of those people who claim to be "reds" and then join fucking Labour. But at the same time I don't want to sit on the sidelines.

We will probably never have a Provo shadow canceler and Provo leader of the opposition again. I want to get them in while the chance is there.

Maybe it's all just a beautiful dream though...