[unmole]

> Regarding communism and computing, deterministic systems where the entire state is knowable and predictible have certain appeal for the communist mind.

Francis Spufford explores this idea in Red Plenty, which I highly recommend. More broadly, I think the book would appeal to many HN readers.

[NitpickLawyer]

Some explorations with an AI overlord also in LeGuin's "The Dispossessed"

[WaxProlix]

Hard to talk about favorites in books, but there was a solid decade of my life where I'd have probably said this was my favorite sci fi book. Highly recommend to anyone reading this.

[keybored]

The incredible things I read on this site. The communist mind? Oh right, there’s a book for that, and it’s probably agreeable to people on this site.

What the heck is this psycho-mysticism.

[gostsamo]

As I commented elsewhere:

I used "communist mind" as a collective term for the ideological framework in which computers were discussed. The state had a party and the party had an ideology and the ideology legitimized the other two, hence all actions of the state and the party had to be justified through it. It does not mean some other kind of consciousness that allowed one to be closer to the ghost of Marx or whatever some people seem to ascribe to it.

[keybored]

I know where you’re coming from.

[unmole]

Ponting out that communist regimes tried to implement planned economies with the help of computation is a statement of fact, not psycho-mysticism.

Red Plenty features Leonid Kantorovich trying to build a computer powerful enough to model the entire Soviet economy. It absolutely is something HN readers would find interesting, your uninformed, middle-brow dismissal notwithstanding.

[keybored]

This focus on the X Mind has a certain legitimacy in literature and biographies, where there is a focus on characters and persons/personas. Because they can certainly have an X Mind. I’ll grant it that. But in the context of discussing the Eastern Bloc it does become psycho-mysticism, and this is the context where I was commenting on it.

This and that type having such and such mindset always needs to, in a serious treatment about real things and across more than a handful of people, play a very secondary role. Because it can only ever be speculative narrative that does not enter into any real argumentation. Seeing Like a State does it well. It discusses state projects and their outcomes. What people did given their positions and limitations (the limitations of what they could see). Any narrative about how The State Seer Mind works is just speculative narrative; the real meat is in the discussions on the grand projects like the pitfalls of monocultural forestry.

But this infantile treatment of Communism is treated as okay/normal, even celebrated. On that subject you can start with the supposed ideology and work backwards from that.

[unmole]

> But in the context of discussing the Eastern Bloc it does become psycho-mysticism

The comment was made by a Bulgarian who actually lived under the regime and explained what he meant. The psycho-mysticism is entirely in your head.

> the real meat is in the discussions on the grand projects like the pitfalls of monocultural forestry.

You mean like, I dunno, Gosplan? Which was the point of the comment that you so strenuously objected to?

Communism deservedly lies on the ash heap of history. Attempts to rehabilitate it by feigning nuance should be met with derision and contempt.

[keybored]

> The comment was made by a Bulgarian who actually lived under the regime

I’ll listen to the regime sufferers on the topic of breadlines. I don’t put any more weight to their opinions alone on topics like how the communist mind is drawn to the determinism of computers. Tsk tsk.

> and explained what he meant.

After I made my own comment.

> You mean like, I dunno, Gosplan? Which was the point of the comment that you so strenuously objected to?

Huh? That you think that it is an own to point out that the “State Planning Committee” (according to Wikipedia) was a state-seer is not obvious to me.

Yes of course the book Seeing Like a State discusses, among other places, seeing-like-a-state in Communist states. What kind of a rejoinder is that?

The reason why I brought up the book is because it is a non-infantile treatment on “seeing like a state”/totalitarian thinking seems to work (precisely by not making it the focal point). Yes, of course it is relevant to Soviet state planning.

> Communism deservedly lies on the ash heap of history. Attempts to rehabilitate it by feigning nuance should be met with derision and contempt.

Like you did with user vidarh you seem to be ascribing an ulterior motive where you have no evidence or reason to. Be careful about that.

[vidarh]

One of the most interesting little nuggets on this is Reagans notes on Able Archer 83, where he for the first time seems to have realised that the Soviet leaders weren't cartoon villains, but actually were just as scared of the US as the US was of them.

That doesn't make the authoritarian nature of the regime any better, nor does it excuse any of the brutality, but it demonstrated how reductive it had been to try to interpret how they were thinking based on an outsider view that generalised all of them into some archetype without understanding individual motivations.

The irony is that so much of Western thinking of this assumes a ridiculous level of collectivism that never existed because it's fundamentally at odds with human nature.

If anything a lot of people have adopted what they deem a "communist mind" in their own analysis of these regimes - and ideologies - and treat large groups of people as if they are carbon copies.

[vidarh]

It's a fascinating exercise in antrhopology to see otherwise smart people confidently discuss the mind of people most of them have had no exposure to in person. Having spoken to a variety of people across the very broad spectrum of left-wing thought, ranging from libertarian marxists opposing the very existence of a state, to hardline marxism-leninists who thought the former group belonged in labour camps, I find the idea of a singular "communist mind" as ridiculous as you.

[flohofwoe]

...or as the post-'68 West-German joke goes: "When two leftists meet, 3 splinter groups are formed", doesn't quite roll off the tounge like the German version "Treffen sich zwei Linke: bilden sich 3 Splittergruppen."

[vidarh]

Indeed. It is quite fascinating how that is simultaneously a wide-spread view of the left, while at the same time the left is regularly accused of being all collectivist. Some left wing ideologies are decidedly collectivist. Some are going equally far in the other direction...

[IAmBroom]

No one but you and the poster above you is discussing "the left" as a single group.

"Communism" is being discussed, and implicitly Soviet communism, which ruled a gigantic portion of both Europe and northern Asia for several decades, producing a very definable system of rewards and disincentives, both legal and otherwise.

[mike_hearn]

All actual communist societies work the same way, so it's clearly possible to generalize.

[vidarh]

All "actual communist societies", have been run by marxist-leninists or regimes supporting derivations of it, which is a couple from dozens of ideologies within the umbrella. So, sure, you can generalize about those regimes. That still does not speak to any unified "communist mind". Those regimes have collectively murdered vast numbers of proponents of other communist ideologies.

[unmole]

> All "actual communist societies", have been run marxist-leninists or regimes supporting derivations of it,

In other words, real communism has never been tried.

[ButlerianJihad]

No true Scotsman would argue with you!

[balamatom]

So what if it hasn't?

[vidarh]

If you believe "real communism" can not be achieved by marxism-leninism, then that would be a conclusion. I intentionally did not make any claim like that, because that is wildly subjective and contentious. You're entirely free to think these regimes are "real communism" - I have no interest in that argument.

What, however, is not subjective, is that the stated ideology of all of these regimes is derived from ML, and that there is a vast number of communist ideologies outside of ML. You're free to consider those equally bad if you please. I've not made any argument about that either.

It is a fascinating picture of exactly what keybored argued that the immediate reaction of people is to drag out strawmen like this.

[unmole]

Yeah, real communism has never been tried. /s

[vidarh]

Strawman - at no point did I make that claim. It has no relevance to my comment.

[unmole]

It's a variation of the same tired argument that's proffered up when communist praxis is criticised: That communist regimes they don't represent real communism unlike the all the other hippy versions.

[vidarh]

And yet you're the one here bringing that up, not me.

It is irrelevant if it is "real communism" or not - it remains an objective fact that all of these regimes have derived their ideology from one very specific branch. In fact, all of them make a big fuzz over exactly that, and all of them had a history of brutally persecuting supporters of other communist ideologies.

You don't need to support any of them to recognise this. I did not make an argument about the desirability of any of them at all, very intentionally.

[keybored]

Here we see the standard intellectual repertoire on Communism.

- Communist Totalitarian Thinking

- “Never been tried” quips as a retort to, um, no one even claiming that here

[unmole]

Tell me more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47776635

[vidarh]

> - “Never been tried” quips as a retort to, um, no one even claiming that here

My emphasis. You seem intent on attacking strawmen.

[keybored]

You linked to vidarh’s original comment. Dunno what for.

[unmole]

I just want to point out how absurd this is. A Bulgarian says communist mind. People from the former Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and other planned economies immediately understand what he means. But we have an American and a Brit complaining about how the good name of communism is being sullied.

[keybored]

I know I know, Standpoint Epistemology is being desecrated. I wouldn’t put much weight in Three Off The Streets of Hamburg when it comes to how liberal democratic state planning works either.

I don’t know where these Anglos are.