Indoctrination and me

[f4f3]

This started out as a comment response, and sort of got out of control… apologies for length - I can't make lj cuts work on my iPhone.

I was born into a Communist family some 45 years ago.

Shortly after I was born, my parents took me to be registered as a Communist. They were accompanied by two friends, who each swore that if I died they would take on the responsibility of bringing me up as a Communist.

When I was five, I started my education at the local Communist school. You could tell it was a Communist school from the name (all Communist schools are named after important Communists of the past) and the Communist symbols hung in the halls and in every classroom.

There were other schools nearby, all of them Socialist, but it was never in doubt that I (and my sister, and later my brother) would go to the Communist school.

Along with classes in reading, writing and arithmetic, there were daily classes in the Communist life. Partly these consisted of learning by rote the answers to a book full of pictures from the life of Marx and questions about communism. There was a correct Communist response to any situation, and we learned it. As each year passed, there would be a new, slightly more sophisticated book of questions, with fewer pictures and more questions.

If we got the answers wrong we would be punished by being made to write the correct responses out hundreds of times, or occasionally we would be beaten (beatings were common for any infraction of the rules). Good students were rewarded with gold stars, or special junior versions of Communist writers to keep (I still remember the prize I got when I was 9. It was far and away the best made book I’d own until I was 17 and at University).

Also every day there would be meetings where our teacher would read out loud various passages from Das Kapital, and we would make rote responses. Once a week we would be taken to larger meetings where a full time Party functionary would also read aloud from the works of 20th Century socialists, as well as a passage from Kapital. There were also special holidays to honour particular great Communists from the past, and once a year everyone would be given a day off work to celebrate Marx’s birthday (I remember being irked that non-Communist Socialists, and even people of no Socialist leaning at all, celebrated the holiday and got the day off).

When I was 7 my classmates and I were prepared by extra readings and questioning for a group induction into being full members of the Party. We were each given a copy of Kapital and had a special Party breakfast. We were all dressed up as if we were adults. The girls all wore wedding dresses, to symbolise the fact that they were being married to Karl Marx. The girls’ parents put a lot of work and money into those dresses – even the poor ones.

At the age of 10 we all renewed the pledges to the Party that our parents had made for us when we were born. To help us feel closer to the Party, we were all allowed to choose a new name for ourselves from the list of great Communists of the past.

Not long after that, I was allowed access to the original Communist texts for myself. Partly this was because I’d shown an aptitude for learning my lists of answers, partly because I’d volunteered to help out at the local Party office. This office, like all the others, had special roles for Young Patriots up till the age of about 14 to assist in Party meetings. Obviously there were a lot of ribald comments about what the officials would get up to with pre-pubescent boys, but I never saw any of that sort of thing going on. It was, however, the first time I tasted wine, when I had a swig from the special stocks the functionaries kept for their meetings.

I suppose my disenchantment with the Party set in round about then. Partly through my “behind the scenes” views of what happened when ordinary Party members weren’t around, partly because of some obvious differences I was spotting in the works of Marx and Engels. Another influence would be my father – although he paid lip service to the Party line, he didn’t attend the weekly meetings, and he even had some non-Communist friends. I don’t think that contributed to my parents’ divorce, but our local part functionary did. My sister had a pretty serious accident at the time. She was run over by a motor-cycle, and for a while there was a possibility that she would lose her leg. The Party official visited her in hospital, and told my mother, over her daughter’s sick bed, that the accident was a punishment for her getting divorced.

I guess that’s the day I stopped being a Catholic.

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Comments

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

The Party official visited her in hospital, and told my mother, over her daughter’s sick bed, that the accident was a punishment for her getting divorced.

I did not know this. Bah. :(

Of course, now you've burned your bridges anyway by living with a Social Democrat.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Nicely put. I may have to bookmark this.

So is your confirmation name Leon or Vladimir?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think it's only the people who were born into it who really understand The Party. The fellow travellers who flirt with the Party Line don't really get it. Some of them don't even believe that there is really a place called Siberia reserved for those who are arrogant enough to think they know better than the Central Committee.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

I just spent a weekend in a dacha on a Communist Party collective farm. The Party members there would have run your party official over for saying such a vicious and horrifying thing to a comrade. And if they didn't, I'd have volunteered to do so.

"The Party official visited her in hospital, and told my mother, over her daughter’s sick bed, that the accident was a punishment for her getting divorced."

This is so sick, I can't even stand it. I have noticed that some of your more perestroika-minded party officials are getting accusations of insufficient Communist fervor from youngsters coming up through the Kommsomol ranks. I fear we may be headed for a purge.

At which point I am joining the Society of Friends.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

AKA The Anarchists? *g*

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

Too right! I couldn't think of a political persuasion that matched up with Quaker, but I am of limited imagination. Anarchists is totally what they would be. Awesome. Except they are more mellow than I envision anarchists, who I think would need some real Go Get 'Em attitude to get by.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

*grins*

They've functioned very successfully as an anarchist society for 300 years. And they've definitely got a real Go Get 'Em attitude. Basically all the women in my husband's family are Scary. Very Scary. And utterly adorable.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

I wish to be scary and adorable.

I have a friend who was raised Mennonite and whose father was raised Amish. He went to a family reunion on his dad's side. He claims there is nothing more scary than seeing a woman in a cape dress spike a volleyball over a net.

I don't doubt it.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Nuns. Nuns are scarier.

On the scary rating of one to ten, nuns are eleven.

Why yes, I was educated by them, can't you tell?

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

Hee! I spent my weekend in the company of elderly Benedictines, except for a few, including a novice with a PhD in medical anthropology.

They're less scary when they're dressed like comfy grannies and wooing you vocation-wards (good luck, ladies... much as I love you, obedience is not my forte).

My dad's generic name for the nuns who educated him in grade school is "Sister Mary Ferocious." Which I think is very apt.

OK: Back to work.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

PS: Icon love. I keep declaring I am one Papal Declaration away from the Quakers.

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

*g* I was going to say that those sound like the words of one with a convent school education.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can remember Sister John Dominic in full floor length black habit and starched wimple hitting a baseball with astonishing ferocity. I was probably about four years old, but I can see it bright as day. Those women could do anything.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

In black poplin!

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

This is a wonderful piece of writing. The only way it could've been more apt would've been if references to Das Kapital were replaced with references to The Communist Manifesto.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

You are exactly right, since it stands as the New to Kapital's Old Testament, but it's such a great piece of writing that I couldn't bear to use it.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Oh, my life has been lit by burning bridges for quite a while now...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I'd be delighted if you did.
Mathew, who was a tax-collector and a bit of booze-hound, from what I've heard.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Whereas we were reminded of Siberia every day. And no one who was ever sent there came back...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Well Father Toy was old school. And there's always someone wanting to bring Old School back.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Mine is Magdalen. You may draw your own conclusions.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, my own estimate is rather the opposite. (But then again, I'm decidedly nonleftist in political orientation; I've likely got a different set of appreciation.)

In my view Capital is much superior to the Manifesto. The latter represents early Marx, the passionate reformer, whose writing is beautiful largely because it's radical and journalistic. The Manifesto has none of the scientific precision and moderation of the later, stolid Marx; the Marx who speaks not of inevitabilities but probabilities, who mocked the Gotha Programme and the Lassallists so aptly, and who has begun to sense the necessary subtleties of his own philosophy. The Capital is a socio-economic theory wrapped in the language of classical economics, whereas the Manifesto, and its worker armies, represent to me essentially a political gospel largely informed by Marx's tempestous Aristotelian aesthetic.