Reddit reviews The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area

Afaik the Ohlone didn't raise any domesticated animals. Source: The Ohlone Way https://www.amazon.com/Ohlone-Way-Indian-Life-Francisco-Monterey/dp/0930588010

Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy were fascist, not communist.

The USSR and China called themselves communist but I don't think they actually were. Kind of like the United States calls itself a representative democracy but it is actually neither. Both were totalitarian regimes which implemented very violent forced collectivization. If we were living in Russia or China 50 years ago, I too would argue that we should be resisting what was being called communism. Today, both are thoroughly capitalist regimes.

The history of what has happened in the United States is very different. Rather than forced collectivization, we had the very violent allotment programs which forced native american tribes to split up collectively owned land into segmented private property: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Act

The result was devastating and ended up in the majority of that land passing from native american to european hands. Tribal understandings of collective ownership could be considered successful instances of communism. One reason I am not a Marxist is because he was eurocentric, and called these kinds of societies "primitive" while arguing that they needed to pass through feudalism and capitalism to reach communism.

One example of tribal societies which resembled communism is the Ohlone prior to european colonization. Their value system strongly emphasized the importance of the common good and strongly discouraged being rich (social status was gained not by having wealth, but by giving it away). This is a good book about them: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ohlone-Way-Indian-Francisco-Monterey/dp/0930588010/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375510482&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ohlone+way

Cuba and Venezuela have both have their problems, but there have been many upsides to their experiments with communism. Cuba has amazing health care and things have gotten better since the communist revolution. The U.S. and its capitalist elite are pulling the strings, not cuba or venezuela. In a global context, U.S. imperialism is a much bigger issue: http://news.rapgenius.com/Hugo-chavez-remarks-at-the-un-general-assembly-sept-2006-lyrics. And the conspiracies which circulate around Cuba and Venezuela that concern me are ones like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d'%C3%A9tat_attempt, not the fact that they call themselves communist.

This is how I feel about North Korea as well. The regime is obviously terrible, but the fact that a dynastic dictatorship wraps itself in the mantle of communism does not mean there is a communist conspiracy or that we should be resisting communism. I think that in whatever capacity we are resisting regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, we should not be resisting their communist leanings but their undemocratic nature. Today, the zapatistas in mexico are a good example of a living communist experiment which also resists the state.

I am totally with anyone who does not want to see the institution of a regime like the ussr or communist china in the united states, i just think it's totally ridiculous that these cold war spectres that resemble totalitarianism far more than communism continue to discourage identification w/ communism, ESPECIALLY because I have yet to see any evidence that there are closet communists pulling the strings today.

The fusion of state and corporation far more closely resembles fascism than democratic communism. I am a communist second, and a democrat first. I am very wary of the dangers of a revolutionary vanguard taking over and instituting a totalitarian regime, a la: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgVWGWKjDDU.

That's why this is the system I advocate, which I believe avoids the problems of totalitarian co-option of communism as well as of revolutionary vanguards: http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1jfhcd/national_impeach_obama_day_set_for_august_6th/cbebxsx

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P.S. I'm still interested to hear what you think about the possibility that Alex Jones is a CIA double agent. OWNtheNWO has continued to ignore my request to enter /r/conspiracyv2, and like you he ignored my pm inquiring into his opinion regarding alex jones = CIA double agent conspiracy theories. I even deleted my post in /r/conspiracy which claimed that /r/conspiracyv2 was a conspiracy (due to being secret and private, which seems antithetical to what /r/conspiracy is about) in order to placate him, but that didn't seem to get anywhere. Since the only claim I made was that Alex Jones might be a double agent whose goal is to cause conspiracy theorists to lean rightwards by combining disinformation and strategic silence along with legit conspiracy theories, this seems pretty relevant to the discussion we're having right now. I've been going back and forth on this a lot, and still haven't made up my mind. Thoughts?

I read this book once.

>Native Americans in California's Bay Area only had to hunt / gather a few hours a week given the abundance of the environment, and spent the rest of the time doing stuff you and I would do if we didn't have to work so hard.

You wouldn't happen to own a copy of The Ohlone Way, by any chance?

May I recommend The Ohlone Way? heart-warming and gut-wrenching. Also very inspiring.