I don’t like spending this much time arguing against campism but they just keep talking at me.
Alright here’s my 2 cents.
There exists an impossibly we’ll organized & funded ruling class. Our society broadly is uneducated or misinformed.
How do people intend to reverse course without a very powerful form of authoritarian-leftism?
Do we intent to reform our governments so radically without the use of authoritarian mechanisms?
How do you get the average person on board with a communist society without striping the privileges the ruling class has almost always enjoyed?
I’m in favor of radical reforms. Those reforms would necessitate authoritarian mechanisms geared against the ruling class and their consolidation of wealth & power.
Americans programming will break when they see it working. Why do you think they try so hard to stop it?
Tenderly, you may have far too much confidence in programing being broken. Simply because physical conditions change, does not mean conservative amygdalas shrink.
There will, by necessity, be some degree of deprogramming.
Yeah, like I’m trans and it seems like the majority of people want to erase me for it. Do we just let that go on until we have a democratic consensus that trans people actually do exist while 3,000 people are socially murdered in the time we wait?
It’s the same for capitalist and imperialist oppression. Pro-imperialist or pro-capitalist ideologies or ideologies that comprimise with capitalism or imperialism are not neutral and shouldn’t be respected just because a majority of people have them. People who who end up supporting liberalism or fascism should be oppressed.
I think the problem I’m seeing is that you seem to be equating any use of force with authoritarianism.
You can have a revolution, restore the means of production to the commons, and then just not have a single-party state. You can deliberately distribute power among the working class. Use of force doesn’t require unchecked state power.
Restore the means of production to the commons. I’ll have to see what that means concretely. I’m not familiar with the idea.
In my idea of how the government should be run, one would need to implement an extremely steep taxation structure.
That would adversely effect a minority group within the nation enacting those laws. I feel that this action as a consequence would be authoritarian.
The rich aren’t a minority group, and the action you’re describing is literally the polar opposite of authoritarianism. If you have to redefine words to make an argument, you don’t have an argument.
Minority group - any group holding less power than the group exercising the majority of it.
Authoritarian - concentration of power into one or just a few ELITE members.First, regarding recommoning the means of production: it’s not a single discrete thing, but rather a collection of economic and political policies and approaches.
Look into is Solidarity Economies: this is a term that bundles together worker cooperatives, housing coops, public banks, credit unions, and all the other structures that allow groups of people to cut investors out of the critical institutions on which we rely.
As for the other part: progressive taxation is not authoritarian and does not require authoritarianism.
Progressive taxation would be a bandaid solution in my opinion but, maybe I’m being dramatic. Solidarity economics sound great as a shift in production.
The point I suppose I failed to make. In order to reverse course and affect radical change, you would need to enact taxation policies (FBI style raids on penthouses, IRS investigations into corporations, ICE style black bagging of CEOs etc.) that would be heavy handed. The heavy handedness one would think of when a regular person, like myself, misuses the term “authoritarian”.
Well, I’ll give you some nuance then:
You’re right. A revolution is not going to be bloodless. Use of force requires moral compromises, and we probably won’t get there with our hands clean.
But: I think there’s a big difference between the contradictions we struggle to navigate as we strive to build a world without masters, and the choice to enthusiastically hand unchecked power to “good” masters who we naively expect to treat us well even when we have no means to constrain them or impose accountability.
Put another way, I can tolerate grey areas we’re reluctantly forced into if our goals are anti-authoritarian, because I believe that such a project would have a good chance of reigning in those excesses. But if we accept and embrace domination from the start, the outcome is inevitably that we all wind up under a boot. Does that make sense?
Agreed. I wouldn’t want to help create hierarchy I’m just seek rigid rules around wealth.
I agree with you, I believe. The difference being that the authoritarian nature be geared towards exclusively a group that is VOLUNTARILY JOINED and nothing else. If you want to own that much wealth, you get some fancy new governmental oversight and regulations. Congrats. I don’t believe that that has be “authoritarian” to the VAST majority of people. Well over 95%.
Totally agree but, it would have to be aggressive in our current world. They will not willingly part with their wealth.
I’m assuming all options would be on the table for mitigating this level of greed. Obviously in an effort to get to a better society.
If the wealthy were willing to give up their wealth without the very real threat of violence against them, we would simply not be having this conversation and instead be discussing the appropriate levels of wealth with the wealthy. The existence of this debate implies that we have all - in some form or another - accepted that the wealthy need to be parted with their wealth against their will.
To achieve a society where all are free and able to live out their potential, regardless of the labels we put on this freer society, wealth redistribution is necessary. If we say the wealthy keep their wealth then we are describing a society where only the wealthy are free.
Great! I’m a billionaire and I’m going to start my own fascist party and buy out and flood every means of mass communication with propaganda for my party. I sure am glad you’re going to allow my legitimate political party to flourish.
Use of force is by any state is unchecked state power, and having multiple parties does not imply democracy, nor make things more democratic.
But yes, I actually do support giving proletarian communists (specifically women and minorities) guns, so that the state can be terrorized into not making reactionary compromises that will lead to doom.
Four legs good!
Two legs bad!
Four legs good!
Two legs bad!
Animal farm?
Indeed.
it’s incredibly ironic that you are using a phrase meant to ridicule people who reduce communism to black and white moralistic idealism… and repeating it like a mantra (like a sheep, perhaps) as part of a conversation where bringing up that excerpt from that Orwell book makes extremely little sense. You are making a satire of yourself, stop doing it.
You sound like you think you are much smarter than you actually are, and you didn’t understand my point.
Some (most) of the species like to be dommed by a big daddy or mommy of one form or another. They should be free to live like the submissive Lil boogers that they are. We should be free of their pathetic attempt to get the parental figure they lacked in their formative years.
Every commune wont be the same. Let them be wrong.
Imagine the reactions you’d get from other people if you said this in real life. Accusing other people of like having a psychosexual fixation with being dominated and that’s why they have their political beliefs is such a strange thing to say. You’ve made it unclear if it’s a joke, but I don’t really care.
“We should be free of their pathetic attempt to get the parental figure they lacked in their formative years.”
Why do you have to degrade people with childhood trauma to make this analogy?
Real Life™ is a joke, and deserves no respect. My opinions that i have shared are not a joke.
Hope you find your way to peace stranger. The block button is below my comment.
What if they try to force others to submit to their dear leader aswell?
If youre talking about the inevitability of outsiders coming to dominate a free people, send them to their sky daddy that they love so much.
If youre talking about those trapped within the confines of their neighbors delusions, the best we can do is open our arms and borders to refugees.
I feel a big problem with humanity is their attempt to fix things that will always remain broken. We show people we are right by living our best and most free lives. Forcing our way of life on others drags us down to the cave peoples level.
In every story what post apocalyptic society survives? Communist. Every post apocalyptic society that leads to hellish dystopia? Capitalist. Prove me wrong.
Ok.
Every post-apocalyptic society we can point to is fictional. After all, we’ve never actually experienced an apocalypse on that scale.
But just off the top of my head, The Book of Eli depicts a post-apocalyptic society that has largely devolved into anarchy, with power concentrated in the hands of warlords and whoever can enforce their will through violence.
Cyborg presents a similar picture: societal collapse, competing factions, and survival through force.
Then there’s Mad Max, where civilization has collapsed into violent competition over increasingly scarce resources, with whoever controls the necessities of life holding the power.
But I’d also venture to say that many of the post-apocalyptic societies people point to as examples of socialism are actually post-scarcity societies, or at least societies in which scarcity has been resolved to some degree. When the necessities of life are readily available, the incentive to hoard resources and compete for basic survival diminishes. That creates the conditions for people to organize society around collective needs rather than individual accumulation.
In other words, what people identify as socialism in these fictional settings may actually be the result of a fundamental change in the material conditions of society.
The interesting question isn’t whether people are naturally selfish or naturally cooperative. It’s how the conditions people live under influence which behaviors become necessary for survival. When resources are scarce and institutions collapse, people may turn to violence and self-preservation. When their basic needs are reliably met, cooperation and collective ownership become much more practical.
Of course, neither outcome is inevitable. Scarcity doesn’t automatically produce anarchy, and abundance doesn’t automatically produce socialism. But the material conditions of a society have a tremendous influence on the political and economic systems that can realistically emerge.
Dune. Turns out feudalism was what made it out of the machine apocalypse and ensuing Butlerian Jihad. Feudalism with nukes.
So you’re saying that communism only exists as a literary fantasy?
you know anything can happen in fiction? you can plausible write a post-apocalyptic capitalist society as well.
Snowcrash is an example.
Benevolent idiot vs malevolent idiot, or as they were historically called: trotskyites and stalinists.
Tankie here. I would agree on the following point – that we are not the same. But, neither are communities where most people are respectful of others’ liberties the same as, or suited to the same kind of rule as, communities where most people are authoritarians. Anarchism doesn’t work among authoritarian populations.
In some places, there isn’t a whole lot of class struggle – I could see anarchism working in those places, but not with most modern people. Those are typically isolated places where people are self-sustaining and disconnected from modern industry, places where states can’t naturally grow on account of the pre-existing lack of class struggle in those areas.
For tankies, communism must be authoritarian, and the worst tankies will just prefer even actual fascism to “childish naivety of democracy”. Technically tankies are just the leftist version of your right-wing grandpa trying to convince you to finally grow out of leftism, except they’re overtly obsessed with “On authority” by Friedrich Engels.
which was written in 1872 and is kinda way way way way way way way past its selling date.
I hate being told I’m not socialist for wanting coöperative ownership and a coöp commonwealth economy, but that they are real the “real” socialists when they just want state owned corporations.
the leftist version
Are they leftists, thought? They call themselves leftists, sure, but if it walks like a duck…
walkssteps like aduckgoose…FTFY
Good point, they seem to be authoritarian with the extra requirement that government should also control the means of production.
Yeah. I dont know exactly what I would call them but the German “far”-“left” splinter party BSW just supported the actually far-right party AFD in voting for the first far-right state governor since the Nazi era… that’s not exactly behavior that anybody would seriously consider left.
Probably cause they both get their funding from moscow and don’t care about anything other than destroying western society, so they voted for the disrupter even though he’s a fascist. Typical tankie behavior.
Red fascists
If you value any economic system above democracy, you’ll end up being authoritarian no matter what your preferred system is.
You call this a democracy? The entire system is built to extract wealth from the working class
Call what democracy? I didn’t post about any place in particular. But no, the US is not a healthy democracy if that’s what you are getting at.
Yeah, but “democracy” looks exactly like western liberal democracy, right? Multiple parties and uses some European country as an example? All third world countries are dictatorships and should bow down to the superior ways of their white overlords? Or they just don’t know what real democracy looks like and they’re misled by Islam or something? Real democracy is a racist as fuck country like Finland, that has de-industrialized, has an economy of basically only consumers, exports nothing and imports everything from the global south that carries the social and environmental burden of actually producing everything? Democratic socialism seems to only be for the imperial core, the rest of the world is just too backwards to understand it, I guess.
(These are rhetorical questions, I know it’s not what you sound like, but it’s what it seems like all of you people are implying with pretend civility.)
If you don’t both-sides the genocide of Palestinians or the war on Iran, by bringing up that they aren’t democratic systems of government so that somehow makes them deserve getting bombed more than if they were. (If you do, then I just don’t have to talk to you.) If you can believe that, than you do actually believe that the struggle against imperialism matters more than the ideals of democracy.
How do you justify democracy when people are voting for life to be worse instead of better, even to the point of undermining the democratic process itself? Sure we could argue at some point democracy had the effect of improving living conditions but should we expect that to be true forever in all circumstances?
I dont believe that democracy is valuable as an end unto itself, it is a tool that should serve its people and if it stops doing that we shouldn’t be dogmatic about it. Authoritarian systems certainly arent the way, and I would guess what we need doesnt even have a name yet.
How do you justify democracy when people are voting for life to be worse instead of better
How are you determining “better” and “worse”? In most cases, there’s no way of knowing what is “better” or “worse” sub species aeterinatis, because most government decisions are not optimizing a single parameter, and are instead making a judgement call by choosing one of multiple options from a Pareto frontier. With democracy, the people get what the majority of people want. Majority rule is better than minority rule.
Bourgeois democracy is minority rule tho, I want a democracy where money doesn’t have a voice
There’s a big difference between the ideal democracy and the bastardization of a democratic process we have in America, much like how Marx’s vision of communism is hugely different from any actual communist implementation. I personally don’t believe that any one governing/socioeconomic system taken in a vacuum is the right answer, they all seem to rely on humans being fundamentally good-natured but it just isn’t true for much of the humans attracted to positions of power.
an ideal democracy would be a democracy where the people have power, as opposed to one where money rules. such is the case in the fake ‘democracies’ under capitalism. it’s not just america and it’s nothing to do with humans needing to be ‘good natured’.
The problem is “the people” in a democracy literally just amounts to “the majority”, and would thus favor the average and the interests thereof over the interests of underprivileged minorities. Can we count on the average person to be concerned about the well being of those who lack the collective power they enjoy? As of now, I would say definitely not.
i don’t think that rich people are inherently better any respecting the rights of minorities.
the current system demonstrably does not protect minorities either.
also the current system actively manufactures consent through media ownership and economic coercion. capital owners play a major role in that process.
what looks like majority opinion is often manufactured preference serving capital. a democracy where people had actual material security and genuine information might produce very different majorities.
Pointing out the flaws in some democracies is not a great argument when every other system is so clearly inferior. To answer your question, democracy requires a culture that supports it. It won’t work everywhere and it doesn’t work overnight.
Democracy works, the problem is we don’t have a true democracy. We have corporate capitalist democracy. It’s a system that makes most people think it’s democracy — but it’s not.
Democracy and capitalism can not exist in the same stratosphere if democracy is to succeed.
Democracy works
Citation needed
There has never been a democracy, so we don’t know if it works or not. Democracy is an ideal state. We all live under a dictatorship of capital.
Idealist philosophy is the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity. Just totally decouple your goals from actual reality, and make zero plans on how to get there, then critique movements that fail to measure up to your pie in the sky. You see, actually achieving things is secondary to these people, what REALLY MATTERS is looking like a good person when you’re doing it. “They don’t want power, they just want to endlessly critique power.”
The ruling class has put in place a system that is impossible to change without doing horrible, violent, and socially unacceptable things, that is why it’s so stable.
I really wished we lived in this world where convincing people of your ideas was enough to bring systemic change, it just won’t for some things.
I mean small bits of democracy exist everywhere. Charity groups often work as a democracy. The youth organization I was in as a kid operated as a great democracy.
There are little democratic groups all over the world working just fine. It’s the large scale corporate hellscape that keeps it from working for us as a whole.
But just saying out of hand “democracy works” is not a fact, it is an unproven assertion. Some charity groups work, most do not. Many charity groups like the largest vegan group DXE have SA charges among the leadership. Youth organizations collapse all the time. If democracy works then how come democratic countries elect authoritarians and fascists like the Republicans in US or Nazi’s or even AFD in Germany? How come democratic countries elect people like Boris Johnson, Marie Le Pen, Bolsonaro, and Sanae Takaichi? Citation needed is just that, I’d like to know where these democratic nations and organizations that exist that actually work. Doesn’t seem like it works to me. Sounds nice in theory but I wouldn’t say it “works” and clearly if we just assume out of hand that it does, we’ll just keep repeating the mistakes that make it not work.
Amerikkkan politician in the gif, lmao.
…Judge Judy? She’s not a politician. She’s barely political at all. She hasn’t even been a real judge since 1996.
Sorry I don’t watch slop I couldn’t know about that. I’m sure she’s very close to the real thing.
The conditions under which democracy works are well understood.
You need a populace educated on how the society and government works at least in its broad strokes. That education should also instill a preference for democracy and describe the pitfalls of other systems.
An independent media system to keep the voter base reasonably informed.
Systems in place to prevent corruption.
Every single one of these have been eroded over 1-2 generations by crony capitalism to enable wealth accumulation.
I would not say that democracy in the US is a reasonable example of what democracy can look like. It is what happens when democracy is being deliberately sabotaged.
You also need a fully open and transparent government, any information being classified top secret or anything of the sort means you cannot have a democracy. No secrets can be allowed, ever. And really the only way to reasonably guarantee stuff like that is to make officials surrender all privacy related rights for life, just permanent publicly open insight into every aspect of your life, past, present, and future if you want to pursue office. I’d argue for attaching 24/7 live streamed cameras to them during their time in office as well. Obviously this would only currently work for rich countries with obscene military expenditures, like the US, but if the big guys were to do it then it would eventually be safe enough for the rest of them.
When the dollar can vote you no longer have a democracy.
Let me know when you come up with a way to force people to accept an unpopular system without an authoritarian regime.
Elections are not democratic because the candidates are always elites of some form. Even with universal sufferage and an egalitarian society there will always be a selection bias towards people who want power and people who are good at winning elections (but not necessarily good at governing). A real democracy would have election by lottery to ensure every segment of the population was represented. This hasn’t ever existed because past governments who elected by lottery (e.g. Ancient Athens) had only a small percentage of society represented as citizens.
After I found out about Lottery Democracy, everything clicked into place. I can finally have a true political goal that I can actually see working. Easy to convince people too, if people just watched the Lottery Democracy video from Spectacles.
I’ll check it out, thanks. I always just think about the way my academic department is organized as an example. There’s a rotating chair, and nobody wants to do it because it’s a bunch of bureacratic bullshit, but people do their time and then go back to getting actual work done. This is how politics should be.
Being “cool with communism” for the vibes (that don’t even exist, every revolution is authoritarian) vs being “cool with communism” for it’s negation of capitalist mode of production
How does a nonauthoritarian communist society handle a billionaire who buys up income-generating property and pays people to run it for the billionaire’s main benefit?
Let’s also assume he pays people to be security guards for this operation.
If a socialist/communist society were working, there wouldn’t be any billionaires. In fact, if Capitalism were working, there wouldn’t be billionaires. There’s literally only two systems that have ever been capable of tolerating that kind of inequality. The mercantile system of feudal states, and the neo-mercantile system of Fascism. The very existence of billionaires is proof of dysfunction in every other economic paradigm.
Oh this is an easy one! Tenants just wouldn’t pay rent, so there’d be no value to extract. This would be completely legal and socially acceptable (expected, even). A piece of paper saying “I own this” is just make-believe without a judicial system and police force that will enforce it.
Thanks, you are the first person out of many to provide a real answer and not just get angry at the question!
I was thinking more along the lines of a factory or a farm, but ok let’s go with a rental home.
Let’s say the billionaire’s security guards stop allowing the nonpaying tenant to access the property. Does the nonauthoritarian communist government go arrest the security guards?
Property’s not for sale dumbass, it’s a communist society. Property is owned collectively by all the people and the state’s job (yes you need the organization of a state) is to distribute that profit among the people. Any power is acquired via being elected (which is the “doesn’t have to be authoritarian” part so many temporarily embarrassed millionaires ignore) and punishment for self dealing from a position of power is treated as treason
In short: care is taken that an owning class cannot ever develop.
Wait so “if election, not authoritarian?”
This is such a weird question.
How does this billionaire exist in this hypothetical communist society? And how do you expect them to buy up a business?
It’s these weird pointless thought exercises people keep throwing at me that drive me to make these posts.
If you really want to know what my desired society looks like, it’s this solarpunk game my friends and I play: Fully Automated! Solarpunk RPG World Guide
Go read that, find all the stuff you don’t like in it, then write Substack article about it and then don’t send me a link.
Billionaires do exist, currently, already, in our non hypothetical world.
I wrongly assumed the proponent of nonauthoritarian communism had some idea how to bring about their ideal society from our current world.
Did you already get through the whole thing?
If you’re impatient, the relevant section is on page 65.
I have a general rule where if someone is not able to summarize their thoughts in one or two paragraphs, I am not going to waste time reading their 134 page document or 2 hour video they throw at me.
Honestly, that’s a great rule.
To answer your question, i don’t presume to have the singular correct strategy, but I personally believe the most sensible route out of capitalism is to build parallel structures at multiple levels: neighborhood mutual aid, community farms, county land banks, national single payer healthcare, etc.
I think that this will build an organizing structure and a vision for change, and by supporting more and more people we create conditions that free them from the coercive power of capitalism, which makes more radical actions like a general strike easier to sustain.
As more and more people withdraw from participating in capitalism, the tools of coercion will become increasingly direct, violent, and punitive, and revolution will take the form of a comiserately forceful refusal to submit.
If there are billionaires it’s not a communist society is it now?
How does one become communist without forcing the billionaire to give up their wealth? Is it not through the use of authority?
You are conflating force and authority
Certainly the forced removal of their wealth must look like authoritarianism to the billionaire, no?
That’s debatable, I don’t call FAFO authority, but I guess I could see how someone could argue that being limited in doing whatever the fuck one wants is authoritarianism.
In any case, the entire premise of the initial question is flawed and this argument makes little sense
The point is that authoritarian is a vague term that depends on who is holding authority and who is having authority exerted on them.
All governments are authoritarian at some point. Even anarchist communities theoretically will exert force on intruders by mustering up the people where they are, where they live.
Exerting force ≠ authoritarian. These words have completely different meanings. For example, community defence against an authoritarian state can involve the exertion of force, but would be categorically anti-authoritarian.
Sorry, I should have said intruders as well as internal bad faith actors.
There will still be psychopaths and sociopaths and serial killers and pedophiles in a communist or anarchist society.
Communities will still need to deal with those malignant people, whether by outcasting/exiling/deporting them or inflicting punishment + delivering rehabilitation. Those activities will be authoritarian over the bad actors.
No, those activities would not be authoritarian over bad actors. Authoritarianism specifically involves concentrated hierarchical power that operates without accountability or consensus. Anarchist communities would handle bad actors in a bottom-up manner, even from the perspective of the bad actor.
Also, your use of the terms “psychopath” and “sociopath” are harmful. These are medical conditions and should not be stigmatized. People with these conditions can lead normal lives if they get the help that they need.
Edit: Apologies if I come across as a bit of a pedant. I just think it’s important that these terms are used correctly. <3
I was meaning authoritarian as in the sense of authority being commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group over other people. And my argument was that even communist and anarchist societies will use power over other bad actors inside that society if those bad actors pose as threats to the prevailing political system.
If a bad actor seeks the pain and suffering of others, regardless of their mental health, or even if a bad actor seeks to persuade a society’s peoples away from the prevailing political principles, such as someone advocating for hierarchy in an anarchist society or a capitalist advocating for private property in a communist society, then those societies will still use their power to self preserve those modes of political power.
To the bad actors, those societies will appear authoritarian.
According to that logic the warsaw uprising was also authoritarian because the rebels imposed their will onto the nazi occupiers.
there is a difference between using force as a means of self defense and for dominance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_d8_VpLc-k
Shouldn’t have just said intruders. Of course self defense isn’t authoritarian. Authoritarianism takes place above and over a society’s own people. I meant to also include internal bad actors like psychopaths, sociopaths, serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, racists, etc. For those criminals within society, it’s still best to remove them from that same society via exile/deportation or take away their rights to punish them then rehabilitate them. Those actions will appear as authoritarian to the bad actors.
I bet you’ll vote for a Democrat that calls me a “biological man” too.
No. But, tell us, what part of the post are you struggling most with comprehending? The “antiauthoritarian” part?
I guess I’m not comprehending the “tankie” part. If you’re on the left and don’t vote for Democrats, you’ll smeared with the same brush. It’s a meaningless red scare snarl word used by your enemies, you seem to think it won’t be applied to you too.
When they start rounding people up, we’ll be rounded up together. So what’s the point of this?
Honestly, I was just letting out my frustration with some folks in another comment section who were proudly insisting that I wasn’t a real enough leftist unless I simp for strongmen.
I’ll still march alongside you (and them too).
Does “simping” even matter? Like, really think about it. If I support China (for example) what effect does that really have? Does that help China? Not really. Will that bring “socialism with Chinese characteristics” to the US? Certainly not!
My personal opinion about China has zero impact on anything. So, who cares?
That sounds rather nihilistic. If it doesn’t matter, why bother having an opinion in the first place? You sound trapped in the sports-politics schema, as if politics can only happen in a Bushesque “you are with or against us” manner. I admire what the Chinese regime has achieved in the past few decades, by not only lifting hundred of millions of people out of poverty, but also preparing China, and in a way the world, for a brighter future. However, that doesnt mean I blindly support their management of public discourse, or expansionist tendencies in South China Sea, stealing territories from Vietnam and the Philippines, for example.
I simply recognize that I can’t change anything about China and it isn’t my place to even try. The only reason I have an opinion about China is because I want to try and learn from their successes. China provides a good example of how to subordinate capitalist development to the will of a powerful political party. Markets can be disciplined.
The border disputes in the South China Sea are coming from every country involved, by the way. It isn’t just big bad China bullying smaller countries, all countries involved are violating each others’ territorial waters:
Minister Susi Pudjiastuti revealed in a statement that ANTARA received here on Monday that 26 of the 556 illegal boats were Indonesian-flagged ones, while 321 Vietnamese, 91 Filipino, 87 Malaysian, 24 from Thailand, two of Papua New Guinea, three from China, and one each from Nigeria and Belize.
But you only hear about China because they are the Designated Bad Guy.
On reflection, can you see how all your comments are toxic? I don’t have time for this nonsense
No, while the term “tankie” is used diversely, and some probably use it as you described, the essence of the term is simply a supporter of old school authoritarian “communism”. Think Marxist-Lennist ideologies as experienced under and in the post-Stalin soviets. Tankies love to downplay N Korea’s crimes, as if if denouncing both South and North political establishments is impossible.
No, the essence of the term is “bad leftist” - it has outgrown its historical context.
The majority of discussions about “tankies” are about leftists that refuse to vote in an approved manner: anarchists are “tankies” according to social democrats, social democrats are “tankies” according to liberals, etc etc. You use it to mean “leftist that supports Marxist-Leninism” but that just isn’t how its used by the majority of people. For the majority it’s just a snarl word.
It is your choice to fall for and participate in bourgeois language abuse.
Trotsky was right
Trotsky the person was acceptable, I don’t agree with him, but he was acceptable. Trotskyists… idk, they’ve really embarrassed themselves lately.
Idk what communist movement you think is going to emerge pristine out of this horrific, traumatizing, wasteland of human suffering without being wrong in really terrible ways.
A socialist or anti-imperialist movement does not have to be morally correct for me to back them. Class struggle does not have to be led by good people to succeed, they don’t have to have a correct interpretation of Marxism or be Marxist at all, they don’t have to not have corruption, and they will almost always carry reactionary baggage. In a lot of situations (almost universally) it’s not realistic or possible at all for a resistance to capitalist exploitation, colonialism or imperialism to exist without all of those problems and more, but doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist. If they’re opposing capitalism, even if they’re doing it badly, they deserve support.
Also, yes, MLs shouldn’t do apologia for the things the USSR did or other socialisms did, they should state the truth clearly without discomfort. I’m kinda disillusioned with ML spaces on the internet, actually, because they really suck. It’s like a game to some people; a game about being right and not caring about fucking anything. It puts me off when I see like uncritical support of past socialisms as if they were perfect, which is impossible, and you’ll always end up being disappointed, which is the one of the points of this whole message, but it only serves to make them look like atrocity-denying historical revisionists to other people. Like the Soviets really did deport Tatars in trains, and really didn’t work to correct the colonialist past they inherited from the Russian Empire.
However, the dissolution of the USSR and the throwing of its people to the wolves of finance capital was a humanitarian catastrophe for Eastern Europe and created a situation that even now is actually sickening to think about, and I don’t know at all how or when things will recover and get better for people there. It put into motion the fucking tragedy that is happening now in Ukraine plus all of the unseen suffering in the poor regions of what was the Eastern Bloc. The ex-Soviet countries are are perfect example of what losing looks like.
Like I’m sure there are lurid, real crimes that Hamas, or Iran, or Ansar Allah committed, but I hope to god they don’t lose, because they’re fighting against the IDF and the American military and all of the bad things that the resistance has done cannot hold a candle to what the US and Israel have done. That’s how I feel about resistance to capital.
Like you’ve gotta understand historical materialism and a lot more than just that, you have to keep trying to understand things for years to be good communist. I’m not a good communist. If you approach politics with the goal of having the correct hot takes, you’ll never want to understand anything. Just stop making hot takes, and look at the world.
It is possible. We had socialist consenus not that long ago :/ The only possible way to achieve at least near-socialist system is democratic. If the system does not directly represent views of their citizens, eventually you get oligarchic corpocracy with planned economy, that will crush all the nations beneath their boots. Furthermore: Bolsheviks were fucking extremists. When post-revolution parliament was established, and parties ran for seats, the majority of votes were Social-Revolutionaries, bolsheviks didnt have nearly as much votes. But then bolsheviks just shut down the parliament because they lost, and put their opponents in jail or even executed. So much for the people’s republic ig.
Instead, we need to actually get support in southeen countries, fight US hegemony and get votes in european countries, but this time hwlping global south first would be priority, so the european and us capitalists couldnt move their capital to poorer parts of the world and thus destroy the socialist consensus.
What is “socialist consensus?” What are these words? “Oligarchic corpocracy?” “Social Revolutionaries?” Are you talking about the Mensheviks? Is this some kind of social democratic stroke?
The fact you have no idea who social-revolutionaries are, means you gave a huge rant about your views, meanwhile having no idea how the most important socialist revolution went. Or even such a simple thing like socialist democratic consensus of pre-60s Congratulations you are a fucking tankie. And I dont get paid to explain history to americans. May your extremist pseudosocialist brainrot mythology stay with you
The SRs supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, but the White movement’s anti-socialist leadership increasingly marginalized and ultimately purged them.
Seems like a very successful political ideology right there.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party, the ones who supported the provisional government originally? And who supported the white army? I didn’t think it was possible anyone supported them in 2026.
“Hey gemini, pls tldr history of social-revolutionaries”. Just shut up and dont embarass yourself. Dont try to narrow my original answer and read the wikipedia at least.
With every answer Im more and more convinced you live in american suburb or some.
I thought you were talking about some mythical social democrats or something, based on your language and talking about votes in European countries. My brain turned off after I read the words oligarchic corpocracy. I thought you were a garden variety rad-lib. First person I’ve known who supports the SRs it didn’t even register in my brain.
What I meant is that bolsheviks were not popular nor they ever represented people of russia. And you still cant bother to read how the revolution went. Any totalitarian ‘socialist’ regime is not socialist, it is purely oligarchic corporcracy. Why corpocracy? Because both USSR and China busted worker unions, had hilarious elections, prevented regular people from becoming politicans or have any say. And ensured only their oligarchic circle could get to power. How is this different from authoritarian capitalist corporacy? Corporations also have planned economy, they also bust their worker union, and they also keep their people in fright of the state machine.
This kind of system is just as far from socialism as a late-stage capitalist state, and serves capitalists and imperialists.
Thanks for sharing this perspective.
As a baby leftist, I don’t want to fall into the traps of others when it comes to heralding the goods of past socialist experiments without criticizing the ills as well.
Nothing is perfect, as you say, and it a materialist socialists’ life long project to see the world clearly for all the material conditions that exist, and have existed up until this point. Idealist socialists and idealist communists will capsize their entire movement, and endlessly make things about purity tests.
The words “purity tests” sets off my liberal detector, because of accusations of “purity testing” being used to defend Democratic party entryism and terrible DSA candidates from criticism.
The words “purity tests” sets off my liberal detector, because of accusations of “purity testing” being used
Outside of any liberal usage, you have to acknowledge the phenomenon of leftist purity testing, especially on Lemmy. It’s part of what makes the ML spaces so unsavory.
defend Democratic party entryism and terrible DSA candidates from criticism.
I mean,
A socialist or anti-imperialist movement does not have to be morally correct for me to back them.
Even the terrible DSA candidates are DSA candidates, and so far as socialist movements go they have the absolute advantage of popularity right now. I’m really, really tired of publicly glazing Democrats because the general class consciousness is so low that slowing the bleeding is the best we can get electorally.
I would be absolutely chuffed if terrible DSA candidates displaced terrible DNC candidates, because at the very least it puts “Socialist” in the general public awareness, and lowers the barrier for decent DSA candidates. And the DSA is a better class of lesser evil overall. And the better the lesser evil, the more effective my dual power is going to be.
Which is to say, purity testing is a real problem, and you don’t have to be a liberal to recognize that any proper leftist movement is going to need to engage the actual proletariat, and most of those guys are tribalistic dummies.
The DSA cannot at all be compared to the groups I was talking about because they fail at one of the main requirements, to be an anti-imperialist movement, their candidates have like backed out from every meaningful thing. They are not really “democratic socialists” they are closer to social democrats.
Not really? The official DSA platform includes dissolving the Senate. The movement itself is pretty anti-imperialist, even if individual candidates have to waffle a bit to get elected by the tribalistic dummies.
Still though, a better class of lesser evil than the DNC in any case, that can’t be denied. I haven’t seen a significant level of “backing out”, and certainly not from every meaningful thing. Until class consciousness attains a level to make more direct means practical, I’d rather shill for a lesser evil that sucks a bit less. DSA > DNC, even if both are a far cry from a proper International.
Yep, I agree with all of that.
I’m not sure if you’re into this sort of thing, but I’m working with some friends on a tabletop game jam that we’re planning over a weekend (online) some time early next year about stories set in the midst of a future revolution. You can see the draft document into which we’ve been occasionally adding ideas here. Let me know if you’re interested.
Someone agrees with me? That’s cool. I thought all of that was going to be for naught.
That link is broken on my browser.
What about now?
You’re both idiots in your own special way.
Serious question: If there’s no money, what’s the incentive to work, other than punishment for not working?
Enjoying and sharing in the results of your work.
People hate working out on the field. Yet some of us happily spend time in the garden. Working all day in a workshop fixing cars can get boring. But there are some people who enjoy tinkering with their car in their garage.
The human brain functions similar to a muscle, doing the same tasks over and over again becomes exhausting after a while. In a better world, we would regularly rotate tasks to prevent such mental exhaustion.
You are just describing how it is currently. You don’t get much from working, but if you don’t you can’t afford basic necessities and thus are punished for not working.
People tend to be motivated to work if they can see a viable benefit from the things they do for the community around them. This is something that capitalism desperately tries to hide and prevent, so people only see work as a purpose to make money for living
I think we’re so far from that world that this is more a question of abstract philosophy than political theory. But for what it’s worth, I think these are the three most common answers to that question:
- We reach a state of automated post-scarcity in which we don’t need people to work;
- People work for the sake of personal satisfaction or community recognition or some other non-monetary reward;
- Goods and services are exchanged in a Gift Economy: people still get rewarded commiserate to their labor, but the exchange isn’t mediated through currency.
Personally, I don’t think it’s something that we need to figure out this decades or next.
Since you are asking seriously I will answer you: Because we have to.
At the most basic level we have to do work for basic survival. Cooking, cleaning ourselves, cleaning our living space, those are necessary to live and are actual work. This can extend to people we care about, as we are willing to put in work to maintain relationships and make sure they are well.
As for why would anyone work for something other than survival, well that can get a little philosophical. One philosophy is existentialism, where we as humans desire to have meaning in our lives and are willing to put in work to achieve something. Basically, just look back at any hobby you have done.
Now, at the societal level people will not work at the current conditions without being forced to earn a wage to survive. Once you remove money from the equation then that lets people decide for themselves how and when to work. Under those conditions people will still work for society, so long as they see the benefits it brings to that society.
An uncommon but relevant example is at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine there was a nuclear plant near the border that everyone was worried would have a meltdown either due to bombing or the Ukrainian workers abandoning it. Some of the workers chose to stay all the way until it was captured. Then there was some diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia to figure out what to do about the plant and the workers. Those workers recognized the value of maintaining the plant to protect society, and did it without pay and at the risk of being bombed.
