With the amount of authority he alone held as an individual I would classify that as Far Right. Similar to the "National Socialist Party", but in reality the painter literally wrote that he named it that specifically to trick people.
I hope you realize that the amount of authority an individual holds in a government has nothing to do with what their preferred method of organizing an economy is.
To the contrary, Marx explicitly advocated for a dictatorship of the proletariat. This wasn't a figurative use of dictatorship. It was the idea that the proletariat would create a literal dictatorship with which they would imprison and strip of their property, other classes.
Just because the guy was a genocidal psychopath, doesn't mean he wasn't left wing. And just because you yourself are left wing, does not mean that you get to define every negative human trait as belonging to the other side of the aisle. That isn't, nor has it ever been, how politics works.
I'll tell you, the debate about this in far-left circles is more about whether Stalin represented continuity with the revolution or whether he essentially acted as a counter-revolutionary force that came up within the revolution. This side will make analogies to Napoleon Bonaparte who crowned himself emperor and established a military despotism.
Another analogy is to the character "Napoleon" in Animal Farm by George Orwell. My personal opinion is that it's contradictory.
Also the other side will argue that the Stalinist regime was not a proletarian dictatorship but a bureaucratic dictatorship.
Ah yes, the classic Trotskyite versus Stalinist feud. Practically speaking, their true differences had to do with geopolitics. Stalin wanted to be inward facing, and maintain trade relations with capitalist powers. Trotsky wanted a permanent revolution, and an invasion of Europe.
I do not think Trotsky, in a state of permanent war with Europe, would have been significantly less draconian than Stalin. He would have simply justified the purges as war measures. As he had already done under Lenin.
Or an internal power struggle within the party. He was a ruthless military commander, and fwiw, every Trotskyist group that has ever modeled itself on his ideas ends up replicating a highly authoritarian internal structure anyway. I'd add though that Stalin basically put the brakes on supporting revolution in other countries. Like vis-a-vis China, Stalin more or less supported the KMT rather than Mao and the Chinese communists. Pretty much anywhere communists came to power outside of Russia following Stalin's consolidation of power it was pretty much in defiance of Stalin unless the Red Army literally overran the place at the end of World War II and installed their own cronies. That's what I mean by contradictory.
I think Stalin's opposition to supporting other communist movements stems from the Bolshevik/Menshevik split prior to the civil war. In the sense that Lenin and the Bolsheviks viewed the Soviet Union as the vanguard of socialism, and alternative socialist movements were a threat to the unity of their vanguard party mentality.
Stalin didn't want alternative communist power centers to develop because he wanted the Soviet Union (and thus himself) to be the sole decider in what was or was not socialist ideology. It's part of the reason he and Tito hated one another.
The Soviet Union's desire to spread communism also conflicted with its own desire to control communism. Stalin was happy to spread communism if the country was a puppet of the Soviets, but he could not abide by a communist regime that existed outside of his control. Their plan was to make the Soviet Union a kind of world government, where orbiting vassal states fed into their centralized system. But, leaders like Mao weren't keen on being a vassal state, and so Stalin undermined them.
That attitude is also a big reason why the Soviets pushed to purge the Anarchists and non-marxist-leninists during the Spanish civil war. They were so obsessed with keeping Republican Spain a vassal of the Soviets that they'd prefer to lose the war than allow Spain to remain socialist, but outside of their sphere of influence.
I don't think that Stalin's attitude about this was unique to him. I actually think that Trotsky was the outlier in the Bolshevik party. The Bolsheviks were deeply suspicious of outside socialists, and it's a bit odd that Trotsky ended up so powerful but still harboring a soft spot for non-Bolshevik communists.
So this is comment OP ‘Vympelknight’, swapped to my other account because I am a dickhead and got a 3 day ban. Anywho, I was specifically speaking from a social equality to hierarchy perspective regarding the consolidation of power. While yes both can be overall authoritative the right focuses on a single peak, such being an individual rather than a collective empowerment of the people. As fascism, which most people see as the pinnacle of far right has the defined characteristic of autocracy (power to a single person), while communism in theory (not practiced history) is about collectivist power. This is why I would be one of those people who said communism hasn’t been tried yet, although as of current I am doubtful that it could ever be truly attempted as humans seem to prioritize ego over anything else.
If we’re simplifying it in the aspect of left-right on the political compass, where left to right is purely just economic, yeah I’ve both seen and understand that. Basically both can use the Y axis yes. However the right is concerned with the peak of individual consolidated power while the other uses it to forcibly flatten hierarchies outside of the government. Peak vs floor type of different direction of how said authority works.
Edit: I have no idea nor exactly care where I am on the spectrum, I would just prefer a world that promotes the most egalitarianism while also making sure everyone’s needs are taken care of with the least amount of authoritative intervention as needed. So basically a dream that I highly doubt will ever come to pass.
Edit 2: I did not make this new account as I thought (logged in with google). I had an account made 3 years ago with my other email apparently.
Edit 3: Did some thinking of it, and if we’re actually at the point of reducing political ideology to a fucking graph, I’m even less hopeful of a future that is beneficial to the masses. So thanks for that.
Regarding "true communism" never having been tried. Communism is not a form of government, it is a state of development described by Marx. Where the need for government no longer exists because the material needs of all citizens were already met. See, Marx believed that all social ills were derived from material conditions. So, if everyone's material conditions were met, there was no need for government or laws. Fundamentally, Marx was a Rousseau style "state of nature" utopian. He believed that once needs were met all humans would return to a state of nature: harmonious cohabitation.
So, of course communism has never been tried, it isn't something that can be tried. According to Marx, communism is something that just occurs naturally through human development. You don't try to do communism, it just happens at some point. According to Marx it is the end-state of human development.
That said, Marx also said that Communism could only be achieved through a profoundly repressive dictatorship which synthesized the contradictions of capitalism (aka kill class enemies and steal their stuff). So, Marx was both an authoritarian and an anarchist. He believed that the anarchist, communist utopia was only possible after the class enemies had been purged and their possessions confiscated by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
So, a Marxist can both be a weird anarchist who believes in fast-tracking to the communist utopia. Or, a profoundly rigid authoritarian who believes that utopia is impossible without reeducating society, and purging class enemies. Both of those sides can make arguments supported by Marx. Which is why Marxism is fundamentally more religious in its character than it is a normal ideology. It is much more about how one interprets the sacred texts, rather than what the best way to govern society is.
This is why I don't like trying to argue the fundamental nature of ideologies. More often than not, they aren't all that coherent, and don't fit neatly into a specific box.
Well I mean it's been like 150 years since the making of communism by Marx, in which we have quite literally established a form of government with that same name, so does none of that matter because of his intrinsic definition? Do we define every single thing we talk about by their origin philosophy definition? Like you said it's incoherent and pointless.
My point isn't the definition of "communism." My point is that it's hard to know what a Marxist's position is on the centralization government, because Marx advocates both for extreme levels of government and the abolition of government at the same time. He spends most of his time critiquing capitalism, and spends almost no time talking about how his predicted future government would be run.
So, I just have a hard time pinning down what "collective governance" means for a Marxist, since the entire "governance" part is wildly vague for Marx. It has room for totalitarian governance, and anarchist governance. Both of which, cannot coexist.
Collective doesn't really mean "everyone is happy, egalitarian and looked out for." Imperial China was extremely collective, but people were not happy, not well looked out for, and they had a wildly powerful emperor.
Oh aight, my apologies for being a dick then. Honestly I agree with you though, historically it has been absolutely abused by Russia and China, and this is something I argue with the Stalinist left all the time. But going back to it being like left or right, I would say that imperialist China despite having some collectivist policy is not quite collectivist due to the amount of power given to the Emperor at a single point of power. That's why I argue that these horrific dudes in history that have equalized their citizens are still more fascist than anything in ideology due to the amount of power authority they seized for themselves. I am myself not quite a marxist, if you deep dove my opinions, I argue this stuff, so I can't necessarily give you what the hell they think as it confuses me as well.
Apologies again, my dude. I at least deleted the last sentence of my last comment which felt like the overtly dickheaded sentence, the rest I'm going to keep to give myself some agency of being a dick, as if I am to do so I should face consequences.
Edit: This is why in the other comment I made sure to say I don't know where I stand exactly politically anymore. It wasn't some subterfuge to blend into y'all, it legit seems like no one actually wants what I want. Everyone still obsesses over this power bullshit, which is why I tend to think that any type of utopia is just incapable of happening.
far-left Stalinism, far-right Stalinism... the important thing is that it's far. and hopefully stays as far as possible
With the pendulum swing nature of modern politics, I'm not as confident the far ideologies can continue to be shut out of power.
Then it’s far right
With the amount of authority he alone held as an individual I would classify that as Far Right. Similar to the "National Socialist Party", but in reality the painter literally wrote that he named it that specifically to trick people.
I hope you realize that the amount of authority an individual holds in a government has nothing to do with what their preferred method of organizing an economy is.
To the contrary, Marx explicitly advocated for a dictatorship of the proletariat. This wasn't a figurative use of dictatorship. It was the idea that the proletariat would create a literal dictatorship with which they would imprison and strip of their property, other classes.
Just because the guy was a genocidal psychopath, doesn't mean he wasn't left wing. And just because you yourself are left wing, does not mean that you get to define every negative human trait as belonging to the other side of the aisle. That isn't, nor has it ever been, how politics works.
I'll tell you, the debate about this in far-left circles is more about whether Stalin represented continuity with the revolution or whether he essentially acted as a counter-revolutionary force that came up within the revolution. This side will make analogies to Napoleon Bonaparte who crowned himself emperor and established a military despotism.
Another analogy is to the character "Napoleon" in Animal Farm by George Orwell. My personal opinion is that it's contradictory.
Also the other side will argue that the Stalinist regime was not a proletarian dictatorship but a bureaucratic dictatorship.
https://i.redd.it/0s9wtvxz0t8g1.gif
Ah yes, the classic Trotskyite versus Stalinist feud. Practically speaking, their true differences had to do with geopolitics. Stalin wanted to be inward facing, and maintain trade relations with capitalist powers. Trotsky wanted a permanent revolution, and an invasion of Europe.
I do not think Trotsky, in a state of permanent war with Europe, would have been significantly less draconian than Stalin. He would have simply justified the purges as war measures. As he had already done under Lenin.
Or an internal power struggle within the party. He was a ruthless military commander, and fwiw, every Trotskyist group that has ever modeled itself on his ideas ends up replicating a highly authoritarian internal structure anyway. I'd add though that Stalin basically put the brakes on supporting revolution in other countries. Like vis-a-vis China, Stalin more or less supported the KMT rather than Mao and the Chinese communists. Pretty much anywhere communists came to power outside of Russia following Stalin's consolidation of power it was pretty much in defiance of Stalin unless the Red Army literally overran the place at the end of World War II and installed their own cronies. That's what I mean by contradictory.
I think Stalin's opposition to supporting other communist movements stems from the Bolshevik/Menshevik split prior to the civil war. In the sense that Lenin and the Bolsheviks viewed the Soviet Union as the vanguard of socialism, and alternative socialist movements were a threat to the unity of their vanguard party mentality.
Stalin didn't want alternative communist power centers to develop because he wanted the Soviet Union (and thus himself) to be the sole decider in what was or was not socialist ideology. It's part of the reason he and Tito hated one another.
The Soviet Union's desire to spread communism also conflicted with its own desire to control communism. Stalin was happy to spread communism if the country was a puppet of the Soviets, but he could not abide by a communist regime that existed outside of his control. Their plan was to make the Soviet Union a kind of world government, where orbiting vassal states fed into their centralized system. But, leaders like Mao weren't keen on being a vassal state, and so Stalin undermined them.
That attitude is also a big reason why the Soviets pushed to purge the Anarchists and non-marxist-leninists during the Spanish civil war. They were so obsessed with keeping Republican Spain a vassal of the Soviets that they'd prefer to lose the war than allow Spain to remain socialist, but outside of their sphere of influence.
I don't think that Stalin's attitude about this was unique to him. I actually think that Trotsky was the outlier in the Bolshevik party. The Bolsheviks were deeply suspicious of outside socialists, and it's a bit odd that Trotsky ended up so powerful but still harboring a soft spot for non-Bolshevik communists.
So this is comment OP ‘Vympelknight’, swapped to my other account because I am a dickhead and got a 3 day ban. Anywho, I was specifically speaking from a social equality to hierarchy perspective regarding the consolidation of power. While yes both can be overall authoritative the right focuses on a single peak, such being an individual rather than a collective empowerment of the people. As fascism, which most people see as the pinnacle of far right has the defined characteristic of autocracy (power to a single person), while communism in theory (not practiced history) is about collectivist power. This is why I would be one of those people who said communism hasn’t been tried yet, although as of current I am doubtful that it could ever be truly attempted as humans seem to prioritize ego over anything else.
If we’re simplifying it in the aspect of left-right on the political compass, where left to right is purely just economic, yeah I’ve both seen and understand that. Basically both can use the Y axis yes. However the right is concerned with the peak of individual consolidated power while the other uses it to forcibly flatten hierarchies outside of the government. Peak vs floor type of different direction of how said authority works.
Edit: I have no idea nor exactly care where I am on the spectrum, I would just prefer a world that promotes the most egalitarianism while also making sure everyone’s needs are taken care of with the least amount of authoritative intervention as needed. So basically a dream that I highly doubt will ever come to pass.
Edit 2: I did not make this new account as I thought (logged in with google). I had an account made 3 years ago with my other email apparently.
Edit 3: Did some thinking of it, and if we’re actually at the point of reducing political ideology to a fucking graph, I’m even less hopeful of a future that is beneficial to the masses. So thanks for that.
Regarding "true communism" never having been tried. Communism is not a form of government, it is a state of development described by Marx. Where the need for government no longer exists because the material needs of all citizens were already met. See, Marx believed that all social ills were derived from material conditions. So, if everyone's material conditions were met, there was no need for government or laws. Fundamentally, Marx was a Rousseau style "state of nature" utopian. He believed that once needs were met all humans would return to a state of nature: harmonious cohabitation.
So, of course communism has never been tried, it isn't something that can be tried. According to Marx, communism is something that just occurs naturally through human development. You don't try to do communism, it just happens at some point. According to Marx it is the end-state of human development.
That said, Marx also said that Communism could only be achieved through a profoundly repressive dictatorship which synthesized the contradictions of capitalism (aka kill class enemies and steal their stuff). So, Marx was both an authoritarian and an anarchist. He believed that the anarchist, communist utopia was only possible after the class enemies had been purged and their possessions confiscated by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
So, a Marxist can both be a weird anarchist who believes in fast-tracking to the communist utopia. Or, a profoundly rigid authoritarian who believes that utopia is impossible without reeducating society, and purging class enemies. Both of those sides can make arguments supported by Marx. Which is why Marxism is fundamentally more religious in its character than it is a normal ideology. It is much more about how one interprets the sacred texts, rather than what the best way to govern society is.
This is why I don't like trying to argue the fundamental nature of ideologies. More often than not, they aren't all that coherent, and don't fit neatly into a specific box.
Well I mean it's been like 150 years since the making of communism by Marx, in which we have quite literally established a form of government with that same name, so does none of that matter because of his intrinsic definition? Do we define every single thing we talk about by their origin philosophy definition? Like you said it's incoherent and pointless.
My point isn't the definition of "communism." My point is that it's hard to know what a Marxist's position is on the centralization government, because Marx advocates both for extreme levels of government and the abolition of government at the same time. He spends most of his time critiquing capitalism, and spends almost no time talking about how his predicted future government would be run.
So, I just have a hard time pinning down what "collective governance" means for a Marxist, since the entire "governance" part is wildly vague for Marx. It has room for totalitarian governance, and anarchist governance. Both of which, cannot coexist.
Collective doesn't really mean "everyone is happy, egalitarian and looked out for." Imperial China was extremely collective, but people were not happy, not well looked out for, and they had a wildly powerful emperor.
Oh aight, my apologies for being a dick then. Honestly I agree with you though, historically it has been absolutely abused by Russia and China, and this is something I argue with the Stalinist left all the time. But going back to it being like left or right, I would say that imperialist China despite having some collectivist policy is not quite collectivist due to the amount of power given to the Emperor at a single point of power. That's why I argue that these horrific dudes in history that have equalized their citizens are still more fascist than anything in ideology due to the amount of power authority they seized for themselves. I am myself not quite a marxist, if you deep dove my opinions, I argue this stuff, so I can't necessarily give you what the hell they think as it confuses me as well.
Apologies again, my dude. I at least deleted the last sentence of my last comment which felt like the overtly dickheaded sentence, the rest I'm going to keep to give myself some agency of being a dick, as if I am to do so I should face consequences.
Edit: This is why in the other comment I made sure to say I don't know where I stand exactly politically anymore. It wasn't some subterfuge to blend into y'all, it legit seems like no one actually wants what I want. Everyone still obsesses over this power bullshit, which is why I tend to think that any type of utopia is just incapable of happening.
Je.
Potráp sa s tým.
Stalin is the right of the left. But far left is more akin to anarchy
Oh i mean socially he is more aligned with the far right...
“But that wasn’t really left wing!” This is just another spin of the “but that wasn’t real communism” narrative. It’s all nonsense.