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Had to break it to dickriders of Obama that he indeed did drone strike children and send child soldiers into war , they played the "no but that was indirectly card" you know the same one h*tler defenders play? Yeah that one.... I cannot put up with liberals
Depends on which one we're talking about tbh. Lenin? Brutal yes. Genocidal no. Stalin? Debatable, I'd say yes but there is a valid argument based in historical analysis against it. Mao? Kinda? Depends what your line for genocide is, if you count cultural genocide then yes absolutely but if you're looking only for mass-killing genocides then he's also a no. Ho chi minh, no. And in fact that mf stopped a genocide in progress. Castro? Also no, although his regime was pretty shitty to queer people, Christians, and afro-cubans for a while, they never really crossed the line into genocide, and reformed those tendencies later on anyway.
Really the only two socialist leaders I can think of that were indisputably genocidal are Pol Pot and Ceauşescu, and I dont see even the most hardcore tankies defending them.
There's always nostalgia for bygone eras from some segment of the population. Especially because of how awful what came after was for Romania.
But he committed the cardinal sin of autocracy: he was incompetent. You can be brutal as all hell, but if you keep the state running properly you can usually get away with it. There's a reason Ceauşescu went out the way he did.
Don't look up what happened in Romanian orphanages in the 80's if you don't want to be sick for a week.
Oh yeah, it exists. He wasn’t 100% bad, and Romania got really screwed over after him, but I don’t see much if any apologetics from any ML spaces I’ve been in.
He also screwed over Romania in the 80s by austerity measures, he was really egocentric and really wanted to pay the debt by giving less food to the people, kinda dumb
EDIT: Who downvoted me lmao? It is no secret that Ceausescu was the worst "socialist" from the eastern block, had like 40 houses, cared more about western relations
Of course Romania had many great policies because of socialism that unfortunately are not present now in Romania, but he was truly not a good leader and he did commit some war crimes towards citizens
Yeah, while nostalgia is very tricky, a good chunk of older people in Eastern Europe feel nostalgic for socialism in a way that feels legitimate, because many say that even though they were technically “poor” (in the capitalist sense), they didn’t have to worry much about life, about being fired, about being able to pay for rent, about their children’s futures.
So while Ceausescu was a dickhead and by the 80s the eastern bloc was rotten, capitalism just sucks, people who are technically in the top 20% of society are just one decision by their boss away from living on the streets.
It is a testament to socialism that even in the eastern bloc, which was generally a mess, in Romania, which was probably the worst of the states, had a lot of aspects that were preferable to capitalism still.
Regardless we must do much better than what he was doing.
life got better after ceausescu dunno what you talking about. Indeed liberals politicians arefucking people over in the country but the living conditions got better, but there needs to be a strong left in Romania
You are allowed to use basic swears (any language), but anything that is racially motivated, related to bigotry, or used to target people is not allowed. Slurs, Racial Slurs, etc. Not allowed. Under the „offensive language“ This includes usage of the word "Tankie" (which you can use in historical context) and other political derogatorys
I don't know of many leftists who think that poor policy management is not a part of what caused multiple famines, and poverty as well. So idk that this is a position that actually is unpopular. We have to learn from these attempts at building a better future, so we have to engage with the good and the bad.
What many leftists will say is that these socialist projects did not materialize out of thin air and that the conditions that led to revolutions cannot just disappear overnight. And also that capitalists have never just let socialists do their thing in peace - they have always seen socialism as a threat, and we do live in a world dominated by capitalists who have the power to destroy socialist projects with military force, embargos and other bullshit.
That does not mean that people's suffering can be ignored or handwaved. This is real life and we have to contend with the reality that progress does in fact take work, sacrifice and time. This does not mean we excuse poor management, or act like it's only capitalists who have suffered during crises in socialist projects.
As a little pet project I’ve been going through the list of “old Bolsheviks” on Wikipedia (anyone who joined prior to 1905) and seeing what happened to them. I’m only just at the L last names but like holy hell man this has been brutal.
But my point more broadly is that it should not be considered a Lib take to fuckin hate Stalin. Like the guy maybe a bit more nuanced but no amount of nuance justifies mass murder of people who, and I cannot stress this enough, we’re on his fuckin side.
This is awesome (and depressing), thank you! Quantifying how much of the core Bolshevik party Stalin murdered really brings the extent of his betrayal into perspective. Sure, he may not have actually been some one-dimensional cartoon villain, but really, with results like these he may as well have been.
The core of the party really hits the nail on the head too, cause if you were someone of any kind of importance or did anything of note, you were facing the wall. There’s a saying that’s generally applied to the holocaust but it just as much applies to this, “the best did not survive”.
The only way a lot of the people in green survived is by being so irrelevant and insignificant that the nkvd and Stalin probably didn’t remember they existed and then they had the good grace not to remind them. And narcs and nkvd officials who carried out the purge were not safe, they’d be on the next trial and in front of the firing squad they’d previously commanded.
And I think this whole process and the familiarization with the early ussr it has given me has definitely shaped my opinions on different points and I definitely lean far more staunchly Anti-Authoritarian even more than I already did. Like I’ve not done too much reading of theory but if this is what M-L ism is about (or even if it isn’t and this is just a manifestation of baked in flaws) I don’t want anything to do with it and I think that should be an understandable position to take.
I don’t like political correctness culture very much. I feel like policing what people say only creates resentment, and what is far more effective is helping people understand why not to use certain language, and how language shapes culture, society, perception, etc.
There are many very woke people who are not necessarily super politically correct with the language they use. I respect them much more than those who police language, but are very much spineless in their actions/opinions (certain liberals).
Leading on from that last point, PC language can be used to virtue signal, while in reality silencing actual discussion.
Yeah, as a brown person, this is something I don't know how to reconcile with. I like the idea of talking rather than shutting something down, but still...
On one hand, limiting free speech can be a slippery slope and pc culture can quickly terminate any discussion about culture, politics, and society if someone makes the mistake of saying something that is anti-woke when they're not actually intending to be anti-woke. It can even be used as a shield by some really shitty people... and governments (guess who). It can also make hateful rhetoric seem like it's correct and/or revolutionary, simply because so many openly and loudly oppose it and because it can be censored by people in places of power.
On the one hand, what happens when you permit intolerance? It normalizes the discussion of things like eugenics, homophobia, sexism, racism, etc and opens them up for moral debates that drift into politics and policy. When certain people join in or feel emboldened, it can quickly turn into a justification for hate, discrimination, genocide, and of course, class division. What happens when governments and organizations also exercise intolerant free speech? What about scientists, economists, and social scientists who champion things like eugenics, race science, etc.
Idk, just feels like a very complicated issue that isn't fully understood and has been made even more difficult to come up with a solution for with the advent of the Internet and the mass production of propaganda, which is incredibly hard to counter with facts and logic.
Yeah I get what you’re saying. One thing I feel though is that, if we don’t open up slightly to intolerant free speech, it’s much harder to attack what is otherwise presented as vague speech and dog whistles. On the other hand if we can easily recognise intolerant free speech, we can easily argue with it/nip it in the bud.
Your point about hate being platformed more is true. There definitely should be some limits to it.
Democracy is non-negotiable. A republic or any style Democratic government should always allow their people and workers representation of themselves or electing others to do so.
Left wing politics is excessively dominated by people who expect to do the same things as always and this time have it work out. The reformists will have the right candidates this time, definitely; material conditions will align for a first-world revolution soon, definitely; failure can be chalked up to ineffable factors that require no self reflection. Hope has become a pure psychological coping mechanism.
Nationalism in any sense is anti-communist. Movements that rely on nationalism to liberate themselves from imperialism will only lead to themselves becoming oppressors after liberation, and it will lead to more oppression during the act of liberation itself. I believe China and Vietnam are good examples of this, both have strong nationalist sentiments that were used for liberation but have led to modern day oppression within those countries. Communism is inherently anti-nation and anti-nationalist
Edit: just to add some clarification. Nationalism is not worse than oppression by colonization. Nationalism is worse than a movement not built on nationalism, and nationalism is not fundamentally needed for liberation. Countries that rely on nationalism for liberation generally end up more oppressive after liberation than countries that do not rely on nationalism due to that lasting nationalism, which leads to oppression of minority groups etc. communism must be built on a base of anti-nationalism or there must be a continuous revolution that gets rid of nationalism
Nationalism in colonized countries is of liberationary nature and is historically progressive. Saying that this nationalism in these countries somehow leads to more oppression is blatantly false and just imperialist apologia. China and Vietnam are miles better, even with the oppression that exists today, than pre-liberation. Yes, Communism is inherently anti-nation and anti-nationalist, but you can't just ignore the actual material conditions. Nationalism for example in Palestine is historically progressive.
nationalism will not be historically progressive forever. there are virtually no feudal relations left that still need to be overcome by a bourgeoisie/nationalist movement.
Would the balkanisation of say, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India or Indonesia, into multiple nation states, constituted by the ethnic groups that made up their former whole, still be progressive?
EDITED: I guess the only place where nationalism could still be historically progressive would be sub saharan africa. Due to the areas unique position of being exploited by almost every imperial power, be it the USA, europe or china
You are right that nationalism is not historically progressive pretty much anywhere in the world except Palestine. I was just pointing out the fact that nationalism in colonized countries is historically progressive since the op was claiming that nationalism in china and Vietnam and similar colonized countries was somehow more oppressive than the imperialism it sought to overthrow.
Nationalism in colonized countries is of liberationary nature and is historically progressive.
The origins of German nationalism were an emancipatory movement against both French imperialism and Prussian feudalism. And look how that turned out.
It is impossible to draw a hard line between colonized and colonizing nations, because a political entity can be both victim and perpetrator of imperialism and colonialism. Countries like the UAE are subject to Euro-American hegemony while also engaging in the systemic exploitation of South-East Asia.
Nationalism is not evil because the nations that engaged in it were historically imperialists, but because nationalism and imperialism are inherently part of the same system. This is the same misunderstanding that prompts liberals to blame the evils of capitalism on individual capitalists.
German nationalism is not evil because it is German, it is evil because nationalism is inherently exclusionary and anti-solidarity.
Nationalism in specifically colonized countries is emancipatory in nature. It's the same as how capitalism was historically progressive. You can dislike it all you want.
Every step toward a socialist wing of rhe Democratic party in the US is a step into the hands of the capitalists who run the political establishment. This road leads away from independence, away from real workin class political power. Something something master's tools, something something master's house.
someone's metaphysical beliefs are irrelevant if they support socialism. I saw a podcast clip where a Muslim author explained that because of his religious beliefs, he is not a materialist. But he thought that Marxism was an extremely important mode of historical analysis and that he supports Marxist organizations and he would support a Marxist party. He got flayed in the comments section by leftists, and some of the comments even got Islamophobic. And it was absolutely unnecessary. He was an author given a platform and he chose to be honest about his position while still supporting Marxism. The comments could have been about solidarity and unity, but because he mentioned he's a Muslim, the comment section became a miserable display of leftist dis-unity and online elitism, instead of actual support for change.
Is "being based on anthropology" a euphemism for acknowledging "human nature" aka the cornerstone of capitalist ideology? Or do you mean something else?
Short answer: Quite the contrary. The supposed "human nature" of capitalist ideology is not based on anthropology at all, but on the liberal homo economicus model for modern, domesticated, and proletarianized humans. That's the euphemism.
Long answer: Contemporary anthropology (not to be confused with the early supremacist pseudoscience used to justify colonialism) studies the human kind as an animal species, and as such describes what we may call "natural" features of humans. Only, the concept of "natural" is not really used that way in natural sciences because everything is "nature" by definition, nothing is not natural.
While our political goals must emerge from agency, class consciousness and the understanding of historical material conditions, the kind of society we are trying to prefigure risks of being heavily biased by the modern and postmodern ideology of our time.
What can we learn from anthropology? Anatomically modern humans are around 300.000 years old. Human domestication happened around 12.000 years old. We are now learning lots of things we didn't know about the first 96% of out time before cities and agriculture, mainly from the later paleolithic (-12.000 to -100.000). I'm not a paleo-something, I'm not saying we should turn to live as prehistoric hunter gatherers. But some of the later findings are quite revealing of very very very long periods of time were humans had a relatively similar way of life, based around the ecosystem dynamics the species emerged from, which is usually the best way to live for any other animal that we know of in the world.
We could try simple thinks like grouping by 200-300 people like evidence shows we did almost always (including early agricultural settlements), going rural and working the land not only for food sovereignty and environmental reasons, but also for mental health, and exploring some ways of organization and "spirituality" that seem to have granted these humans a fairly egalitarian communal cohesion and solidarity (without naivety or romanticizing it, of course).
Noooo, no, it can be, but it's not. I see your worry and would like to reassure you that research done by anthropologists can outright counter many of the bs, "human nature", "greed is good", "people are self-interested", "end of history", narratives/arguments of capitalism with historical and archeological evidence to prove the contrary. It isn't inherently ideological, and it can be extremely damning evidence against capitalism and its priestly economists, it just so happens that its researchers aren't immune to the ideological teachings of our time.
In fact, seeing as you're flared as an Anarcho-communist you might like AAAAA LOT of what some anthropologists have to say.
!WARNING, IDEOLOGICAL TAKE INCOMING!
My take away has been that the story of mankind isn't only about selfishness or patriarchal and hierarchical dominance in the name of progress and greed. My take away has been that people are as intelligent and altruistic as they've always been (over the millennia) and that almost every human story contains some hint of altruism, struggle, creativity, or friendship.
Command economies, centrally planned economies, soviet-type economic planning, whatever the hell you wanna call it. It just doesn’t work. Socialism can work, but that shit is just god awful. It’s also counterintuitive to Marxism on so many levels. ML’s PLEASE find something better
I agree that bureaucratically planned economies can’t work in the long run, because as we’ve seen in the USSR and Eastern European stalinist countries, the bureaucracy becomes disconnected from the workers’ reality on the terrain and becomes corrupt due to its privileges which leads to poor planning. The best example of bureaucratic planning utterly failing at its task is in my opinion the Great Leap Forward. If the workers and peasants had democratically planned the production together the famine would’ve probably never ended up happening. But I do think that a planned economy can work if the plans are democratically elaborated and approved by every layer of the working class.
I agree that centrally planned economies, for example China, are not socialist. But if you really wanna argue, empirically centrally planned economies are more 'efficient' then free market economies, now that we can use computers to process massive data. But both are capitalist anyway and not what we as communists should aspire for.
I think that centrally planed economies are a start but should be driven more by a Democratic decision on what can be focused on. It isn’t the end all be all but economic democracy seems the best start for social ownership rather than just a party or state making the decisions (how that would be done i of course do not know)
I’ll die on this hill. There’s a reason putting private organizations in charge of the economy was a horrible idea, and you do not solve this by putting state-run organizations in charge instead. What that does is create a bureaucratic mess of unresolved externalities, corruption, logistical nightmares, a horrible lack of coordination that affects resource allocation and redistribution. Also, the Soviet-Type model only really works for heavy industry and NOTHING ELSE. Besides, if you centralize economic power, there’s no chance of it ever decentralizing. Ask Khrushchev, funnily enough.
People call me utopian for being an anarchist, but what’s utopian to me is believing that the “communist” bureaucracy will surrender its own power willingly, because as we know, the economically dominant classes will not willingly give up their wealth. That’s why we’re communists in the first place.
Participatory economics. Basically you collectivize firms, services and property (with the exception of individual artisans) who self-manage and federate into planning bodies. Best explained by Michael Albert. Also, cybernetics in order to adapt to scale. I especially like the renumeration part of Parecon, abolishing traditional currency in favor of labor vouchers.
OK... Do you think MLs and other pro central planning people want bureaucracy? Like they just sat around, thought and realised that what the world needs is more bureaucrats?
Yes, actually. That’s the whole point of central planning. If you centralize planning in the hands of the state, who else is supposed to plan the economy? The flying spaghetti monster? Hell, even when production was socialized in Catalonia you still had ML’s that were basically like “sure, let’s nationalize a functioning economy that’s already in the hands of the workers.” And was it not Lenin who wanted a socialist bureaucracy? Because if not, then I’ve got something to say to a lot of MLs.
And you think the state is made up of what exactly? Because the state MLs want is specifically one built on Soviet democracy. Soviet democracy is literally a federation of councils. And the point of the councils is to get mass input and oversee implementation. The point of the federation is to coordinate things by taking advantage of economy of scale.
The thing I think you're not realising is that bureaucracy doesn't grow on purpose. It is instead a coping mechanism for when there is no capacity for a non-bureaucratic, more Revolutionary alternative. The Soviets tried to do mwhat you're suggesting, failed and did what worked instead.
Soviet democracy has only really existed in anarchist movements, though. Especially Makhnovshchina. The thing is that soviet democracy got thrown out by the Bolsheviks because it wasn’t great at times of war, and then emergency measures became life. Taking credit for soviet democracy, then saying it doesn’t work is crazy. Also, you mean that workers actually controlling the means of production and not being at the mercy of a coercive state is “impossible?” You just went against Marx! Heathen.
Bureaucracy doesn’t grow on purpose, but it sure as hell keeps itself alive forever on purpose. It which point just give up on communism because bureaucratization is something that no socialist state has actually survived. There’s also soooo many revolts and measures that the Bolsheviks could’ve avoided if they kept their socialized policies, but okay man.
Soviet democracy unambiguously existed in a good number of socialist states from the USSR to Maoist China to even early Vietnam. These are places where Soviet democracy not only existed but had to exist in order to get as far as they did, especially in Vietnam and China.
Who said Soviet democracy doesn't work?
I agree. There needs to be a more active focus on fighting bureaucratisation. That is something I think most serious MLs will agree with you on. This is something even the ML "bigwigs" understood. The Great Purge was motivated partly by strong anti-bureaucratic sentiments. The Cultural Revolution too. You can find writings from both Che and Fidel discussing the problem of bureaucracy in Cuba. This is something we have been thinking about forever.
I guarantee you "just don't have a bureaucracy" has been attempted before and failed. And it failed for a good number of reasons from insufficient political and organisational work to it being unstable in times of military threat/attack to having an economy that was just too underdeveloped to make it possible. So maybe you should focus more on how to deal with that particular problem rather than just going "I would simply not have one" because if it was a simple choice, we'd all be on the same side here.
Well, coming from a council communist one would assume you already know the answer to this question.
A federation of councils is nowhere near the bureaucracy of state socialism, and shouldn’t even be classified as a bureaucracy. With democratic planning based on mass input, with coordinators rather than commanders, with direct oversight and with the decentralized features of cybernetic systems, you’d make the antithesis to a bureaucracy.
Regardless of how you call it, those are bureaucratic, but I don't find it to be necessarily bad, checks and balances are just necessary to keep oversight over those planning councils and coordinators.
Checks and balances. Firstly, please tell me the definition of a bureaucracy? And how is a directly elected federation of unions, councils, etc. a “bureaucracy?”
Planned economies can work, it’s just that putting the planning in the hands of some random schmucks and not the workers and firms themselves who already handle production, logistics, distribution, transportation, coordination, etc. is highly inefficient
Central planning does include this though, it just makes it cohesive
'The first and most essential governing tasks in the U.S.S.R. start at the workers' bench. Here took form the Five Year Plan that startled the world. Production meetings after work discuss shop problems, what holds back production, how much it can be increased, granted certain raw materials, machines and skilled per- sonnel, for the coming year. These discussions are enlarged on factory scale; they go up from factory to the central offices of the trust. Word comes down to the shop again that the country needs certain new machines. Can we make them in our plant? And here workers' invention and suggestion widen to include a nation's plans. Delegates from other industries which need the machines arrive, explain, mutually consult.
For a socialist state this is the simplest, most basic act of government; workers planning expansion and improvement of their publicly owned properties. The biggest basic plants, supplying equipment on which the rest of the land depends-steel works, auto works, locomotive works, mines become naturally known as "political centers." I can pick them out in Moscow: Electric Works, Auto Works, Ball-Bearing Works, Aviation Works, and others. From these centers arise new ideas, new policies for the nation's growth; before any new policy is seriously considered, wide sampling takes place of workers' opinion in these centers. When any policy is put through, the active force for carrying it into being consists of the workers in such centers and other workers organized around them.
Political life in rural districts starts around the use of the land. Sixty peasants in council-the collective farm of a small village -meet with the representative of the township land department or the farm expert from the tractor station to draw up their "farm plan." Num- ber of households, of people, of horses, ploughs, tractors, extent and type of land must be included. The plan must take account of the little community's food and fodder needs, the past crop rotations, the marketable crop recommended by the state for their locality. Certain general directions come down from the central Commissariat of Agriculture, filtered through the provincial land offices and adapted to their region: a two percent increase in grain or a rise in industrial crops is asked for.' - Anna Louise Strong, Dictatorship and Democracy in the Soviet Union, pp. 7-8
I would agree, however, that over-bureaucratization did occur in socialist states, but I feel as if this can be whipped back into shape. Albert Symanzki suggests a cultural revolution in 'Is The Red Flag Still Flying?'.
Fundamentally, these mechanisms don’t exist. It would only be as simple as “worker chains” if we didn’t implement Stalinist economic policies to economic planning. Also, the overinvestment problem seen in almost all socialist states are all clear symptoms of a lack of worker participation. A lack of worker participation was actually WIDESPREAD in the Soviet Union and often caused some unrest. Highly recommend you read what Alec Nove has to say about this. If Anna Louise Strong’s accounts were actually correct, then you wouldn’t have had the Great Purges, and you wouldn’t have had a mass industrialization program that did not give a DAMN about workers.
Do you perfer mass parties? Or just dislike parties in general?
Edit: by mass parties I mean a party that open to the masses and it plans to use its large membership and presence to spread revolutionary sentiment and to have a large number of human capital and organisational reach for a revolution.
As opposed to a vanguard party which seeks to be a small party of professional revolutionaries.
Vanguard parties were conceived as an idea to prevent revisionists seizing control. The Soviet Union and the peoples republic of China were both seized by revisionist (Gorbachev at the latest, and Deng) did not do its job therefore does not work.
This is like saying you can't overthrow capitalism because in both cases capitalism was eventually restored. just because something doesn't succeed doesn't make it sterile.
You just have the whole purpose of a vanguard party wrong. Vanguard parties are not to fight against revisionism, but to lead the proletariat during the revolution as highly organized, educated and effective strata of the proletariat. The whole idea that they are supposed to prevent revisionism stems from either a complete misunderstanding, not actually reading lenin or later stalinist conception. Vanguard parties are not supposed to take power and guard against revisionism. The only reason the Bolsheviks took power is because they had no choice but to do so when the soviets became functionally defunct due to all the workers being busy fighting the civil war.
The two examples you gave below of China and Ussr are incorrect because they didn't fail because of the vanguard party. The Chinese revolution was not a marxist one in the first place, deng was not its downfall, mao's class collaboration was. The USSR was doomed when the german revolution failed and the international revolution never came.
One of the major reasons the german revolution failed was Rosa's refusal to form a vanguard party.
Being a cool person with unapologetic, principled beliefs is a better way of convincing reactionary friends and coworkers than debating and arguing with them.
We are all someones first introduction to what a leftist is actually like.
Those who genuinely believe that harm reduction is useless really need to look at how direct the current American governments attack on trans people is
Stalin was a mediocrity who killed the Bolshevik party (literally and figuratively) at the behest of a rising bureaucratic caste that had no interest in advancing socialism. Sorry, not sorry.
Voting, in the tradional western sense, is completely innefectual. Even "progressive" candidates offer little to the average person in a system designed for exploitation.
I get into this with liberals every presidential cycle after they screamed at me for not voting for their "harm reduction" candidate.
And when they actually bring actual substantial positive change to the working class, like FDRs New Deal it's all just a momentary retreat, short term concessions for long term exploitation.
What pisses me off about the "harm reduction" rhetoric is that I'm absolutely amendable to harm reduction as a concept and even voting for it. The problem is these scumbag liberals never offer anyone that is ACTUALLY harm reduction, just someone with the sense of optics to calm everyone down.
The progression from one mode of production to another isnt guaranteed and the individual can drastically impact the world, “great man theory” is not absolute but individuals can personally radically change the flow of history (even though they are constrained by their environmental conditions).
The inability of much of the left to incorporate environmental collapse as a primary material condition is an unbelievable failure. Frameworks that haven't been able to adapt to a literal human-made extinction event, and continue to not be able to do so, have stopped being materially responsive and shouldn't be supported. Ideologies that perpetuate anthropocentrism, growth imperatives, and exploitative relations to non-human life only serve to redistribute who manages our current, existential collapse, rather than to confront it.
Maoism is different from what Mao DID. Most honest Chinese socialists see them as mistakes from the past. It was a truly humanitarian catastrophe beyond comparison. However, what Mao WROTE was pretty good actually. The bad part is he not doing what he said should be done. And what was done was really really badly executed..
He is like a lot of ideologists who seem to at times be paradoxical towards what the preach at times. At one moment he is celebrating the restoration of a commune that is independent from the party and the next he denounces them for that once he realizes that it would threaten his grip on the people. I can’t say i am sinologist so if someone refutes my example i am open to hearing it out. My main point is that he was always someone so close to radical change and then running it back once criticism started forwarding towards him, that’s how i interpret his policies like the 100 flowers campaign
I think the existence of a state is contradicting Marx's intent of communism because at the core of his theory he argued for no state no class and no money in the society
I think this is kind of a misreading of Marx. Or at least an under-reading. Bro wrote a lot.
In the aftermath of the Paris Commune's demise, for example, he wrote that a socialist movement must destroy the existing state and create a new one that would be by and for the workers. This was because the communards had tried to take the existing state institutions in Paris and use them to achieve communist ends, and it went horribly for them.
He was also pretty clear throughout his career that the DotP would be a transitional worker's state, and that only the fabled "Communist Mode of Production" would be the classless, stateless society that he and Engels described.
The Soviets made a massive blunder in attacking the ukraine anarchists, from both a strategic, pragmatic and ideological standpoint
the anarchists were competant fighters against the white armies and by attacking them, the soviets had to redirect forces to a new front line (they didnt expect the anarchists to put up a strong resistence) which led to both the whites and blacks gaining ground from the reds. in addition to this, the anarchists had no plans to do a first strike to the soviets (both the Russian SSR and Ukraine SSR) and were content with the status quo, which led to both sides having a shorter frontline and more secure supply lines. Finally, the anarchists (just like the Left-SRs) were popular among the peasants which allowed the Soviets to make in-roads to the peasantry and 'proletarianise' them. They did they before the october revolution with both the anarchists and the Left-SRs, however when they turned on them both suddenly in-roads to the peasant base became harder and led to the peasants rejecting socialism in its entirety, further wasting resources for the Soviets.
tldr: trotsky and lenin were idiots for fighting the Makhno Anarchists and Stalin was an idiot for imprissoning the Left-SRs
Yes, I think modern (usually eurocentric) anarchists and communists failed to value the power of spirituality because of the oppressive and reactionary historical role of religions. Some ways of spirituality have worked in favor of the sustainability and cohesion of egalitarian communities around the world for all of human existence, and it deserves more of our attention. PS: I am an atheist, interested in animism like ancient vedic and pachamama.
Dogmatic anti-theism is an active hinderance to any socialist project and is in most cases nothing more than an expression of unresolved personal religious trauma and/or unexamined individual desire for superiority over "the masses" masquerading as a principled political stance.
Me arguing with other Muslims that we should be boycotting countries like Saudia Arabia and the UAE. This includes vacationing in Dubai and going to Hajj.
A vanguard of sorts is essential. Capitalism will start global wars to prevent socialism and you think an open democratic party can stand up to that?
Also, the left needs to get it's fucking act together and stop being such pussies. Such purist little bitches. The right has no qualms and does not give a fuck and outplays the left at every chance because they're pragmatic even when they disagree. The left has no pragmatism. The left even says online activism is useless while the right has massive online networks spreading their propaganda. Get it together.
The DPRK is entirely a victim on the scale of geopolitics. It survived attempted Genocide by the US but is not given the same grace as any other victim of US Hegemony entirely because of Western Propaganda. Many “Leftists”end up repeating state talking points against the DPRK which manufactures consent for the ongoing attempted genocide of their people and way of life. It’s a complete betrayal of so-called “Anti-Imperialistic Values.”
Please flair up, thank you.
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A democracy without a state is a utopian ideal that is unsustainable and will inevitably fail due to either internal or external forces. Not saying the state has to be hierarchical, but people need the free flow of information to make judgements about their circumstances, education in order to vote their interest, and regulations/protections against others with greater power in order to not be exploited. I don't think all humans are paranoid, ignorant, cruel, and greedy, but there will always be some humans who end up thinking/acting that way.
I also don't want bears to overrun my town, because everyone decided we don't need waste disposal.
National liberation is reactionary in the modern day
There is no such thing as “socialist commodity production”
You cannot have socialism in a single country
The trade-unions are counter-revolutionary in the modern day and labor organizing will have to take on a more militant self-organized structure
The revolution must coincide with the proletarian dictatorship which takes on an anti-state character and is at its strongest points the active process of communisation, during this period the class-party is a necessary component but this party must not be a government in waiting and should always be outside of the proletarian dictatorship and its power structures
Online leftist disunity does nothing but discourage class consciousness and therefore reddits like this and discords should be shut down and rather we should focus on building class unity and unions
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Animals used in agriculture are the largest group of oppressed and exploited beings on earth. If you apply the values of leftism consistently and oppose all forms of exploitation and oppression, you’ll logically end up at veganism. Only severe cognitive dissonance can lead one to call themselves a leftist while exploiting other animals.
I agree in the sense that a leftist society would become vegan just by principle. But if you’re going around leftist circles and arguing that every leftist who eats meat is a hypocrite people are just going to think you’re an idiot. Logically you’re right but really there are so many bigger and more apparent issues that must be solved. Most leftists are just more pragmatic and want to solve the issues in front of them because they’re actively destroying their lives. It’s not hypocrisy it’s survival.
You’re saying I’d be considered an idiot while being right. Examine that. Why wouldn’t one be able to tackle all the usual leftists issues while being vegan. What is keeping you or any other leftist from going vegan right now?
I disagree that it’s not a major leftist issue. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of ecological decline and global warming. The prevalence of consuming animal products is the result of decades of capitalist propaganda. It IS one of those issues right in front of us, actively destroying our lives. Veganism is part of pragmatic leftism.
Trust me, I’ve been a leftist for much longer than that I’ve been a vegan. It was a huge ideological blind spot for me, and is still for most leftists. Going vegan has been one of the most meaningful personal choices I’ve made and it just made so much sense as a leftist.
Judging by the downvotes, I truly am like the picture in this post. It baffles me that my position is a hot take, but it is. It’s very disheartening to see how apprehensive leftists are of veganism.
Quite honestly, I have found transitioning to veganism a far easier a task than I anticipated before I myself made the switch. Sure, I have to spend slightly more time reading ingredients and learning how to cook new things, but is that really a significant sacrifice to make in the grand scheme of things?
If we allow convenience to determine our decision making, how can we expect to be able to make the truly monumental sacrifices that will be necessary to build a better world? Surely it would be more convenient for many to just let things continue as they currently are.
Unfortunately I believe that for most to make this change it will require their conditions to be altered significantly, through ecological collapse for instance. I hope that on this subject I am wrong.
I’m not apprehensive of veganism, I just can’t afford it. And like most people I understand that a lot of people are fighting their day to day lives instead of a big conglomerate life altering issue. Before veganism can be truly supplanted in most societies, leftism has to be able to do anything first. And until we get support from the masses who eat meat, we can’t push that messaging too hard or people will just think we’re more elitist than we already are.
I work a minimum wage job supporting myself and my partner. If I can afford being vegan, anyone can. If anything, my weekly expenses have gone down after switching to a plant based diet. You don’t lack means, just discipline.
Veganism is literally something you can do right now. It neededn’t even be part of your public outreach. But if anything, you want vegans in your activist circles. They’re the most proactive and engaged group of activists I know, and I’ve been in quite some radical leftist spaces. Most leftists wait for the revolution to commence, vegans take things into their own hands. Much can be learned from their discipline and praxis.
It’s our task to dispel incorrect notions about leftism the masses may hold. Same for veganism. Both are unpopular for the wrong reasons. It makes no sense to want to inform and correct the public perception of one while going along with the reactionary propaganda on the other.
Ultimately, my point stands. Non-vegan leftism is ideologically inconsistent. So yes, you’re all wrong.
While, what you’re saying is logically correct I do think that switching an entire diet is more than affordability and discipline. People have to go out of their way to find new recipes, find things that they like and enjoy eating, figure out what they need to be eating to get proper nutrition and accept that they’re going to have to stop eating foods that they have been eating for their whole life. A lot of people may want to switch to veganism in principal but due to other stresses in their lives, they simply do not have the capacity to make a big change like that. A lot of people can’t focus on living their lives to be as perfect of a leftist as possible because they’re necessitating just living day to day due to the difficult times that we are in
For leftists especially, I don’t see this as a valid excuse. Clearly as a leftist, you have time to analyse the systems in which we live. You’re capable of doing research and have thus come to leftist conclusions. Leftists pride themselves on being intellectually curious. This should logically extend to researching why and how to be vegan. There are so many sources out there to make this process as seamless as possible. It really is a matter of motivation, not capability.
In my case, I was simply oblivious to the extent of the horrors involved with global animal agriculture. It is difficult to realise that you have been participating in immense cruelty and injustice. I urge all leftist to watch Dominion (2018), which is fully available on youtube. Once I saw what it’s all really like, I wanted nothing to do with it. No matter how difficult it might have been. And it wasn’t.
It’s important to note that being vegan isn’t a diet. It’s a philosophy that rejects all forms of oppression and exploitation of animals. It’s the extension of leftists values to other animal species. The diet is simply acting on this philosophy.
First of all, there is a hidden-yet-obvious premise that needs to be exposed immediately before going any further. The question already assumes that agreement must be produced by a binding collective decision which is a democratic assumption, NOT a neutral one.
Anarchism starts from a different place entirely, where agreement, let alone a unitary one, is not a grand prerequisite for action, coordination ≠ decision-making just as organizing ≠ rule, so first to clarify the following:
Why do we need "an agreement" in the first place? Who is being bound and by whom? The thing is, most conflicts dissolve once you drop the idea that a group must speak with one will.
Second, it's quite a miss to assume that anarchist coordination aims at blind, abstract "unity" at all costs.
Democracy, whether representative, direct or consensus has a shared core in that it produces legitimacy for decisions, authorizes enforcement and subordinates minorities to outcomes and needless to say, anarchism by definition rejects all three.
Instead of "what does the group decide?" we must ask
"who wants to do what, with whom and under what conditions?" and such a kind of shift is very much foundational.
Furthermore, how people actually organize without democracy? Well for one, anarchist organizational praxis is extremely diverse, theoretically as well as historically, the common denominator being usually that it works through principles of free association, mutual aid and recognition of our inherent interdependence, not aggregation.
Voluntary association is one of the concrete mechanisms, in it, people group around projects, not identities or territories. If you do not agree, you are free not to participate, form a parallel project or negotiate terms of cooperation. No one is entitled to your compliance nor are you to everyone conforming to your whims.
Then, affinity and initiative; those who care most about an action propose, organize and carry it out, as it stands to reason. Others opt-in because they want to, not because they were out-voted and compelled by being a momentary minority.
Negotiation instead of decision: when interests clash, people bargain, adapt, separate or compromise without a final authority, as unresolved disagreement does not require resolution to proceed. The thing is, deadlock is not a crisis - but coercion very much is.
After than, coordination by compatibility which means that large-scale organization emerges from federations of projects and networks of association (of any size/scale), mutual adjustments, shared infrastructure and sometimes, only if deemed absolutely necessary, revocable delegation (technical, not political).
Nobody gains the right to command others (authority).
If people disagree? Well, they already do, democracy just hides it. In fact, democratic mechanism resolves disagreement by declaring one side "the decision", forcing the other side to comply. Anarchism resolves disagreement by letting differences persist (if a mutually satisfactory resolution just cannot be arrived at for whatever reason, though that would almost certainly be very rare) while re-arranging relations instead of overriding people. Sometimes, that can mean two kitchens instead of one, two strategies or two paths instead of one etc.
Now you or someone may ask why consensus is still not anarchist and yeah, this is where people get stuck often. Consensus to many may sound anarchist, but structurally it still treats the group as a unit, demands total participation, still pressures dissenters to conform and produces binding outcomes, and those are just direct, oroactive consequences consensus-assembly produces, which ignores more socio-psychological by-products of such social relation.
Anarchists historically tolerated it under the excuse of pragmatism (which often either backfired long-term or just wasn't a suitable thing to be considered "pragmatic"), not principally. Errico Malatesta's line is key here:
"Anarchy cannot come but little by little... but it must always remain anarchy". So consensus becomes anti-anarchist the moment it stops being voluntary and ignorable.
Anarchism does not organize by making everyone agree but organizes by letting people freely coordinate, separate and recombine without anyone having the authority to decide for others while democracy "solves" disagreement by imposing outcomes. Anarchism solves it by changing relationships. If an agreement is mandatory, it isn't anarchism and that's non-negotiable, it's a matter of definition.
Communism is No racism/clacism/etc instead of Everybody is the same and it did exist on the Second world, it improved life quality and it's collapse is the reason most of the old communist nations are third world level now.
Leftism shouldn't be approached solely from a pragmatic, materialistic angle, and must have at least a major part of its support be rooted in empathy and liberation of all. I mean this in the sense that "it makes more sense on an efficiency/production" angle shouldn't be a major defense of communism. Even if capitalism was the more efficient mode of organization, leftists should oppose capitalism because it is inhumane. I see far too many leftists, usually online, abandon liberatory and compassionate ideas and attitudes in the name of what they call "pragmatism" for the revolution. If the focus is entirely on how effective communism is compared to capitalism wothput a shred of empathy and liberatory empathy, it doesn't give me faith that that someone will stick to communism no matter what and is just going with an almost opportunistic approach to organizing themselves out from under capitalism.
Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyists seem to have more in common than they think so I do not understand why they dislike each other so much.
Also it chafes me just a little that a primary defense for vanguardism for the Soviet Union I've seen, and the defense for jailing the anarchists, was that anarchists are prone to infighting with other leftists and that would break the revolution that needed to be protected, so they did that, only for them to then start the infighting amongst themselves that they jailed the anarchists for. The post-Lenin schism between Stalin and Trotsky was interesting to read about, especially since the first time I heard the word Trotskyist was when an ML spit the word out like it was on fire.
MLs and Trotskyists do not even like other MLs and Trotskyists. Also MLs have more definitions of ML then Anarchists have for Authority, ML can mean: Stalinist, Trotskyist, 3 world Anti-Imperialist (with no relation to world revolution) or even Democratic socialist with many being a mix of these
A global socialist revolution is likely not coming, not just in our lifetime, it's not coming at all. Too many variables.
Class consciousness won't be achieved, again not just in our lifetime, it's not happening at all.
In regards to these, I'd like to pull a quote from James Madison:
" As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties....A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts." - Federalist 10
TL;DR People will always have differing opinions on literally every possible topic. and When particularly concerning politics, people of similar interests will always form groups to protect said interests.
Obviously, this means a global revolution of any kind cannot occur, not to talk of socialist, as it requries mass class consciousness, which cannot be achieved because of fundamental differences of opinion that will always exist unless you attempt to bring about class consciousness unethically by removing the liberty of man to come to their own opinions and act on them.
That being said, I'd still like both to happen, but ion see em happening.
This is just pessimism. And no a “global” revolution won’t ever happen. It’ll happen one nation at a time and sometimes only sections of nations at a time.
Russia existed as an absolutionisy monarchy with a barely 10% literacy rate, a country dominated by neo-fuedalism and peasantry les than a decade before the October revolution.
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Working with groups like Stand Up To Racism doesn't make you implicated in its flaws. You can recognise the flaws of the organisation (and the many, map flaws of the SWP that essentially controls it) while recognising there's no real other option to building a united front against the far right.
Even under the most ideal circumstances, anarchism is unachievable. Now for the controversial part: I don’t think that anarchism of any form is a desirable political structure. Society today relies on too many complex structure and economic systems to ever devolve production to that level, and “mutual aid” is a feeble cop out. You cannot “mutual aid” your way into a functioning power grid, or advanced medical infrastructure. Even the ultimate dissolution of the state ultimately predicted by Marx will in no way resemble the society anarchism desires. Instead, organizational structures will come into being which assume the administrative functions of the dissolved states, but merely bereft of their function as a tool for facilitating class domination.
I don't have to agree with everything Stalin did. I think killing Bukharin was a huge mistake. But Stalin's record as a leader speaks for itself.
Along the way, many innocent people and also many good comrades who simply disagreed or didn't see things the same way were killed (I will remind you that their politics were a dire kill or be killed situation. Had Stalin ignored his opposition, they would have killed him.). It was a brutal struggle. I respect all the comrades who fought for a better world. Even Trotsky, who I think meant well, but was just wrong.
You have to understand these people and their desperation. I don't engage in factionalism. I look at what worked and discard the rest.
Clearly, every theorist up to now has been wrong fundamentally in their strategy of how to bring about socialism. When it is achieved, it will be done in a way people didn't really think about back then.
Maybe China will do it. Maybe someone else will. The machine of history will continue to grind on, and the material conditions will change as new technology and possibilities emerge.
Note: Keep it civil, obviously.
Only socialism can prevent climate change. Simply "buying better" will not solve the problem
Voting with your dollars. American-style democracy. Corporations are people too! /s
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Me arguing with liberals that their favourite politician is a genocidal maniac
Insert Do you know how little this narrows it down meme
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Had to break it to dickriders of Obama that he indeed did drone strike children and send child soldiers into war , they played the "no but that was indirectly card" you know the same one h*tler defenders play? Yeah that one.... I cannot put up with liberals
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Depends on which one we're talking about tbh. Lenin? Brutal yes. Genocidal no. Stalin? Debatable, I'd say yes but there is a valid argument based in historical analysis against it. Mao? Kinda? Depends what your line for genocide is, if you count cultural genocide then yes absolutely but if you're looking only for mass-killing genocides then he's also a no. Ho chi minh, no. And in fact that mf stopped a genocide in progress. Castro? Also no, although his regime was pretty shitty to queer people, Christians, and afro-cubans for a while, they never really crossed the line into genocide, and reformed those tendencies later on anyway.
Really the only two socialist leaders I can think of that were indisputably genocidal are Pol Pot and Ceauşescu, and I dont see even the most hardcore tankies defending them.
Wasn’t there a poll at some point where Ceauşdscu had a lot of nostalgia for him?
There's always nostalgia for bygone eras from some segment of the population. Especially because of how awful what came after was for Romania.
But he committed the cardinal sin of autocracy: he was incompetent. You can be brutal as all hell, but if you keep the state running properly you can usually get away with it. There's a reason Ceauşescu went out the way he did.
Don't look up what happened in Romanian orphanages in the 80's if you don't want to be sick for a week.
That was the whole “let’s make as many babies as possible without bothering to care for them” thing right
That too.
It was also the whole "we're going to give them blood transfusions without screening the blood products. Oh yea and it's the 80's"
So many of his worst aspects are just baffling. Not even like intentional evil, just deeply bizarre and incompetent evil.
There is a decent amount of nostalgia, doesn’t mean he wasn’t generally pretty bad though.
Yeah, I’m just saying there is some apologia for him
Oh yeah, it exists. He wasn’t 100% bad, and Romania got really screwed over after him, but I don’t see much if any apologetics from any ML spaces I’ve been in.
He also screwed over Romania in the 80s by austerity measures, he was really egocentric and really wanted to pay the debt by giving less food to the people, kinda dumb
EDIT: Who downvoted me lmao? It is no secret that Ceausescu was the worst "socialist" from the eastern block, had like 40 houses, cared more about western relations
Of course Romania had many great policies because of socialism that unfortunately are not present now in Romania, but he was truly not a good leader and he did commit some war crimes towards citizens
Yep, you will see people criticize Tito for taking on IMF loans and going into debt, and Romania did a similar thing. Endless things to criticize.
Yeah, while nostalgia is very tricky, a good chunk of older people in Eastern Europe feel nostalgic for socialism in a way that feels legitimate, because many say that even though they were technically “poor” (in the capitalist sense), they didn’t have to worry much about life, about being fired, about being able to pay for rent, about their children’s futures.
So while Ceausescu was a dickhead and by the 80s the eastern bloc was rotten, capitalism just sucks, people who are technically in the top 20% of society are just one decision by their boss away from living on the streets.
It is a testament to socialism that even in the eastern bloc, which was generally a mess, in Romania, which was probably the worst of the states, had a lot of aspects that were preferable to capitalism still.
Regardless we must do much better than what he was doing.
life got better after ceausescu dunno what you talking about. Indeed liberals politicians arefucking people over in the country but the living conditions got better, but there needs to be a strong left in Romania
And Pol Pot is barely leftist. I've seen more people call Pol Pot a CIA plant than have carried water for him lol
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stalin was a woman and just very butch
If that sex with Stalin game didn't consider this then it's not worth playing
Too many leftists believe that poverty, hunger/famine is a policy position….. only when it’s capitalists.
I don't know of many leftists who think that poor policy management is not a part of what caused multiple famines, and poverty as well. So idk that this is a position that actually is unpopular. We have to learn from these attempts at building a better future, so we have to engage with the good and the bad.
What many leftists will say is that these socialist projects did not materialize out of thin air and that the conditions that led to revolutions cannot just disappear overnight. And also that capitalists have never just let socialists do their thing in peace - they have always seen socialism as a threat, and we do live in a world dominated by capitalists who have the power to destroy socialist projects with military force, embargos and other bullshit.
That does not mean that people's suffering can be ignored or handwaved. This is real life and we have to contend with the reality that progress does in fact take work, sacrifice and time. This does not mean we excuse poor management, or act like it's only capitalists who have suffered during crises in socialist projects.
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As a little pet project I’ve been going through the list of “old Bolsheviks” on Wikipedia (anyone who joined prior to 1905) and seeing what happened to them. I’m only just at the L last names but like holy hell man this has been brutal.
But my point more broadly is that it should not be considered a Lib take to fuckin hate Stalin. Like the guy maybe a bit more nuanced but no amount of nuance justifies mass murder of people who, and I cannot stress this enough, we’re on his fuckin side.
this is unsurprising, sadly
This is awesome (and depressing), thank you! Quantifying how much of the core Bolshevik party Stalin murdered really brings the extent of his betrayal into perspective. Sure, he may not have actually been some one-dimensional cartoon villain, but really, with results like these he may as well have been.
The core of the party really hits the nail on the head too, cause if you were someone of any kind of importance or did anything of note, you were facing the wall. There’s a saying that’s generally applied to the holocaust but it just as much applies to this, “the best did not survive”.
The only way a lot of the people in green survived is by being so irrelevant and insignificant that the nkvd and Stalin probably didn’t remember they existed and then they had the good grace not to remind them. And narcs and nkvd officials who carried out the purge were not safe, they’d be on the next trial and in front of the firing squad they’d previously commanded.
And I think this whole process and the familiarization with the early ussr it has given me has definitely shaped my opinions on different points and I definitely lean far more staunchly Anti-Authoritarian even more than I already did. Like I’ve not done too much reading of theory but if this is what M-L ism is about (or even if it isn’t and this is just a manifestation of baked in flaws) I don’t want anything to do with it and I think that should be an understandable position to take.
I don’t like political correctness culture very much. I feel like policing what people say only creates resentment, and what is far more effective is helping people understand why not to use certain language, and how language shapes culture, society, perception, etc.
There are many very woke people who are not necessarily super politically correct with the language they use. I respect them much more than those who police language, but are very much spineless in their actions/opinions (certain liberals).
Leading on from that last point, PC language can be used to virtue signal, while in reality silencing actual discussion.
Yeah, as a brown person, this is something I don't know how to reconcile with. I like the idea of talking rather than shutting something down, but still...
On one hand, limiting free speech can be a slippery slope and pc culture can quickly terminate any discussion about culture, politics, and society if someone makes the mistake of saying something that is anti-woke when they're not actually intending to be anti-woke. It can even be used as a shield by some really shitty people... and governments (guess who). It can also make hateful rhetoric seem like it's correct and/or revolutionary, simply because so many openly and loudly oppose it and because it can be censored by people in places of power.
On the one hand, what happens when you permit intolerance? It normalizes the discussion of things like eugenics, homophobia, sexism, racism, etc and opens them up for moral debates that drift into politics and policy. When certain people join in or feel emboldened, it can quickly turn into a justification for hate, discrimination, genocide, and of course, class division. What happens when governments and organizations also exercise intolerant free speech? What about scientists, economists, and social scientists who champion things like eugenics, race science, etc.
Idk, just feels like a very complicated issue that isn't fully understood and has been made even more difficult to come up with a solution for with the advent of the Internet and the mass production of propaganda, which is incredibly hard to counter with facts and logic.
Yeah I get what you’re saying. One thing I feel though is that, if we don’t open up slightly to intolerant free speech, it’s much harder to attack what is otherwise presented as vague speech and dog whistles. On the other hand if we can easily recognise intolerant free speech, we can easily argue with it/nip it in the bud.
Your point about hate being platformed more is true. There definitely should be some limits to it.
Democracy is non-negotiable. A republic or any style Democratic government should always allow their people and workers representation of themselves or electing others to do so.
[EDIT] Ranch is the best sauce
Unbelievable! Ranch is not! you are banned
i recognise that quote...
What do you think of democratic centralism? And, if it's not too big a question, it's implementation historically?
Left wing politics is excessively dominated by people who expect to do the same things as always and this time have it work out. The reformists will have the right candidates this time, definitely; material conditions will align for a first-world revolution soon, definitely; failure can be chalked up to ineffable factors that require no self reflection. Hope has become a pure psychological coping mechanism.
Nationalism in any sense is anti-communist. Movements that rely on nationalism to liberate themselves from imperialism will only lead to themselves becoming oppressors after liberation, and it will lead to more oppression during the act of liberation itself. I believe China and Vietnam are good examples of this, both have strong nationalist sentiments that were used for liberation but have led to modern day oppression within those countries. Communism is inherently anti-nation and anti-nationalist
Edit: just to add some clarification. Nationalism is not worse than oppression by colonization. Nationalism is worse than a movement not built on nationalism, and nationalism is not fundamentally needed for liberation. Countries that rely on nationalism for liberation generally end up more oppressive after liberation than countries that do not rely on nationalism due to that lasting nationalism, which leads to oppression of minority groups etc. communism must be built on a base of anti-nationalism or there must be a continuous revolution that gets rid of nationalism
Nationalism in colonized countries is of liberationary nature and is historically progressive. Saying that this nationalism in these countries somehow leads to more oppression is blatantly false and just imperialist apologia. China and Vietnam are miles better, even with the oppression that exists today, than pre-liberation. Yes, Communism is inherently anti-nation and anti-nationalist, but you can't just ignore the actual material conditions. Nationalism for example in Palestine is historically progressive.
Just because something is historically progressive doesn’t make it communist, capitalism used to be historically progressive.
Okay? When did i ever say that anything historically progressive is communist?
nationalism will not be historically progressive forever. there are virtually no feudal relations left that still need to be overcome by a bourgeoisie/nationalist movement.
Would the balkanisation of say, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India or Indonesia, into multiple nation states, constituted by the ethnic groups that made up their former whole, still be progressive?
EDITED: I guess the only place where nationalism could still be historically progressive would be sub saharan africa. Due to the areas unique position of being exploited by almost every imperial power, be it the USA, europe or china
You are right that nationalism is not historically progressive pretty much anywhere in the world except Palestine. I was just pointing out the fact that nationalism in colonized countries is historically progressive since the op was claiming that nationalism in china and Vietnam and similar colonized countries was somehow more oppressive than the imperialism it sought to overthrow.
Ah, my bad, i didnt finish reading ops (the op u replied to) comment 💀. i didnt catch the part with china or vietnam 😅.
The origins of German nationalism were an emancipatory movement against both French imperialism and Prussian feudalism. And look how that turned out.
It is impossible to draw a hard line between colonized and colonizing nations, because a political entity can be both victim and perpetrator of imperialism and colonialism. Countries like the UAE are subject to Euro-American hegemony while also engaging in the systemic exploitation of South-East Asia.
Nationalism is not evil because the nations that engaged in it were historically imperialists, but because nationalism and imperialism are inherently part of the same system. This is the same misunderstanding that prompts liberals to blame the evils of capitalism on individual capitalists.
German nationalism is not evil because it is German, it is evil because nationalism is inherently exclusionary and anti-solidarity.
Nationalism in specifically colonized countries is emancipatory in nature. It's the same as how capitalism was historically progressive. You can dislike it all you want.
Every step toward a socialist wing of rhe Democratic party in the US is a step into the hands of the capitalists who run the political establishment. This road leads away from independence, away from real workin class political power. Something something master's tools, something something master's house.
someone's metaphysical beliefs are irrelevant if they support socialism. I saw a podcast clip where a Muslim author explained that because of his religious beliefs, he is not a materialist. But he thought that Marxism was an extremely important mode of historical analysis and that he supports Marxist organizations and he would support a Marxist party. He got flayed in the comments section by leftists, and some of the comments even got Islamophobic. And it was absolutely unnecessary. He was an author given a platform and he chose to be honest about his position while still supporting Marxism. The comments could have been about solidarity and unity, but because he mentioned he's a Muslim, the comment section became a miserable display of leftist dis-unity and online elitism, instead of actual support for change.
We should base on anthropology more to design policy and prefigure a better society.
And I feel this should be a no brainer, but I get that modern and postmodern ideology doesn't like to think of humans as an animal species.
Is "being based on anthropology" a euphemism for acknowledging "human nature" aka the cornerstone of capitalist ideology? Or do you mean something else?
Very short answer: No, not at all.
Short answer: Quite the contrary. The supposed "human nature" of capitalist ideology is not based on anthropology at all, but on the liberal homo economicus model for modern, domesticated, and proletarianized humans. That's the euphemism.
Long answer: Contemporary anthropology (not to be confused with the early supremacist pseudoscience used to justify colonialism) studies the human kind as an animal species, and as such describes what we may call "natural" features of humans. Only, the concept of "natural" is not really used that way in natural sciences because everything is "nature" by definition, nothing is not natural.
While our political goals must emerge from agency, class consciousness and the understanding of historical material conditions, the kind of society we are trying to prefigure risks of being heavily biased by the modern and postmodern ideology of our time.
What can we learn from anthropology? Anatomically modern humans are around 300.000 years old. Human domestication happened around 12.000 years old. We are now learning lots of things we didn't know about the first 96% of out time before cities and agriculture, mainly from the later paleolithic (-12.000 to -100.000). I'm not a paleo-something, I'm not saying we should turn to live as prehistoric hunter gatherers. But some of the later findings are quite revealing of very very very long periods of time were humans had a relatively similar way of life, based around the ecosystem dynamics the species emerged from, which is usually the best way to live for any other animal that we know of in the world.
We could try simple thinks like grouping by 200-300 people like evidence shows we did almost always (including early agricultural settlements), going rural and working the land not only for food sovereignty and environmental reasons, but also for mental health, and exploring some ways of organization and "spirituality" that seem to have granted these humans a fairly egalitarian communal cohesion and solidarity (without naivety or romanticizing it, of course).
Noooo, no, it can be, but it's not. I see your worry and would like to reassure you that research done by anthropologists can outright counter many of the bs, "human nature", "greed is good", "people are self-interested", "end of history", narratives/arguments of capitalism with historical and archeological evidence to prove the contrary. It isn't inherently ideological, and it can be extremely damning evidence against capitalism and its priestly economists, it just so happens that its researchers aren't immune to the ideological teachings of our time.
In fact, seeing as you're flared as an Anarcho-communist you might like AAAAA LOT of what some anthropologists have to say.
!WARNING, IDEOLOGICAL TAKE INCOMING!
My take away has been that the story of mankind isn't only about selfishness or patriarchal and hierarchical dominance in the name of progress and greed. My take away has been that people are as intelligent and altruistic as they've always been (over the millennia) and that almost every human story contains some hint of altruism, struggle, creativity, or friendship.
Yes, I agree. I think you might like my other answer.
Command economies, centrally planned economies, soviet-type economic planning, whatever the hell you wanna call it. It just doesn’t work. Socialism can work, but that shit is just god awful. It’s also counterintuitive to Marxism on so many levels. ML’s PLEASE find something better
I agree that bureaucratically planned economies can’t work in the long run, because as we’ve seen in the USSR and Eastern European stalinist countries, the bureaucracy becomes disconnected from the workers’ reality on the terrain and becomes corrupt due to its privileges which leads to poor planning. The best example of bureaucratic planning utterly failing at its task is in my opinion the Great Leap Forward. If the workers and peasants had democratically planned the production together the famine would’ve probably never ended up happening. But I do think that a planned economy can work if the plans are democratically elaborated and approved by every layer of the working class.
Revolutionary Marxist parecon (participatory economics, i.e. a democratically planned economy) has entered the chat.
FUCKING FINALLY GOD DAMNIT
I agree that centrally planned economies, for example China, are not socialist. But if you really wanna argue, empirically centrally planned economies are more 'efficient' then free market economies, now that we can use computers to process massive data. But both are capitalist anyway and not what we as communists should aspire for.
I think that centrally planed economies are a start but should be driven more by a Democratic decision on what can be focused on. It isn’t the end all be all but economic democracy seems the best start for social ownership rather than just a party or state making the decisions (how that would be done i of course do not know)
You should read about decentralized planning. I think that's what you are trying to refer to.
This one came straight out of the oven. It's hot! 🔥🔥
I’ll die on this hill. There’s a reason putting private organizations in charge of the economy was a horrible idea, and you do not solve this by putting state-run organizations in charge instead. What that does is create a bureaucratic mess of unresolved externalities, corruption, logistical nightmares, a horrible lack of coordination that affects resource allocation and redistribution. Also, the Soviet-Type model only really works for heavy industry and NOTHING ELSE. Besides, if you centralize economic power, there’s no chance of it ever decentralizing. Ask Khrushchev, funnily enough.
People call me utopian for being an anarchist, but what’s utopian to me is believing that the “communist” bureaucracy will surrender its own power willingly, because as we know, the economically dominant classes will not willingly give up their wealth. That’s why we’re communists in the first place.
I'm curious. What do you propose as an alternative?
Participatory economics. Basically you collectivize firms, services and property (with the exception of individual artisans) who self-manage and federate into planning bodies. Best explained by Michael Albert. Also, cybernetics in order to adapt to scale. I especially like the renumeration part of Parecon, abolishing traditional currency in favor of labor vouchers.
OK... Do you think MLs and other pro central planning people want bureaucracy? Like they just sat around, thought and realised that what the world needs is more bureaucrats?
Yes, actually. That’s the whole point of central planning. If you centralize planning in the hands of the state, who else is supposed to plan the economy? The flying spaghetti monster? Hell, even when production was socialized in Catalonia you still had ML’s that were basically like “sure, let’s nationalize a functioning economy that’s already in the hands of the workers.” And was it not Lenin who wanted a socialist bureaucracy? Because if not, then I’ve got something to say to a lot of MLs.
And you think the state is made up of what exactly? Because the state MLs want is specifically one built on Soviet democracy. Soviet democracy is literally a federation of councils. And the point of the councils is to get mass input and oversee implementation. The point of the federation is to coordinate things by taking advantage of economy of scale.
The thing I think you're not realising is that bureaucracy doesn't grow on purpose. It is instead a coping mechanism for when there is no capacity for a non-bureaucratic, more Revolutionary alternative. The Soviets tried to do mwhat you're suggesting, failed and did what worked instead.
Soviet democracy has only really existed in anarchist movements, though. Especially Makhnovshchina. The thing is that soviet democracy got thrown out by the Bolsheviks because it wasn’t great at times of war, and then emergency measures became life. Taking credit for soviet democracy, then saying it doesn’t work is crazy. Also, you mean that workers actually controlling the means of production and not being at the mercy of a coercive state is “impossible?” You just went against Marx! Heathen.
Bureaucracy doesn’t grow on purpose, but it sure as hell keeps itself alive forever on purpose. It which point just give up on communism because bureaucratization is something that no socialist state has actually survived. There’s also soooo many revolts and measures that the Bolsheviks could’ve avoided if they kept their socialized policies, but okay man.
Soviet democracy unambiguously existed in a good number of socialist states from the USSR to Maoist China to even early Vietnam. These are places where Soviet democracy not only existed but had to exist in order to get as far as they did, especially in Vietnam and China.
Who said Soviet democracy doesn't work?
I agree. There needs to be a more active focus on fighting bureaucratisation. That is something I think most serious MLs will agree with you on. This is something even the ML "bigwigs" understood. The Great Purge was motivated partly by strong anti-bureaucratic sentiments. The Cultural Revolution too. You can find writings from both Che and Fidel discussing the problem of bureaucracy in Cuba. This is something we have been thinking about forever.
I guarantee you "just don't have a bureaucracy" has been attempted before and failed. And it failed for a good number of reasons from insufficient political and organisational work to it being unstable in times of military threat/attack to having an economy that was just too underdeveloped to make it possible. So maybe you should focus more on how to deal with that particular problem rather than just going "I would simply not have one" because if it was a simple choice, we'd all be on the same side here.
And you think your system won't create bureaucrats?
Well, coming from a council communist one would assume you already know the answer to this question.
A federation of councils is nowhere near the bureaucracy of state socialism, and shouldn’t even be classified as a bureaucracy. With democratic planning based on mass input, with coordinators rather than commanders, with direct oversight and with the decentralized features of cybernetic systems, you’d make the antithesis to a bureaucracy.
Regardless of how you call it, those are bureaucratic, but I don't find it to be necessarily bad, checks and balances are just necessary to keep oversight over those planning councils and coordinators.
Checks and balances. Firstly, please tell me the definition of a bureaucracy? And how is a directly elected federation of unions, councils, etc. a “bureaucracy?”
I mean market socialism is a thing
Better, but still not right. Defaulting to capitalist mechanisms to stabilize socialism is counterproductive
You could also just have decentralised planning
THATS WHAT THE FUCK IVE WANTED
Fair but I'm not informed enough on that to have an opinion in the matter
Something worth investing on planned economies tho is if computing is able to overcome the calculation error problem
Oh, if only Glushkov could’ve saved the USSR
Sure, but in the short term I believe it's more beneficial than a planned economy
Planned economies can work, it’s just that putting the planning in the hands of some random schmucks and not the workers and firms themselves who already handle production, logistics, distribution, transportation, coordination, etc. is highly inefficient
Central planning does include this though, it just makes it cohesive
'The first and most essential governing tasks in the U.S.S.R. start at the workers' bench. Here took form the Five Year Plan that startled the world. Production meetings after work discuss shop problems, what holds back production, how much it can be increased, granted certain raw materials, machines and skilled per- sonnel, for the coming year. These discussions are enlarged on factory scale; they go up from factory to the central offices of the trust. Word comes down to the shop again that the country needs certain new machines. Can we make them in our plant? And here workers' invention and suggestion widen to include a nation's plans. Delegates from other industries which need the machines arrive, explain, mutually consult.
For a socialist state this is the simplest, most basic act of government; workers planning expansion and improvement of their publicly owned properties. The biggest basic plants, supplying equipment on which the rest of the land depends-steel works, auto works, locomotive works, mines become naturally known as "political centers." I can pick them out in Moscow: Electric Works, Auto Works, Ball-Bearing Works, Aviation Works, and others. From these centers arise new ideas, new policies for the nation's growth; before any new policy is seriously considered, wide sampling takes place of workers' opinion in these centers. When any policy is put through, the active force for carrying it into being consists of the workers in such centers and other workers organized around them.
Political life in rural districts starts around the use of the land. Sixty peasants in council-the collective farm of a small village -meet with the representative of the township land department or the farm expert from the tractor station to draw up their "farm plan." Num- ber of households, of people, of horses, ploughs, tractors, extent and type of land must be included. The plan must take account of the little community's food and fodder needs, the past crop rotations, the marketable crop recommended by the state for their locality. Certain general directions come down from the central Commissariat of Agriculture, filtered through the provincial land offices and adapted to their region: a two percent increase in grain or a rise in industrial crops is asked for.' - Anna Louise Strong, Dictatorship and Democracy in the Soviet Union, pp. 7-8
I would agree, however, that over-bureaucratization did occur in socialist states, but I feel as if this can be whipped back into shape. Albert Symanzki suggests a cultural revolution in 'Is The Red Flag Still Flying?'.
Fundamentally, these mechanisms don’t exist. It would only be as simple as “worker chains” if we didn’t implement Stalinist economic policies to economic planning. Also, the overinvestment problem seen in almost all socialist states are all clear symptoms of a lack of worker participation. A lack of worker participation was actually WIDESPREAD in the Soviet Union and often caused some unrest. Highly recommend you read what Alec Nove has to say about this. If Anna Louise Strong’s accounts were actually correct, then you wouldn’t have had the Great Purges, and you wouldn’t have had a mass industrialization program that did not give a DAMN about workers.
Vanguard parties don’t work. They were designed as weapon against revisionism and failed.
Do you perfer mass parties? Or just dislike parties in general?
Edit: by mass parties I mean a party that open to the masses and it plans to use its large membership and presence to spread revolutionary sentiment and to have a large number of human capital and organisational reach for a revolution.
As opposed to a vanguard party which seeks to be a small party of professional revolutionaries.
I always thought of the idea of allowing more than one leftist parties but banning the right leaning parties.
Go on
Vanguard parties were conceived as an idea to prevent revisionists seizing control. The Soviet Union and the peoples republic of China were both seized by revisionist (Gorbachev at the latest, and Deng) did not do its job therefore does not work.
Tea
This is like saying you can't overthrow capitalism because in both cases capitalism was eventually restored. just because something doesn't succeed doesn't make it sterile.
Oof yeah that is definitely something 🤔
You just have the whole purpose of a vanguard party wrong. Vanguard parties are not to fight against revisionism, but to lead the proletariat during the revolution as highly organized, educated and effective strata of the proletariat. The whole idea that they are supposed to prevent revisionism stems from either a complete misunderstanding, not actually reading lenin or later stalinist conception. Vanguard parties are not supposed to take power and guard against revisionism. The only reason the Bolsheviks took power is because they had no choice but to do so when the soviets became functionally defunct due to all the workers being busy fighting the civil war.
The two examples you gave below of China and Ussr are incorrect because they didn't fail because of the vanguard party. The Chinese revolution was not a marxist one in the first place, deng was not its downfall, mao's class collaboration was. The USSR was doomed when the german revolution failed and the international revolution never came.
One of the major reasons the german revolution failed was Rosa's refusal to form a vanguard party.
China isn't communist, its a capitalist police state testing ground with a communist mask
https://preview.redd.it/h8bg43yb6a9g1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a42893f3b983372a72210015ff920ebb01ff8592
Being a cool person with unapologetic, principled beliefs is a better way of convincing reactionary friends and coworkers than debating and arguing with them.
We are all someones first introduction to what a leftist is actually like.
Those who genuinely believe that harm reduction is useless really need to look at how direct the current American governments attack on trans people is
Or read anything about Weimar Germany. "After Hitler us" DOESN'T WORK.
Stalin was a mediocrity who killed the Bolshevik party (literally and figuratively) at the behest of a rising bureaucratic caste that had no interest in advancing socialism. Sorry, not sorry.
Voting, in the tradional western sense, is completely innefectual. Even "progressive" candidates offer little to the average person in a system designed for exploitation.
I get into this with liberals every presidential cycle after they screamed at me for not voting for their "harm reduction" candidate.
And when they actually bring actual substantial positive change to the working class, like FDRs New Deal it's all just a momentary retreat, short term concessions for long term exploitation.
What pisses me off about the "harm reduction" rhetoric is that I'm absolutely amendable to harm reduction as a concept and even voting for it. The problem is these scumbag liberals never offer anyone that is ACTUALLY harm reduction, just someone with the sense of optics to calm everyone down.
The progression from one mode of production to another isnt guaranteed and the individual can drastically impact the world, “great man theory” is not absolute but individuals can personally radically change the flow of history (even though they are constrained by their environmental conditions).
Property is theft
But what is even is theft without property? Private property is theft is the eyes of collective property and vice versa.
The inability of much of the left to incorporate environmental collapse as a primary material condition is an unbelievable failure. Frameworks that haven't been able to adapt to a literal human-made extinction event, and continue to not be able to do so, have stopped being materially responsive and shouldn't be supported. Ideologies that perpetuate anthropocentrism, growth imperatives, and exploitative relations to non-human life only serve to redistribute who manages our current, existential collapse, rather than to confront it.
“Socialism In One Country” is ideological poison and anti-Marxist drivel. Sorry, not sorry.
Maoism is different from what Mao DID. Most honest Chinese socialists see them as mistakes from the past. It was a truly humanitarian catastrophe beyond comparison. However, what Mao WROTE was pretty good actually. The bad part is he not doing what he said should be done. And what was done was really really badly executed..
He is like a lot of ideologists who seem to at times be paradoxical towards what the preach at times. At one moment he is celebrating the restoration of a commune that is independent from the party and the next he denounces them for that once he realizes that it would threaten his grip on the people. I can’t say i am sinologist so if someone refutes my example i am open to hearing it out. My main point is that he was always someone so close to radical change and then running it back once criticism started forwarding towards him, that’s how i interpret his policies like the 100 flowers campaign
I think the existence of a state is contradicting Marx's intent of communism because at the core of his theory he argued for no state no class and no money in the society
I think this is kind of a misreading of Marx. Or at least an under-reading. Bro wrote a lot.
In the aftermath of the Paris Commune's demise, for example, he wrote that a socialist movement must destroy the existing state and create a new one that would be by and for the workers. This was because the communards had tried to take the existing state institutions in Paris and use them to achieve communist ends, and it went horribly for them.
He was also pretty clear throughout his career that the DotP would be a transitional worker's state, and that only the fabled "Communist Mode of Production" would be the classless, stateless society that he and Engels described.
Economic value theory is worthless to socialism outside of critiquing capitalism.
Publicly funded high density high rise housing in all cities.
We don’t need a stock market
Democratic socialism is (in my opinion) a radical-flavored sub ideology of social democracy, and is no socialism at all
The Soviets made a massive blunder in attacking the ukraine anarchists, from both a strategic, pragmatic and ideological standpoint
the anarchists were competant fighters against the white armies and by attacking them, the soviets had to redirect forces to a new front line (they didnt expect the anarchists to put up a strong resistence) which led to both the whites and blacks gaining ground from the reds. in addition to this, the anarchists had no plans to do a first strike to the soviets (both the Russian SSR and Ukraine SSR) and were content with the status quo, which led to both sides having a shorter frontline and more secure supply lines. Finally, the anarchists (just like the Left-SRs) were popular among the peasants which allowed the Soviets to make in-roads to the peasantry and 'proletarianise' them. They did they before the october revolution with both the anarchists and the Left-SRs, however when they turned on them both suddenly in-roads to the peasant base became harder and led to the peasants rejecting socialism in its entirety, further wasting resources for the Soviets.
tldr: trotsky and lenin were idiots for fighting the Makhno Anarchists and Stalin was an idiot for imprissoning the Left-SRs
Stalin wasn't as terrible as he's made out to be but we shouldn't be hero worshipping him because he wasn't as good as MLs like to spout.
Religion doesn't have to be the opium of the people and faith can actually contribute to liberation in certain contexts.
Yes, I think modern (usually eurocentric) anarchists and communists failed to value the power of spirituality because of the oppressive and reactionary historical role of religions. Some ways of spirituality have worked in favor of the sustainability and cohesion of egalitarian communities around the world for all of human existence, and it deserves more of our attention. PS: I am an atheist, interested in animism like ancient vedic and pachamama.
Covid, for one
Dogmatic anti-theism is an active hinderance to any socialist project and is in most cases nothing more than an expression of unresolved personal religious trauma and/or unexamined individual desire for superiority over "the masses" masquerading as a principled political stance.
Me arguing with other Muslims that we should be boycotting countries like Saudia Arabia and the UAE. This includes vacationing in Dubai and going to Hajj.
The problem isn’t technofeudalism, or neoliberalism, or corporatism, or oligarchy, or whatever the fuck. The problem is capitalism.
As a corollary, the US isn’t fascist or Bonapartist, it’s still a bourgeois democracy.
A vanguard of sorts is essential. Capitalism will start global wars to prevent socialism and you think an open democratic party can stand up to that?
Also, the left needs to get it's fucking act together and stop being such pussies. Such purist little bitches. The right has no qualms and does not give a fuck and outplays the left at every chance because they're pragmatic even when they disagree. The left has no pragmatism. The left even says online activism is useless while the right has massive online networks spreading their propaganda. Get it together.
Democracy sucks. In an anarchist way.
Me explaining in other subs that China is in fact not Socialist nor progressing towards it
The DPRK is entirely a victim on the scale of geopolitics. It survived attempted Genocide by the US but is not given the same grace as any other victim of US Hegemony entirely because of Western Propaganda. Many “Leftists”end up repeating state talking points against the DPRK which manufactures consent for the ongoing attempted genocide of their people and way of life. It’s a complete betrayal of so-called “Anti-Imperialistic Values.”
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Industrial agglomeration is a way bigger deal than any economic theory makes it out to be.
Me everytime I talk politics to a liberal, especially Filipino liberals.
A democracy without a state is a utopian ideal that is unsustainable and will inevitably fail due to either internal or external forces. Not saying the state has to be hierarchical, but people need the free flow of information to make judgements about their circumstances, education in order to vote their interest, and regulations/protections against others with greater power in order to not be exploited. I don't think all humans are paranoid, ignorant, cruel, and greedy, but there will always be some humans who end up thinking/acting that way.
I also don't want bears to overrun my town, because everyone decided we don't need waste disposal.
Rejecting metaphysics is a metaphysical claim 😤
National liberation is reactionary in the modern day
There is no such thing as “socialist commodity production”
You cannot have socialism in a single country
The trade-unions are counter-revolutionary in the modern day and labor organizing will have to take on a more militant self-organized structure
The revolution must coincide with the proletarian dictatorship which takes on an anti-state character and is at its strongest points the active process of communisation, during this period the class-party is a necessary component but this party must not be a government in waiting and should always be outside of the proletarian dictatorship and its power structures
Online leftist disunity does nothing but discourage class consciousness and therefore reddits like this and discords should be shut down and rather we should focus on building class unity and unions
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Palestine belongs to Palestinians, circa 2009-present
Non-vegan leftism is inconsistent.
You called out the left and made them feel bad.
Kinda sad that I had to scroll down so far to find your comment. It probably best encapsulates the vibe of the image.
As in?
Animals used in agriculture are the largest group of oppressed and exploited beings on earth. If you apply the values of leftism consistently and oppose all forms of exploitation and oppression, you’ll logically end up at veganism. Only severe cognitive dissonance can lead one to call themselves a leftist while exploiting other animals.
I agree in the sense that a leftist society would become vegan just by principle. But if you’re going around leftist circles and arguing that every leftist who eats meat is a hypocrite people are just going to think you’re an idiot. Logically you’re right but really there are so many bigger and more apparent issues that must be solved. Most leftists are just more pragmatic and want to solve the issues in front of them because they’re actively destroying their lives. It’s not hypocrisy it’s survival.
You’re saying I’d be considered an idiot while being right. Examine that. Why wouldn’t one be able to tackle all the usual leftists issues while being vegan. What is keeping you or any other leftist from going vegan right now?
I disagree that it’s not a major leftist issue. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of ecological decline and global warming. The prevalence of consuming animal products is the result of decades of capitalist propaganda. It IS one of those issues right in front of us, actively destroying our lives. Veganism is part of pragmatic leftism.
Trust me, I’ve been a leftist for much longer than that I’ve been a vegan. It was a huge ideological blind spot for me, and is still for most leftists. Going vegan has been one of the most meaningful personal choices I’ve made and it just made so much sense as a leftist.
Judging by the downvotes, I truly am like the picture in this post. It baffles me that my position is a hot take, but it is. It’s very disheartening to see how apprehensive leftists are of veganism.
Quite honestly, I have found transitioning to veganism a far easier a task than I anticipated before I myself made the switch. Sure, I have to spend slightly more time reading ingredients and learning how to cook new things, but is that really a significant sacrifice to make in the grand scheme of things?
If we allow convenience to determine our decision making, how can we expect to be able to make the truly monumental sacrifices that will be necessary to build a better world? Surely it would be more convenient for many to just let things continue as they currently are.
Unfortunately I believe that for most to make this change it will require their conditions to be altered significantly, through ecological collapse for instance. I hope that on this subject I am wrong.
I’m not apprehensive of veganism, I just can’t afford it. And like most people I understand that a lot of people are fighting their day to day lives instead of a big conglomerate life altering issue. Before veganism can be truly supplanted in most societies, leftism has to be able to do anything first. And until we get support from the masses who eat meat, we can’t push that messaging too hard or people will just think we’re more elitist than we already are.
I work a minimum wage job supporting myself and my partner. If I can afford being vegan, anyone can. If anything, my weekly expenses have gone down after switching to a plant based diet. You don’t lack means, just discipline.
Veganism is literally something you can do right now. It neededn’t even be part of your public outreach. But if anything, you want vegans in your activist circles. They’re the most proactive and engaged group of activists I know, and I’ve been in quite some radical leftist spaces. Most leftists wait for the revolution to commence, vegans take things into their own hands. Much can be learned from their discipline and praxis.
It’s our task to dispel incorrect notions about leftism the masses may hold. Same for veganism. Both are unpopular for the wrong reasons. It makes no sense to want to inform and correct the public perception of one while going along with the reactionary propaganda on the other.
Ultimately, my point stands. Non-vegan leftism is ideologically inconsistent. So yes, you’re all wrong.
While, what you’re saying is logically correct I do think that switching an entire diet is more than affordability and discipline. People have to go out of their way to find new recipes, find things that they like and enjoy eating, figure out what they need to be eating to get proper nutrition and accept that they’re going to have to stop eating foods that they have been eating for their whole life. A lot of people may want to switch to veganism in principal but due to other stresses in their lives, they simply do not have the capacity to make a big change like that. A lot of people can’t focus on living their lives to be as perfect of a leftist as possible because they’re necessitating just living day to day due to the difficult times that we are in
For leftists especially, I don’t see this as a valid excuse. Clearly as a leftist, you have time to analyse the systems in which we live. You’re capable of doing research and have thus come to leftist conclusions. Leftists pride themselves on being intellectually curious. This should logically extend to researching why and how to be vegan. There are so many sources out there to make this process as seamless as possible. It really is a matter of motivation, not capability.
In my case, I was simply oblivious to the extent of the horrors involved with global animal agriculture. It is difficult to realise that you have been participating in immense cruelty and injustice. I urge all leftist to watch Dominion (2018), which is fully available on youtube. Once I saw what it’s all really like, I wanted nothing to do with it. No matter how difficult it might have been. And it wasn’t.
It’s important to note that being vegan isn’t a diet. It’s a philosophy that rejects all forms of oppression and exploitation of animals. It’s the extension of leftists values to other animal species. The diet is simply acting on this philosophy.
Anarchism and democracy (ANY democracy - representative, direct, consensus etc) are incompatible at a fundamental level.
i dont understand, how are you meant to come to an agreement then? or organise in general
First of all, there is a hidden-yet-obvious premise that needs to be exposed immediately before going any further. The question already assumes that agreement must be produced by a binding collective decision which is a democratic assumption, NOT a neutral one.
Anarchism starts from a different place entirely, where agreement, let alone a unitary one, is not a grand prerequisite for action, coordination ≠ decision-making just as organizing ≠ rule, so first to clarify the following: Why do we need "an agreement" in the first place? Who is being bound and by whom? The thing is, most conflicts dissolve once you drop the idea that a group must speak with one will.
Second, it's quite a miss to assume that anarchist coordination aims at blind, abstract "unity" at all costs. Democracy, whether representative, direct or consensus has a shared core in that it produces legitimacy for decisions, authorizes enforcement and subordinates minorities to outcomes and needless to say, anarchism by definition rejects all three.
Instead of "what does the group decide?" we must ask "who wants to do what, with whom and under what conditions?" and such a kind of shift is very much foundational.
Furthermore, how people actually organize without democracy? Well for one, anarchist organizational praxis is extremely diverse, theoretically as well as historically, the common denominator being usually that it works through principles of free association, mutual aid and recognition of our inherent interdependence, not aggregation.
Voluntary association is one of the concrete mechanisms, in it, people group around projects, not identities or territories. If you do not agree, you are free not to participate, form a parallel project or negotiate terms of cooperation. No one is entitled to your compliance nor are you to everyone conforming to your whims.
Then, affinity and initiative; those who care most about an action propose, organize and carry it out, as it stands to reason. Others opt-in because they want to, not because they were out-voted and compelled by being a momentary minority.
Negotiation instead of decision: when interests clash, people bargain, adapt, separate or compromise without a final authority, as unresolved disagreement does not require resolution to proceed. The thing is, deadlock is not a crisis - but coercion very much is.
After than, coordination by compatibility which means that large-scale organization emerges from federations of projects and networks of association (of any size/scale), mutual adjustments, shared infrastructure and sometimes, only if deemed absolutely necessary, revocable delegation (technical, not political). Nobody gains the right to command others (authority).
If people disagree? Well, they already do, democracy just hides it. In fact, democratic mechanism resolves disagreement by declaring one side "the decision", forcing the other side to comply. Anarchism resolves disagreement by letting differences persist (if a mutually satisfactory resolution just cannot be arrived at for whatever reason, though that would almost certainly be very rare) while re-arranging relations instead of overriding people. Sometimes, that can mean two kitchens instead of one, two strategies or two paths instead of one etc.
Now you or someone may ask why consensus is still not anarchist and yeah, this is where people get stuck often. Consensus to many may sound anarchist, but structurally it still treats the group as a unit, demands total participation, still pressures dissenters to conform and produces binding outcomes, and those are just direct, oroactive consequences consensus-assembly produces, which ignores more socio-psychological by-products of such social relation.
Anarchists historically tolerated it under the excuse of pragmatism (which often either backfired long-term or just wasn't a suitable thing to be considered "pragmatic"), not principally. Errico Malatesta's line is key here: "Anarchy cannot come but little by little... but it must always remain anarchy". So consensus becomes anti-anarchist the moment it stops being voluntary and ignorable.
Anarchism does not organize by making everyone agree but organizes by letting people freely coordinate, separate and recombine without anyone having the authority to decide for others while democracy "solves" disagreement by imposing outcomes. Anarchism solves it by changing relationships. If an agreement is mandatory, it isn't anarchism and that's non-negotiable, it's a matter of definition.
There is no such thing as "authoritarianism" or "totalitarianism."
Communism is No racism/clacism/etc instead of Everybody is the same and it did exist on the Second world, it improved life quality and it's collapse is the reason most of the old communist nations are third world level now.
Leftism shouldn't be approached solely from a pragmatic, materialistic angle, and must have at least a major part of its support be rooted in empathy and liberation of all. I mean this in the sense that "it makes more sense on an efficiency/production" angle shouldn't be a major defense of communism. Even if capitalism was the more efficient mode of organization, leftists should oppose capitalism because it is inhumane. I see far too many leftists, usually online, abandon liberatory and compassionate ideas and attitudes in the name of what they call "pragmatism" for the revolution. If the focus is entirely on how effective communism is compared to capitalism wothput a shred of empathy and liberatory empathy, it doesn't give me faith that that someone will stick to communism no matter what and is just going with an almost opportunistic approach to organizing themselves out from under capitalism.
Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyists seem to have more in common than they think so I do not understand why they dislike each other so much.
Also it chafes me just a little that a primary defense for vanguardism for the Soviet Union I've seen, and the defense for jailing the anarchists, was that anarchists are prone to infighting with other leftists and that would break the revolution that needed to be protected, so they did that, only for them to then start the infighting amongst themselves that they jailed the anarchists for. The post-Lenin schism between Stalin and Trotsky was interesting to read about, especially since the first time I heard the word Trotskyist was when an ML spit the word out like it was on fire.
MLs and Trotskyists do not even like other MLs and Trotskyists. Also MLs have more definitions of ML then Anarchists have for Authority, ML can mean: Stalinist, Trotskyist, 3 world Anti-Imperialist (with no relation to world revolution) or even Democratic socialist with many being a mix of these
In regards to these, I'd like to pull a quote from James Madison:
" As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties....A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts." - Federalist 10
TL;DR People will always have differing opinions on literally every possible topic. and When particularly concerning politics, people of similar interests will always form groups to protect said interests.
Obviously, this means a global revolution of any kind cannot occur, not to talk of socialist, as it requries mass class consciousness, which cannot be achieved because of fundamental differences of opinion that will always exist unless you attempt to bring about class consciousness unethically by removing the liberty of man to come to their own opinions and act on them.
That being said, I'd still like both to happen, but ion see em happening.
This is just pessimism. And no a “global” revolution won’t ever happen. It’ll happen one nation at a time and sometimes only sections of nations at a time.
Russia existed as an absolutionisy monarchy with a barely 10% literacy rate, a country dominated by neo-fuedalism and peasantry les than a decade before the October revolution.
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Working with groups like Stand Up To Racism doesn't make you implicated in its flaws. You can recognise the flaws of the organisation (and the many, map flaws of the SWP that essentially controls it) while recognising there's no real other option to building a united front against the far right.
Anti-communism, anarchism, trotskyism, left communism, liberalism
Even under the most ideal circumstances, anarchism is unachievable. Now for the controversial part: I don’t think that anarchism of any form is a desirable political structure. Society today relies on too many complex structure and economic systems to ever devolve production to that level, and “mutual aid” is a feeble cop out. You cannot “mutual aid” your way into a functioning power grid, or advanced medical infrastructure. Even the ultimate dissolution of the state ultimately predicted by Marx will in no way resemble the society anarchism desires. Instead, organizational structures will come into being which assume the administrative functions of the dissolved states, but merely bereft of their function as a tool for facilitating class domination.
Communism isn’t leftist (leftism representing the left wing of capital since the French Revolution) or an ideology
https://preview.redd.it/cxmfyoso139g1.jpeg?width=1348&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d20927ce9ae5e879fb59a7a3e6bfaf0c83bea709
- Ultra_Lefty, Italian LEFT communist
Left communist doesn’t mean super far left
Stalin was the most effective leader in human history.
Also, Bukharin wasn't that bad at all, and everyone should have listened to him more.
Which one is it? Because one murdered the other
I don't have to agree with everything Stalin did. I think killing Bukharin was a huge mistake. But Stalin's record as a leader speaks for itself.
Along the way, many innocent people and also many good comrades who simply disagreed or didn't see things the same way were killed (I will remind you that their politics were a dire kill or be killed situation. Had Stalin ignored his opposition, they would have killed him.). It was a brutal struggle. I respect all the comrades who fought for a better world. Even Trotsky, who I think meant well, but was just wrong.
You have to understand these people and their desperation. I don't engage in factionalism. I look at what worked and discard the rest.
Clearly, every theorist up to now has been wrong fundamentally in their strategy of how to bring about socialism. When it is achieved, it will be done in a way people didn't really think about back then.
Maybe China will do it. Maybe someone else will. The machine of history will continue to grind on, and the material conditions will change as new technology and possibilities emerge.
Nationalism can be very good, if not took to the extreme