Social Programs are just functions of government, they don't necessarily have any direct ties to Mode of Production. There are examples of Socialist social programs, such as Single Payer Healthcare where everyone along the Healthcare chain is a government employee and the Healthcare industry as a whole is owned and run by the Workers via the state, but most single Payer Healthcare programs heavily involve privatized companies that are paid by the state.
The problem with the word woke is that it was specifically about racial inequality and then the right made it synonymous with everything they hate about lgbtq people. White Christian Nationalism is the real mind virus.
No, we think woke is hysterical because no right wingers know what it means. I'll happily call myself woke, but I also use it as a sarcastic pejorative
That's what I would consider left, but not far-left. I suppose Socialism with Liberal Democracy, as opposed to a more direct or decentralized version of democracy, would be left but not far left as well. Capitalism ends where left begins.
Neither. The left/right divide is Socialism/Capitalism. There are various Overton Windows, ie what is considered left or right when compared to an areas median, like Liberalism being left of the American median despite being a right-wing, Capitalist ideology.
Anarchism, Communism, Marxism, and other forms of Socialism are leftist, while Liberalism, Social Democracy, and fascism are rightist.
Uh. Okay. If you say so. I wasn't going to say anything about the No True Scotsman fallacy, but you really did force my hand with that last one. That's outright silly, and a pretty vile attempt to coerce conformity out of of other progressives who don't align with your perspective on economics by thinking you can label them "right-wing" for it.
Right. I must've missed that because I don't care about this conversation at all. Labels were never my thing to begin with. But you can call me right-wing if it makes you feel better, as long as I get to keep my trans boyfriend.
You asked me, so I answered. Personally, I think left/right is hopelessly reductive, it ties too many unrelated things together, and says nothing of social views, of which you're presumably very progressive despite right wing economic views.
That's why I wouldn't call you "right wing" before I called you a liberal, which I'm sure we are both comfortable with.
I personally couldn't care less about economics. There are too many things to be right and passionate about for me to start worrying about all that theoretical insanity.
It's not linear. Anarchist or Libertarian Socialist systems like Syndicalism, Mutualism, Georgism, and Distributism are just as Socialist as Marxism in that they prevent the exploitation of capital accumulation, but they favor direct stakeholder ownership of firms in place of a state or other more communal systems that create an inherent hierarchy of power.
I'm aware that it's not linear, but it's also not a 2 axis grid, either. There are generally groups of ideologies based on what class they represent, and the methods they use.
Not wholly opposed to that, markets can serve the purpose they're designed for, and I could see an evolution of cybersyn that helps run the economy using simulated markets.
As a Mutualist, while there are a few things that could be better centralized, I'm in favor of a full worker consumer cooperative economy. Housing, groceries, and, utilities all work better as cooperatives, but capitalist have enough wealth to often push cooperatives out in other markets.
There's also a middle ground between consumer cooperatives which are more on the communal side and worker cooperatives that are more on the libertarian socialist side with Worker Consumer Cooperatives that align both kinds of stakeholders with ownership and management reducing exploitation on both ends.
Every communist country except for Cambodia saw massive, rapid, improvements in quality of living, to an unprecedented degree. Life expectancy in both China and the USSR more than doubled in only a few decades.
I just a Mutualist who wants worker consumer cooperatives and housing cooperatives to be the only way to form businesses. Unless someone has a direct stake in the firm, they shouldn't be able to benefit from it. No rent seeking, no venture capital, no bureaucracy.
Middle-of-the-road person: "You are not in a culture war or an ideology war. You are both in a CLASS war, run by billionaires who are the REAL source of your pain. They use the six corporations that control all the news to distract you and keep you fighting with each other so that they . . . the rich . . . can run off with all the f*cking money."
I think that the key difference here that would make two people who agree with this statement a centerist or a leftist is whether or not they feel visceral hatred for the right or if they treat them like human beings.
Far left is no landlords really. Like maybe small scale for like older people who prefer not to own condos and do any maintenance in elderly years, or students or people temporarily in another country or something, but no massive bloated greedy parasites like now.
How would apartments work, ideally? I guess have a contract where everyone living in the apartments owns a percentage of the building, and therefore the community of people that live there are responsible for building maintenance and other stuff like that, right?
I feel like this is easy to answer and I'm not sure why the question comes up so often.
People have jobs and get payed salaries to both build and maintain houses/apartments. Rent payments would go to pay the actual people that did the building / do the maintenance. Nobody makes profit off this. No landlord, no investor, no profit. The money goes to cover building costs, then maintenance. Easy peasy.
We have things like this. People build and maintain our public roads, schools, water/sewer systems, fire departments, military, etc.
No profits. No landlord gets free money for renting. No wallstreet investor gets free money for selling at high market values, etc.
Obviously, decisions have to be made about supply/demand, areas where lots of people want to live and all that. So what? Let's make those decisions intelligently instead of greed and profit driven.
You just described a housing cooperative. This form of collective ownership aligns owner and renter/home owner stakeholders as the same person and is a special form of consumer cooperative. Housing cooperatives are especially prevalent in the nordic countries. They keep prices down as they aren't owned by shareholders who want continuous profit. The problem with this style of firm is that they tend to dissolve after the tenets collectively pay off the property and seek to sell rather than maintain or expand the cöop. This occured after world war 2 in France as a bunch of post war building were quickly built and the coops that built them were dissolved.
Isn't that how most apartments work? The apartment I live in, and every apartment I know of has an "owners corporation", of which each owner of each apartment is a member. The members have meetings and elect a committee to make financial decisions. All members pay fees to the owners corporation. Most of the money goes to a building manager, which is an external company hired by the owners corporation to maintain the building. The building manager handles repairs and cleaning of the common areas and facilities. Any non-routine spending must be approved by the committee (and large expenditures, such as elevator replacement, would go to a vote of all members).
...
Anyway, the gist is what you said. Individuals and families own the apartments, and collectively they own the whole building and make decisions about how it should be maintained and run.
I don't think you can simply call state housing authoritarian or housing coops Anarchist, political science isn't really binary, nor even grid-based like the political compass wants it to be.
The left doesn't really have any political power under capitalist hegemony where there's economic consensus in the political and ruling class. There are many leftists but essentially no political left, and at the same time politics can no longer impact our economic arrangements, irs basically a spectacle we react to from different angles. What we have are centrist liberals both portrayed as "far left" by the right, some who ignorantly react to that with "yes, I am far left!" And those who actually have a visceral hate for capitalism have almost always been dealt with on common ground between centrist liberals and the right.
Both political extremes are as bad as the other. The only sensible course is to allow our political and corporate systems to destroy our environment unchecked while a tiny elite of billionaires funnel up all the remaining wealth of our societies.
Honest question, not trying to start an argument or anything, but what is extreme left when we're talking about the current political landscape actually? Cause when I look at US politics I don't see anything close to what I'd consider extreme going on on the left side. Maybe individual people with no significant political power talking about overthrowing the whole capitalist system but yeah, they don't seem to have any actual political power.
Since we've spent the past 60 years talking about how horrific communism and extreme left is, even fighting multiple wars over it, we don't really have a presence of far leftism.
I feel like it's cyclical at this point. We hate the far left so much that people become fascist. A fascist dictator rises. Everyone realizes how this was a bad idea, and we equalize. Generations forget, and we progressively move right again til another fascist dictator comes in.
So no, there is no political power in America with true far left views, and our boomer gov would do anything to keep it that way.
This makes a lot of sense to me, the US has a good long history of being anti-communist so anything moving close to that has been villanized to the point that any kind of socialist idea faces push back and true leftist views go under-represented. It does feel like the overall movement in the US has been to the right though, but that could be my own recency bias.
The original anti-vax movement was always weird to me, the issue screams "muh freedums" so I always found it strange that it came from the left. I guess it goes into the same box as all the hippy dippy wellness stuff, which does have some things like meditation that turn out to have real benefits, but there are just some people who take to all that really strongly without evidence.
Anti-intellectualism I always considered a right leaning thing, like, you always hear republicans saying universities are tools of left-wing indoctrination and not the other way around? But I suppose hippies had that "don't trust the man" thing going on.
Are hippies how people's idea of the far left formed? My understanding is the whole hippy movement, while memorable, was quite short lived?
I think both extremes may have different reasons but the same outcome.
For the anti intellectualism on the left, it stems from real issues like the Henrietta Lacks and relation with race, and generally more that is talked about with critical race theory. Fwiw it is all important to address, but there is a strong contingent that generalizes it too far and will distrust all of medicine, science, education, and academic research.
I also know a lot of far left people who would refuse to vote for Bernie because he was white male
I also know a lot of far left people who would refuse to vote for Bernie because he was white male
Do you actually know a lot of people in real life who think like this? Or is it just particularly loud groups of them on social media?
I am a member of socialist organization and am acquainted with a lot of people on the far left(anarchists, communists, socialists, etc.), and I've never heard this sentiment. I've heard other complaints about him not being leftist enough, but nothing about his race.
I do know some, maybe it's because I live in a university town. I think you were interested in today's far left, and those are the ones I've been frustrated with.
To a lesser amount, I also know one or two people who identify as communist. The best quote from them was, maybe if trump were to be president, then we would finally collapse the global economy so then every one would start over.
It does stem from a feeling that the current system is too broken to fix. They are valid feelings and I can only presume our lack of progress is because the Republicans have always had so much power paired with general concept that change is a slow process. But these people are tired of waiting and hoping for drastic change.
How did it come from the left? The "vaccines cause autism" wasn't connected to any political side as far as I'm aware. Just because you're a hippie doesn't mean you're left-wing, or politically conscious at all even.
I might be wrong but I always associated hippies with left-leaning, liberal politics. And I'm not sure where the association between the left and the anti-vax movement came from but I know it was a thing that was frequently made fun of. I even remember catching a Simpson's episode where they went somewhere and commented on how progressive/liberal it was (forget the specific word), then Marge asked a random woman if she vaccinated her kids and she responded "of course" then Marge said "and not TOO liberal".
Now that I think about it, maybe the political association of the original anti-vax movement was manufactured?
I feel like we're all already moved on from this discussion, but I JUST came across mention of the original anti-vax movement and hippies on "Some More News" (aka Cody's Showdy), felt it was interesting to run into a day after this discussion: https://youtu.be/nrsysN_LBoo?si=rqEEZCGLQ8wH2GNV&t=2781 (comes up at 46:21 in case the time stamp doesn't work).
The far left would be people like tankies, where they go so extreme they end up parroting a lot of the same rhetoric you see on the far right, just through a different lens. I've literally interacted with people on this site who believe North Korea is secretly a utopia that the West is trying to hide with propaganda.
They don't really have much in the way of significant political representation in this country. The far right unfortunately does.
I'd consider commies, anarchists, and anti capitalists in general to just be leftists, not far leftists. It's not really my thing but I can at least respect it.
So communism so hard it swings back around into fascism, yeah, I suppose that would be "far-left". This may be my own limited experience talking though but I don't think that's a popular world view? Especially not in the US from what I can tell. I know there's a lot of talk of "tankies" on Lemmy (still not 100% sure I understand what a tanky is), but I have yet to actually have a conversation with a legitimate one IRL or online. Far-right extremists on the other hand you can run into multiple times a day, so I know which side I have more concerns about.
The USA skews fairly right overall so you don't really see a lot of them here. It's a lot easier to find them in other countries.
I've definitely ran into a few people IRL who have gone far enough down the rabbit hole that I've heard them trot out the classic stuff about how "Stalin/Mao/Fidel/etc. was good actually"
They're analogous to the far right is the main thing. Anarchism/communism/etc. is the gateway to such views. Most lefists don't go that far (good) but some do. Same thing with the far right, they start off as libertarian, ancap, or run of the mill conservatives etc. and end up going into cuckoo land after they watch too much cable news and facebook conspiracies.
In the USA, we have an environment where it's far easier and more beneficial to those in power to co-opt people into right wing extremism than left wing extremism, hence the outsized representation. You can definitely find countries where the opposite is true, it's a fairly big issue in south american and southeast asian nations. What's interesting to me is that the end goals are nearly the same, which is to implement an authoritarian state where there is a powerful insular ingroup that can exploit the masses to their benefit.
They’re analogous to the far right is the main thing. Anarchism/communism/etc. is the gateway to such views. Most lefists don’t go that far (good) but some do. Same thing with the far right, they start off as libertarian, ancap, or run of the mill conservatives etc. and end up going into cuckoo land after they watch too much cable news and facebook conspiracies.
i don't think there is a reputable source to substantiate this.
I don't know of any particular sources but I do have anecdotes of watching friends and family fall into these traps on both ends of the spectrum. A couple of my leftist friends have started treading dangerously close to some pretty sour viewpoints. I mostly see it as pro-accelerationism, everything I don't like is capitalism/neoliberalism/western values, and are totally blind to the influence propaganda has on them and the weak points in their own ideologies.
On the right, I've watched several of my family members go down the fox news alt right rabbit hole and end up at similarly dumb viewpoints. They also want a revolution, except everything they don't like is liberals/communism/woke etc. They are also totally blind to the influence of propaganda and the weak points in their ideologies. The media machine in the US is set up to make this pipeline far more efficient than the leftist version.
They mostly don't like the same things, but they're pulling in opposite directions, and each is convinced that when the revolution comes, their side is the one that will win out, when in reality, we'll probably just end up with the same shit, different coat of paint.
Me? I think there's concepts we can borrow from many ideologies that can help us solve specific problems and bring about incremental change until we reach true propserity. The socialists and commies get some stuff right, so do the libertarians, the anarchists, the ancaps, etc. The only thing I think will definitely not help is tearing it all down. There is no silver bullet, it's all just problems that are met with ever improving solutions. Sometimes we take two steps forward one step back, but I don't think anyone can deny that the world at large is better off now than when it was almost completely ruled by monarchy, bloody violence, and slavery a few hundred years back.
Exactly this. I've been calling them the "burn it down" group. It's not a fun ideology... sure they don't have a lot of power today, but that's how these things work. If they have power it's too late. It's worth knowing that this is a growing movement with real people. They are my cousins, coworkers and a few of my friends lol. Not just a social media rhetoric or scare tactic.
the end goals are nearly the same, which is to implement an authoritarian state
first, a bit of snark: there is a cure for political illiteracy.
then, a rebuttal: communism is a stateless classless moneyless society. there is no such thing as a communist state. for many anarchists, this is indistinguishable from anarchism.
The far lefists aren't commies though, that's my point. They play like they are, but really they're just authoritarian fascists. Commies are just regular leftists, and marxist schools of thought are a totally reasonable worldview to carry even if I don't agree with some points of it.
if you're not building a classless stateless society, you're not a leftist. I'd be just as offended about being called a liberal as being called a tankie. statism is bad.
Statelessness is the end goal of communism, yes. I have met so-called communists that think strongarm authoritarianism is the way to get there, and for some reason believe that those authoritarians would willingly give up their power once they've achieved a position where they could implement said stateless society. This is basically what happened in the USSR and China, and is decidedly not the path Marx himself proposed for achieving it. A stateless communist society in Marxist thought is simply the natural progression after late stage capitalist societies, which is not a step you can simply skip over.
I don't necessarily agree with the idea, but I think it's important to be educated on a wide variety of schools of political thought.
What’s interesting to me is that the end goals are nearly the same, which is to implement an authoritarian state where there is a powerful insular ingroup that can exploit the masses to their benefit.
Unlike centrist liberals, who want to create a non hierarchical, stateless society with no exploitation or in groups...
Nowhere did I claim such a thing. Some leftist groups want the whole stateless thing. Go even further left into crazy land though and you run into strongarm authoritarianism.
I'd call myself a liberal in the modern sense, I certainly don't believe that large scale stateless societies are viable but there are definitely things we can learn from ideologies further to the left than what I subscribe to.
Authoritarianism is by definition illiberal and anyone who is authoritarian or supports authoritarianism is not liberal no matter what they claim to be. Centrism is also a meme, anyone who claims to be a centrist is usually just a stan for authoritarians in disguise.
The core tenant of liberalism is respect for the autonomy and civil liberties of the individual and consent of the governed to the rules of the government through the machinations of democracy. Any system claiming to be liberal without subscribing to that is a farce.
The same could be said of the "far left". They claim to be leftists, and they might have started out as such, but they have stepped out into crazy land and end up supporting things antithetical to the ideologies they claim to subscribe to.
Authoritarianism is by definition illiberal and anyone who is authoritarian or supports authoritarianism is not liberal no matter what they claim to be. Centrism is also a meme, anyone who claims to be a centrist is usually just a stan for authoritarians in disguise.
Ok, but now you're just fiddling with semantics so that your thesis is tautologically true. Sure, if you redefine your terms in a circular way so that authoritarianism means iliberalism and iliberalism means authoritarianism, then obviously its true, but it's not very meaningful. It also doesn't really make sense in regards to your original argument that the extremes of left and right are authoritarian, because, by your definition of liberal there is not now and never as been a liberal society. The USA incarcerates a volume of people that dwarfs any of the called 'authoritarian' nations, comparable to the Soviet Gulag system at the height of the purges. It also summarily executes people for minor crimes all the time. It frequently overthrows governments and engages in mass killings, including currently committing a genocide. Beyond that, it unilaterally deprives its people of access to the Earths commons using unilateral and lethal force, as well as hording vast quantities of stolen wealth from its rightful owners and using that wealth to oppress them. Other 'liberal' countries may not go to the same level, but they all do the same things. They have all been authoritarian and thus not liberal, which would make liberalism an extremist left wing ideology.
The core tenant of liberalism is respect for the autonomy and civil liberties of the individual and consent of the governed to the rules of the government through the machinations of democracy.
That's all the tenants of leftism, including the 'extreme' leftism you call 'crazy land'. You're also leaving out the important caveats: autonomy as defined by liberals (So not, for example, autonomy to freely roam the earth and make use of its commons without interruption), civil liberties as defined by liberals (so not, for example, the liberty to make use of the means of production as you like), and consent of the governed as defined by liberals (so not, for example, the ability to ignore the degrees of government that you do not consent to).
The same could be said of the “far left”. They claim to be leftists, and they might have started out as such, but they have stepped out into crazy land and end up supporting things antithetical to the ideologies they claim to subscribe to.
Are you willing to apply this standard to 'moderate' liberals; are you willing to extend it to yourself? Will you declare anyone who shows even critical support for existing failed attempts at liberalism (which is all of them, by your definition), as having "stepped out into crazy land and end up supporting things antithetical to the ideologies they claim to subscribe to."? Do you condemn people who support George Washington the same way as you do people who support Lenin? Do you condemn people who support Lincoln the same way as you do people who support Castro? Do you condemn people who support Churchill the same as people who support Pol Pot? Do you condemn the French Revolution and the American Revolution the same as the Russian and Chinese?
Because if not, I can only conclude that it's not 'authoritarianism' that you consider "crazy land"; it's just political heterodoxy in general.
This entire discussion is about semantics, so I see no issue with getting fiddly with it. As for authoritarianism being illiberal, I don't see how that is tautological. Authoritarianism is when the government or ruler has absolute control and has no obligation to accept input from the populace over which they rule. This violates the consent aspect of liberalism. These are commonly accepted definitions, not stuff I just made up. They're mutually exclusive concepts and absolute versions of either cannot coexist.
And yes, I do think there has never been a truly liberal society, just as there has never been a truly communist society or any other -ist or -ism based society. They are concepts we can strive for, but adhering perfectly to the academic definition of any of these concepts is not realistic. I think the USA is fundemantally illiberal in many regards, and we would do well to strive to correct those aspects.
As for the definitions of those specific aspects of liberalism, yes, of course it is those aspects defined under the framework of liberalism. It would just take thousands of words to provide the entire context and it's not super important here. You seem to understand that these words have different definitions in different frameworks, and I'm sure anyone discussing political ideology in this level of depth is also aware of that.
When I'm talking about the extremist sides of the spectrum, far left and far right, I am referring to those who tread into territory where their ideology becomes ostensibly dangerous. The most common version of this is directly supporting things like oppressive authoritarian rulers and population cleansing, There are absolutely people on both the left and the right who would see those as acceptable means to their end of implementing their preferred ideology. Right wingers who want to ethnically cleanse populations they see as problematic or inferior are no better than the far leftists who want to guillotine whoever they decide is the bougouise. This is the crazy land I'm talking about. Not being in crazy land means trying your best to not support awful shit, making sure you are picking the least bad feasible options in your current situation, and revising your positions and who you support when evidence indicates that the bad outweighs the good.
And yes, I actually do have a lot of issues with the French and American revolutions, and I do not think Churchill was a particularly good guy. I don't think they are the same as the Russian and Chinese revolutions. They all resulted in regimes of varying levels of "bad", but the Chinese and Russian versions resulted in higher death tolls and much more unhealthy systems coming out the other side (in my subjective opinion).
I think to cover the rest of your points, there are degrees here and the real world doesn't function in absolutes as I mentioned in the second paragraph. I don't have time to respond to every comparison you mentioned, but Washington vs Lenin for example: Washington did not have secret police killing dissidents by the thousands. Lenin did. Washington did not implement policy that resulted in mass famines resulting in the deaths of millions, Lenin did. Washington did support slavery and ethnic cleansing of Native American populations, and it irritates me greatly that this gets glossed over. Lenin did not. Which one of those guys is worse depends on your subjective values, but for me, I'd say Lenin is the worse guy.
I'm tired and it's almost 3am so hopefully all that makes sense.
This entire discussion is about semantics, so I see no issue with getting fiddly with it.
My point is you are redefining words as you go, which is pointless.
for authoritarianism being illiberal, I don’t see how that is tautological
Because you have defined it tautologically.
Authoritarianism is when the government or ruler has absolute control and has no obligation to accept input from the populace over which they rule
Which doesn't apply to any of these 'far left extremist' projects you're talking about.
And yes, I do think there has never been a truly liberal society, just as there has never been a truly communist society or any other -ist or -ism based society. They are concepts we can strive for, but adhering perfectly to the academic definition of any of these concepts is not realistic. I think the USA is fundemantally illiberal in many regards, and we would do well to strive to correct those aspects.
Then how can you say you are anything but a leftwing extremist yourself?
As for the definitions of those specific aspects of liberalism, yes, of course it is those aspects defined under the framework of liberalism. It would just take thousands of words to provide the entire context and it’s not super important here.
It's extremely important; it's essentially you saying "It's not authoritarianism when we do it!"
When I’m talking about the extremist sides of the spectrum, far left and far right, I am referring to those who tread into territory where their ideology becomes ostensibly dangerous. The most common version of this is directly supporting things like oppressive authoritarian rulers and population cleansing, There are absolutely people on both the left and the right who would see those as acceptable means to their end of implementing their preferred ideology. Right wingers who want to ethnically cleanse populations they see as problematic or inferior are no better than the far leftists who want to guillotine whoever they decide is the bourgeois.
And this is the crux of my point; you say this like the center of the spectrum, and liberals, aren't dangerous; aren't perfectly happy to support authoritarian rulers and populations cleansing, who see genocidal violence acceptable means to their ends of maintaining their preferred ideology. In fact, in our current world, the overwhelming majority of violence and suffering is caused by moderates and liberals. You need to examine your blind spot here, and stop acting like the moderate position is somehow pacifism.
And yes, I actually do have a lot of issues with the French and American revolutions, and I do not think Churchill was a particularly good guy.
So no, you don't hold liberals to the same standard you hold leftists, you instead hold a massive, systematic double standard.
I don’t think they are the same as the Russian and Chinese revolutions.
And there it is, right here, the deep seated double standard. Like I said; you don't hate authoritarianism, you hate political heterodoxy.
but the Chinese and Russian versions resulted in higher death tolls and much more unhealthy systems coming out the other side (in my subjective opinion).
Death tolls are not subject to "subjective opinions"; you're just wrong
Which one of those guys is worse depends on your subjective values, but for me, I’d say Lenin is the worse guy.
And that says a fuckload about how fucking evil your subjective values are.
See, this is why I loath liberals, in some ways more than fascists; at least fascists are open about their evil. You don't actually hold principles you apply consistently, you don't actually believe in all that shit about autonomy and liberty. They're all just a smoke screen to justify ruthlessly crushing any oppositions: martial law, torture, murder, genocide, chattel slavery; these are all perfectly forgivable in defense of liberalism, at worst they'll get you called "not a great guy", but you certainly won't be called "a dangerous authoritarian in crazy land" and you will always, always, be certain that you will be considered better than any leftist leader.
I seriously cannot get over saying chattel slavery and genocide are better than Lenin, or that Churchhill; a man who genocided millions of people and proudly presided over the most brutal empire in history, is better than the Russian revolution.
Alright dude, now you're just misrepresenting my views and revealing your own biases and we're going nowhere. I don't have time to make a comprehensive response to all that, I'm just going to go outside enjoy the freedom and prosperity that my evil liberal society has provided me. Good thing I won't have to wait in a bread line at Costco, it's a real time saver.
I’m just going to go outside enjoy the freedom and prosperity that my evil liberal society has provided me.
Like I said, you don't actually believe in any of the value of ideals you claim; you're the beneficiary of a liberal order built on imperialism, exploitation, and genocide, and you hate anyone who threatens to take that from you. Ten million Palestinians, Ethiopians, Indians, Yemeni, and whoever else needs to can die horribly, but so long as you have your Costco, you're happy.
Can you name a large scale anarchist project with better rights than Cuba or Vietnam?
I'll save you the effort: nah. Catalonia had concentration camps and "free" Ukraine was a bandit dictatorship that empowered kulaks to do pogroms. And they both got crushed partially due to a lack of centralization, and a lack of collaboration with and alienation from popular fronts.
"Tankies" as you put it, are the actual leftists advancing liberation, and not just jerking themselves off about how left they are, which is easy to do when their ideology remains only theoretical. When the rubber hits the road, anarchists fall somewhere between the brutality of socialist projects and capitalism.
As Trotsky said "anarchism is a rain coat that leaks only while it is wet"
I don't believe in rights. at least, there's no such thing as an inalienable right, since governments can and do take them away. I'm not even sure how to begin to answer your question given that I think that you're talking about fictions. sort of like asking me which anarchist society had the most thetans, or protection spirits.
I didn't think that I'd have to explain to somebody that the very existence of a hierarchy implies class structure. but I guess it's true that some people still side with the wrong people at the second international.
Not even positive rights? You're literally like "authority means it is by definition a class society" and you don't believe in rights? How do you square that circle?
It honestly feels like this is a cheap rhetorical dismissal because you don't want to compare what the actual material benefits of socialist revolutions are vs anarchist revolutions.
I didn’t think that I’d have to explain to somebody that the very existence of a hierarchy implies class structure.
And of course, there was no hierarchy in actual anarchist societies. /s.
Have you never heard of the concept of a transitional state? You know, that thing that socialists and anarchists both do, that involves hierarchy in repressing right wing elements? That socialists actually acknowledge the evil of, as opposed to pretending like they're not doing a transitional state?
Or do you have a new super special plan to do classless society day one? If so I'd love to hear it.
nothing like moving the goalposts to end the workday.
i'm opposed to prefigurative theories of revolution. we don't know what society will look like in every corner of the world without oppression. we do know what oppression is, and we can fight it.
we do know what oppression is, and we can fight it.
You're against concentration of power. Can you name a single revolution that succeeded without some concentrated power, democratically concentrated or otherwise?
Can you name a single revolution that succeeded without some concentrated power, democratically concentrated or otherwise?
you're going to need to define revolution and success and concentration, and at this point, we might as well just lay our cards on the table. you believe it's only practical to have a transitional state. i have a suspicion about anything that even smells like a state. we will not reconcile this in !memes today.
i don't think i'm misrepresenting your position. i feel i understand it, and i disagree about the practicality of setting up a system of oppression to end oppression.
Okay, so, the end result of inspiring people means that their political project succeeded? Their end goal was to inspire people? I thought their end goal was a classless, stateless society?
I feel like they probably shouldn't have done those things then, if they weren't able to sustain themselves in the face of that sort of state repression like communists could.
no. I think they could have won 100 years ago and I think they could win tomorrow. I like the tactic. people can be inspired and it can happen in an instant.
do I want to bet that you don't know the future? absolutely. here's a proof.
knowledge is defined as a justified true belief.
you can't have evidence about the future because it hasn't happened.
truth claims about the future have no value because it hasn't happened.
there is no justification that can produce knowledge about the future.
you don't know the future.
qed
edit: oh fuck. I was supposed to bet something. how about a loaf of bread?
Exactly like how I can confidently predict your perfect spontaneous anarchist revolution won't happen to tomorrow, no matter how much you insist that "it could"
i figured if you lost a bet you wouldn't welch on it. and calling me tankie, when this whole discussion is about me opposing authoritarian regimes no matter how they wish to portray themselves, is simply dishonest.
I thought their end goal was a classless, stateless society?
right, but since we (they) eschew(ed) prefigurative theories, we (they) only organized to fight. the actual structure of society is up to the people who live in the world that we (they) make possible.
one has nothing to do with the other, except that hierarchies sometimes pretend to respect (or grant)rights, but the fact that they have the discretion means the rights, themselves, are fictions.
It honestly feels like this is a cheap rhetorical dismissal because you don’t want to compare what the actual material benefits of socialist revolutions are vs anarchist revolutions.
that's not what you proposed to use as a metric. i'm not sure how to quantify them and, frankly, or what a good measure would be, i guess.
i do know that i don't trust anyone else to decide how i keep myself fed and safe. given the choice in constructing a revolution, i would empower individuals to a maximum degree and destroy concentrations of power wherever they're found.
And I'm going to tell you you're wrong. And then I'm going to find people who actually want to change the status quo for the better to work together with.
it is. since you seem opposed to learning anywhere but Lemmy, I'll help you out. equivocation is an informal fallacy where you use one word in a certain context with a particular meaning, and then you use the same word in a different context with a different meaning, and then you claim that they're the same thing. The authority of the boot maker is different from the authority of the cop. The authority of the doctor is different from the authority of the insurance company.
it is. since you seem opposed to learning anywhere but Lemmy, I’ll help you out. equivocation is an informal fallacy where you use one word in a certain context with a particular meaning, and then you use the same word in a different context with a different meaning, and then you claim that they’re the same thing.
Oh my God, go back to Reddit you insufferable debate bro.
i have been expressing my earnest feelings and doing my best to convey them to you. explaining your equivocation was no more debate bro than explaining the definition of communism is. please look back through here, and you'll find that i'm quite happy to admit i don't really know everything, i don't have a perfect plan for every thing, and i don't care to argue about any of it. i don't mind discussing, but your accusation of debate bro-ing seems, to me, like projection.
it is. since you seem opposed to learning anywhere but Lemmy, I’ll help you out. equivocation is an informal fallacy where you use one word in a certain context with a particular meaning, and then you use the same word in a different context with a different meaning, and then you claim that they’re the same thing.
Yeah ok, totally not a debate bro
If that's how you want to do it, I'm happy to come to your level and just copy paste the Wikipedia definition of proof by assertion and fallacy fallacy while dropping smug lines like "I'll help you out"
Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction and refutation.[1] The proposition can sometimes be repeated until any challenges or opposition cease, letting the proponent assert it as fact, and solely due to a lack of challengers (argumentum ad nauseam).[2] In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies.[3]
I think the anarchists in Spain have more of a claim to define anarchism than you tbh. And they absolutely had authority. Hell, they had concentration camps.
you know I dwelt on this a bit, and the revolution was thrown by the people and it wasn't thrown for mercantilism. it was just against the feudal system. but what followed was mercantilism. merchants didn't throw the revolution. I don't know how you got the conclusion that the French revolution was a mercantilist revolution. I honestly can't think of a single mercantilist revolution. The closest thing I can imagine are the American revolution and possibly the piracy of the 18th century.
All of that is besides the point; the point is that none of these revolutions produced the kind of perfect anarchist society you want, and you would oppose them.
Okay, so at this point it seems anarchist societies are pretty impossible, if all these principled anarchists end up forming non-anarchist societies over and over again when they win power.
So what is even the point of being an anarchist? To feel good about yourself?
Thats literally the difference between us, I believe less exploitation is better than waiting for a perfect solution. Socializing the means of production, even if it doesn't eliminate all exploitation, eliminates capitalist exploitation, which is a massive win for the working class as it is the main source of our exploitation.
I'm not sure if after capitalism is destroyed socialist States will actually wither away or not, but Im sure they'll be less bloody to move past than capitalism was if it is the latter.
I dont exist in structures where the meeting facilitator has that much of an impact to the point that the meeting would be derailed by a shitty one, but I guess that's a difference between the ways our ideologies organize.
it was the smallest amount of power I could concieve. certainly, there is an authority in small things like setting the agenda and deciding on how strictly to adhere to timetables.
a lot of the meetings that I go to are pretty much organized as do-ocracies. someone says they are willing to do the work of taking notes or do the work of facilitating, and everybody's relieved that they didn't have to step up.
That doesn't sound consensus based or consent based at all, lol, you don't even have a democratically elected and instantly recallable committee to assign the work? Damn, anarchists are out here having more hierarchy in their political structure than the tankies.
Earnestly: while we live in a deeply stratified society, if you dont intentionally form power structures informal, incredibly undemocratic ones will fill that void, as is this case with what you're describing.
I guess I just don't understand what you're getting at..I don't have a chart of population sizes. I'm just going to say I don't know, but an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
let's say, though, that none ever existed. so what?
If none exist while socialist projects exist, that suggests that the ideology is nonviable at large scales at this point in time. And "just waiting" while capitalism cripples the biosphere and kills millions is an expression of prioritizing your own perfectionism over preventing actual suffering.
I think that many small interconnected communities is what we should be aiming for anyway, so any small community to me is evidence that it can work. The fact that all of these communities are surrounded by imperialists or capitalist societies doesn't preclude more people from forming egalitarian communities and communicating and working with those that are existant. I have no desire to build a system capable of oppressing people, because I don't want to be responsible for people's oppression.
Imprecise definition aside, revolutions have to be able to defend themselves, and it could be argued Catalonia and Ukraine started in much better material positions and ended up falling apart because of problems with their political/economic structure, while the semi-centralized democracy and rationalized economy of the USSR allowed them to succeed in defending itself from the Nazis (but not, ultimately, from the US empire, however Vietnam, Cuba, laos, and China succeeded, and the DPRK partially succeeded)
No. There's a spectrum of both communism and anarchism, their intersection tends to be known as anarcho-communism. An example of non-anarchist communism is vanguardist communism, which is inherently authoritarian (and anti-anarchist).
I feel like you're intentionally using a definition of left wing that is essentially "Every thing I like is Left, everything bad is right". Most people think of absolute free speech as a right wing position, mostly because theyve listened to people who identify as left talk about free speech curtailment to suit them for a long time
Most people think of absolute free speech as a right wing position
it used to be the right wingers that wanted to censor everything back in the 1990's, now it's the democrats that want to censor everyone for equally stupid, but different reasons.
All censorship is bad. whether it's a private corporation with a monopoly or a government doing it doesn't matter, all censorship is bad.
Also if republicans are more likely to allow people to say what they want, why should I vote for democrats? Free speech and freedom from religion was the very first law to ever be written in the US.
Things change. Maybe painting libertarians, randian libertarians, conservatives, republicans and the Unabomber as all the same wing muddies the waters.
All censorship is bad. whether it's a private corporation with a monopoly or a government doing it doesn't matter, all censorship is bad.
I totally agree with you that the government should never be involved in censoring anything, but differ on private corporations, especially as far as the internet is concerned.
The internet as a whole should never be censored. People should always be able to make their own website with whatever they want on there, even if it will get them arrested. The owners of a website should always have control over the content that they allow, though.
If the owners of a company don't want to see hate speech or extreme content on their own product than it should always be their right to remove it. If the majority of the public doesn't want to see Nazi shit on a social media site then it will always be in that corporations best interest to remove it, or people will stop using it.
All censorship is bad, but some of it is a necessary evil to keep the internet from being flooded with hate speech, gore, and CSAM. I will say that some companies take it way too far with the things that they censor, and it sucks, but it is within their right.
I'm an extreme centrist. Between absolute anarchist worker self-management and overreaching socialist government regulation, I think we should reach a healthy middle.
"I want to eradicate non-whites and install a christo-fascist dictator" is as obnoxious as "all people deserve housing and healthcare and a system based on extracting all excess profit from workers is exploitation"
"Ethnonationalism is awesome" and "equality is a good and achievable goal" are not remotely equal in terms of how obnoxious it is, unless you legitimately sit in between those two.
