I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are "far left". Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren't really "far left". Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them "far right". Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!
We're "not allowed" to. The concept of comparing our politics to elsewhere around the world is chastised. "It's not the same here!" "They have a longer history" "they share a common culture!" (far right for "skin color")
Any excuse under the sun to keep the right as being viewed as closer to "center" and to misrepresent centrist policies as "far left" so we get no progress and all the arguments.
It's really interesting how the right has embraced moral relativism on a case-by-case basis. Often it is a strategy to quarantine/localize ideas, so as to avoid the need to reconcile them to any broader worldview.
It's also a strategy for insulating ideas and events from history that they want to shelter from criticism, like criticizing slavery, theocracy, monarchism, etc. I've seen real cases in the wild where criticism of slavery was dismissed as "presentism", as inappropriately imposing present day moral values.
I've noticed that too and found it counterintuitive. The other thing is free market economics. I would expect conservatives to embrace moral traditionalism and economic intervention but currently it's the opposite...
There are quite a few actual leftists on Lemmy. I don't think they're confused and as the meme suggests, they're rather vocal.
Meanwhile Trump and other far right people have tried to brand liberals as "radical left" which is just silly, but a lot of news sources seem content to parrot alt-right rhetoric. One thing the Republican Party has always been good at is poisoning the well.
Those terms are so vague and have so different meanings to a lot of people that I often avoid using them... I recently read the idea that egalitarian=left // strong hierarchy=right and it kinda makes sense, but it's still quite debatable
Generally it's better to separate views by who supports them, and who they benefit. Leftists tend to support the Proletariat, whereas rightists tend to support the bourgeoisie.
I'm not sure its that easy nowadays, when lots of freelancers and self-exploiters struggle while being considered bourgeoisie. Or at least, not "proletariat". The lines are not as clear as they used to be.
If you’re working five days a week for a living, you’re not really a part of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are the business owners, not the business managers and assistants. At best, a freelancer with no employees under them would be petite-bourgeoisie. You wouldn’t graduate to the bourgeoisie until you have a few employees under yourself, who take care of the day-to-day operations.
A lone freelancer is just a step away from an employee, with none of the legal protections. Hire a manager to run the day-to-day op, and employees to do the grunt work, thus freeing yourself up to sit back and collect profits. Then you would start to be the bourgeoisie, because you only need to check in to ensure everything is running smoothly and occasionally sign some new contracts. The majority of your time isn’t being spent at work for someone else.
Except there are a ton of right wing positions that don't benefit anyone except the politicians who use them to keep their supporters angry and afraid. I'd go so far as to say left wing policies are primarily about helping people and right wing policies are primarily about hurting people.
Reactionary proletarians are victims of bourgeois culture wars, it's the fascist anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT rhetoric that serves as a distraction. That doesn't make the GOP a Worker party even if some workers vote for the GOP.
Left vs Right isn't about Democrat vs Republican, but class interests and dynamics.
Council communists and Anarchists generally qualify for far-left status. (Or, differently put, council communism is methadone therapy for Marxists who don't yet dare make the jump to syndicalism).
authoritarianism and far-left are mutually exclusive.
You're correct, believing that "authoritarian" is a well defined or meaningful term and not just a snarl word created during the cold war to equivocate communists and Nazis is incompatible with being far-left
The first use of authoritarian is in 1852, in the writings of AJ Davis apparently. Here's the quote:
1856 A. J. Davis Penetralia 129 Does any one believe that the Book is essential to Salvation? Yes; there are many externalists and authoritarians who think so.
Authoritarian was also increasing in usage well before the cold war, beginning around 1910 or so. An example from Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker, written in 1933:
Nietzsche also had a profound conception of this truth, although his inner disharmony and his constant oscillation between outlived authoritarian concepts and truly libertarian ideas all his life prevented him from drawing the natural deductions from it.
That's a thoroughly modern use of the word authoritarian, written almost 15 years before the start of the cold war. Authoritarian is used to describe those who support hierarchial systems of government. That's the short and sweet of it, perhaps not a perfect dictionary definition but it illustrates the distinctive bit. Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there's an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.
"The working class [...] cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers [...] Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism [...] Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.'
Trotsky wrote that. It may not be 1:1 but the similarities between his ideas and those.of fascists are pretty obvious.
All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander "communists"?
Thank you for the detailed background on that. People often resort to No True Scotsman claims to disavow bad elements from the group they support, or better yet toss them to their rivals. But honestly the more an entity is pulled away from center along the authoritarian/liberal axis, the less meaningful any left/right distinction becomes.
I just wanted to clarify, I'm not an authoritarian. I'm an anarchist. And the left/right distinction still does matter very much along the authoritarian/libertarian axis. I don't think much of auth-left ideologies but I hold them in much better regard than fascists. There are similarities, but they are no where near the same. And liberalism is a center right authoritarian ideology
On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it's so ludicrously bourgeois. "Oh, you Anarchists", quoth Engels, "All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn't fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive".
Maybe, Friedrich, your workers don't mind dealing with the necessities and physical processes of yarn and cloth manufacture, what they mind is not being able to fire your ass for saying excessively over-reductive shit like that.
On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it’s so ludicrously bourgeois
Are you really saying "Engels was bourgeois, therefore the argument he's making is bourgeois"? lol
“All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn’t fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive”.
Tell me how you haven't read it even more. Because he's actually concluding:
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
Read the paragraphs directly before: Engels refers to "arguments as these", so we can safely assume that the example he gives there is representative. What's his example? Safety in railway operations.
That, indeed, is not a job for a delegate, a person chosen by council to represent the council in a bigger council, a political position which comes with no authority, but one of a safety commissioner, a person who was entrusted with, granted authority, by a council to enact necessary safety procedures for the common good. The railway safety commissioner would be choosen by the railway workers. Someone they trust to be a stickler to details and procedure.
Both, btw, are recallable on the spot should they abuse their positions, or turn out to not be suitable for other reasons.
This is not a mere "changing of names", the tasks are completely different in character and the levels of authority could not be any more different. What Engels seems to be incapable of conceiving is that an e.g. city council doesn't have authority over a neighbourhood council. That the delegates the neighbourhood councils choose come together in a city council and then precisely not dictate to the neighbourhood councils what they're supposed to do. That's your brain on hierarchy.
So, yes, Engels concludes that he's right. And thereby proves that he either a) didn't understand what the anti-auths were telling him or b) didn't care, as authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.
As to "labour cannot be organised without hierarchy" in general: It's long been proven false. There's a gazillion of examples in which it has done. There are, right now, armies out there operating without hierarchy that are fighting both Cartels and ISIS, very successfully so. If armies can be organised like that, surely it does work for ice cream factories. Stick to materialism, please, your idealist claim doesn't become true by repeating it.
That, indeed, is not a job for a delegate, a person chosen by council to represent the council in a bigger council, a political position which comes with no authority, but one of a safety commissioner, a person who was entrusted with, granted authority, by a council to enact necessary safety procedures for the common good.
granted authority
authority
?
This is not a mere “changing of names”, the tasks are completely different in character and the levels of authority could not be any more different. What Engels seems to be incapable of conceiving is that an e.g. city council doesn’t have authority over a neighbourhood council. That the delegates the neighbourhood councils choose come together in a city council and then precisely not dictate to the neighbourhood councils what they’re supposed to do. That’s your brain on hierarchy.
So how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know? How is that supposed to work? Who decides the level of authority? Another authority?
a) didn’t understand what the anti-auths were telling him
Literally changing the name of "authority" to "granted authority". You only changed the name of things. Engels is making the argument on the materiality of authority. That even if the authority is granted, it's an authority. He is referring to whatever makes the organization happen as authority (even when granted).
And says that without this (authority) organization is impossible. Which makes sense.
b) authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.
So how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know?
You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?
That even if the authority is granted, it’s an authority.
One example doesn't even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.
If you OTOH now try to pull semantics and say "but by being convinced by other people of a joint plan of action, they have authority over you", or "A delegate has the authority to do as they're told by their council" then you're doing the "holding up a stone thing": You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it. Or, in different words: It's playing dumb. You hear what Anarchists are saying, including their definitions of authority, of distinguishing power-to against power-over, and say "but the stone has authority over you that's silly"!
You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?
Yes but than the plan of action takes form of authority. Which is the point that Engels makes.
One example doesn’t even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.
Then noone is required to take the delegate serious. The delegate enjoys no authority and there's no organization happening as everybody is free to do whatever th fuck they want.
holding up a stone thing”: You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it.
Only when you take it in in bad faith, because we're talking about people and not inanimate objects (stones). The definition of anarchists is just another social construct that basically describes authority..
Yes but than the plan of action takes form of authority. Which is the point that Engels makes.
It is an extension to the libertarian notion of authority that Engels makes.
Suppose you and your comrades are are at a party conference in another city, and, in a wild bout of anti-authoritarianism, you're talking among yourselves which restaurant to go to instead of following party orders. Maybe it's just an oversight, the responsible buerocrat didn't do their job. Anyway the obstacle is not insurmountable, the choice is not very contentious, some people have preference, one's a vegan, but in the end you all agree that Mexican is a perfectly fine choice.
Then, out of nowhere, a KGB agent appears saying "Now it would be a shame if someone changed their mind about eating Mexican and would need to be sent to Gulag, would it, after all, we can't have a decision without subsequent imposition of authority".
Then noone is required to take the delegate serious.
The delegate is taken just as serious as the council they represent. They are, after all, the representative of that council. If you ignore what the delegate says, you're ignoring what the council says. But the authority is that of the council, not of the delegate.
The definition of anarchists
Council communists have a compatible definition, btw. It's only Bolsheviks and their descendants who disagree because they can't stand workers actually having a say in things, see the Trotsky quote before. That is authoritarianism. You can't declare it away by playing semantic games.
Suppose you and your comrades are are at a party conference in another city, and, in a wild bout of anti-authoritarianism, you’re talking among yourselves which restaurant to go to instead of following party orders. Maybe it’s just an oversight, the responsible buerocrat didn’t do their job. Anyway the obstacle is not insurmountable, the choice is not very contentious, some people have preference, one’s a vegan, but in the end you all agree that Mexican is a perfectly fine choice.
Then, out of nowhere, a KGB agent appears saying “Now it would be a shame if someone changed their mind about eating Mexican and would need to be sent to Gulag, would it, after all, we can’t have a decision without subsequent imposition of authority”.
Basically you're arguing against the state, which we sure both want. The abolishion of class society, meaning one class is not subjugating it's will on another, be it capitalist or a socialist state bureaucrats.
I think that without a state you cannot abolish the existing forces that give rise to class society as it's not a even playing field between labour and capital. You need a form of authority to make the reorganization of political economy possible.
The delegate is taken just as serious as the council they represent. They are, after all, the representative of that council. If you ignore what the delegate says, you’re ignoring what the council says. But the authority is that of the council, not of the delegate.
authority is that of the council
authority
How are you not aware of what you're saying? Do you want me to do an anarchist caricature of going to the restaurant like you did in your example? Only the proper application would be of the building the restaurant and how noone likes to do the actual work of building it as everyone is free not to do it. There's no authority. If you tell me that the hunger is the authority im going to laugh
Basically you’re arguing against the state, which we sure both want.
You are aware that communism, too, not just anarchism, is a stateless society?
(Side note: In the ole socialist definition of "state". Both still qualify for the modern political theory definition of state which bogs down to "a people, a territory, a type of governing system (organisation)". Gotta be careful with that one it often gets confused).
I think that without a state you cannot abolish the existing forces that give rise to class society as it’s not a even playing field between labour and capital.
Indeed, without state power labour would have the upper hand. You saw that in the Russian revolution where workers very quickly formed soviets and kept things running. Then the Bolsheviks re-established state power, deliberately destroying horizontal worker organisation with hierarchical structure, and everything went to shit.
Then, going back a tiny bit:
The abolishion of class society, meaning one class is not subjugating it’s will on another, be it capitalist or a socialist state bureaucrats.
How do you envision a state without state bureaucrats?
Only the proper application would be of the building the restaurant and how noone likes to do the actual work of building it as everyone is free not to do it.
How do you come to the conclusion that nobody likes building things? Doubly so if there's a couple of people around who like cooking for the community who could really use a nice place to provide their services?
There's actually interesting modern polls around this, made in the context of UBI: The overwhelming majority say that if they received UBI, they'd still be working about as much. Maybe get another job, maybe cut down hour a bit, maybe take a sabbatical to do learn a new trade and switch there, but overall the wheels would keep churning at about the same speed. Meanwhile, the same overwhelming majority, when asked what other people would be doing, said "they'd stop working". That kind of mind-bug is a mixture of capitalist realism and hierarchical realism, the notion that people need to feel the whip to be motivated to be productive. That without imposition of force, humanity as we know it would cease to exist: We'd lose our zest, our creativity, our ambition, our love for one another, everything. That humanity is an inherently asocial species, held together by the powers that be. That we need to be domesticated to be ourselves.
If lifespans doubling within a few decades, and a backwater, feudal failed state becoming a global super power constitutes "going to shit", then I sure wouldn't mind seeing some shit around here.
A superpower which doesn't exist any more, it was torn apart by its own lack of productivity and internal contradictions.
The industrialisation went quickly, true, but heavy industry was the only thing the Soviet Union ever got remotely good at, its state apparatus failed to incorporate advances made elsewhere, heck it was so bad that the GDR started its own chip programme because the Soviets wouldn't and they needed chips to stay competitive in the market of industrial machinery. Did you know that in the 80s VW Wolfsburg was full of GDR-built machines? They used the proceeds to buy things that are necessary to keep Prussians happy and not rebelling, such as coffee (I'm being absolutely serious here coffee was a big political issue in the GDR).
Meanwhile, rapid increases in lifespans and living standards aren't exactly rare because it's not actually that hard to get half-way decent when you start from a point of utter destitution.
The USSR did achieve nothing special in that regard, and definitely nothing special enough to justify the abuses that come with their approach.
A superpower which doesn’t exist any more, it was torn apart by its own lack of productivity and internal contradictions.
Yeah, you're right; it didn't attain divinity and immortality, so it was basically a failure. Might as well have stayed feudal.
Meanwhile, rapid increases in lifespans and living standards aren’t exactly rare because it’s not actually that hard to get half-way decent when you start from a point of utter destitution.
Actually they are, you don't see that kind of rapid increase in capitalist countries almost ever, while it's the norm for communists.
The USSR did achieve nothing special in that regard
Lol, ok
and definitely nothing special enough to justify the abuses that come with their approach
K. Looking forwards to seeing you meet your own standards on this one.
You are aware that communism, too, not just anarchism, is a stateless society?
Yes. Are you aware that communists in socialist states handle political economic forces to achieve this, but are faced with significant capital forces that tries to work against it, thus creating contradictions?
In the ole socialist definition of “state”
I use the "Monopoly on violence" definition (similarly in wider meaning, as with authority)
Then the Bolsheviks re-established state power, deliberately destroying horizontal worker organisation with hierarchical structure, and everything went to shit.
They just did it for fun, wasn't like there was fascist and imperialist forces right?
How do you envision a state without state bureaucrats?
Democratic centralism, but it will have beraucrats until the state abolished capitalist force. The party bureaucrats debate internally and acts in unison. You can freely join the party. It's deliberate to keep non marxist/people that think capitalism is good, outside. It's based. Read "What is to be done" from Lenin.
How do you come to the conclusion that nobody likes building things?
Not what Engels or I am saying? The "decision" or the process, the organization around building things requires authority e.g. architect, safety inspector etc.
Doubly so if there’s a couple of people around who like cooking for the community who could really use a nice place to provide their services?
Yes? And after they formed the decision they are bound by it. Giving it authority. It's this abstract that Engels is referencing
UBI
A social democratic solution, that keeps the economic base capitalist but creates a welfare state.i.e. here take the money and fuck off. do was we say
Also once you have the political will to implement UBI you could just build housing. UBI also comes at the cost of consolidating various social spending in order to create more dependency and have only one front of negation to deal with as a capitalist
Are you aware that communists in socialist states handle political economic forces to achieve this, but are faced with significant capital forces that tries to work against it, thus creating contradictions?
Oh yes if your 5-year plan failed of course that's because the Rothschilds don't want you to succeed. Couldn't be because the plan was shit.
I use the “Monopoly on violence” definition (similarly in wider meaning, as with authority)
There's no monopoly on violence in Anarchism.
Democratic centralism.
Have you actually read Lenin. That's not a method to organise a society, it's a method to organise a party. All it basically bogs down to "Once the party has made a decision, party members are to stop arguing and get to work implementing it". It has numerous problems when it comes to de-facto centralisation of power, as well as inability to address and correct decisions that were, or have become, wrong.
The “decision” or the process, the organization around building things requires authority e.g. architect, safety inspector etc.
That's literally the authority of the shoe-maker. Being a specialist and therefore trusted to make expert decisions is not the same as having power over people. Anarchists freely bow to the shoe-maker when it comes to matters of shoe production, but not when it comes to where to walk with them.
Yes? And after they formed the decision they are bound by it. Giving it authority. It’s this abstract that Engels is referencing
No they're not bound by that decision. There's plenty of reasons why one would want to change their mind.
A social democratic solution, that keeps the economic base capitalist but creates a welfare state.i.e. here take the money and fuck off. do was we say
It takes power away from capitalists by giving the labourer the option to walk away from job offers they don't like. It is not a total overhaul of the system, true, but you should be able to appreciate the juicy irony of fighting capitalist power with market mechanisms.
Also once you have the political will to implement UBI you could just build housing.
People need more to live than housing, also, you're being paternalistic. "Here, live in this place, eat this stuff". What if I want to take the same amount of resources and live in another place, and eat different stuff?
Oh yes if your 5-year plan failed of course that’s because the Rothschilds don’t want you to succeed. Couldn’t be because the plan was shit.
Why the fuck are you making anti-Semitic statements? Why are you equating capitalist forces with "Rothschild's"?
As far as I now the soviet union went from feudalism to a space traveling nation. Similarly the rise of China is impressive af. Cuba despite it's sanctions and restrictive access to world markets has a higher life expectancy than the US. etc.
How many anarchist non-state states exist? Rojava? Tell me how their dealing with capitalist imperialist forces is going
There’s no monopoly on violence in Anarchism
Idc. I tell you how I use the term. It ssimilarly a wide category that encompasses disciplinary measures inside anarchist organization.
authority of the shoe-maker
Brother in Christ why are you so dense about this and not taking Engels Argumentation and exploring what he could've meant and try to view from that lense (not necessarily having to adopt it)
People need more to live than housing, also, you’re
Agree and it's the socialists states duty to serve these interests
being paternalistic. “Here, live in this place, eat this stuff”.
I agree UBI is paternalistic. The state will tell you how much you get to spend and need to use for living.
Why the fuck are you making anti-Semitic statements? Why are you equating capitalist forces with “Rothschild’s”?
Nah I'm more side-jabbing at Soviet antisemitism, dunno whether you share it it's not a universal. Could've just as well said Deutsche Bank as far as the argument is concerned. "Oh no the filthy capitalist pigs invested into semiconductors we're falling behind, they're exerting authority over us" give me a break no they're not your planners have their heads up their asses and missed the train.
higher life expectancy than the US.
Yeah saying "we're better off than the US" is just as convincing as American saying "we're better off than Haiti". Darn low bar. Do better.
not taking Engels Argumentation and exploring what he could’ve meant
Why do you demand that of me, but not of Engels? Why isn't he exploring what anti-auths could have meant instead of putting up a strawman? Also I did try to interpret Engels in a way where he doesn't argue against a strawman but then the text makes even less sense.
I agree UBI is paternalistic. The state will tell you how much you get to spend and need to use for living.
Which is less paternalistic than giving you goods instead of money. In one case you can consume those goods, in the other you can choose which goods you consume. You can forego expensive food for a while to save up for canvas and paintbrush, if you so please. You can choose whether you spend the money included for purposes of recreation to travel to a metal concert, the opera, or a beach bar. You can choose to spend that recreation money on better food or a new hammer, if you so please.
Is it anywhere close to usufruct? No, of course not. But it's still miles better than "work for a boss or starve", or "work for a boss or don't get to choose your meal". Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Anti-semitism like stopping the holocaust, but ok go off king
Could’ve just as well said Deutsche Bank as far as the argument is concerned. “Oh no the filthy capitalist pigs invested into semiconductors we’re falling behind, they’re exerting authority over us” give me a break no they’re not your planners have their heads up their asses and missed the train.
What no theory does to a mf
Yeah saying “we’re better off than the US”
Do you even read?
I said "Cuba despite it’s sanctions and restrictive access to world markets has a higher life expectancy than the US"
Qualitative different statement
Why do you demand that of me, but not of Engels?
Because he's dead?
Why isn’t he exploring what anti-auths could have meant instead of putting up a strawman? Also I did try to interpret Engels in a way where he doesn’t argue against a strawman but then the text makes even less sense.
"Strawman is when you use a definition that encompasses mine"
Which is less paternalistic than giving you goods instead of money
It's paternalistic still? The economic base is capitalist and has a welfare superstructure. The undemocratic relation between worker and employer is not resolved and you get no say in how much you get.
Is it anywhere close to usufruct? No, of course not. But it’s still miles better than “work for a boss or starve”, or “work for a boss or don’t get to choose your meal”. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Sure, but once you have the political will to make UBI a reality, the huge amount of money you're basically taxing off of the rich can be spent more ressourceful
“Strawman is when you use a definition that encompasses mine”
It is if you expand the definition of fruit to encompass things that cooks would never call a fruit, and then call caprese a valid fruit salad. There's a reason I led you down that road in the other thread.
The undemocratic relation between worker and employer is not resolved and you get no say in how much you get.
The employer also doesn't get a say. The citizen overall, though, does get a say (in liberal democracies at last), as to how large the universal allowance is. The Labourer outnumbering the employer in the liberal democratic process thus gives an overall tilt towards the labourer, the ability to ensure that it's large enough to be able to tell bosses "Shove it, I quit".
Sure, but once you have the political will to make UBI a reality, the huge amount of money you’re basically taxing off of the rich can be spent more ressourceful
On what? Housing? People spend it on housing. They can pool it into cooperatives, no issue there regarding economies of scale.
It is if you expand the definition of fruit to encompass things that cooks would never call a fruit, and then call caprese a valid fruit salad. There’s a reason I led you down that road in the other thread.
It is if you expand the definition of salad.. how are you not understanding this??
Anti-auths don't have any issues with caprese We do have issues with fruit salads, though.
...or something along the lines I lost track of the isomorphism it could be that we don't have issues with fruit salads but have issues with caprese. But you'll get it, eventually, as long as you stop confusing stuff by equivocating.
Wasn't sure if that was a legitimate question or just another example.of the usage of authoritarian. But if it was a question, I'll leave this video. It's an anarchist critique of on authority. Short answer, yes. It is possible to have organization without an authoritarian structure
05:22 Acknowledges that argument that Engels is making is that "anything is authoritarian"
05:28 Acknowledges that Engels has a very broad definition of "authority"
06:20 Builds a strawman by giving a context "Engels existed around the time of the industrial revolution", reading the paragraph about steam boats, etc. and is
0740 using it to suddenly drastically narrows the definition of Engels down to mean "technological development is authoritarian".
10:15 At 10:45 correctly explains the point that Engels is making and copes hard with the fact that Engels indeed questions the entire political theoretical understanding of authority lol
12:00 correctly understands that the point is that "Anti-Authoritarians want to change society" and if Engels can prove that organization without authority is impossible, it will mean that he will be able to show this deep contradiction
13:55 He builds another strawman by claiming that Engel's argument is "Steam is an authority" and not the actual argument that the organization of labour inheretly requires authority and in a society without capitalism the production process would take authorties place (i.e Steam)
14:50 Another strawman where he claims that "hunger would be authority" in an ancient hunting times, instead of the organization of how the hunt would take place
This is so dumb i don't want to continue and its so long wtf
Pure ideology, that video was such a waste of time
The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes "authority" in a libertarian framework. He created an overly broad conception of authority and proceeded to (poorly) attack that. If you're going to critique an ideology you should at the very least have an understanding of what the core concept your criticizing means. Engles made some shit up, put that in the mouths of anarchists and acted like a little piss baby about it. How on earth did you get 15 minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?
Pure ideology? You're hilarious. Like y'all haven't been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx's ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big "scientific socialist" brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I'm a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise
The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework.
He's not misunderstanding what constitutes authority. He is giving a broad definition and proves the existence of authority after abolition of capitalism by referring to the organization of labour.
minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?
Because the "obvious points" are made with strawmen (see comments above)
Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise
He’s proving the existence of authority (with a definition thats wide/encompasses the libertarian framework).
He's not using that definition anywhere in his article.
If you know think about going for the "but Engel's definition is broader, therefore, his argument is still valid" boy oh boy I suggest you study logic. That's not how widening and narrowing works.
Say, cooks. They say: "These things are fruits, and with them we can make fruit salads". Botanists say "These things are fruit, our category is wider, it includes tomatoes, therefore, you can make fruit salad with tomatoes".
Say, cooks. They say: “These things are fruits, and with them we can make fruit salads”. Botanists say “These things are fruit, our category is wider, it includes tomatoes, therefore, you can make fruit salad with tomatoes”.
Ok I can see where the problem is. You don't know how narrowing and widening works.
Fruit in fruit salads describes the salad. It's the qualifier. The proper application would be:
Botanist says:" These things are fruits. We have tomatoes, etc. I can make fruit salad".
Cooks ways:"A fruit salad is a type of salad. I have noodles I can make noodle salad. I use a wider definition of salad which encompasses fruit salads, noodle salads and a bunch of others"
Fruit in fruit salads describes the salad. It’s the qualifier.
Indeed, it is a qualifier. A qualifier that the botanists widened. When they said "you can make a fruit salad with tomatoes" they used their definition of fruits, but the narrower definition of cooks for "fruit salad" (there's no botanical definition of "fruit salad", it's a purely culinary term). Thus, we have a category error.
On the narrowing side that category error is generally not present, say, you can narrow down "fruit" to "tropical fruit" or "temperate fruit" and still get perfectly valid fruit salads made from those narrower categories. Heck you can narrow it down to "banana" and get a fruit salad, even if it may be a bit bland.
Indeed, it is a qualifier. A qualifier that the botanists widened. When they said “you can make a fruit salad with tomatoes” they used their definition of fruits, but the narrower definition of cooks for “fruit salad” (there’s no botanical definition of “fruit salad”, it’s a purely culinary term). Thus, we have a category error.
Yes we have a category error because you made it The botanist is narrowing down the category of salads by qualifying it to be fruit salads.
On the narrowing side that category error is generally not present, say, you can narrow down “fruit” to “tropical fruit” or “temperate fruit” and still get perfectly valid fruit salads made from those narrower categories. Heck you can narrow it down to “banana” and get a fruit salad, even if it may be a bit bland.
Yes you're right in this example the qualifier is tropical that narrows down fruits. In the previous example we talked about fruit salads. The category being salads.
The botanist is narrowing down the category of salads by qualifying it to be fruit salads.
The cooks made a statement about fruit salads, not salads in general. It is not under contention that caprese is a salad and includes tomatoes. It's also not a fruit salad.
The cooks made a statement about fruit salads, not salads in general. It is not under contention that caprese is a salad and includes tomatoes. It’s also not a fruit salad.
Well duh, it's because you made an error, you made the cook say it for some inexplicable reason in your thought experiment and I'm pointing it out to you.
The statement of the cooks, "these are fruits, we can turn them into fruit salad" is perfectly accurate. There's no error in there. In my example it's the botanists which make the mistake by widening the definition of "fruit" without double-checking whether that widening changes their understanding of "fruit salad" to become something different from what the cooks were saying.
In my example it’s the botanists which make the mistake by widening the definition of “fruit” without double-checking whether that widening changes their understanding of “fruit salad” to become something different from what the cooks were saying.
Indeed, you made the thought experiment and build this error into it (aka Strawman). I corrected the conversation to show how to correctly apply widening and narrowing in regards to "fruit salads"
What you should’ve done instead is apply it to Engels’s widening of the term “authority” to mean things that don’t fit into a fruit salad, any more.
Ok let me do it now since youre dense: Authority encompasses "granted authority". Granted is the qualifier. Authority is the category. Authority being defined as:
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
If something is granted it's not imposed. Those two things are mutually exclusive. If Engels was honest in his argument he'd have used "imposed authority" to characterise what anti-auths were criticising, not the general "authority".
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that’s true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
Exactly. I like to keep things simple and boil things down to authority. I'm the only one allowed to define me, and I don't have the right to define others. If everyone has absolute freedom to be what they are, then by design no one has the right to define, exploit, marginalize or otherwise or oppress them. if anyone was oppressed, not everyone would have absolute freedom. Then on top of that we put societal contracts. "Here's a time period of my labor, would you trade it for that thing you have". "I'd like to give some of my extra things so that more people can have good things [taxation] "Here's consent, how about you?" "I go by [pronoun]."
Anarchism -> Maximum freedom for all
Hierarchism-> Maximum freedom for the one on top.
Smarter people than me have talked about the nuances for ages so as I said, I like to simplify things. Fullyautomatedspacegayluxurycommunism ftw!
What if I want to use my absolute freedom to oppress someone else? What if I use my absolute freedom to build a structure that blocks the view of the mountains from my neighbors, who love the view? Whose freedom should get oppressed to solve that?
While I would say that graph is more correct than the two-dimensional ones, many of us are fed in the west. (As a social libertarian/anarcho communist) I make the point that I don't believe authoritarians actually qualify significantly for any form of left or right. They are all about their authority primarily and doing what they wish to do. They will resort to any rhetoric or means to achieve their goals they think will serve them. Whether it is left or right.
Case in point Hitler, who is closely associated with fascism which is considered nominally right-wing. Absolutely aped the terminology and rhetoric of early 20th century socialism. Till it didn't serve him anymore. China who is more or less The Golden child of ml activists is more state capitalist than they are State communist. Because it suits those in power.
The graph more accurately might look like a deformed Dorito. Authoritarians being fluid and centrist. Not committed to being left or right. On the right side gradually sloping down through libertarians into capitalists/liberals on the far right. Somewhere neutral between authoritarian and actual libertarian. But the more true libertarian you trend the more left you absolutely trend. That's for sure.
At least online, it seems like the only Americans who call themselves far left agree those are all centrist positions. It's only "centrists/progressives*" (moderately far right Americans) and other flavors of far right who still often dont generally call themselves far right (trump enthusiasts, alex jones types, proud boy types) who label basic things like universal health care a far left idea or just call it impractical atm.
*I feel like 10 years ago, people who were at least moderately left were the main people using this term, but in the last few years, people right of center have been using the label to try limit progress by pretending they're just trying to be practical/realists about what can actually be done.
To be “on the left” at minimum you need to be totally opposed to the capitalist system.
From there, there are many ideologies to choose from whether authoritarian (like Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism, etc.) or anti-authoritarian: mutualism, communalism, one of the many strains of anarchism, etc.
Also if you’re authoritarian I’d say it’s questionable whether you’re still on the left.
If you believe that “authoritarian” is a well defined or meaningful term and not just a snarl word created during the cold war to equivocate communists and Nazis, I'd say it's questionable whether you're still on the left.
You're half right. Americans as a whole don't need to absorb context, but American conservatives do.
The rest of us are well aware of what's going on. There are democrats in our government that are pretending to be against "socialism", but they are old and these clearly dated policies aren't going to last.
I get the feeling most of that nonsense was just fear mongering to force Biden into office instead of Bernie four years ago.
Nah, American "left" liberals definitely need to learn that there's a while spectrum of political beliefs to the left of them, and that anti-capitalism exists in general
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).
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.
Sorry to say if your views are closer to true libertarianism and the principles favored by those links you would likely be considered distinctly leftist. Dbzer0 is a primarily anarchist community, on the far-left.
You have views that are independently more left or right, but say if your views were a political party, it would be placed on a spectrum from left to right based on how many of these positions fall on either side of the spectrum. Typically the views that are seen as far left and far right are mutually exclusive, like authoritarian centralized governance versus decentralization, increased immigration vs decreased, but it's true there is a lot of nuance lost when things are viewed that way.
but it's true there is a lot of nuance lost when things are viewed that way.
Exactly. In truth, I hate ALL sides, ALL PARTIES , just for differing reasons. I vote for the shit I vote for, no political party has the power to sway me to be a blind follower that just accepts whatever bullshit they do. I'm very openly critical of all political parties in general, and don't really have anything good to say about any of them. They've all done shit I greatly disagree with.
Racists? Omg. 😱 that's literally most parties in the US. Democrats have a racist history just the same. Welcome to America, all parties are racist in one way or other, because this country breeds extremism and corruption. Even liberalism has perpetuated systemic racism on several occasions despite trying to dismantle it. All the parties in the US are guilty.
Corruption runs deep, and corruption is corpo profit margins.
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.
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.
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.
Both sides see in black and white, but for far different reasons, the far left want to eliminate the concept of profit over people, while the far right want to eliminate people that dont fit inside their rigid and arbitrary 'moral' structures.
Did you notice how you cant refute my statement? Leaving your only option to call this a one sided assessment of the status quo, while in actuality it sums up of the state of current affairs quite succinctly. Popcorn do be good though.
The left is the party of trying to help the lowest so everyone can live a decent life and the right is the party of trying to achieve the best possible life for a few of the highest
You're just supporting this clueless "both sides" narrative with exactly no nuance. The right is factually incorrect and is centered around supporting hierarchy, regardless of vibes, while the left opposes hierarchy. Polarization is not what's wrong with American society, it's a symptom of the underlying cause, which is Capitalism's decay.
It's interesting innit, that the reddit migration to Lemmy gave the most vocal ideologues a place to gather, and a reason not to go back. I wonder if the discussion on Reddit is a bit more nuanced now?
But, since you asked nicely, I'll rephrase it as a conservative would. As I think someone should believe what feels right to them, but at least understand the mind and motivations of your opposition, otherwise you will fail in your goals. That's something not one of the 10 downvoters and 5 commenters have been able to do.
The far left seeks to eradicate the fundamental principles of individual initiative and free enterprise in favor of a collectivist agenda, they're in favor of legalization of all drugs and the murder of children and don't understand that a functioning society is a fragile house of cards. They think that children growing up without one or both parents is perfectly fine, and the child will in turn be a well-adjusted adult, regardless. They want to open the borders to let every spy, murderer, and rapist into their neighborhood. The far right aims to preserve traditional values and defend against the erosion of societal norms by those advocating for radical change.
Okay great job you dressed up some hateful shit with jingoistic buzzwords. What's your point? We've all heard this before, no one is unaware of the rationalizations that conservatives tell themselves to justify their hatred and selfishness as tough love and societal stewardship.
Okay, now what are the rationalizations that progressives/liberals/Democrats/leftists/whatever the preferred term that's the opposite of 'conservative' tell themselves?
Keep in mind, you're including the entire group here, as you did with 'conservatives', so anything any [preferred leftist term] does means it's representative of the entire group.
ETA: yes it's as old as human nature and organized religion, yes, and you're continuing it. Everyone with different beliefs is "the other" and "the enemy" and "must be removed from existence to ensure peace for our people." I'm trying to point out that you're being taken advantage of, and the truth seems to be evoking strong emotions.
If you say down and had an honest conversation without yelling and turns were allowed to be finished, you'd find you have much more in common with these individuals than "the enemy" as the group you see them as.
But ideological warfare prevents class warfare, so it continues being spoonfed to you, and you happily latch on to every bite so you continue to feel a sense of purpose.
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.
"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.
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.
