cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10351845
This is the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1d92dkp/rate_the_political_factions_in_my_totally/
Most people know about the end states. How you get there is way more important. Gotta get to communism without becoming a dictatorial hell scape like ussr or China.
The two main avenues are slow change through existing means and violent revolution. The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
Look at Project 2025. That’s a fascist takeover plot that has a plan for future government. No one really takes it seriously, unfortunately since it could happen. so even fewer will take other plans seriously.
dictatorial hell scape like ussr or China
Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia is a great book that goes into this, a lot of the terror during that period was not Stalin personally going around and shooting every peasant who had more than 5 rubles to his name (during the rare moments he wasn’t personally eating everyone’s grain). Rather it was the people using the new system to settle old scores or for personal advancement.
The book doesn’t cover the period between 1917 and 1923, or the Hundred Flowers Campaign in China, but you can see similar sentiment in transcripts and letters when Lenin, Mao, et al look at how many people had gotten into the party entirely for the purpose of abusing their positions for personal gain.
At a very general level, we can infer any socialist country is more democratic after the revolution based on the fact that the government pursues the interests of the people more than it did before the revolution.
In Cuba for instance, their last constitutional referendum had a 90% approval rating. Do you think that happened by chance, or that you are simply unaware of/trained not to recognize how the people determine the actions of the state?
Rather it was the people using the new system to settle old scores or for personal advancement.
Lenin, Mao, et al look at how many people had gotten into the party entirely for the purpose of abusing their positions for personal gain.
How was that allowed to happen? Did they build a system of oppression that was ripe for takeover by petty tyrants, some of whom became actual, fully fledged tyrants, whilst simultaneously shutting down the mechanisms by which workers could have power over their own lives?
This isn’t about whether Stalin personally gets into heaven, plus the absurd strawman that people think he did anything personally shows a complete lack of systemic thinking, which was ironically one of Marx’s great contributions to political thought. It is about whether the systems we build are liberatory or oppressive.
I’m not watching a youtube video.
Did they build a system of oppression
No, such a system already existed, evidenced by the famines, massacres, etc that happened almost yearly in China and Russia before the revolutions.
What I’m getting at is that while the post-revolution states weren’t utopias, they were far better than what came before. Telling people otherwise only serves to prolong the status quo.
Also they kinda did have a government ready to go in the case of the USSR, the Soviets.
simultaneously shutting down the mechanisms by which workers could have power over their own lives
Except they had and used those mechanisms, as evidenced by the massive improvements to the average person’s lives after the revolution.
the absurd strawman that people think he did anything personally
Apologies, typically when I see people doing anti-communism use the term dictatorial, they mean a single person exercising absolute power. Though I don’t understand why you’d consider a dictatorship of the working class “hell”.
The two main avenues are slow change through existing means and violent revolution. The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
Applied in practice it means that the period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. (…)
To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of Russia. (…)
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the Man of To-morrow.
- Emma Goldman, Afterword of My Disillusionment in Russia
The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
The expectation that revolutionaries aiming for a future without hierarchy, states, or class should have a plan for exactly those ready to go is how you actually get the autocratic takeover - because you’re maintaining the existing systems of power for the sake of taking comfort in the familiar (or worse - as a deliberate ploy by those presenting themselves as “in charge” to grab power).
The whole point of a revolution, from an an-com point of view anyway, is to start building something new from the bottom up, horizontally, abolishing hierarchy and power structures, not just replace the existing ones with our own.
The fact that people can’t even begin to imagine a different way of living, even though our existence under kings and masters has only been a blink in human existence and civilisation, just goes to show how well the indoctrination works, but better is possible once you start unlearning constructs you’ve come to accept as facts.
am open to social democrat processes that have provided many EU countries with worker rights, health care, education etc.
not really liking the tankie / biden genocide / climate indifferent takes.
these things are not the same.
A few things to address:
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There is plenty of room between “Social Democrat” and “Tankie”; and social democracy is still capitalism. I don’t know exactly what idea you have of Europe, but we’re not free from corporations.
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I don’t know if that is what you are implying, but accusing Biden of supporting genocide does not make someone a tankie. Plenty of countries have condemned Israel and accused Israel of genocide or “committing genocidal actions”, are all of them “tankies”?
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Republicans are (for the most part) Liberal Conservatives, the Dems (for the most part) are Liberal Progressives. They are all capitalists. Biden vs Trump has nothing to do with this conversation.
and social democracy is still capitalism
Literally the first sentence on social democracy:
#“Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism”
##“within socialism”
Maybe keep reading:
By the post-World War II period and its economic consensus and expansion, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to orthodox Marxism. They shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform as a compromise between capitalism to socialism.[108]
In Britain, the social democratic Gaitskellites emphasized the goals of personal liberty, social welfare, and social equality.[111] The Gaitskellites were part of a political consensus between the Labour and Conservative parties, famously dubbed Butskellism.
You can also look at European countries which are social democracies, and you will see they are all capitalist countries. Here, also from wiki. I can tell you here in Portugal we have 2 parties which, according to the wiki, are also Social Democratic parties, and they are also the only two parties who have ever been in power. I can tell you first hand, I live in a capitalist system. According to the wiki, the UK’s Labour Party “is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as being an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists”, do they seem socialist to you? And before you claim that they are because “they also have democratic socialists”, that would mean that by transitive property, USA’s Dem party is a socialist party. I guess the USA is socialist after all!
Yeah don’t try to shoehorn some dictatorial bullshit into the democratic process and we can talk.
I relate to this, but I keep trying to tell people that we need to get a clear diagnosis of the problem and figure out how we’re going to get out of this bind.
Ultimately, Biden is currently on track to lose. He’s been losing in the polls all year, and alarmingly, he’s insisted that he isn’t going to make changes. He’s staying the course.
Those of us who want to avoid a Trump dictatorship need to find a way to change this dynamic, and I don’t see any way that complaining about Biden’s disaffected base fixes this. I don’t think complaining about Biden fixes it either. I think he’s made peace with losing. So what will?
The Democratic establishment – the campaign managers and staff in particular – can largely tolerate a Trump dictatorship more than the loss of status. “Leaders of the Resistance” is okay with them. “Collaborators” or “nobodies” isn’t. If Jill Stein hits 15% in the polls and starts drawing major crowds, I thik this would be such a painful shock to the self-image of Democratic campaigners that I think this could dislodge the race and force Biden to reconsider his approach, and hopefully campaign for president the way he did in 2020.
If you don’t want Trump, don’t blame the left. They aren’t the primary source of his polling collapse. That’s coming from moderates who see no vision or benefit. And the Democratic party’s most popular agenda items are all leftist anti-corporate stuff. So criticism is all that I see saving us from Biden’s terrible judgement.
Ultimately, Biden is currently on track to lose.
If you don’t want Trump, don’t blame the left. They aren’t the primary source of his polling collapse.
See, your premise is faulty so your conclusions - built upon this fault - are doomed.
Polling is fucked. Literally, the polling we’re seeing (and saw in 2020) is worse than useless in so far as it doesn’t inform the public and deliberately distorts the ground game.
If Jill Stein hits 15% in polls we’ve wandered into bizzarro world and all bets are off anyway.
. So criticism is all that I see saving us from Biden’s terrible judgement.
…?
- like when he cut insulin to $35, literally saving lives?
- saving the economy,
- forgiving school loans,
- stood up for unions & labor (FIRST PRESIDENT TO EVER WALK A PICKET LINE),
- increased overtime for millions,
- ended federally subsidized discriminatory mortgage lending,
- went after airlines, cable companies, phone companies, concert ticket sales and hotels for their fucking ridiculous hidden fees!,
- brought back net neutrality,
- he’s gonna try to tax billionaires!
Look I don’t like the old shit, I’ve never been a fan and would prefer bernie but this is where we’re at: if you can’t look at that list and admit that holy shit the old squint seems to actually have some handle on the situation you’re disregarding reality.
And if you think Jill fucking Stein would do better you need to stop huffing gasoline Charlie Kelly.
Bruh.
Your arguments are totally wasted on me. I’m not saying he hasn’t done good stuff. I’m saying that he’s running a losing campaign, and so far has been totally unwilling to change.
Regarding polling: I don’t know how to get through to you that he’s losing. If you’re not accepting reality, then we’re fucked. Are you going to reject the election results too? It’s not really even in the margin of error most weeks, he isn’t even close to having the votes he needs in the states he needs to win. I can’t believe we’re replaying 2016 when we’ve already been through it. Wake up: we’re on a collision course and need to change direction NOW.
Regarding his achievements: These are largely great. Which just makes it so much more painful that no one knows about them. He’s never been a skilled candidate, and unfortunately getting older has not done him favors. If he had a really strong campaign, he could certainly win, but if you give a guy who isn’t good at the fundamentals of running bad support and bad guidance and a muddled, poorly delivered message, we’re going to wake up under President-for-life Donald Fucking Trump.
Did people forget that he was president? He won. It’s like I’m in groundhog’s day, and no one knows that we already ran this simulation, and the result was terrible.
If Jill Stein hits 15% in polls we’ve wandered into bizzarro world and all bets are off anyway.
We are already in bizzarro world! The leading candidate is a known fascist/rapist/felon, and the current incumbent is the most unpopular president in contemporary history.
People don’t even remember that Trump was found guilty of rape last year, because it’s not even newsworthy because he keeps quoting Hitler. And he is CURRENTLY IN THE LEAD.
Smash the glass and pull the alarms! All bets ARE off! This is a god-damned crisis, and repeating why BIden SHOULD be winning is pure copium. Put down the pipe and put on a pair of comfortable shoes, because saving America is going to need actual organizing work! And that starts with accepting that we have a problem.
I’m not saying that we need to make Jill Stein president, but we need something to convince Biden to either let someone else take the nomination or start running like he means it. He (and you) need the loudest possible wake-up call or mark my words: Trump WILL win.
This is out of touch with the problem.
The long term problem is that we don’t have a political economy that actually represents the public.
But the short term problem is that Trump is currently on track to win, and the people who don’t want that to happen are sticking their heads in the sand.
We need to (1) reengage the Democratic base. Biden’s victory in key swing states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia in particular – was built on the backs of grass-roots door knocking campaigns by Bernie supporters. His campaign was absolutely reliant on the support of people who didn’t really like HIM, but really wanted to get Trump out of office. Those people will probably still hold their nose and vote for him, but that turnout operation is shattered, and I don’t see a way he can match his close victory in 2020 without it.
If progressives find a champion in Jill Stein, it’s possible that they start dreaming of something better, and if Biden turns things around, they’ll have the drive to rebuild that critical lefty turnout machine.
(2) Biden needs a metaphorical slap in the face. He won last time because Bernie’s team wrote half his platform in a reconciliation committee. This time, there was no primary, so Biden has reverted to all his instincts, and they are TERRIBLE. He’s trying to win Haley voters as if that’s not like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football. If Stein gets momentum, maybe it’ll knock sense into him.
This is all aside from the fact that voting Green builds party infrastructure and ballot access for a meaningful third party. There are lots of complicated reasons why voting Green has long-term strategic benefits, but I’m not even getting into those. I’m just talking about how we save Biden from himself. Sorry if it sounds like 4D chess, but polls already show Biden losing and he’s not taking note, so I think seeing popularity for a left alternative is the only thing I can think of that will rescue this thing.
Because no viable alternatives have been shown to work.
Unregulated capitalism is untenable, but regulated capitalism is and remains the best system we’ve been able to come up with.
I’m all for new ideas, but you’ve got to show some kind of precedence of it working in order to change the largest system in the world.
I love this logic because capitalism has made it its job to kill any competition prove the alternatives nonviable. Chile was trying something truly revolutionary, a fully democratic based socialism, and the CIA aborted the attempt and installed a capitalism friendly dictatorship.
You won’t catch me simping for Authoritarians or anything, but when the only other mode of operation is a military strong enough to resist the CIA, there’s going to be a bias towards Authoritarian based alternatives. Convenient, if you’re trying to paint the alternatives as nonviable.
That’s kind of a straw man, though, isn’t it? Governments of capitalist countries have worked hard to suppress non-capitalist movements within and without their country, but that’s just what governments do. The Soviet Union was communist (as pure communist as the US is pure capitalist, which is to say, not very), and that also suppressed any alternatives. It’s not a function of the economic system; it’s a characteristic governments repeatedly demonstrate, regardless of their economic ideology.
I agree with the grandparent argument: capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best thing we have so far. Personally, I don’t believe communism can work, mainly because I think it goes against human nature. Except for clan behavior - altruism to your family, friends, neighbors - people are generally selfish, and communism requires us to be altruistic at our own expense to people who we not only don’t know, but who may talk differently from us, look different from us, have different culture from us. And even at the clan level, communism struggles. There were hundreds of attempts at building communes in the US in the 60’s, and I honestly believe most died out not because they were subverted by the government, but because people are selfish and they collapsed under their own internal conflicts. Very few of those remain, and when you look at them, they have fairly rigid internal structures that re-enforce the commune.
Maybe if we can make it to post-scarcity, we’ll be able to afford to be communist, because then it won’t depend on altruism. But right now, when times are hard and food is scarce, most humans will look to feeding their own children first, and the priorities of the commune tear like tissue. Capitalism endures because it’s built upon greed and selfishness, and those come easy to humans. When times are hard, we tend to fall back on barter, which is capitalism.
Anyway, saying that the US suppression of communism in Latin American countries says less about capitalism than it says about the US government, and their perceived interests. The proof is in the parallels in Soviet and communist (Mao era) China regional actions.
Some argue that the true democratic socialism has been achieved in India under Nehru. He was a socialist and the Indian economy was heavily regulated and many industries were government-owned. I’m not sure of the specifics but that hasn’t worked out well for many years. There is a reason why the news that India “liberalising” its economy in 1990s was big and seen as historical. Many credit India’s continuing growth from the liberalisation of the 90s. But some things have been relaxed too much imo.
I don’t know about the situation, but from what you described that wasn’t democratic socialism, it was social democracy; social democracy is a branch of capitalism. More specifically, social democracy emerged from a compromise made by capitalists to quell socialist and communist fervor.
In socialism, workers would be the owners of business and would distribute the profits among themselves. In social democracy, the states runs/manages some businesses with (in theory) the countries interests in mind, and creates several public support systems (i.e. public education and free healthcare) to improve overall quality of life for the average person; however the economy is still a capitalist one with free (but regulated) markets, where the only power workers have is voting on government elections.
So do you have a functional alternative or do you just want a functional alternative?
(We ALL want the functional alternative)
Se can’t have a functional alternative if we don’t try and experiment dysfunctional ones and improve them. No system arises perfect. The argument that there is no alternative good enough is a tool to abot the creation of a good enough alternative through the improvement of not so good altemratoves.
We don’t requite perfection from capitalism, but require from it’s alternatives. Why? To block the possibility of a alternative, as all systems have problems, and initial experiments are problemsl ridden.
Because no viable alternatives have been shown to work.
Capitalism has proven it definitely doesn’t work, we’re careening toward ecological collapse.
Humans existed without state, and therefore with (likely multiple coexisting) informal economic systems for hundreds of thousands of years, I’d say that has been show to work.
There was nowhere close to the number of humans or level of complexity that there is today when those systems were in place.
That doesn’t mean those methods or some form of them can’t work, you just assume this is true because you’ve been given that message by those who need us to believe this for them to maintain power.
And let’s say no non-state method can possibly work at our scale, is that to essentially throw up our hands and say, “well, since intelligently shrinking our population and economy to a size that can be sustainably managed and is appropriate sized for our planet (i.e. “degrowth”) is unspeakable, and other methods we sorta tried for a bit don’t seem to work, we’ll just go ahead and continue with this known broken method until it all collapses from overexploitation” ??
Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “I want human society to exist in 100 years and for that to happen, we need to learn to live within the bounds of our planet”?
Read up on the Paris Commune, read Homage to Catalonia by Orwell, read up on the anarchists from Manchuria. Those are just the bigger ones I can think of from the top of my head, but there are plenty more (usually smaller scale) examples. Also, read David Graeber’s work, especially The Dawn of Everything like another user suggested.
The common point of failure for those, was being a smaller entity that was surrounded and attacked by imperialist forces; some of which received help from other, more powerful, imperialist forces that had a vested interest in these groups failing.
I’m trying to remain cordial and nice, but it’s quite difficult when it seems like usually the people claiming “no viable alternatives have been shown to work” have never actually looked into any alternatives; it hardly feels like good faith argumentation.
Socialism is defined as the government owning or regulating the means of production.
When there’s an actually well regulated market, like say, we have here in the Nordics, you’ll tend to see other socialism alongside it. We have good social security and labour laws. Exactly because it’s regulated market economy we utilise.
Capitalism does not have aa monopoly on market economies.
Capitalism is to market economy what cancer is to cell growth.
Even the US employs socialist policies. As in the policies themselves are socialist in nature. Antitrust laws. Because without them, capitalism would fuck over the economy in a heartbeat.
If something has been shown to not work it’s capitalism.
Capitalism is the antithesis of a well regulated market and will always fight regulation in any form, because it’s harder to make profits if you can’t sell unsafe garbage and exploit workers to their death.
Unregulated capitalism has never been tried and it’s probably the solution to all the problems with our current system.
I’m good having regulations
If my boss could literally own me I know he would
If your current boss tried to literally own you wouldn’t you just move to a company that treats you better?
There might not BE a better company. In the system you describe we’d end up with even more strictly defined economic classes, because the wealthy would have the ability to collectively decide policy without interference. You’d just be creating an oligarchy.
It seems you’ve come from a time line where we got rid of the food regulations and you’ve injested far too much lead.
What’s with the personal attacks?
Can you not find a problem with my solution and have a discussion instead?
Insulting you is really unnecessary, SatansMaggotyCumFart.
Unregulated capitalism would result in the right of the richest and you could use your power to prevent others from getting as rich.
Companies with company town usually paid their employees with a company issued money that was only good at the company stores.
They usually sold with inflated prices.
This isn’t pure capitalism.
What makes you think unregulated capitalism won’t result in these monopolies?
And the Sturlungs?
This sounds like insanity. You think the Jeff Besos’ of the world are going to play fair when capitalism has no regulations?
If the people decide they don’t like Bezos’ company they would use a new one and he wouldn’t have a leg up on the other ones like he does now.
How would they go to a new one if he uses the massive power he has to absorb and destroy the competition?
How would they get there if the roads no longer connect to other areas because Bezos bought all the construction companies and makes the cost too high to maintain those roads?
The oligarchy system is not what I’m looking for, it’s a small group of people given control of companies as favors not organically growing by being the best.
oligarchy is the natural result of unfettered capitalism – capitalism rewards profit, not merit
Lol the yanks are giving it a good go, and look at the trouble they’re in.
They have individual states where the economy is bigger than full European countries.
I’d say they are pretty successful at it.
a yes, the unregulated capitalism mindset that cause the great depression
