Hot Take - Hexbear “left unity” is an illusion that only seems true because it is dominated by MLs.

I’ve felt this way for a while. The lack of ideological diversity is what creates the illusion of “left unity” over here. One example:

Imagine if we had a sizeable chunk of people who are anti-Dengist. Then nearly every post about China, every use of Xi emotes, would be filled with replies criticising China, Xi, and the OP.

And you couldn’t call all these people libs and just ban them because there are a lot of leftists, from Maoists to anarchists to ultras to even non-Dengist MLs who genuinely oppose the modern Chinese state based on their ideological convictions.

And if the mods banned them, that would be pure bias, and could lead to an exodus of those other leftist users, which would mean we are not actually left-unity.

But if the mods didn’t, then it would be a severe restriction on the kinds of content that can be posted on the “main” communities. You couldn’t say things like “China is moving towards socialism or that it is in the primary stage of socialist construction” because these are controversial opinions not held by other leftists. Allowing these, would mean allowing the opposites, which would mean a war in the replies every time you post something like this.

As an example, see what happened with vegan posting. In this “left unity” Hexbear, anarchists would have to confine their controversial opinions to the anarchist comm, MLs to the ML comm etc.

Right now, we have an extremely small minority of people who are against the majority opinion in some way. And those people are tolerated in their dissent as long as they frame it in very careful ways and never outright go against the majority. I mean, we have left unity emotes and anarchist emotes and that’s all cool.

But what happens if there are a 100+ anarchists who start posting and commenting about their analysis/opinion on the USSR? Would that be allowed? Would anarchists, if they existed in sizeable numbers be allowed to not just criticise the Soviet Union in the narrow ways in which is allowed currently but to state the full breadth of their opinions on it from the start? Even more controversial, what if Trots started talking about Stalin? How long would that be tolerated?

Now, I’m not saying the way Hexbear operates is wrong. Maybe left unity is a pipe dream and that there are just too many controversial positions and opposing visions for it to be real. Maybe, if there were other tendencies here, the mods would figure out a way to balance things out. Be calm on main, go wild on specific comms. But I think that is the point - Hexbear’s claim to left unity needs to be properly tested. The users and the mods need to face these challenges and come up with proper solutions that doesn’t end in purges of other communities. We cannot claim to be this big tent when we’ve only been in this tiny sandbox with a handful of small rocks.

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They do not.
Anarchists believe that the state literally means "governance" or "government."
Marxist-Leninists do not.
- Marxists advocate for the withering away of the proletarian state once it has served its purpose, right? I thought that was one of the most basic tenets of Marxism
  e:
  The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away.
  ~ Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring
  
  The State in ML theory is the mediator of class antagonisms and the high-order apparatus of class violence.
  By some definitions of anarchism, that "administration" that Engels describes counts as hierarchy and should be eliminated. This is a rare situation where I would say to read "On Authority," and I am saying so not for a "Dae anarkiddies owned" reason but because Engels talks about principles of administration and production and the necessity of authority therein for proper functioning.
  So some anarchists get along with the ML end goal and some do not.
  
  The state isn't "no government" or "no hierarchy."
  This is fundamental to Marxism.
  
  "The State" is notoriously hard to define so let's make sure we're square before we keep doing this, I'm using the definition of the state as the entity that holds the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence over a given area. Are we in agreement or do you use a different definition?
  
  Stop being condescending.
  The state withering away means that there is no class society anymore. That's it.
  It doesn't mean "no authority" or "no governance" or "no administration" or "horizontality."
  
  I respect you, but you're really misreading the tone and being a bit presumptuous in the process
  
  i'm not but okay
  
  I genuinely don't mean to be condescending, I just want to make sure we agree on terms because I feel like I'm being talked past and I'm worried that I'm also talking past you.
  Based on the way you responded, it sounds like you agree on my definition of the state. Now, how can there be authority or governance if no entity holds the right to use legitimate force to enforce authority or governance?
  
  Some of these recent users since our merger with Lemmy are incredibly annoying.
  Yes, Marxists don’t want a state. It’s why Marx didn’t say communist state but society with free association. A state necessitates the existence of different classes, where one oppressed the other (using their monopoly on violence). The proletarian state uses its power after the revolution to do away with all capitalist means of production, relations etc, thus abolishing the two classes, and thus itself.
  To me, imagining how such a society would function at the present moment is pretty impossible. I personally don’t see how there will be an “authority” or “unjustifiable hierarchy” in such a society. But maybe there will. It will certainly have challenges that will be overcome by its people. Our task is to get us to that stage.
  
  there's that tone again
  there is no class to oppress another; that's literally it
  there are still rules you have to follow
  
  i think you're misreading their tone as condescending when i'm p sure they're just trying to ensure communication is happening with clarity.
  this isn't reddit. people usually aren't trying to be shitty to you here.
  
  hmmmmmmmmmmm
  true, this is a very kind community, even by first impressions
  
  and also me especially I'm a softie thembo
  
  thembo?
  
  hi friend I genuinely want to talk but I don't know what I'm saying that's wrong so I'm only going to try one more time - can you please explain to me what you define as the state (you have used a lot of "the state is not [...]" and not very much "the state is [...]"), and with that definition of the state, how do you propose authority will be implemented without such a state?
  Just to state my claim one more time,
  Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then "the state... ceases to exist", and "it becomes possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.
  ~ Lenin, State and Rev, ch. 5
  I don't think you're wrong about classes necessitating a state for their existence, but I just think the state encompasses more than just the existence of classes
  
  What you quote is a condition, not a necessity. Read Otto Wille Kuusinen's Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism: Manual (2nd edition) and you'll see that the typical idea of communism as thought of historically is not "horizontal" like the anarchists say.
  Read this.

272 comments