This meme was inspired by the response to a meme I posted on r/worldjerking
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.
this is why i like syndicalism, it's sort of a hybrid of the two resulting in a fairly fast soft and nonviolent revolution if enough people join in.
unionize, have the unions take over the businesses, stop running things for profit, bish bash bosh socialist state.
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.
That's brilliant. I'm going to save this.
prefigurative politics!
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:
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"
Yeah don't try to shoehorn some dictatorial bullshit into the democratic process and we can talk.
Problem is that any regulation proposed to rein in the slide towards capitalist dystopia is suddenly labeled as anti-democratic commie socialist dictators trying to crush the free market.
Make no mistake, corporations are dictatorships. They do need to be held in check.
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.
....?
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.
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.
Man I love state sponsored terrorism!
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.
I mean, that's why I'm here using a p2p alternative. Since Napster and Bittorrent, they've proven that the most reliable way to resist their violence is to decentralize.
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.
If the alternatives dont work then why does the ruling class work so hard to squash them?
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.
How can we try anything new if everything has to have a precedence.
By doing smaller changes on an existing system. By forming strong unions, like the EU and releasing new regulations, one after the other.
I'm all for new ideas so long as they're old ideas.
take a look at The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber
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.
Has anyone tried lottery? I wanna bet that picking leadership completely at random would be better representation than rich assholes like Biden and Trump. That's how we do things with QA testing and statistical analysis. It's how we try to eliminate bias.
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.
Unregulated capitalism is impossible by definition, because capitalism requires private property, and private property only exists because the state enforces that status.
a yes, the unregulated capitalism mindset that cause the great depression
The Great Depression was caused by the stock markets failing, not a lack of regulation.
Happy cake day.