I don’t like spending this much time arguing against campism but they just keep talking at me.
Honestly the base concept is fine, we’ve just never seen a working model.
We just don’t really see many governments that are actually for and by the people. Most are closer to an oligarch tribunal that boils down to a slightly distributed dictatorship, then the slap a non-dictatorship name on it and press play.
This reminds me of the book “Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When it’s Gone”.
If you value any economic system above democracy, you’ll end up being authoritarian no matter what your preferred system is.
You call this a democracy? The entire system is built to extract wealth from the working class
Call what democracy? I didn’t post about any place in particular. But no, the US is not a healthy democracy if that’s what you are getting at.
Yeah, but “democracy” looks exactly like western liberal democracy, right? Multiple parties and uses some European country as an example? All third world countries are dictatorships and should bow down to the superior ways of their white overlords? Or they just don’t know what real democracy looks like and they’re misled by Islam or something? Real democracy is a racist as fuck country like Finland, that has de-industrialized, has an economy of basically only consumers, exports nothing and imports everything from the global south that carries the social and environmental burden of actually producing everything? Democratic socialism seems to only be for the imperial core, the rest of the world is just too backwards to understand it, I guess.
(These are rhetorical questions, I know it’s not what you sound like, but it’s what it seems like all of you people are implying with pretend civility.)
If you don’t both-sides the genocide of Palestinians or the war on Iran, by bringing up that they aren’t democratic systems of government so that somehow makes them deserve getting bombed more than if they were. (If you do, then I just don’t have to talk to you.) If you can believe that, than you do actually believe that the struggle against imperialism matters more than the ideals of democracy.
How do you justify democracy when people are voting for life to be worse instead of better, even to the point of undermining the democratic process itself? Sure we could argue at some point democracy had the effect of improving living conditions but should we expect that to be true forever in all circumstances?
I dont believe that democracy is valuable as an end unto itself, it is a tool that should serve its people and if it stops doing that we shouldn’t be dogmatic about it. Authoritarian systems certainly arent the way, and I would guess what we need doesnt even have a name yet.
Democracy works, the problem is we don’t have a true democracy. We have corporate capitalist democracy. It’s a system that makes most people think it’s democracy — but it’s not.
Democracy and capitalism can not exist in the same stratosphere if democracy is to succeed.
The conditions under which democracy works are well understood.
You need a populace educated on how the society and government works at least in its broad strokes. That education should also instill a preference for democracy and describe the pitfalls of other systems.
An independent media system to keep the voter base reasonably informed.
Systems in place to prevent corruption.
Every single one of these have been eroded over 1-2 generations by crony capitalism to enable wealth accumulation.
I would not say that democracy in the US is a reasonable example of what democracy can look like. It is what happens when democracy is being deliberately sabotaged.
You also need a fully open and transparent government, any information being classified top secret or anything of the sort means you cannot have a democracy. No secrets can be allowed, ever. And really the only way to reasonably guarantee stuff like that is to make officials surrender all privacy related rights for life, just permanent publicly open insight into every aspect of your life, past, present, and future if you want to pursue office. I’d argue for attaching 24/7 live streamed cameras to them during their time in office as well. Obviously this would only currently work for rich countries with obscene military expenditures, like the US, but if the big guys were to do it then it would eventually be safe enough for the rest of them.
This seems extreme. I agree with more transparency of politicians, but I don’t see our current problems as stemming directly from the fact that our military has top secret information and an intelligence service.
Democracy works
Citation needed
Amerikkkan politician in the gif, lmao.
There has never been a democracy, so we don’t know if it works or not. Democracy is an ideal state. We all live under a dictatorship of capital.
I mean small bits of democracy exist everywhere. Charity groups often work as a democracy. The youth organization I was in as a kid operated as a great democracy.
There are little democratic groups all over the world working just fine. It’s the large scale corporate hellscape that keeps it from working for us as a whole.
Idealist philosophy is the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity. Just totally decouple your goals from actual reality, and make zero plans on how to get there, then critique movements that fail to measure up to your pie in the sky. You see, actually achieving things is secondary to these people, what REALLY MATTERS is looking like a good person when you’re doing it. “They don’t want power, they just want to endlessly critique power.”
The ruling class has put in place a system that is impossible to change without doing horrible, violent, and socially unacceptable things, that is why it’s so stable.
I really wished we lived in this world where convincing people of your ideas was enough to bring systemic change, it just won’t for some things.
Pointing out the flaws in some democracies is not a great argument when every other system is so clearly inferior. To answer your question, democracy requires a culture that supports it. It won’t work everywhere and it doesn’t work overnight.
When the dollar can vote you no longer have a democracy.
How do you justify democracy when people are voting for life to be worse instead of better
How are you determining “better” and “worse”? In most cases, there’s no way of knowing what is “better” or “worse” sub species aeterinatis, because most government decisions are not optimizing a single parameter, and are instead making a judgement call by choosing one of multiple options from a Pareto frontier. With democracy, the people get what the majority of people want. Majority rule is better than minority rule.
Bourgeois democracy is minority rule tho, I want a democracy where money doesn’t have a voice
There’s a big difference between the ideal democracy and the bastardization of a democratic process we have in America, much like how Marx’s vision of communism is hugely different from any actual communist implementation. I personally don’t believe that any one governing/socioeconomic system taken in a vacuum is the right answer, they all seem to rely on humans being fundamentally good-natured but it just isn’t true for much of the humans attracted to positions of power.
an ideal democracy would be a democracy where the people have power, as opposed to one where money rules. such is the case in the fake ‘democracies’ under capitalism. it’s not just america and it’s nothing to do with humans needing to be ‘good natured’.
The problem is “the people” in a democracy literally just amounts to “the majority”, and would thus favor the average and the interests thereof over the interests of underprivileged minorities. Can we count on the average person to be concerned about the well being of those who lack the collective power they enjoy? As of now, I would say definitely not.
i don’t think that rich people are inherently better any respecting the rights of minorities.
the current system demonstrably does not protect minorities either.
also the current system actively manufactures consent through media ownership and economic coercion. capital owners play a major role in that process.
what looks like majority opinion is often manufactured preference serving capital. a democracy where people had actual material security and genuine information might produce very different majorities.
Elections are not democratic because the candidates are always elites of some form. Even with universal sufferage and an egalitarian society there will always be a selection bias towards people who want power and people who are good at winning elections (but not necessarily good at governing). A real democracy would have election by lottery to ensure every segment of the population was represented. This hasn’t ever existed because past governments who elected by lottery (e.g. Ancient Athens) had only a small percentage of society represented as citizens.
After I found out about Lottery Democracy, everything clicked into place. I can finally have a true political goal that I can actually see working. Easy to convince people too, if people just watched the Lottery Democracy video from Spectacles.
I’ll check it out, thanks. I always just think about the way my academic department is organized as an example. There’s a rotating chair, and nobody wants to do it because it’s a bunch of bureacratic bullshit, but people do their time and then go back to getting actual work done. This is how politics should be.
Let me know when you come up with a way to force people to accept an unpopular system without an authoritarian regime.
For tankies, communism must be authoritarian, and the worst tankies will just prefer even actual fascism to “childish naivety of democracy”. Technically tankies are just the leftist version of your right-wing grandpa trying to convince you to finally grow out of leftism, except they’re overtly obsessed with “On authority” by Friedrich Engels.
I hate being told I’m not socialist for wanting coöperative ownership and a coöp commonwealth economy, but that they are real the “real” socialists when they just want state owned corporations.
the leftist version
Are they leftists, though? They call themselves leftists, sure, but if it walks like a duck…
walkssteps like aduckgoose…FTFY
Yeah. I dont know exactly what I would call them but the German “far”-“left” splinter party BSW just supported the actually far-right party AFD in voting for the first far-right state governor since the Nazi era… that’s not exactly behavior that anybody would seriously consider left.
Probably cause they both get their funding from moscow and don’t care about anything other than destroying western society, so they voted for the disrupter even though he’s a fascist. Typical tankie behavior.
Red fascists
Good point, they seem to be authoritarian with the extra requirement that government should also control the means of production.
which was written in 1872 and is kinda way way way way way way way past its selling date.
Benevolent idiot vs malevolent idiot, or as they were historically called: trotskyites and stalinists.
Tankies: ackshually, the term “authoritarian” is not narrowly defined and therefore has no meaning! Checkmate libs1
Democracy is akshually authoritarian because there are laws.
Natural laws? Sounds like authoritarianism.
Freedom is slavery.
Idk what communist movement you think is going to emerge pristine out of this horrific, traumatizing, wasteland of human suffering without being wrong in really terrible ways.
A socialist or anti-imperialist movement does not have to be morally correct for me to back them. Class struggle does not have to be led by good people to succeed, they don’t have to have a correct interpretation of Marxism or be Marxist at all, they don’t have to not have corruption, and they will almost always carry reactionary baggage. In a lot of situations (almost universally) it’s not realistic or possible at all for a resistance to capitalist exploitation, colonialism or imperialism to exist without all of those problems and more, but doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist. If they’re opposing capitalism, even if they’re doing it badly, they deserve support.
Also, yes, MLs shouldn’t do apologia for the things the USSR did or other socialisms did, they should state the truth clearly without discomfort. I’m kinda disillusioned with ML spaces on the internet, actually, because they really suck. It’s like a game to some people; a game about being right and not caring about fucking anything. It puts me off when I see like uncritical support of past socialisms as if they were perfect, which is impossible, and you’ll always end up being disappointed, which is the one of the points of this whole message, but it only serves to make them look like atrocity-denying historical revisionists to other people. Like the Soviets really did deport Tatars in trains, and really didn’t work to correct the colonialist past they inherited from the Russian Empire.
However, the dissolution of the USSR and the throwing of its people to the wolves of finance capital was a humanitarian catastrophe for Eastern Europe and created a situation that even now is actually sickening to think about, and I don’t know at all how or when things will recover and get better for people there. It put into motion the fucking tragedy that is happening now in Ukraine plus all of the unseen suffering in the poor regions of what was the Eastern Bloc. The ex-Soviet countries are are perfect example of what losing looks like.
Like I’m sure there are lurid, real crimes that Hamas, or Iran, or Ansar Allah committed, but I hope to god they don’t lose, because they’re fighting against the IDF and the American military and all of the bad things that the resistance has done cannot hold a candle to what the US and Israel have done. That’s how I feel about resistance to capital.
Like you’ve gotta understand historical materialism and a lot more than just that, you have to keep trying to understand things for years to be good communist. I’m not a good communist. If you approach politics with the goal of having the correct hot takes, you’ll never want to understand anything. Just stop making hot takes, and look at the world.
Thanks for sharing this perspective.
As a baby leftist, I don’t want to fall into the traps of others when it comes to heralding the goods of past socialist experiments without criticizing the ills as well.
Nothing is perfect, as you say, and it a materialist socialists’ life long project to see the world clearly for all the material conditions that exist, and have existed up until this point. Idealist socialists and idealist communists will capsize their entire movement, and endlessly make things about purity tests.
The words “purity tests” sets off my liberal detector, because of accusations of “purity testing” being used to defend Democratic party entryism and terrible DSA candidates from criticism.
The words “purity tests” sets off my liberal detector, because of accusations of “purity testing” being used
Outside of any liberal usage, you have to acknowledge the phenomenon of leftist purity testing, especially on Lemmy. It’s part of what makes the ML spaces so unsavory.
defend Democratic party entryism and terrible DSA candidates from criticism.
I mean,
A socialist or anti-imperialist movement does not have to be morally correct for me to back them.
Even the terrible DSA candidates are DSA candidates, and so far as socialist movements go they have the absolute advantage of popularity right now. I’m really, really tired of publicly glazing Democrats because the general class consciousness is so low that slowing the bleeding is the best we can get electorally.
I would be absolutely chuffed if terrible DSA candidates displaced terrible DNC candidates, because at the very least it puts “Socialist” in the general public awareness, and lowers the barrier for decent DSA candidates. And the DSA is a better class of lesser evil overall. And the better the lesser evil, the more effective my dual power is going to be.
Which is to say, purity testing is a real problem, and you don’t have to be a liberal to recognize that any proper leftist movement is going to need to engage the actual proletariat, and most of those guys are tribalistic dummies.
The DSA cannot at all be compared to the groups I was talking about because they fail at one of the main requirements, to be an anti-imperialist movement, their candidates have like backed out from every meaningful thing. They are not really “democratic socialists” they are closer to social democrats.
Not really? The official DSA platform includes dissolving the Senate. The movement itself is pretty anti-imperialist, even if individual candidates have to waffle a bit to get elected by the tribalistic dummies.
Still though, a better class of lesser evil than the DNC in any case, that can’t be denied. I haven’t seen a significant level of “backing out”, and certainly not from every meaningful thing. Until class consciousness attains a level to make more direct means practical, I’d rather shill for a lesser evil that sucks a bit less. DSA > DNC, even if both are a far cry from a proper International.
Yep, I agree with all of that.
I’m not sure if you’re into this sort of thing, but I’m working with some friends on a tabletop game jam that we’re planning to run (online) over a weekend some time early next year about stories set in the midst of a future revolution. You can see the draft document into which we’ve been occasionally adding ideas here. Let me know if you’re interested.
That link is broken on my browser.
What about now?
Someone agrees with me? That’s cool. I thought all of that was going to be for naught.
It is possible. We had socialist consenus not that long ago :/ The only possible way to achieve at least near-socialist system is democratic. If the system does not directly represent views of their citizens, eventually you get oligarchic corpocracy with planned economy, that will crush all the nations beneath their boots. Furthermore: Bolsheviks were fucking extremists. When post-revolution parliament was established, and parties ran for seats, the majority of votes were Social-Revolutionaries, bolsheviks didnt have nearly as much votes. But then bolsheviks just shut down the parliament because they lost, and put their opponents in jail or even executed. So much for the people’s republic ig.
Instead, we need to actually get support in southeen countries, fight US hegemony and get votes in european countries, but this time hwlping global south first would be priority, so the european and us capitalists couldnt move their capital to poorer parts of the world and thus destroy the socialist consensus.
What is “socialist consensus?” What are these words? “Oligarchic corpocracy?” “Social Revolutionaries?” Are you talking about the Mensheviks? Is this some kind of social democratic stroke?
The fact you have no idea who social-revolutionaries are, means you gave a huge rant about your views, meanwhile having no idea how the most important socialist revolution went. Or even such a simple thing like socialist democratic consensus of pre-60s Congratulations you are a fucking tankie. And I dont get paid to explain history to americans. May your extremist pseudosocialist brainrot mythology stay with you
The SRs supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, but the White movement’s anti-socialist leadership increasingly marginalized and ultimately purged them.
Seems like a very successful political ideology right there.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party, the ones who supported the provisional government originally? And who supported the white army? I didn’t think it was possible anyone supported them in 2026.
“Hey gemini, pls tldr history of social-revolutionaries”. Just shut up and dont embarass yourself. Dont try to narrow my original answer and read the wikipedia at least.
With every answer Im more and more convinced you live in american suburb or some.
I thought you were talking about some mythical social democrats or something, based on your language and talking about votes in European countries. My brain turned off after I read the words oligarchic corpocracy. I thought you were a garden variety rad-lib. First person I’ve known who supports the SRs it didn’t even register in my brain.
What I meant is that bolsheviks were not popular nor they ever represented people of russia. And you still cant bother to read how the revolution went. Any totalitarian ‘socialist’ regime is not socialist, it is purely oligarchic corporcracy. Why corpocracy? Because both USSR and China busted worker unions, had hilarious elections, prevented regular people from becoming politicans or have any say. And ensured only their oligarchic circle could get to power. How is this different from authoritarian capitalist corporacy? Corporations also have planned economy, they also bust their worker union, and they also keep their people in fright of the state machine.
This kind of system is just as far from socialism as a late-stage capitalist state, and serves capitalists and imperialists.
Can’t wait for the tankies to show up and once again try to defend bootlicking.
You dont even have to do anything and they show up.
It’s what they do.
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There’s this new invention called “planes”.
If you think it’s a moral imperative, you really would have been here already and done the job.
But no, you’ll just watch Hitler from afar and post one liners
9 day old account with 200+ comments regularly suggesting political violence. I appreciate your effort, but you should just tag them as a troll and save your time.
Anyone acting as if getting rid of Trump does anything is clearly not serious. Vance is Thiels little bitch and would approve company towns hour one. We’re lucky we have Trump still because his incompetence is really doing us more favors than we realize. If Trump died early in his term, JD would’ve had a bunch of competent evil people in power and they would at least know how to properly file court documents. We’re lucky Trump likes suck ups and fox new hosts more than people who can string together a sentence. JD would not make the same mistake.
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Guess I’ll use my Rambo training to 360 no scope kill the prez, ezpz
The guy you’re replying to isn’t the one acting like it’s a simple thing to assassinate the president, nor asking for it.
Shit posting on the internet isn’t saving the world from your country’s fascism.
Way to completely sidestep my point with a strawman but go off I guess.
Brother, I suggest you reread the comment thread.
Neither will assassinating Trump though.
It’d make a lot of people very happy for a few weeks.
Bootlicking is when you’re unwilling to martyr yourself in a nearly assured failure of an assassination attempt is certainly a take…
“BuT wHaT aBoUt AmErIcA???”
You say that as if 70% Americans don’t already want this. Bootlicking is when one worships people like Jinping, Putin, Trump, etc. instead of wishing terrible things would happen to them. That’s the difference between tankies and normal people.
Utterly disagree with your 70% contention. If anything its the exact opposite.
Also do you really think Americans are any different than those who live under Putin? Or do you think just like the vast majority of Russians do Americans keep their head down during the day and in private in their heads and on anonymous message boards, they make wishes. Wishes that don’t mean anything. That’s why they’re called wishes.
30% of Americans are MAGA.
The rest found want as far off this ride and as far left as we can go, and we want it democraticly so those MAGA fucks don’t try to civil war us
70% want America as far left as we can go? I mean come on. You must know even at your most outrageously optimistic hopeful self that that’s nonsense. A lot of us could certainly wish it were true, but you’d have to be as high as a kite to think it is.
I’m not pulling the number out of my ass. That is Trump’s actual disapproval percentage.
That’s my point though. Disapproval on a poll is a big fucking difference from action. That’s the difference between loyal opposition and actual opposition. Just because 70% disapprove doesn’t mean 70% actually want to do anything much less will.
Edit: Hell 70% won’t even vote against it.
30% want it
30% want whatever the winner wants
30% don’t want it
Tankie here. I would agree on the following point – that we are not the same. But, neither are communities where most people are respectful of others’ liberties the same as, or suited to the same kind of rule as, communities where most people are authoritarians. Anarchism doesn’t work among authoritarian populations.
In some places, there isn’t a whole lot of class struggle – I could see anarchism working in those places, but not with most modern people. Those are typically isolated places where people are self-sustaining and disconnected from modern industry, places where states can’t naturally grow on account of the pre-existing lack of class struggle in those areas.
I prefer Stakeholder Socialism.
In every story what post apocalyptic society survives? Communist. Every post apocalyptic society that leads to hellish dystopia? Capitalist. Prove me wrong.
Ok.
Every post-apocalyptic society we can point to is fictional. After all, we’ve never actually experienced an apocalypse on that scale.
But just off the top of my head, The Book of Eli depicts a post-apocalyptic society that has largely devolved into anarchy, with power concentrated in the hands of warlords and whoever can enforce their will through violence.
Cyborg presents a similar picture: societal collapse, competing factions, and survival through force.
Then there’s Mad Max, where civilization has collapsed into violent competition over increasingly scarce resources, with whoever controls the necessities of life holding the power.
But I’d also venture to say that many of the post-apocalyptic societies people point to as examples of socialism are actually post-scarcity societies, or at least societies in which scarcity has been resolved to some degree. When the necessities of life are readily available, the incentive to hoard resources and compete for basic survival diminishes. That creates the conditions for people to organize society around collective needs rather than individual accumulation.
In other words, what people identify as socialism in these fictional settings may actually be the result of a fundamental change in the material conditions of society.
The interesting question isn’t whether people are naturally selfish or naturally cooperative. It’s how the conditions people live under influence which behaviors become necessary for survival. When resources are scarce and institutions collapse, people may turn to violence and self-preservation. When their basic needs are reliably met, cooperation and collective ownership become much more practical.
Of course, neither outcome is inevitable. Scarcity doesn’t automatically produce anarchy, and abundance doesn’t automatically produce socialism. But the material conditions of a society have a tremendous influence on the political and economic systems that can realistically emerge.
you know anything can happen in fiction? you can plausible write a post-apocalyptic capitalist society as well.
Snowcrash is an example.
yup
Dune. Turns out feudalism was what made it out of the machine apocalypse and ensuing Butlerian Jihad. Feudalism with nukes.
So you’re saying that communism only exists as a literary fantasy?
Didn’t Marx warn of an authoritarian takeover of a people’s revolution and how that was no different than having a bourgeoisie?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
this is like a page long, maybe worth a read
Rosa Luxemburg certainly did but who cares about women in history am I right? /s
Right? Who’d ever listen to women of history, like Emma Goldman, and especially women of color, like Lucy Parsons. They’ve certainly never mentioned anything worthwhile about this topic. /s
Sylvia Pankhurst promoted Luxemburg’s views after her death. She also became disillusioned with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
I don’t think Marx ever condemned the word “authoritarian.” Or said anything about a dictatorship of the proletariat becoming more unjust than a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. That doesn’t sound like anything he’d say.
Guy Debord criticized the Soviet Union for creating a new class system. He still believed in Marxism, but didn’t believe that the structure of the Soviet Union was able to create the conditions for communism.
Not according to “tankies” :D They love shiny boots holding a red flag. They just hate brown flags, but love a good boot-liking
Yup.
All governments are authoritarian at some point. Even anarchist communities theoretically will exert force on intruders by mustering up the people where they are, where they live.
Exerting force ≠ authoritarian. These words have completely different meanings. For example, community defence against an authoritarian state can involve the exertion of force, but would be categorically anti-authoritarian.
Sorry, I should have said intruders as well as internal bad faith actors.
There will still be psychopaths and sociopaths and serial killers and pedophiles in a communist or anarchist society.
Communities will still need to deal with those malignant people, whether by outcasting/exiling/deporting them or inflicting punishment + delivering rehabilitation. Those activities will be authoritarian over the bad actors.
No, those activities would not be authoritarian over bad actors. Authoritarianism specifically involves concentrated hierarchical power that operates without accountability or consensus. Anarchist communities would handle bad actors in a bottom-up manner, even from the perspective of the bad actor.
Also, your use of the terms “psychopath” and “sociopath” are harmful. These are medical conditions and should not be stigmatized. People with these conditions can lead normal lives if they get the help that they need.
Edit: Apologies if I come across as a bit of a pedant. I just think it’s important that these terms are used correctly. <3
I was meaning authoritarian as in the sense of authority being commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group over other people. And my argument was that even communist and anarchist societies will use power over other bad actors inside that society if those bad actors pose as threats to the prevailing political system.
If a bad actor seeks the pain and suffering of others, regardless of their mental health, or even if a bad actor seeks to persuade a society’s peoples away from the prevailing political principles, such as someone advocating for hierarchy in an anarchist society or a capitalist advocating for private property in a communist society, then those societies will still use their power to self preserve those modes of political power.
To the bad actors, those societies will appear authoritarian.
According to that logic the warsaw uprising was also authoritarian because the rebels imposed their will onto the nazi occupiers.
there is a difference between using force as a means of self defense and for dominance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_d8_VpLc-k
Shouldn’t have just said intruders. Of course self defense isn’t authoritarian. Authoritarianism takes place above and over a society’s own people’s. I meant to also include internal bad actors like psychopaths, sociopaths, serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, racists, etc. For those criminals within society, it’s still best to remove them from that same society via exile/deportation or take away their rights to punish them then rehabilitate them. Those actions will appear as authoritarian to the bad actors.
Oh okay that makes sense now
Trotsky was right
Trotsky the person was acceptable, I don’t agree with him, but he was acceptable. Trotskyists… idk, they’ve really embarrassed themselves lately.
Being “cool with communism” for the vibes (that don’t even exist, every revolution is authoritarian) vs being “cool with communism” for it’s negation of capitalist mode of production
