I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
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Generally true, yes. In most cases, the leftists using that sort of terminology are tankies, meaning they are explicitly pro-authoritarian. They just want the dictators to be communists (or claimed communists) rather than capitalists (despite said dictatorial communism usually being about seizing all the money for themselves anyways and often results in full on capitalism regardless, China is a great example).
So you don’t even need the word replacement thought experiment. Tankies are openly authoritarian.
People really don’t want to acknowledge that politics is more than one axis.
Like communism is the opposite of capitalism, not democracy. The opposite of democracy is a dictatorship.
And when a dictator calls their government Communist, it’s pretty much a guarantee it’s not even a communist economy anymore than when North Korea or Russia claim to be democracies.
Very true. Reading a lot of Socialist lit has made me very critical about the regular framework I see regularly posited as Socialism being a direct opposite of capitalism and being some kind of inevitable slippery slope toward Communism.
Like as a system it is very distinct from Communist ideologically speaking and represents a sliding scale of public ownership versus private ownership but never fully occludes private ownership, currency or the very basics of capitalism systemically and any one person’s veiw of where that balance should rest is itself an end point and fully formed political belief. You can believe a mix of liberal / capitalist and socialist things that are not strictly contradictory. Capitalism is a sliding scale we are just currently dealing with it’s deep unstable and predatory end. Admitting some capitalism is okay and can be made more ethical doesn’t disqualify you from the left nor does it nessisarily make you “centrist”. It also doesn’t make you automatically a fan of everything capitalist or the status quo.
The number of “That’s not Socialism! Socialism means only (posit one potential facet out of the massive cloud of policies/stances of the ideology) or " That is only the secret aim of Communists to tip the teeter-totter towards our/their goals!” is a very paternalistic view. Socialism is DEEP and diverse. There’s not a central author or even a neat handful of authors one can point to. The more you read the more internal variations you find.
People generally seem to just want an enemy to point and hiss at, they don’t want to look at things as a potential series of sliding scales or people of mixed ideological stances as valid in their own right.
Socialism requires that the workers own the means of production. So no it’s not on a sliding scale with capitalism. Those are called hybrid economies and are a concept in their own right. In fact basically all modern economies are hybrid economies.
Socialism does include many systems, but none of them are capitalist, they are mutually exclusive. They can have markets, currency, and other things, or they might not. Communism is just a subcategory of socialist society. The reason people think socialism leads to communism is because of the marxists who use one as a platform to achieve the other.
Socialism requires no such thing - most of the rhetoric which treats worker owned production as the only definition of Socialism stems from Marxist frameworks and leaves any writing done on the subject since which has fleshed out the philosophic roots untouched. There has been a lot of writing on the subject in the 200 years since . Ownership of the means of production is by no means the only form of public or social property.
Dismissing mixed and hybrid economic theory as “not Socialist enough” is more or less what I am talking about with the nature of false dichotomies. So often socialists are dismissed on this platform directly because they don’t buy into every binary maxim of all Socialism through the lens of Communist philosophy. Socialism works in mixed systems because it is kind of the political overlap of a lot of things. Where it can and does integrate into “hybrid” economies because it is not fully “anti capitalist”. It is it’s own sphere of political thought and buying in to one specific “hybrid” branch still makes one socialist. While Socialism certainly isn’t capitalist in itself and does curtail capitalism somewhat by existing in the same space it’s no more “anti” than two roomates sharing an apartment and divvying up responsibilities and resources mutually would be considered “anti-roommate”.
I am quite frankly tired of Marxists or even other Socialists trying to impose their own overly narrow definition to what amounts to a range of different socialism factions or treating hybrid socialist ideologies like liberal socialism or ethical socialism like they aren’t socialism.
Communism is also not strictly socialism. The two ideologies may be related but the definition of Communism leaves no real space for hybrid systems hence the ideological distain for “hybrids” ane why calling Communism “just a subsection” of Socialism is misguided. Marx may have coined and popularized the term but early writers who adopted the label socialist very quickly became something unique and the term essentially became the safe space of at least partial criticism of Marxist/Leninist revolutionary anti-capitalist ideology. The difference between the two that eventually emerged as literally one having a tolerance for mixed systems and one not. Only one of them is strictly anti-capitalist.
Anarchists are anti-capitalist and have little to do with Marx.
Why would you want any form of a destructive and exploitative system like capitalism to remain? I think you just aren’t happy people are calling out your pro-capitalist and reformist bullshit.
Capitalism isn’t always a destructive system, we are just living the deep end of unfettered capitalism which is. At its absolute basic having a business owner who forks over the initial investment and pays for both materials and labourers while profiting a modest amount isn’t automatically exploitation. Investment capital isn’t just big hedgefunds and megacorps. It’s literally just having any form of private ownership of a business regardless of size.
What makes capitalism exploitative and terrible is not combatting its worst aspects. Things like people being incentivized or at very least not being punished for allowing profit to be king instead of looking at business success as a many spoked wheel including a duty to worker welfare, a responsibility to the community, ethical sourcing and so on. When you have a culture of milking everything dry to appease shareholders being normalized and routine grabbing of public resources for pennies considered legitimate then yes Capitalism is exploitative but there’s plenty that can be done to literally disincentivize that system. The way the stock market works is not on its own an integral part of capitalism. It’s an option. Laws and oversight can do a lot to bring the system of exploitation into check. Inventivizing co-op and worker owned labor is great but so is expanding tax structures, government public services and safety nets and strengthening environment protections or increasing indigenous repatriation and sovereignty. A lot of that is making Government more airtight against private sector tampering.
End of the day if a business is playing by the rules and doing their bit to what they owe society then who owns it becomes much less relevant.
People love to talk about protections and safety nets enforced by governments and committees but you find in most countries with capitalism the government is corrupt including in the US and UK. They essentially do what businesses tell them to do because they spend money on lobbying and line politicians pockets. There isn’t really a way to fix this under capitalism to my knowledge.
The media too is bought and paid for by the big business players. That’s the nature of capitalism as a system. It corrupts everything.
I have a friend who has come to reflect this exact behavior to an extraordinary degree of accuracy.
It’s interesting because the near puritanical nature of their responses to nearly anything has become more extreme than even the most devoutly religions individuals. Obviously the focus of their evangelizing is very different, but it has become difficult to even have a conversation.
I’ll give you an example: I saw a new game called Pal World, which looked absurd, mentioned and was instantly met with the fact that the game was unacceptable because it supports forced labor.
Additionally, there seems to be an immense amount of hypocrisy in regards to what is good and what is bad, largely driven by what best I can refer to as their “leftist Zeitgeist.” As bad as I can tell now, according to them, I am a liberal, and apparently liberals are bad, and the only true salvation is being a leftist?
Of course, I have a much more varied and complex set of moral and political values that likely don’t fall under a singular label… But what do I know about anything.
This is kind of like saying Helldivers 2 is bad because it’s about forcefully spreading “democracy” (pretty obviously it means capitalism) to other planets.
Yeah, it is, but it’s hugely satirical and makes blatant political statements through satire.
Pal World isn’t that deep, I don’t think there’s much depth to their forced labor system other than parodying Pokémon and slightly highlighting how the Pokémon universe is full of forced labor and isn’t that kind of funny
As bad as I can tell now, according to them, I am a liberal, and apparently liberals are bad, and the only true salvation is being a leftist?
Watch it before you rage downvote…
The Most Dangerous Thing In The Western Hemisphere: American Liberals
That’s a no from me. I don’t need some jerk on youtube to know that liberals aren’t the “most dangerous blah blah blah.” It’s the same rhetoric the right has been spouting for years. So just go piss off with your hyperbolic BS.
It’s not hyperbolic and “some jerk on YouTube”, they have 1.7 million subscribers. Instead of remaining ignorant you could learn a few things from it. He’s a Leftist account.
The difference is that revolutions HAVE happened throughout history, and have been successful.
Comparing a political act that has historical precedent to a bible story with no basis in fact is probably the most flaccid “both sides” centrist argument I’ve ever heard.
Most revolutions don’t result in a better world for the common person. They result in warlords taking power.
So how long does it take to go from “overthrowing the new warlords” and “we have to stay this way because this is the way it is”?
Like I know you didn’t mean to, but you just made a pretty good argument why a revolution isn’t inherently a bad thing: it’s replacing warlords.
Be a use even if you’re right, and every single prior revolution has resulted in warlords gaining power…
That doesn’t mean the next one will too. And the alternative is living under a system that’s inherently corrupt and was created by warlords whose main desire would be maintaining power and preventing change at all costs.
Like, you can say you don’t want to try, but why try to talk others out of the chance to make things better for everyone including yourself?
Why shit on people who want to make the world better just because they care to even talk about trying?
Why shit on people who want to make the world better just because they care to even talk about trying?
I almost think that’s the intent of the original post. Lots of people are doing important justice work, but in some circles they are treated like traitors to the cause if they aren’t threatening class warfare.
Marxism and Christianity only share the fact that they contain frameworks for analyzing material reality(Marxism through Materialism and Christianity through representing reality as though it is divine, and thus explainable via the divine), and this post seems to not be willing to honestly engage with Marxism as a concept.
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Marxists do not oppose incremental change. Marxists believe that minor concessions under Capitalism are insufficient to actually fix the underlying problems, and this point of view is built on a thorough understanding of the Marxist critique of Capitalism.
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Marxists do not oppose reform, they just believe it is impossible to do successfully without sliding backward, because the state is built in a manner that supports Capitalism and resists change.
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Marxism is an economic critique of Capitalism, a philosophical framework, and a call to action. It is a complete set of tools to look at the world, analyze it, and how to fix it. In this manner, it can be superficially compared to Christianity, but only on the surface.
That’s really it.
So Marxists are not opposed to incremental change, except they actually are. And Marxists are not opposed to reform except they consider it impossible.
What in the Ministry of Truth?
Marxists are not opposed to incremental change. They do not believe incremental change is a bad thing, and do not move against it. Incremental change is a nice-to-have, when revolutionary change is seen as necessary.
Marxists are not opposed to reform. If it is shown to be legitimately possible to reform a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, ie a Capitalist State, into a Socialist one, Marxists would be first in line. However, history has shown this to be extraordinarily difficult to outright impossible, akin to politely asking a bear to stop mauling you, so Marxists seek other methods. Marxists are Materialists, not Idealists.
Hope that helps!
However, history has shown this to be extraordinarily difficult to outright impossible
Successful reform of capitalist countries to socialist: 3 - 10 ish depending on how you define it
Successful communist revolutions: ZERO
Curious how Marxists have not adjusted their beliefs when confronted with these statistics
Wrong, actually.
Successful reform of Capitalist countries to Socialist: 0.
Successful Communist Revolutions: 5-10.
Curious how Cryophilia thinks they are making coherent points when they just redefine established terms until it looks like they have a point.
Where are these 5-10 nations?
The USSR disbanded, same with Anarchist Catalonia and Burkina Faso, but China, Cuba, Chiapas, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea are all examples of states that all managed to establish a Socialist government via revolutionary means. I don’t consider the Paris Commune to be successful either, it was extremely short lived.
The overall success of these states is definitely arguable, obviously, but it is inarguable that they managed to establish a Socialist state via revolution.
It’s also worth mentioning that I am not endorsing these countries, just pointing out some examples of revolutions successfully changing economic systems.
I am sorry but China and North Korea are not socialist states. You are going to have to try harder than that.
Successful reform of capitalist countries to socialist
Point me to socialist country that got there through reform.
In case you try to claim these the UK/Sweden/Norway is not a socialist country. They are hybrid economies. Hybrid economies are not socialist.
No true Scotsman
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Wild to me that people actually think liberal democracy isn’t authoritarian, it is literally the dictatorship of the bourgiosie
.ml domains always have the goofiest takes.
The owning class gets what they want while the working class seldom does.
You see how flat that line is? The percentage of the public that wants something has very very little effect on policy
The owning class (bourgiosie) has the authority to hand down dictates that the working class (proletariat) must abide by despite have essentially no influence on the nature of those dictates.
This has got to be a troll, right? A liberal democracy is by definition not authoritarian, what do you even think it means?
Nah, I agree with the original point. Liberal Democracy is only one form of Democracy, and is particularly good at resisting popular change and supporting whoever has the money to lobby. You can see in the US, for example, even presidents who win the popular vote, lose!
More direct democratic forms, whether that be direct democracy, participatory economics, parlimentary democracy, industrial democracy, and so forth are all more accountable to the people and capable of positive change that the public desires.
Despite being overwhelmingly popular, the US does not have: Legalized Marijuana, Medicare for All, Student Loan Forgiveness (outside loophole forgiveness), Enshrined Abortion Protection, and more.
Read up on the types of democracy here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_democracy
A liberal democracy is a representative democracy with rule of law, protection for individual liberties and rights, and limitations on the power of the elected representatives.
From your link, sounds like the exact opposite of authoritarian to me. Just because authoritarian “neo-liberal” places like the USA choose to call themselves liberal democracies doesn’t make them correct.
What is “authoritarian” if not a method to suppress popular opinion and exert the will of the minority? Those are the stated goals of liberal democracy, but not the function.
Where are you getting these “stated goals”? Who is the minority, elected officials? What am I missing here?
The stated goal of liberal democracy is to “enshrine personal liberties, the rule of law, Private Property, and political freedom” via a representative government in a Capitalist state. In another phrase, it is a Capitalist state with representatives.
In practice, the purpose of a representative, rather than more direct forms of democracy, is to provide the wider public with a set of predetermined choices, not to represent the views of the public. This results in political parties that are good at fundraising being the only viable parties.
Furthering this logical chain, those who appeal to those with the most ability and interest in shaping the state will be the representatives the public can vote on. Ie, those who can convince large corporations and the ultra-wealthy to make significant donations, are the ones who retain power.
The reality is that in Capitalism, a minority controls the majority of the wealth, and this minority is the Capitalist, owner class. Capitalists lobby and advertise for candidates that do not fundamentally challenge their profits or positions, which leads us to presidential elections that appear to be a constant “lesser evil” voting process. The evil is the point! We just choose which flavor is easier to suck down, which is normally the side willing to make more concessions.
More direct forms of democracy remove this barrier.
I think I get your point, but it seems to ignore that plenty of places have successful labour parties that have the backing of unions rather than wealthy capitalists.
presidential elections that appear to be a constant “lesser evil” voting process
Sounds like you’re basing all your arguments on one particular county!
