almost definitely a repost but eh
And not a single one is doing anything to actually revolt, just sitting online talking shit on people who are actively doing things because “incrementalism is useless, we need a revolution”.
Sorry creating lemmy isn’t starting the revolution, getting together a small amount of people online to talk about a parallel societal formation isn’t starting a revolution, being civically inactive is not starting a revolution, buying a bunch of guns is not starting a revolution, talking about moving away from corporate tracking tools is not starting a revolution, switching from US to Chinese propaganda is not starting a revolution. As lame as all the gravy seal militias in the US are, they are numerous steps ahead on the starting of a revolution.
This is erasure of orgs like The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. One of the number one things leftists try to encourage people to do online is to join an org, because sitting around and talking is useless beyond the entertainment of it and perhaps learning more theory. We do organize IRL, I’ve met some wonderful people doing so.
Yeah and I am a member of the two that are in my area. They all subscribe to incrementalism as people on your .ml would put it, though. None of these are preparing a revolution, they would labeled terrorist organizations, and destroyed very quickly if they did anything, actually, radical, like the ALF/ELF, while being so visible.
Most revolutionary orgs don’t outwardly organize for reasons you suggest. Those orgs are still revolutionary.
And these are the behaviors I have seen so many people in online leftist spaces call useless, and incrementalist, as they are not preparing to actually revolt, they are working within the legal framework given to them by the capitalists. It seems you and I have a more closely aligned idea of change than a large amount of people who are on .ml. I also highly doubt most of these people will be able to deal with the violence then wish to incite with a revolution. I know how it is to kill, people, so I don’t tell people they should.
I’m not sure what orgs you’re talking about, because I align more with most people on Lemmy.ml. Maybe you actually do too?
The ones you posted have had their efforts mocked because they operate within the framework capitalists give them, and are not actually revolutionary. I have watched it happen, many there seem to think if there isn’t violence, then nothing is happening. Also, no, I do not apologize for authoritarian governments, regardless of their alignment with capitalism. Nor do I support censorship of criticisms of places because they aren’t aligned with NATO.
No, they are not mocked by users on Lemmy.ml. They are broadly supported by communists. I think you’re inventing something to be mad at.
Especially over the past few years, this viewpoint seems to dominate over so many leftist spaces, and I believe it’s part of what led to Trump winning the election. I don’t particularly like the Democrats either, but so many refuse to vote for anything other than an impossible overnight jump to socialism.
yOu JuSt hATe tHe WoRkiNG cLaSs!1!
Ivory tower leftists hate nothing more than the working man.
How many would “vote with their dollar” if $==🧨, though? 🤷🏼♂️
The Rapture (or whatever no-effort salvation flavor you prefer) will not be televised.
Well, Marx’ withering away of the state and the rise of Communism was basically the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
“A stateless utopia birthed from the continual consolidation of power in a proletariat dictatorship” gives the same vibes as trickle down economics.
As production and distribution are collectivized, class fades, and along with it the institutions needed to uphold the working class as the ruling class over capitalists, as there would be no capitalists. It doesn’t mean the total erasure of administration abd management.
Wake me up when they stop the endless tilting at imaginary counter-revolutionary windmills and actually do that. Somehow there’s always some pesky boogeyman that requires benevolent repression. Absolute fantasy that class could ever fade when guns and politicians exist.
“Administrators” are your trickle down “Job Creators”
Class is not administration, and there has never been global socialism to begin with so there hasn’t been a point free from capitalism’s antagonization.
If a group of people calls the shots they have inherent power and form their own class. You write this problem off via a bedrock axiom starting that a vanguard party is and always will be representative of the proletariat masses. That’s fundamentally impossible, humans don’t organize or behave like that on historical time scales.
If a new political force cannot supercede their control and externally correct value drift then your system cannot evolve. If you can’t correct for that other than by saying “better representation will emerge” then you’re flat out anti-revolutionary; a reformist in wolf’s clothing.
Administration in socialist countries is not as simple as “a group of people that call the shots and form their own class.” Administration is economically compelled by large-scale production, and is to be made accountable via robust systems of democracy. Further, in collectivized production, there isn’t the same mechanism built-in for profits and creating whole industries for luxury for the few like there is in capitalism.
To the contrary of your point, systems must evolve, there isn’t a way to stop it. Everything is in motion, and history builds up. There are no static systems, you don’t enter the same river twice, yada yada. It’s not about “better representation emerging,” it’s about deliberately understanding how the structure of the mode of production impacts how society is run.
systems must evolve, there isn’t a way to stop it
What comes after this fabled stateless society? If it isn’t a stable system with no possible need for correction then what prevents the re-emergence of states?
The benefits of states are self evident: your immediate group benefits from the use of force to leverage and exploit others. The benefits of remaining stateless are entirely intangible and abstracted.
When a catastrophic event forces your hand, subjugation of your neighbors may be the only way for your populace to survive. One solar flare or meteor or mega volcano and your carefully plotted administration is in the shitter. It’s survival of the ruthless and we’re off to the races again.
This archaic attempt at dissecting the complexity of human existence into a mathematical and controllable roadmap is absurd. Wake up, it’s not the 19th century; we’ve known better for a while now. Let’s fix the world we have instead of having you spending 12.7k comments naval gazing about ideology and which tin pot dictators need our “critical support”. I pray to God you’re at least cashing a paycheck for that drivel.
It doesn’t mean the total erasure of administration abd management.
Except they become the new capitalists. They would develop an interest in maintaining their position as administrators and as administrators would have the means even if it conflicts with everyone else’s interests. They’d become the new upper class.
Also, I’m surprised you didn’t point out that the “withering of the state” was Friedrich Engels’ idea technically. Not Marx.
No, they would not become the new capitalists. Collectivized production is based on allocation of labor, means of labor, and distribution of goods and services based on needs and in some cases “labor vouchers.” An administrator in such a system is entitely distinct from a capitalist. Even in capitalism, managers are not capitalists and do not play the same role.
Capitalism is predicated on circulation of commodities, and constent reproduction on an expanded scale. Capitalists aren’t capitalists because they manage, but because they use their money, cast it into the market like a net (buying means of labor and labor-power), and return said net with greater sums of money. Such a system is completely incompatible with collectivized production.
As for the withering of the state, Marx came up with the concept. Engels merely came up with the phrase.
I wasn’t saying administrators would become capitalists in the strictest definition, but in the fact that they’d become a class distinct from the rest of the proletariat. You’d still have a state enforced hierarchical structure that has its own interests. It just wont be structured around facilitating various corporations and their profits. You can argue that’s an improvement over capitalism, but to suggest the state will naturally wither away in such a system is naive at best and a manipulative lie at worst.
As for the withering of the state, Marx came up with the concept. Engels merely came up with the phrase.
Where did Marx originally describe the idea?
I’m aware of what you meant. Administration isn’t a class, and is not based on domination of the means of production through ownership, but is merely a necessary part of the production process. Further, the proletariat wouldn’t exist either, proletarians are specifically wage laborers that sell their labor to capitalists, what we are discussing is classless society.
As for Marx and the concept of the state withering, I’m unaware of the first mentionings of it, but the idea can be found all the way back in Economic Manuscripts of 1844:
The first positive abolition of private property — crude communism — is therefore only a manifestation of the vileness of private property trying to establish itself as the positive community.
(2) Communism (a) still of a political nature, democratic or despotic; (b) with the abolition of the state, but still essentially incomplete and influenced by private property — i.e., by the estrangement of man. In both forms, communism already knows itself as the reintegration, or return, of man into himself, the supersession of man’s self-estrangement; but since it has not yet comprehended the positive essence of private property, or understood the human nature of need, it is still held captive and contaminated by private property. True, it has understood its concept, but not yet in essence.
Engels was great at writing and contributed a great deal to the development of Marx’s thought, but even before co-writing Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx had already had a fairly developed conception of the negation of the state, as a student of Hegel.
I’m not much of a fan of Engels, as I noticed of what I’ve read of him that his works or works involving him tend towards subtly implying (or even explicitly stating) top down structures and authoritarianism is initially necessary to achieve communism in the ways he frames his analysis. Something that Marx seemed generally more mixed or neutral on when he wrote independently of Engels depending on how late in his writings you look.
I’m aware of what you meant. Administration isn’t a class, and is not based on domination of the means of production through ownership, but is merely a necessary part of the production process. Further, the proletariat wouldn’t exist either, proletarians are specifically wage laborers that sell their labor to capitalists, what we are discussing is classless society.
Regardless, having access to the controls that gives one power over economic value and the ability to exploit that power, even if its not through ownership its still under their control. For example, someone who runs a non-profit organization but uses all the grant money to build a clubhouse for them and their friends rather than something broadly socially beneficial is exploiting the people who actually generated the value for the grant money in the first place, even if the clubhouse is not the administrator’s by deed.
I work for a non-profit. I know a lot of decisions above me get made because its more beneficial for leadership or even employees rather than the greater community.
Why is a class based society bad? Why is it harmful? My personal answer is that it just results in a generally worse world for people through taking away control over their own lives as they end up largely dictated by capitalists. If the system you aim to replace classes with reproduces many of those same kinds of consequences for the average person but just changes who’s in charge then its not really what I would describe as a meaningfully better world. Its the same shit but with a different color palette.
I’m not convinced a state with its own self interest would ever permit its power to “wither”. That doesn’t mean a state can’t be used for good, or that states are intrinsically evil, but a state given some ideological revolutionary foundation, monopoly on violence, and a “ends justify the means” attitude towards achieving utopia and an indifference towards individuals under its power is going to commit some atrocities and historically has.
Not really, all it means is that as an ecomomy collectivizes and class distinctions fade as ownership of production is equalized, the need for strong institutions to uphold one class and oppress others fades too, as there would be no class.
You forgot to mention both have accelerationists willing to make people’s lives worse to hasten the
RaptureRevolution.both have accelerationists
Accelerationism isn’t a policy, it’s a coping mechanism.
“Actually, I love that things aren’t going my way, because it’ll all work out in the end” is what you say when you’re down bad with no clear hope of recovery.
And complaining about acceleratism is just scapegoating. You’re not in this position because a secret cabal of extremists is sabotaging your milquetoast efforts because they think losing harder is good.
Accelerationism is definitely also a policy.
A lot of these bastards tacitly favored The Idiot during the 2024 election, essentially on the basis that everyone dying horribly would turn out better in the long run.
Comrade, this time it’s really late stage capitalism comrade, trust me comrade. Revolution is imminent, the workers will rise up. / repeat for 150 years.
This leftist believes we are already dead and this is hell.
It’s hell all the way down.
Zen makes no sense and all the sense simultaneously, the more you look/don’t look at it.
Yeah I’d much rather die in the fast track concentration camps our government is building today than the slow track one our government has us in now.
Hmm… Floating into the sky which is also where a magical land exists with an all knowing, benevolent supreme being or equality and fair treatment for all peoples… Yeah those are the same.
Hate to say it, but I’d argue that this particular leftist sub-group can be ever worse than Christians. At least on paper, Christians are supposed to want to convert sinners and non-believers, and are supposed to work to do outreach to help people explicitly undeserving. The Christian enemy of the devil is effectively an abstract. Yes, there’s the anti-lgbt+ bigots, but in my experience they are a minority despite their incessant loudness and overwhelming presence in the public eye.
This particular revolution worshipping sub-group of leftists though? They appear to overwhelmingly just want death and suffering for their “enemies”. They have no plans to attempt to convert people and many are actively against even trying.
I can’t tell you how much heat I’ve taken for suggesting that (at best) ignoring all the fuckers that voted for Trump and not trying to find any way to build relationships so you can turn them is a losing strategy.
It makes me sick that so very many people see violent and complete revolution where somehow they never have to deal with opposition voices ever again afterwards (read: purges and re-education camps, ideas I’ve seen positive unironic support for from this group a shocking amount) as a more viable and desiriable outcome than trying to understand and care for their misguided neighbors and family so they can turn them.
Just because your plan isn’t technically genocide due to it falling on lines of political ideology doesn’t make it less completely fucked in the head and reprehensible.
If your wishes for the future include “We have to be baddies so we can completely erase the worse baddies from existence and make our utopia” then I strongly suggest you need to reevaluate just about fucking everything in your life and ideals.
That’s why they narrowed it to evangelical Christians. There is still your argument that they will try to convert you first, but boy if you don’t, it’s the same hate. I’d say the leftist hate is at least honest and doesn’t try to camouflage it with “love the sinner” lies and cherrypicking from a guide book.
Leftists cherry pick from holy scripture aka. theory ad nauseam to build arguments to support any inhumane action.
The Christian „love the sinner“, „love your enemies“ is different. There you only need to profess your faith to be accepted in the community. Then afterwards the reeducation/indoctrination/conversion happens over time.
With tankies you go to gulag/reeducation/indoctrination first, and if you survive that you can maybe become a comrade. You will never join the party though. You remain irredeemable and a suspect counterrevolutionary.
You mean, the paper that was inked to “allow” divorce & execution of a certain Anglo king’s wives, or the “original” low-effort patchwork plagiarism of any/all folklore the ruling class could scrape together? Either way, that’s some ironclad foundational document, there. 😝🤌🏼
This is just wrong from top to bottom. Revolutionary theory has always posited that revolution can only come from the large majority, even if we use methods like vanguard parties if the working class at large isn’t behind it then it will fail. Every successful revolution has had working class education, organization, and agitation as its basis.
Revolution doesn’t mean genocide. Historically, revolution has been less bloody than the systems that upheld pre-revolutionary society. Mark Twain has an excellent quote on this:
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Overall, I think you’d do well by actually listening to us. I wrote an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, feel free to give it a look!
I can’t tell you how much heat I’ve taken for suggesting that (at best) ignoring all the fuckers that voted for Trump and not trying to find any way to build relationships so you can turn them is a losing strategy.
Look I hate tankies, accelerationists, and purity testing among progressives, but generally speaking the great rural swaths of MAGA chuds are as much of a waste of time as tankies are. They’re either completely deluded or sociopathically self-interested. There isn’t any moral standing to demanding I go out and have a beer with my racist MAGA neighbor. Nor would that even be a tolerable course of action for me, he could literally die in a fire I’d feel nothing.
So… do you find extermination of these people is a more tolerable course of action than getting to know them?
This is a core point I’m trying to make here, and strive to make fairly often elsewhere. The “rural swathes of MAGA chuds” (keep drinking the 1%s rural vs urban division of the middle and lower classes why don’t you) are a large enough group/voting bloc that they cannot simply be ignored.
It doesn’t have to be you, but someone has to do something about this group. And I’m not coyly endorsing mass murder or sterilization here. I’m also not sitting on my ass telling others to do work I’m not doing myself.
You can resign yourself to try and just outlive them. You could just keep trying to outvote them every time, forever. Sad, but tolerable and entirely understandable, attitude.
You can come up with a large number of other ways that effectively amount to “remove their ability to vote”, most of which would be violations of human rights or elimination of human life. These are the attitudes I find reprehensible, and shockingly fucking common.
Or we could all start making concentrated efforts to start treating people with god awful views as people where some amount of them might be able to be changed. Not as subhuman mosters (the term “chud” is pretty disgusting when you get down to it), as unredeemable fools, as non-entities (wouldn’t care if they dropped dead), or at best as roadbumps to be driven over on the path towards the future.
The fact that so many people look around at their neighbors and see so many of them as just useless wastes of space is one of the most effective ways that those in power maintain that power. Keeping those lower than them squabbling among each other so they can’t effectively organize against the people on top.
I’m not going to argue for some full overthrow of the concept of capitalism, but there is clearly a hell of a lot wrong. A lot of rot up at the top. Willingly and intentionally saying “but those people are so backwards that I could never work with them” is just a disgustingly elitist concept.
Go and punch the actual nazis. Call out “nazi bar” situations. People who literally want you and yours dead? Fire at will.
But those are levels of hatred that are far rarer than people pretend they are. Most people just want to get on with their day, and a lot of people against certain groups fold very quickly when someone they love turns out say, homosexual. That’s not hypocrisy. It’s an opportunity to help someone reflect on their biases. We all have them, stop putting yourself up on such a pedestal.
I’ve rambled enough, but I’ll throw this in as a bonus:
The “rural flyover states” have been done so fucking bad by the federal government, by their local politicians, and by corporations for so fucking long that I can’t help but see punching down every time someone starts in on the bullshit about “those stupid people out in rural areas”. They deal with a lot of similar issues to poor urban areas, and the attitude of the entire fucking world in calling impovershed areas “the global south” should give us all pause, especially when these areas of the US are in no way limited to the former confederate states.
I was born in one of those states. My wife is from one of those counties in a larger state. We’re both happy as hell to be out, but seeing what goes on there on a regular basis is terrible.
People talk about tent cities and rising amounts of homeless in major cities. No one talks about the towns that have had every industry pull out over the last 50 years and the homeless and drug abuse problems in them that are only exacerbated by there being literally no homeless shelters or clinics for 30 miles with almost entirely barren highway in between the few pockets of dying towns.
This is besides the point, but in what way is a "lukewarm Christian’ someone who actually makes progress? I’ve only ever heard the term be used in the opposite way.
I’ve been saying this for a long time now. All the “moral” principles that people supposedly just have are actually derived from christian thoughts that have pervaded society for centuries. All the supposedly secular and “ethical” concepts are actually just christian concepts without the brand name “christian”.
This may be the worst take I’ve ever heard tbh
Both sides same horseshoe isn’t even a new take
Straw man level 1000
‘I’m not like that.’
Hey, maybe it’s not about you?
It’s coming from .world. OP and most of these comments are talking about their weird idea of what MLs believe and practice, while ignoring MLs in this very post. It would be different if OP was Lenin in 1902.
‘Not all MLs!’
But quite a fucking lot of MLs. The loudest MLs. And their mods. And their admins.
You can’t stretch this into prejudice and claim offense. It’s explicitly describing a subset, and they are right there for the lookin’.
You’re doing it right now. If you think that’s what MLs here believe, @ them and ask them if they believe this.
It would be really weird if marxist leninists didn’t read Lenin or derived works.
‘I am explicitly talking about highly visible people not necessarily present.’
‘Well I don’t see them present.’
This is not a me problem.
It would be really weird if marxist leninists didn’t read Lenin or derived works.
And every Christian is super good about what Jesus said.
This is not a me problem.
Proving your claim is your problem, and it would be trivial to just name the people you’re talking about if you actually cared about what they believed. But you’d rather keep being mad and getting other people mad about this type of person that only exists in your head.
Yogthos, Cowbee, Davel, Dessalines, Linkerbaan, off the top of my head.
Not that burden of proof was on me, since your claim is the absolute, from improbable ignorance. Like there’s no reason ML has this reputation. Zero MLs do the thing everyone expects from ML! It is a miracle.
And I worry that that phrasing hews too close to your strawman, where “some” means “all.” If some ML who’s merely a serial annoyance insists they’re not a tankie fundamentalist, then there is no such person.
Why am I bothering. You think pointing to theory means nobody could act differently.
I don’t think anyone is like that. I think it’s an entirely fabricated and false perception
Edit: also, by “actual progress” OOP obviously means reformist neoliberal capitulations. It’s biased as hell. No one thinks anything will be “magically fixed.” The author can’t even seem to decide whether they’re trying to dunk on anarchists or authoritarians. It reads like a poorly researched attempt at rage bait
I envy your ignorance.
Edit: I can’t nail you harder than your own edit does.
I can’t nail you harder than your own edit does.
Well, lemme hear it. I’m curious
And they disappeared, to never let us hear it…
I’m probably a strawman myself 😣 I’ve heard that’s terminal
He’s currently raging at me for calling out his transphobia and strawmen, and then says I’m the weirdo.
Hot bubble baths are pretty transcendent. That would be my vote for leftist rapture.
In the meantime, we still have Bubble’s baths. 🤷🏼♂️
mmm, bubble bath
Shittiest MadLibs reboot ever.
The world is
sinfulanti-democratic backsliding but we just have to wait until theSecond Comingthe Election happens when everything will be magically fixed. Any attempt to make actual progress makes you alukewarm Christiantankie anything less thanthe Apocolypsethe Election (which is definitely fair and free and democratic full of extremely popular and nice politicians) is completely useless. Also consuming certian media or makin certain lifesytle choices issinful and unchristianmakes you a tankie or a rebellious ineffective anarchist or a secret conservative.so democracy bad?
What you’ve got there is a tankie
