I mean give the man (or not) credit, some of the most powerful and influential countries in the world is where democracy suffers terribly either at the hand of despotism or at the hand of capitalism (likely both).
these countries tend to dominate over other countries as they dominate over their own citizens. this should never be a goal. countries should be democratic between themselves as their citizens should be.
Yea but still it remains that democracy as it exists now is a major failure in some of the most influential countries, making democracy a failure for more than what %80 of the world (USA, Russia, India, China, and many more middle sized countries too)?
I dont think the meme is anti democratic per se, it is just anti democratic against a democracy of this type where usually people with a mentally ill levels of drive for power are at the top. It is making more fun of the fox than the sheep.
Well, it might be so. But I am just suspicious about tankies showing flaws of democracy since they use it to “show” the supposed supremacy of “communist”, authoritarian states as China.
You are conflating communism with authoritarianism as is commonly done on purpose or by accident to invalidate it. Anarchists are also often Communists and they oppose democracy for its oppressive properties as compared to consensus building and free association, that’s a critique of democracy from an even more libertarian perspective.
Socialists and Communists also believe in the democratization of the economy, so that a capitalist owner class doesn’t get to dictate how our labor and resources are allocated.
If you truly believe in freedom, you might be interested in anarcho-communism or socialism. Liberal democracy isn’t as free as you think.
Wait did you not know about the anarcho-communists doing labor camps?
My point is that authoritarian is a useless word. Anarchists accuse left wingers of being authoritarian and then do the exact same thing with a different name. Just accept that some parts of revolution are gonna suck and gonna have excesses.
Not theory, refutation of the bullshit that anarchism necessitates forced labor. I don’t care what that poster thinks, I care that readers aren’t misled.
Their point wasn’t that Anarchism necessitates forced labor, but that historically Anarcho-Communists have employed Labor Camps, such as in Revolutionary Catalonia.
They are making the point that Anarchists are more than willing to be authoritarian when it benefits them and is immediately practical, despite cloaking themselves in an “anti-authority” robe, historically.
Those states, according to theory, are meant to be a transition TO communism, but of course many things can go wrong in that process, and we’re kinda right back at the situation portrayed in the meme.
Despite my spat with the ML leftists in this thread, I see why the idea of a communist Vanguard state is appealing. I also see how a state which transforms into socialism or communism must be “authoritarian” in that it has to take away factories and land from those that keep it as capital, so that it can be shared. These states also had to contend with constant sabotage and aggression from the Liberal Democracies of the West who feared worker revolution coming to their own land.
Anarchists are a more idealistic bunch and generally strive to build parallel power structures and organizations of people and so try to construct a new order upwards. In practice it’s hard to imagine that method being able to replace nation states, especially with similar external sabotage on top of the existing internal challenges of running an equal society. Dictatorships and blind supporters of authoritarian leaders are hard to best in terms of efficiency.
Both approaches seek to accomplish communism, anarchists want to have their dessert right away, Marxist-Leninists believe the wolf will take care of them just as soon as he’s done eating his enemies.
There has never been a communist state, not as a cop-out, but because there is no state in communism by definition. These states claim that they’re transitional towards communism.
I also see how a state which transforms into socialism or communism must be “authoritarian” in that it has to take away factories and land from those that keep it as capital, so that it can be shared.
I think this will never work, or with a very small probability. Power simply corrupts and attracts a nasty kind of people. Personally, I believe that upwards, organic, evolutionary changes are more probable to bring us closer to the ideas of communism, as industrial evolution moved most of the world from feudalism into capitalism in a natural way.
I think that’s a fair take and perhaps indicates you’d lean anarchist-left. Direct action, mutual aid, and forming parallel power structures are the exact political and social activities that are core to that philosophy. Not exclusively so, but anarchists emphasize that kind of thing over activities like voting or, I guess, awaiting revolution.
I have mixed feelings myself, that kind of natural transformation won’t just be left alone to evolve, it’ll be actively resisted by powerful political and global forces, the United States and its allies would not allow it, for example. So in that sense a powerful political organization manifesting as a new revolutionary state does seem more likely to work to me, similar to how feudalism and monarchy resisted liberalism and had to be resisted through war.
Funny enough a big reason there’s animosity between leftists, especially between anarchists and Marxist-Leninists, is because anarchist experiments were sabotaged and anarchists were fought by “Communists” during the Spanish civil war even as they together fought against Fascists. You’d think a “communist vanguard state” with the goal of establishing communism would be supportive of autonomous anarchist collectives, but those leftists weren’t under the thumb of the Soviet Union. I think this pretty clearly demonstrated that the USSR wasn’t interested in anything but Empire.
I think that’s a fair take and perhaps indicates you’d lean anarchist-left.
I perceive myself as a social democrat, maybe with elements of anarchism, such as decentralization and down-to-up elements of organization.
I have mixed feelings myself, that kind of natural transformation won’t just be left alone to evolve, it’ll be actively resisted by powerful political and global forces, the United States and its allies would not allow it, for example.
This problem is actually a hard one – otherwise no one wouldn’t need to argue about it, and there is no simple choice. If someone thinks that there is an obvious simple solution, then he/her may be just very ignorant. Maybe I will sound controversial here, but in contrast to Marxist-Leninist, I do not blame United States for damping revolution. Revolution will not come simply because we are not in 19th century capitalism anymore. Capitalists adapted, provided more humane conditions to workers to not be swept by workers’ revolution, and Antonio Gramsci saw it something like 100 years ago, but Marxist-Leninists still live in 19th century and do not see that low-income class would rather choose far-right options like Trump or AfD. The United States indeed massively interfered with damping of “socialists” republics in South America, but I think we do not need another “red” imperialism country like USSR or Russia’s vassal. Humanity needs real communism, not “red” authoritarianism.
I think this pretty clearly demonstrated that the USSR wasn’t interested in anything but Empire.
I think so, and with time this was becoming more and more obvious. Western leftists were surprisingly long (like 1956) under the charm of USSR, maybe with an exception of people like Emma Goldman.
Authoritarian is just a buzzword armchair generals throw around. All states rely on authority, including anarchist attempts like in Catalonia and Ukraine.
That’s not how I read it… it’s not really democracy if the guy being voted for is lying to the voters without repercussion (thus obstructing the voters’ right to make an informed decision) so they can get into office and do things they know the voters wouldn’t have voted for. That’s anti-democratic in itself. This meme isn’t saying democracy bad, it’s saying that what we have now isn’t a democracy.
Yes, it also helped to liberate woman and gave them more opportunities, decreased illiteracy and MASSIVE russian retardancy, but overall it sucked at many levels and from the very start:
The red terror was much smaller than the white terror, and the torture is nothing that capitalist countries don’t do on the regular. I for one would like to decrease the amount of torture in the world.
Yeah, I’ve heard about the white terror. This does not justify people who supposedly wanted a better world. I am quite sure that now amount of torture in western countries is negligible when compared with China and North Korea, and mostly by intrinsic flaws of e.g. police than political causes. And yes, I’ve heard about exceptions as Guantanamo or Pinoshit. Actually Pinoshit and Franco should not be counted as nominal western mindset, since they are authoritarian fascist piece of shits. I despise all authoritarian despots equally, no matter fascist Franco or “communist” Stalin.
I am quite sure that now amount of torture in western countries is negligible when compared with China and North Korea
This sounds like western chauvinism. Hoe can you be sure? The US has soo many blacksites, hell even local PDs have them.
Guantanamo or Pinoshit. Actually Pinoshit and Franco should not be counted as nominal western mindset, since they are authoritarian fascist piece of shits.
Pinochet was straight up supported by the west until it was too politically inconvenient, but by that time he’d already done his job of eradicating the left. Franco wouldn’t have won if it wasn’t for Britain, France, etc, enforcing “no arms and troops shipments” for the USSR but not for Italy and Germany. And they also weren’t willing to accept Spanish republican gold.
I despise all authoritarian despots equally, no matter fascist Franco or “communist” Stalin.
Hmm. One of these people was a dictator. The other was democratically elected and lead the industrialization of a society that allowed it to defeat the industrial superpower that was Germany and end the holocaust.
And how can you be sure? Given nontransparent smokescreen of all red imperialist countries like USSR, China and North Korea?
You call them imperialist without having an understanding of imperialism.
For example, explain China increasing in manufacturing output as a percent of their economy as they enter and push into the middle income bracket?
Also, how the hell is the DPRK imperialist? The only place they’ve invaded was a US military dictatorship in the same country that they’re in, while the US dictatorship was slaughtering 10s of thousands of protestors.
Oh yes, USSR, the famous standard of democracy /s
Yes. If you can’t explain how the soviet councils were layered and how elections were carried out then don’t pretend like you can argue about this in an informed way.
China uses a similar system and has a 95 percent approval rate, according to Harvard Surveys.
*replace it with the gulag system
This is holocaust trivialization. The gulags were not meant to kill people, and the mortality rate in them reflects this.
For example, explain China increasing in manufacturing output as a percent of their economy as they enter and push into the middle income bracket?
Exploiting cheap workers in inhumane conditions, resembling 19th century capitalism. Exactly what communism was supposed to end. China is getting robotized somewhat, since its society ages dramatically, but they want to keep polluting the world with cheap throwaways.
Also, how the hell is the DPRK imperialist?
DPRK constantly threaten South Korea and Japan. Apart the famous missile launches, it performs abductions, drug smuggling, marine poaching, and spying. And we have cyber attacks as well. The country is too shitty to invade another country full scale, but it does what it can do to be a bully, officially uses imperialist rhetorics and throw threats.
If you can’t explain how the soviet councils were layered and how elections were carried out then don’t pretend like you can argue about this in an informed way.
The elections were carried out in such a way, that an average worker had no chance to vote for a social demoratic party, anarchist party, or liberal democratic party. They even killed their communist opposition, Mensheviks. There is no democracy with a single party system, don’t be ridiculous.
China uses a similar system
And is a similar authoritarian regime.
This is holocaust trivialization. The gulags were not meant to kill people, and the mortality rate in them reflects this.
Setting aside manufactured famine in Ukraine and genocides like Katyn, very cautious estimates says that around 30 millions of people were victims of gulag, with lethal 2,7 million victims. This is probably massive underestimation, since many of gulag documents were destroyed in 2014. But hey, the mortality rate was smaller than in Nazi death camps, great job USSR! /s
Exploiting cheap workers in inhumane conditions, resembling 19th century capitalism. Exactly what communism was supposed to end. China is getting robotized somewhat, since its society ages dramatically, but they want to keep polluting the world with cheap throwaways.
Taking everything you said as true, that isn’t imperialist though. Imperialism is a specific thing, have you read any academic writings on imperialism?
DPRK constantly threaten South Korea and Japan. Apart the famous missile launches, it performs abductions, drug smuggling, marine poaching, and spying. And we have cyber attacks as well. The country is too shitty to invade another country full scale, but it does what it can do to be a bully, officially uses imperialist rhetorics and throw threats.
Taking everything you say is true, that also isn’t imperialism
The elections were carried out in such a way, that an average worker had no chance to vote for a social demoratic party, anarchist party, or liberal democratic party. They even killed their communist opposition, Mensheviks. There is no democracy with a single party system, don’t be ridiculous.
Okay, see my original point about not being informed.
Setting aside manufactured famine in Ukraine and genocides like Katyn, very cautious estimates says that around 30 millions of people were victims of gulag, with lethal 2,7 million victims. This is probably massive underestimation, since many of gulag documents were destroyed in 2014. But hey, the mortality rate was smaller than in Nazi death camps, great job USSR! /s
Your estimate should be 1.7 million, Nazis aren’t people remember?
What in the world are you on about? This is about how politicians will pay lip service to the public but will act in their own interestd, usually based on their donors.
I get that you’re on Lemmy.world, where everyone outside of your anticommunist bubble everyone is a secret scary tankie, but this is even worse of a take than nornal.
Not so. The tankiest instances are lemmygrad and hexbear, while I think sh.itjust.works is neocon or lib at best, not to mention nazi “exploding heads” so we have a whole spectrum. I think Lemmy.ml had tolerable tankiness, but since lemmygrad and hexbear were rightly defederated from most instances, the tankies and wumaos are poisoning Lemmy.ml and much of fediverse with genocide denialism, authoritarian propaganda, etc.
Both Hexbear and Lemmygrad are largely self-sufficient, some people likely have alts but the idea that they are “poisoning” Lemmy.ml is silly. Marxists have always been here.
Yes, Marxists have been on Lemmy.ml and this is a good thing. But there is difference between Marxists and supporters of authoritarian regimes like China, Russia or North Korea, who are denialists of genocides like Bucha, Katyn, Tiananmen, etc. and who are cheap wumao/govnoyed propagandists.
Suggesting people read Marx gets you called a Tankie. I have even seen Anarchists get called Tankie. The term is meaningless at this point, and people attach a bunch of scary baggage to it as a way to pretend everything left of Liberalism is tankie.
The term is wide and sometimes misinterpreted, but actually not meaningless, since tankies are mainly associated with marxism-leninism (maybe sometimes maoism) and whitewashing of regimes as China, USSR, or North Korea. Same as the term “woke”, which is even wider and horribly overused. Thus, I wouldn’t call a western postmarxist leftist a tankie, and a lib or neocon probably would call this person a woke one :)
Cause the middle school one is the quadratic formula. You use it to factor 2nd degree polynomials. You don’t solve for a, b, and c, you just plug them in.
In Spain too, it’s also needed in vocational training (FP1, FP2) for carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc., because it involves necessary calculations in their work, such as trigonometry, spheronometry, vector forces, flow calculations, among others. For office workers, naturally, percentage calculations are not overcome, but even there second degree equations can arise.
I’ve had an economics teacher in the Netherlands who had interest tables and wanted us to them too. For those before calculators, those are tables that list the years on the left, and the interest on top, and then the multiplier in the table.
Absolutely. But I learned in 2005, and the electric calculator had replaced the sliderule a couple of decades earlier.
But this is something they were great at, but usually not with the same accuracy. It’s hard to get more than 3 decimal places out of one, and tables are great for that, you can fill whole books with them.
That’s nuts. In the US the only high school math I was taught was algebra and geometry. Anything more advanced than that was for students in the “gifted” program. No wonder why Americans are so stupid.
not sure why you’re getting downvoted for this, I had the same experience with my education in the US. high school class of 08, lol. the school never taught a math class past algebra 1. if you finished it, you still needed math credits per year, so they’d just have you retake the same class. seriously. absolutely abysmal. 95% of the math I do now is self taught. from my “education” alone, we never got much past solving basic linear single-variable equations. most of my class graduated barely literate. really, most of my class simply left, myself included - the dropout rate was astonishingly high around 08, and instead of doing the same classes and curriculum for the third time in my senior year, I opted to simply leave, educate myself, and shortly thereafter start my business.
Yeah it was a middle school thing in Finland too, at least in the 90’s.
I did an exchange year in the US in my 2nd high school year, and I was honestly a bit surprised at how… well, simple it all was. I was a senior in the US and I’d learned just about everything they taught that wasn’t specific to the US or the English language (and even some of those…) either in my 1st year in high school or in middle school.
In my experience as an American, I’ve learned the same thing in multiple years, we kind of just chose a point to stop at and did that for our entire god damn school year, never moving on. We could have talked about so much interesting history, but no, we need to talk about WW2 and completely gloss over most other things for the 12th year in a row
For christs sakes I was learning FRACTIONS AND DECIMALS IN MY SENIOR YEAR
I will admit the reason my last two years were such a stark contrast to my previous years was because I went from honors down to basic because I went to a vocational high school, Diamond Oaks, and they only had the base classes
But still I never want to have another history class on WW2 again, I don’t mind learning the era but I’ve relearned the same thing over and over again
American schools cover the civil and 2 great wars because those were the last times we were arguably the good guys. Every war since has been a conflict we started by meddling or we had no good reason to be there
every year of high school I and the rest of my class ('08) had was the same curriculum repeatedly.
history: ww2 bulletpoints, same as last year. write a paper about how bad the nazis were but how complex the situation was, actually, so don’t be so judgemental.
lit: baseball?? books and writing exercises about baseball.
math: algebra 1 over and over. I once got sent to the office for a disciplinary discussion for asking if we’ll ever hit algebra 2.
PE: no, none whatsoever.
art: watch whatever movies, free form ungraded discussion aka nobody does shit.
science: watch vaguely sciencey documentaries and write a paper about an animal’s behavior and habits.
electives: none, a myth we heard whispers of amongst older friend siblings.
foreign language: Spanish 1, every year.
i left right before my senior year and started working. I’ve never been sure if that was the right call or not but my friends that graduated are borderline illiterate to this day and completely math averse for sure. so I don’t think another year of ww2 baseball algebra would have helped me much more.
Idk what middle school really is because it’s not been a thing at any of the schools I’ve been to, but it’s definitely something you do a lot earlier than calculus. If calculus comes in in your last three or four years of high school, quadratics are what you’re doing for at least two years before that.
It’s the step between primary and secondary school that a lot of countries have, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_school
In Hong Kong too, though the dividing is a bit different. High school is like the last 3 years of secondary school, and middle school is like the 3 years in primary school and 3 years in secondary school.
We also have vector and matrix on top of calculus in high school if you take the elective course. The compulsory part contains geometry, complex, probability, etc.
I’m American, I definitely learned this stuff in 7th or 8th grade. Granted, I didn’t use it past high school, and I forgot it before I finished college, but that’s definitely when I learned it.
Math is personalized in American schools. There’s on grade, advanced, gt, and accelerated. Each level above on grade is how many years ahead your class math is. Depending on how large your school is, gt and accelerated math students will take math with the grades above them.
Yeah seriously WTF, I didn’t even learn basic Algebra until freshmen year of high school! We never even got to the math with the fancy letters in it. I have no idea what those cursive f, d, and w characters mean.
Cursive big f: “integration”, which can be interpreted in two ways. One is “area under the curve” for some part of the curve. Other is “average value of a part of the curve multiplied by the size of that part of the curve”. Curve being the function, the graph, f(x), however you wanna call it.
Normal d: “differentiation” (from difference), infinitely small change. Usually used in ratios: df/dx means how much does f(x) change relative to x when you change x a little bit.
Cursive d: “partial”, same as normal d but used when working with higher dimensional data like 3D. Can also mean “boundary” of something. Example: boundary of a volume in 3D, like wrapping paper around a box. Or, boundary of such wrapping paper itself, if it’s not perfectly connecting.
Omega: just a Greek letter used as a variable, in this case there’s a history of it being used as a sort of “density” variable in the field of differential geometry. The college row in the meme is kind of translating the high school row from a function to a 3D volume.
It’s just calculus where admittedly my own education stopped but it’s still very helpful in finding values in real-world things like change of value in time. I still hope to one day develop a working knowledge of it, myself. u/…mir below me did a good job of summarizing the two main introductory concepts in much the same way i’ve read others simplify and describe the subject in classic 100+ yr old books like “Calculus Made Easy by Sylvanus Thompson.” I suspect it’s not as intimidating as it seems once a person gets past some basic fundamental concepts.
Anecdotal, but I grew up in the US and I learned this in middle school as a gifted student. Others have mentioned it depends on the state/curriculum. I imagine in other countries they also divide their students between standard/honors/gifted-type tiers; they certainly do in the Netherlands, which is where I did my graduate studies.
“Gifted” education in the US means they burn us out with weird “critical thinking” extracirriculars and then berate us when the senioritis hits two years early.
What’s the alternative? Ending up like Allende, or the Spanish second republic, or Rosa Luxembourg? “The only good socialist movements are those who fail”
You need to take power in a way that doesn’t make a majority of the population hate your guts. Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.
You say that as if communists don’t want democracy. I want the highest degree of democracy possible, I just understand that the material conditions that allow revolutions don’t always allow for extremely high democracy at the beginning, and how a vanguard party of communist intellectuals can initially serve well to guide an uneducated populace or, worse, educated against communism as we are now.
The way to such a system can’t be through a violent uprising, you’ll be seen as illegitimate and opportunists. Revolutions themselves are very volatile points in history, and it can be very easy for the wrong person or set of people to take the reigns of power. We don’t want another Stalin or Mao.
You’re insulting all the people who suffered even more oppressive regimes than Stalin or Mao as a consequence of NOT arming themselves. Chileans suffered Pinochet as a consequence of lack of oppression of the fascist opposition during Allende. Spanish suffered Franco as a consequence of lack of oppression of the fascists during the Spanish Second Republic. Oppression is sadly a tool that must be used, as sparingly as possible that’s true, to prevent reactionary elements from maintaining or reinstating even more oppressive structures.
People everyday in post-colonial countries suffer immeasurable despair as a consequence of lack of revolution. If you criticise Stalin or Mao and consider them undesirable and illegitimate, you should be even more convinced of the illegitimacy of current western governments that impose imperialism on the global south. Every day that we delay or refuse these armed revolutions, we’re perpetuating this system which is even more harmful than the USSR or communist China by any metric possible.
So we just need super smart authoritarian communist to lead a bloody revolution backed by the uneducated masses that will then be handed over peacefully to the uneducated masses once communism is firmly established?
I support communism, I want revolutionary change, and I’m an idealist. But I don’t understand how that’s realistically possible. Theoretically possible, but the number of complications that would arise, the number of variables that could go wrong and destroy the entire movement, how easy it would be to corrupt… It’s never happened before for a reason, and having violent, bloody revolutions every few decades in the hopes it finally works perfectly this time doesn’t seem constructive or intelligent to me. There has to be a better way to balance how fast the change happens and how fragile and volatile the system will be during the change
Have you read Marxist theory? Marxists don’t typically identify themselves as idealists, preferring instead Materialism, specifically Historical and Dialectical Materialism.
Reading theory may help you better engage with leftists online.
Right, sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the definition of idealist "One whose conduct or thinking is influenced by ideals that often conflict with practical considerations. "
Not that I necessarily am “An adherent of any system of philosophical idealism.”
But yes, I’ll read more Marxist theory specifically. I don’t have trouble interacting with leftists online very much, it’s just when I see leftists who are strictly authoritarian. The “by any means necessary” just ain’t it for me
I understand what you meant, it’s just that Marxists don’t take on that mantle whatsoever. Same with your notion that we rely on some “super smart authoritarian,” that goes against revolutionary theory.
That’s why I suggested reading theory. You seem to have an idea of what you want your end to be, and why current Capitalism is bad, but you lack organizational and Dialectical Materialist theory.
There’s a reason we have realism in political science though. Theory isnt the truth of how things play out in real life, especially when it comes to the social sciences. We need descriptions just as much, if not moreso, than prescriptions.
We need, as commies, to establish grassroots movements that will improve things locally, create safety nets, organize labor to get progressively better victories through strike and if necessary through other means, and to have a growing sector of workers that are class-conscious. When the material conditions arrive, we need to have a critical mass of class-conscious workers so that we can organise as best as possible, and help to educate the rest of people, and to discuss the wants and needs of the workers and translate those needs to the vanguard party. But we also need the vanguard party.
You talk about how things can “go wrong and corrupt the entire thing”, but by doing so you’re forgetting that that’s already the case, that we live in a corrupt, bloody and oppressive system, which kills millions every year worldwide through violent and less-violent means. You say it’s never happened, but I disagree with you. Ask an anarchist and they’ll tell you about Zapatista and Rohinya movements. Ask a Marxist-Leninist like me and we’ll tell you about Cuba and the USSR and why we believe they’re inherently more democratic and less oppressive than the current system, although admittedly not perfect. Our best tool to prevent the system from being corrupt, is to have as many class-conscious workers as possible. So let’s organise labor, let’s create communities and activist organizations, and let’s improve things on a local level, so that people’s material conditions start to improve and as a bonus we can draw more people to the movement that actively improves their lives.
That’s a bit goofy, but then I will amend the original statement with clarity: revolutionaries do not necessarily support random individual movements, but mass revolutionary action among the workers.
You’re contradicting yourself little buddy, just earlier you were claiming that mass popular support is democracy. But apparently an uprising of the oppressed is just a coup. 🤡
I remember when I was feeling powerful and great because I had just beat the Moon Presence in Bloodborne, so I loaded up a new game plus and died to the first enemy.
Seriously. I might not be a great “Marx Scholar” and I don’t think the revolution will just be a peaceful process “whished into existence” but I don’t think Marx was Dunkin g on anti authoritarians here and to presume the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is the long term free society of Marx ideals is utter garbage. Communism will be anti-authoritarian or it will not be.
The thing is that anarchism fundamentally doesn’t scale. There’s a reason we see central authority arise in every functioning society regardless of its political system. It’s the same reason complex animals evolve things like nervous systems and brains. Large organism need a way to coordinate actions towards a common purpose, and a human society is no different. This is why we see anarchist style societies at small scales, and then as they grow they develop central coordination mechanisms. The fact that anarchist can’t wrap their heads around this simple concept is frankly depressing.
Anarchists tend to fall for idealism, and see only Anarchism as “good” and therefore acceptable. That’s really the key point, they feel like they must unify means and ends, and that the microscopic chance that one day Anarchism may be established is worth fighting for.
It’s idealism to the core and puts the individual over the well-being of the group.
Indeed, and this is why anarchism is really just an offshoot of the liberal ideology at the end of the day. Idealism holds that existence is inseparable from human perception and that reality stems from the mind. This leads them to think that they can just will reality into existence through sheer force of will. The general premise most anarchists seem to believe is that the state is responsible for all the problems in society, and if it was somehow abolished then people would just naturally act in cooperative and enlightened way. This appears to be premised on the assumption that most people think the way anarchists do.
You’ve claim to know with great detail and certainty what anarchists believe without citing any anarchist thinkers. All you are doing is constructing a strawman of anarchists based on vibes hoping that none will be here to refute it. Anarchy is more than the absence of the state, and none who are knowledgeable posit that anarchy will materialize without effort. Anarchists are idealists not out of naivete, but necessity. It has been born out of history that when means and ends are not unified, the means become the ends. This was true of the Russian revolution when “all power to the Soviets” became hollow words and “war communism” became the new oppressor of the people.
Nah, I’m going by the actual tangible achievements, or lack of thereof as the case may be, of anarchists based on the teachings of their thinkers.
This was true of the Russian revolution when “all power to the Soviets” became hollow words and “war communism” became the new oppressor of the people.
Having actually grown up in USSR, I can tell you that listening to anarchists regurgitate this nonsense is incredibly offensive. It completely discredits your argument and shows that it is you who’s opining on a subject you have no understanding of. All people like you accomplish is enable capitalist oppression by rejecting real world solutions.
Nah, I’m going by the actual tangible achievements, or lack of thereof as the case may be, of anarchists based on the teachings of their thinkers.
The Bolsheviks discount anarchist achievements by claiming them as their own. Anarchists fought alongside the Bolsheviks because they promised to realize the anarchists’ goal of all power to the Soviets. When it became clear the Bolsheviks lied in order to selfishly establish themselves as the intelligentsia, a privileged class, the anarchists resisted and were violently repressed by their former brothers and sisters in arms.
I would like to hear about your experiences growing up in the USSR as I know there were many positive aspects, but by betraying the values for which many of the revolutionaries fought they created a society with an unstable foundation, as evidenced by its’ eventual collapse. Anarchists did not reject real world solutions, they defended them with their lives and lost. The Bolsheviks have themselves to blame for the collapse.
This clearly illustrates that anarchists are not capable of organizing in effective ways that can protect their ideology. The same way anarchists ended up losing to Bolsheviks, they end up losing to capitalists, and fascists. What Bolsheviks achieved was to build a socialist state that was able to defend itself and greatly improve the lives of the working majority. Anarchists simply aren’t capable of doing that as the past century has shown beyond all doubt.
USSR was the first ever attempt at building socialism at scale, and while it may have collapsed, other socialist projects live on today and continue to improve lives of over a billion people on this planet.
You’re using the same argument capitalists use to dismiss socialism, namely that socialism clearly doesn’t work because all socialist projects ended in collapse or continue in a state of poverty. This is, in essence, victim-blaming. Just as socialism struggles under the oppression of capitalist hegemony, anarchism struggles under the oppression of both capitalists and statists.
What Bolsheviks achieved was the betrayal of all who fought for the liberation of the proletariat. If power had gone to the Soviets as the Bolsheviks promised then the USSR would not have collapsed under the weight of its’ contradictions. You speak as if the USSR only repressed the forces of reaction, but it also repressed the very same workers it claimed to support when they tried to claim the worker control of the means of production they were promised.
What I’m pointing out is that all ideologies compete with others. That’s the reality of the world. If Anarchists are not able to defend the way they want to organize society then their ideology ends up being trampled by others. That’s the world we live in. Calling this victim blaming doesn’t change the material reality of the world.
The difference between anarchists and communists is that the latter actually managed to build functional societies, and to effectively resist capitalism. Anarchists failed to do that, and the reasons for why anarchist approach fails time and again are well understood now.
What Bolsheviks achieved was the betrayal of all who fought for the liberation of the proletariat.
Repeating nonsense over and over will not make it true.
You speak as if the USSR only repressed the forces of reaction, but it also repressed the very same workers it claimed to support when they tried to claim the worker control of the means of production they were promised.
This is an idealist position that’s divorced from realities of the world. USSR existed under siege from global capitalism throughout its whole existence, and that was the reason it was organized the way it was.
What I’m pointing out is that all ideologies compete with others. That’s the reality of the world. If Anarchists are not able to defend the way they want to organize society then their ideology ends up being trampled by others. That’s the world we live in. Calling this victim blaming doesn’t change the material reality of the world.
The Bolsheviks’ had the ill-gotten might to push their agenda, but might does not make right. The Bolsheviks lied to and used the anarchists to achieve what they did, but anarchists have learned from their past mistakes and will prove you wrong.
USSR existed under siege from global capitalism throughout its whole existence, and that was the reason it was organized the way it was.
Capitalist aggression did not make necessary the regressive views on social issues and science the USSR had (which resulted in famine), nor the widespread corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency of state officials. You cannot simply excuse all flaws of the USSR by blaming global capitalism.
The Bolsheviks’ had the ill-gotten might to push their agenda, but might does not make right. The Bolsheviks lied to and used the anarchists to achieve what they did, but anarchists have learned from their past mistakes and will prove you wrong.
No amount of moralizing will change the fact that anarchists fail to organize effectively time and again. If anarchists actually learned anything then we’d see that put into practice. The lack of any actual achievements is the elephant in the room here.
Capitalist aggression did not make necessary the regressive views on social issues and science the USSR had (which resulted in famine), nor the widespread corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency of state officials. You cannot simply excuse all flaws of the USSR by blaming global capitalism.
Yes, it absolutely did as anybody with even minimal historical knowledge would know.
This is getting repetitive and we’re just talking past each other so let’s just agree to disagree about the USSR. I just want to make the point - which I hope we can agree on - that the revolution wouldn’t have been successful without political pluralism within the ranks, and no future revolution will either. Dismissing the contributions of anarchists will only harm your cause.
Revolutions require a critical mass of people to come together, and sometimes people who have different vision for the end goal find opportunities to work together as Bolsheviks and anarchists did. Lenin wrote extensively on the subject of when alliances should be formed. MLs don’t have a problem working with anarchists, recognizing that there are common interests and that a time may come where such alliances may need to be rethought. The hate largely comes from the side of anarchists who refuse to work with MLs and spend their time trying to discredit the accomplishments of existing socialist states.
It’s also worth noting that the reality in the west today is that both MLs and anarchists are an insignificant political minority. If the current system does end up collapsing in the near future, then fascism is the most likely outcome. While the left bickers, the right is rapidly growing in power in vast majority of western countries.
The hate largely comes from the side of anarchists who refuse to work with MLs and spend their time trying to discredit the accomplishments of existing socialist states.
You have been discrediting the accomplishments of anarchists while I have been acknowledging the accomplishments of marxists.
While the left bickers, the right is rapidly growing in power in vast majority of western countries.
I agree, but remember this conversation was started because you were insinuating that anarchists never accomplished anything.
You have been discrediting the accomplishments of anarchists while I have been acknowledging the accomplishments of marxists.
I’ve been pointing out that anarchists have not managed to put their ideas into practice on any appreciable scale while Marxists have done this. Ultimately, what I’m telling you is that anarchists need to show how they can actually make their ideas work and withstand the challenges that they face in the real world. This is a problem that anarchists have not been able to solve in my view.
You say that it’s the fault of Bolsheviks that anarchists didn’t get their way in USSR, but there’s no reason to believe that anarchists would’ve fared any better against the capitalist invasion that followed in 1918, or against the nazis a couple of decades later. In fact, the centralization of power that you decried was ultimately what allowed USSR to rapidly industrialize and come out victorious in WW2.
Meanwhile, I completely agree that the socialist projects that Marxists managed to build are not without their own problems. Yet, I think they are a strict improvement over capitalism as imperfect as they may be. My view is that the threat of fascism is very real and that it grows by the day, and in face of that the left should focus on using tools that have been proven to defeat fascism in the past.
The dictatorship of the proletariat literally just means that the bourgeoisie are suppressed politically until they can be integrated into the rest of society, it doesn’t mean a dictatorship, it means a democracy where the former oppressors don’t get a seat at the table.
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