davel

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

If you’re saying authoritarianism can be explained by non-whiteness…

I’m not saying that. I’m saying that “whiteness” as a construct is a tool of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism. And that the Global North similarly tends to attribute “authoritarianism” to whichever states are acting insufficiently subservient to their imperialist interests at any given moment. And I’m saying that these two constructs have a tendency to be aligned with each other, because they’re both tools of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism.

But also saying that anyone opposing NATO become ipso facto non-white because it’s “an ever-shifting construct”…

Whiteness is as old as European colonialism, and has been baked into capitalism—which began in Europe—from the start. Whiteness has been twisted into all sorts of nonsensical logic pretzels. See for example honorary Aryans honorary whites. It has no explanatory power because it is simply a tool of power. Even the Irish, Italian, and other Catholic European immigrants have suffered it within our own country. As Josep Borrell has more-or-less said, the imperial core is the “garden”, and the rest of the world is the “jungle.” Imperialism uses race—which again is made-up bullshit—as a tool to justify their imperialism.

You’re saying “authoritarianism = non-whiteness = opposition to the NATO bloc”

I’m not saying that, but the NATO bloc often seems to imply it. international-community-1international-community-2

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

The whole point of a communist system is a centrally planned, and controlled, economy.

This has not been universally true among socialist states.

This gives the state immense control

All states have immense control by virtue of having a monopoly on violence.

The capitalist class controls the state in capitalist countries, including ostensibly democratic” ones. They use the state to to rule the working class and to protect their private property.

self preservation at any cost.

This is practically every state that has ever existed.

“rules for rulers” by cgp grey,

cringe Maybe step away from the Polandballs and go read/listen to some books.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/c9355777-f283-429e-9825-46b805bcc7dc.jpeg

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

This Soviet World

Most Americans shrink from the word “dictatorship.” “I don’t want to be dictated to,” they say. Neither, in fact, does anyone. But why do they instinctively take the word in its passive meaning, and see themselves as the recipients of orders? Why do they never think that they might be the dictators? Is that such an impossible idea? Is it because they have been so long hammered by the subtly misleading propaganda about personal dictatorships, or is it because they have been so long accustomed to seek the right to life through a boss who hires them, that the word dictatorship arouses for them the utterly incredible picture of one man giving everybody orders?

No country is ruled by one man. This assumption is a favorite red herring to disguise the real rule. Power resides in ownership of the means of production—by private capitalists in Italy, Germany and also in America, by all workers jointly in the USSR. This is the real difference which today divides the world into two systems, in respect to the ultimate location of power. When a Marxist uses the word “dictatorship,” he is not alluding to personal rulers or to methods of voting; he is contrasting rule by property with rule by workers.

The heads of government in America are not the real rulers. I have talked with many of them from the President down. Some of them would really like to use power for the people. They feel baffled by their inability to do so; they blame other branches of government, legislatures, courts. But they haven’t analyzed the real reason. The difficulty is that they haven’t power to use. Neither the President nor Congress nor the common people, under any form of organization whatever, can legally dispose of the oil of Rockefeller or the gold in the vaults of Morgan. If they try, they will be checked by other branches of government, which was designed as a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent such “usurpation of power.” Private capitalists own the means of production and thus rule the lives of millions. Government, however chosen, is limited to the function of making regulations which will help capitalism run more easily by adjusting relations between property and protecting it against the “lawless” demands of non-owners. This constitutes what Marxists call the dictatorship of property. “The talk about pure democracy is but a bourgeois screen,” says Stalin, “to conceal the fact that equality between exploiters and exploited is impossible. . . . It was invented to hide the sores of capitalism . . . and lend it moral strength.”

Power over the means of production—that gives rule. Men who have it are dictators. This is the power the workers of the Soviet Union seized in the October Revolution. They abolished the previously sacred right of men to live by ownership of private property. They substituted the rule: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” -

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

Liberalism is founded on facts and logic, therefore liberals have an inalienable right to expound on unfounded ideas.

NO INVESTIGATION, NO RIGHT TO SPEAK

Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?

It won’t do!

It won’t do!

You must investigate!

You must not talk nonsense!

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

That’s why Russians aren’t “white” anymore. They’ve been downgraded to asiatic horde again, which is why NATOpedia has trotted out meat wave theory again. Like authoritarianism, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea.

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

Like, what countries do you think are communist?

None, as any communist country will tell you. They are socialist states working toward communism, meaning a classless society, and, by their own theory of state, a stateless society.

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

Yes, they have a single party: the https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat, also known as proletarian democracy.

But we too have a single party: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, also known as bourgeois democracy.

[Princeton] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

You can see the parallels with fascism.

Totalitarianism, AKA authoritarianism. Hannah Arendt came from wealth and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. This is a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.

Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited

U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.

If fact almost all of the “Western left” (that wasn’t crushed by red scares) was captured by the imperial core’s propaganda machine: Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

The Democracy Index published by the Economist Group

Neoliberal corporate media are defining what is to be considered “democratic”? You don’t have to drink this Kool-Aid.

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?

Because our bourgeois state propaganda and corporate media tell us that they are, because it’s in their best interest that we believe it.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/b2f54be8-65bc-432f-a93d-a912a308990b.jpeg

davel , 2 months ago to technology in Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT

Good luck with the deleting. It often just means UPDATE comments SET is_deleted = 1 WHERE ID = 666;.

davel , 2 months ago to asklemmy in The last time you were misgendered and the last time you misgendered someone else, why?

Call me anything you like, just don’t call me late for dinner.

davel , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to asklemmy in The last time you were misgendered and the last time you misgendered someone else, why?

It’s not uncommon for my phone voice to be misgendered. I don’t especially care, so I often don’t bother correcting them if I don’t expect to ever talk to them again.

take this picture of the friend for example

Hey I know this one. White and gold, final answer.

davel , 2 months ago to memes in Weapons manufacturers are terrorist organizations

You know, the fascist government that had an actual election as late as 2019 where southern and eastern regions largely voted for the person that won.

It’s too bad that actor who used to play president on TV and had zero actual political experience got steamrolled by the fascists once he got in office.