I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.
How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren’t going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?
How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn’t it?
We don’t ignore it when a socialist country takes security measures, we say they’re an unfortunate reality of steps a country has to take in order to defend itself against external and internal aggression. Having your country go socialist earns you a lot of enemies and having a lot of enemies means you have to build up things like intelligence agencies, military apparatuses, and centralized agencies for combating sabotage and spying. These are things every country does, but western nations like to paint the security measures that socialist nations take as purely authoritarian, or needlessly tyrannical, or whatever other word gets thrown around. The nations yelling at socialist countries to change their domestic policies are usually the most imperialist and have the most to gain from socialist states being dismantled.
When your enemies are the global capitalists who operate global finance and industry, you should probably build up something to defend against it. Nukes tend to work as a deterrent, but they only go so far when you’ve also got an internal population that can present a security problem.
China’s taken the smartest strategy of all honestly. They’ve intertwined their economy with the imperial powers to the point it’s impossible to disentangle. The west can’t take violent action against China, since that’s where the industry is.
Also, so called authoritarian measures against our enemies are a good thing. It’s good when fascists, racists, and imperialists lose civil liberties like the freedom to express themselves, organize, fund politicians, or operate businesses.
Do you think that we will see true communism ever arise from authoritarianism? I don’t think that is possible.
I think that authoritarianism is a lot more palatable to the imperialists than actual communism would be, I worry that, quite apart from it being wrong to curtail civil rights, by being authoritarian a socialist state is simply dancing to the tune of the imperialists.
I don’t think I’m comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don’t have rights, that power is too often abused widely.
Personally I don’t believe the term authoritarianism is a useful description of anything. It’s too vague. I’ve seen one definition that’s like “a system that rejects the involvement of certain groups or interests from the political process.” Well that would be all socialist nations by default, since socialist countries by definition have denied political representation for the capitalist class in some way.
A better question is: How is a socialist country supposed to defend itself? It may not be possible for a country to achieve what Marx called upper-phase communism. It may not be possible for money, states, and all property to be abolished. That’s a question for the future. But when a country tries to curtail the power of capitalists, even attempts to create what’s known as true communism, they find themselves on the receiving end of an entire world against them. Sanctions, invasions, sabotage, spying. The shape that a socialist country will take is the result of its conditions. We’re living in a world dominated by capital and socialist countries represent a resistance against capital. If socialist movements are threatened, they either defend themselves or collapse.
You’re right that countries are dancing to the imperialists, because the imperialists hold the most power right now. That’s why an anti-imperialist movement is important, why a multi-polar world is important. Once the threat of imperialism subsides or is defeated, then I’m going to guess socialist countries will begin to express their policies differently.
I don’t think I’m comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don’t have rights, that power is too often abused widely.
Is there any society that isn’t this? A central authority deciding how to distribute rights is a governing body.
Socialism is a movement about denying the right of property to capitalists. That’s the entire purpose of the movement, to elevate working class people to the point of dominating society and to restrain or abolish the capitalist class. Landlords and capitalists shouldn’t be able to exercise the same rights they have in a liberal capitalist nation. Fascists, racists, transphobes, imperialists, etc shouldn’t have any civil liberties and should be subject to arrest, reeducation, or worse.
Thanks for sharing, believe it or not I am a communist myself and I agree with most of what the video said. I just don’t see how communism can ever emerge from authoritarianism, because if the defence against imperialism is authoritarianism are we not still dancing to the imperialist tune?
Comunism can only emerge from authoritarianism, by definition, because every single class society is authoritarian, and thus every state is. And as Engels noticed, revolution is the most authoritarian thing that is.
Imperialism is not the same as authoritarianism. To know what we mean by “imperialism” read Lenin’s “Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism”.
And you might noticed how authoritarianism in my first sentence is used incredibly wide, it’s not a mistake, it’s one of those terms that have no useful meaning, it wasn’t even useful to start with, and especially not when it went through the liberal media and social media mill which had tendency to either purposefully or acidentally (or both) twist definitions to the point they are unrecognizable. Therefore to broadly talk about “authoritarianism” is meaningless, that word is unhelpful as definition and can be used at most as the cliche to deflect discussion (and note it’s been used in this thread in this characer extensively by liberals who sure as hell aren’t opposing it because they support authoritarian societies as well).
I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.
How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren’t going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?
Its information overload aka gish gallup
How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn’t it?
People confuse facism and authoritarianism all the time, and people respond to this as if they’ve never figured this out.
So instead of anything productive these threads churn out:
Vs
We don’t ignore it when a socialist country takes security measures, we say they’re an unfortunate reality of steps a country has to take in order to defend itself against external and internal aggression. Having your country go socialist earns you a lot of enemies and having a lot of enemies means you have to build up things like intelligence agencies, military apparatuses, and centralized agencies for combating sabotage and spying. These are things every country does, but western nations like to paint the security measures that socialist nations take as purely authoritarian, or needlessly tyrannical, or whatever other word gets thrown around. The nations yelling at socialist countries to change their domestic policies are usually the most imperialist and have the most to gain from socialist states being dismantled.
When your enemies are the global capitalists who operate global finance and industry, you should probably build up something to defend against it. Nukes tend to work as a deterrent, but they only go so far when you’ve also got an internal population that can present a security problem.
China’s taken the smartest strategy of all honestly. They’ve intertwined their economy with the imperial powers to the point it’s impossible to disentangle. The west can’t take violent action against China, since that’s where the industry is.
Also, so called authoritarian measures against our enemies are a good thing. It’s good when fascists, racists, and imperialists lose civil liberties like the freedom to express themselves, organize, fund politicians, or operate businesses.
Do you think that we will see true communism ever arise from authoritarianism? I don’t think that is possible.
I think that authoritarianism is a lot more palatable to the imperialists than actual communism would be, I worry that, quite apart from it being wrong to curtail civil rights, by being authoritarian a socialist state is simply dancing to the tune of the imperialists.
I don’t think I’m comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don’t have rights, that power is too often abused widely.
Personally I don’t believe the term authoritarianism is a useful description of anything. It’s too vague. I’ve seen one definition that’s like “a system that rejects the involvement of certain groups or interests from the political process.” Well that would be all socialist nations by default, since socialist countries by definition have denied political representation for the capitalist class in some way.
A better question is: How is a socialist country supposed to defend itself? It may not be possible for a country to achieve what Marx called upper-phase communism. It may not be possible for money, states, and all property to be abolished. That’s a question for the future. But when a country tries to curtail the power of capitalists, even attempts to create what’s known as true communism, they find themselves on the receiving end of an entire world against them. Sanctions, invasions, sabotage, spying. The shape that a socialist country will take is the result of its conditions. We’re living in a world dominated by capital and socialist countries represent a resistance against capital. If socialist movements are threatened, they either defend themselves or collapse.
You’re right that countries are dancing to the imperialists, because the imperialists hold the most power right now. That’s why an anti-imperialist movement is important, why a multi-polar world is important. Once the threat of imperialism subsides or is defeated, then I’m going to guess socialist countries will begin to express their policies differently.
Is there any society that isn’t this? A central authority deciding how to distribute rights is a governing body.
Socialism is a movement about denying the right of property to capitalists. That’s the entire purpose of the movement, to elevate working class people to the point of dominating society and to restrain or abolish the capitalist class. Landlords and capitalists shouldn’t be able to exercise the same rights they have in a liberal capitalist nation. Fascists, racists, transphobes, imperialists, etc shouldn’t have any civil liberties and should be subject to arrest, reeducation, or worse.
Thanks for the detailed response, you’ve given me a lot to think about.
You at least don’t seem vitriolic so I’m gonna link you a 2 minute music video that addresses exactly this concern
Thanks for sharing, believe it or not I am a communist myself and I agree with most of what the video said. I just don’t see how communism can ever emerge from authoritarianism, because if the defence against imperialism is authoritarianism are we not still dancing to the imperialist tune?
Comunism can only emerge from authoritarianism, by definition, because every single class society is authoritarian, and thus every state is. And as Engels noticed, revolution is the most authoritarian thing that is.
Imperialism is not the same as authoritarianism. To know what we mean by “imperialism” read Lenin’s “Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism”.
And you might noticed how authoritarianism in my first sentence is used incredibly wide, it’s not a mistake, it’s one of those terms that have no useful meaning, it wasn’t even useful to start with, and especially not when it went through the liberal media and social media mill which had tendency to either purposefully or acidentally (or both) twist definitions to the point they are unrecognizable. Therefore to broadly talk about “authoritarianism” is meaningless, that word is unhelpful as definition and can be used at most as the cliche to deflect discussion (and note it’s been used in this thread in this characer extensively by liberals who sure as hell aren’t opposing it because they support authoritarian societies as well).
True communism is stateless, so how can this emerge from authoritarianism?
We could use the word oppressive or repressive if you prefer?
I agree, liberals are as bad as tankies for justifying their repressive ideology