this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Socialism with democracy, but for that to happen the people need to install an temporary authoritarian government to make the transition no?
MLs when they get to play wet biscuit with a copy of On Authority
I don't necessarily disagree with your main point.
Though the arguments you make will not work on anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
You kinda cope in there by saying that the governments that called themselves socialist in the past were democratic, which is kind of not true for a lot of them. There's degrees to it but for the most part they weren't.
I think it's smarter for us to distance ourselves from those governments as they ultimately didn't really represent our views, not mine at least.
The other problem is the Engels On Authority ass first paragraph, equating use of violence with authoritarianism.
When you do thay you kinda just come off as an authoritarian if people aren't already familiar with your definitions (similar to using the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat.)
The argument is also just silly and I wish I could go back in time and stop it from entering the material world but I am too lazy to write about it. A lot of libertarian communists have written about it over the past century so you can probably fish something up if you look.
Comrades in this election you may democratically vote for the one candidate from our party, as the opponent tragically fell out of a window.
When you associate yourself with authoritarian hellholes you become an unhinged weirdo to 90% of the population.
It's not the 1960s anymore, we know what these countries are/were like and if you really want to simp for them then don't be surprised people think you hate democracy.
Nah, we do. Some of us actually grew up in them. But I'm sure you know best.
No, we were part of the majority that had money but nothing to spend it on because everything was rationed. From water and heating to tv time and groceries. There wasn't enough of anything because everything was going to export so at least on paper everything looked great and so you get to say stuff like "wow, that grass painted with toxic paint sure looks green from over here!"
"I am immune to propaganda but you're not"
you talk about bourgeois influence/propaganda, why you don't care abut goverment propaganda?
What if I told you we could vote ourselves into socialism?
Every system has to be enforced at some level. Even if it's just the mobs. Having an unenforced system that doesn't fall to bad faith actors will take a complete change of human psychology.
What if I told you every time that happens the bourgeoisie takes control of the military and starts a civil war to maintain their power?
I'm not sure that holds without the CIA coming in to facilitate that in a relatively new democracy. If a large country with good institutions voted that way it would be a lot harder to pull off a military coup.
That depends on if you believe in Stalin's ideas of a vanguard or Trotskys ideas of a vanguard. According to Trotsky the vanguard of the workers should be democratically elected.
Or, hear me out, you can be a non-Marxist socialist, because socialism does not only mean Marxism.
I'm aware, however I assume the person was specifically referring to Stalinism.
Then the assumptions they forwarded as absolutes need to be addressed instead of accepted.
Of course, I was taught that Liberal capitalist ran democracy is somehow the only legitimate form of democracy. The question is how should democracy be implemented in a way that ensures the workers have power.
It couldn't possibly be that people are too scared to criticize the CCP, right? ... right?
I'm not suggesting study bias, but I am suggesting that Chinese citizens' social media and internet use is now so closely monitored by the CPP that it has a chilling effect on free speech, and this may have influenced the results even if they were told the study was anonymous.
Secondly, since Xi took power, according to that same report, he has "effectively sidelined functional and professional institutions of party and state", in addition to removing term limits. These are all classic authoritarian strongman moves. The study goes on to point out that having an effective authoritarian as leader - one who has helped improve the lives of many Chinese citizens - is of course going to be popular. The old saying goes that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, and that may be true in some regards, right up until the point it isn't benevolent anymore. Which is more or less inevitable imo.
What the hell are you talking about? China is using "communism" to mask the fact that they're a state capitalist dictatorship. Nothing about China is socialist and in many ways corporations in China face even less regulations and restrictions then the west. I would also like to see the source of that statistic because outside observers have been banned from making any statistics about the Chinese government and economy.
Authoritarian governments never allow themselves to be temporary. Generally speaking, they usually have to be forcibly removed.
You’ve seen them on the telly, those authoritarian governments that resign peacefully when their work is done.
Theoretically, amendments could be passed to alter the Constitution into anything, if they have support from enough states. Then again, if (theoretically) enough people support a radical change that is prevented because of the outsized influence of some states, how is that democratic?
Understood, thanks!
No, if enough people vote for socialist candidates and they pass a law that says all property now belongs to the state, then it'd be enforced just like any other current law.
The transition could be gradual. If we started nationalizing companies that get too big, and do that for a few generations then the state would own 99% of the economy.
If we keep raising property tax, you'd effectively get to the point where people are leasing the land rather than owning it.
Communism brain rot is trendy nowadays. It’s the last refuge for the tortured mind of the permanently online doomers. It’s almost non existent in real life thankfully
It's not strictly necessary, but it sure does seem to keep happening.
Unless China does something very funny to their billionaire class and starts pushing the perpetual revolution, I think it's fairly safe to assume traditional Marxist thought is no longer the most dominant socialist school, and when the resource wars start in earnest there will be some genuine shifts in what kind of government a socialist revolution seeks to enact.
That or the fascists just win this time.
that usually ends in disaster. never mind the fact that authoritarian governments like the power and wouldn't want to give it back, which defeats the entire point of socialism...
but even if you have a completely benign dictator (usually just a fantasy but for the sake of argument let's say we had one) people, especially in democracies, don't like the idea of a coup, unless it's them doing it but then it's a revolution. but that could also lead to reactionary sentiment.
we've seen this happen in Iran. democracy gets fucked with by a US coup, people react with a revolution but unfortunately reactionary forces use the anger to their advantage and devolve into a different kind of authoritarian regime anyway.