this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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lemmy.ml and anti-democratic meme? surprised not
why is this anti democratic again?
it creates biased impression that democracy is generally like this. it's like showing that ussr sucked, so any leftist ideology must sucks too
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.
Okay but the USSR didn't suck, it was a good attempt at workers democracy with massive problems, but smaller problems than bourgeois 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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror -- look at the passage on tortures. This alone made me to despise USSR.
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.
This sounds like western chauvinism. Hoe can you be sure? The US has soo many blacksites, hell even local PDs have them.
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.
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?
Oh yes, USSR, the famous standard of democracy /s
*replace it with the gulag system
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.
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.
This is holocaust trivialization. The gulags were not meant to kill people, and the mortality rate in them reflects this.
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.
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.
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.
And is a similar authoritarian regime.
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
Taking everything you said as true, that isn't imperialist though. Imperialism is a specific thing, have you read any academic writings on imperialism?
Taking everything you say is true, that also isn't imperialism
Okay, see my original point about not being informed.
Your estimate should be 1.7 million, Nazis aren't people remember?
Russia (allegedly) has elections too however
Oh yes, Russia, the renowned standard of democracy /s
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.
The CPC has like a 95 percent approval rating according to Harvard polling, what are you talking about?
I guess you mean CCP but who am I to disrespect great CCP
I mean, you've obviously done a successful revolution in your country, so you definitely know stuff about how to build socialism.
Next time I will make sure not to talk about goverments until I build one myself
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.
You mean the idea of communism or actually existing "communist" countries, like China, USRR or North Korea?
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.
Thank you for a quite objective response.
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 perceive myself as a social democrat, maybe with elements of anarchism, such as decentralization and down-to-up elements of organization.
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 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.
Mfw the anarcho-syndicalists throw me in a labor camp
Lol this maymay cracked me up good internet joke i hope u get many points
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.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
I don't think you're going to find it easy to convince a Marxist to become an Anarchist by linking Anarchist theory.
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.
That is theory, what are you talking about?
Their point wasn't that Anarchism necessitates forced labor, but that historically Anarcho-Communists have employed Labor Camps, such as in Revolutionary Catalonia.
Examples are mentioned in With the Peasants of Aragon.
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.
Rich for Marxists to throw out "anarchism has never worked when tried" lol. (Also isn't true, see link).
But granted, maybe there's a more charitable interpretation of their comments.
I didn't throw that out, and neither did OurToothbrush.
Authoritarian is just a buzzword armchair generals throw around. All states rely on authority, including anarchist attempts like in Catalonia and Ukraine.
'elections' with reaaaaaaally big quotes
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.
Well, maybe someone outside your tankie bubble may have an other interpretation.
The "tankie bubble" is Lemmy. Lemmy.ml doesn't defederate from larger instances, I see almost everything.
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 :)
I read it as an oblique reference to this:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritarian-presidential-election-f27e7e9d7c13fabbe3ae7dd7f1235c72
It may not have BEEN that, but I definitely saw it as a swipe against dishonest elected officials, not against democracy