Asklemmy

Eventually you'll realise that voting for the least bad option just makes things worse and never better, and you'll have to deal with the fact that you can get what you want through the system.

Does one have to be a revolutionary or iconoclast to be "legitimately" Left? (sorry for the paraphrase)

Not just "no" but fuck no. Anyone suggesting otherwise does not have freedom and liberty for all in mind.

However I find myself being disagreed with quite often, mostly for not advocating or cheering violence, "by any means possible" change, or revolutionary tactics. It would seem that I'm not viewed as authentically holding my view unless I advocate extreme, violent, or radical action to accomplish it.

You're encountering a mix of naive people, extremists, sock puppets, and the like there. I'm curious as to which contexts you see it in the most. Context is really important. Due example anyone supporting capitalism would be seen adversarily by an M-L communist and a lot of anarchists too.

Those seem like two different things to me.

Pick your battles. If you do not believe in violent revolution to overthrow capitalism but want an M-L to accept you, you're going to have a bad time. I'd recommend trying to reduce seeking external validation and accept that those with wildly different world views might not see eye-to-eye with you on things, even if you're both on the same side of center. You'll be much happier.

Edit: TO COMMUNISTS, ANARCHISTS, OR ANYONE ELSE CALLING FOR THE OVERTHROW OF SOCIETY

THIS OBVIOUSLY ISN'T MEANT FOR YOU.

I think you may have a few misconceptions there :). I'm an anarchist and believe that the data shows resoundingly that capitalism and the hierarchical structures that it requires are the root cause of much of human suffering as well as pushing the Earth towards becoming uninhabitable to our species.

Do I want to overthrow society? Fuck no. The amount of suffering and death that that would cause is literally beyond human capacity to comprehend. How many would starve or die of preventable disease? The ends do not justify the means.

Do I want capitalism to continue to be the dominant economic system? Absolutely not. It fails to address inequity or the long-term survival of our species. It's better than feudalism, yes, but, not by enough and out must evolve to meet the species needs, despite the wishes of billionaires.

I treat anarchism as a long project. I know I'll never see it in my life and that's ok as long as I put future generations in a place to carry on the baton. Things have been declining, in many ways, due to the Me Generation refusing to relinquish control. I hope that enough of my cohort are willing to put in the effort to fix some of the damage once they're finally gone (those still holding on to power at this point won't willingly hand it off to us until they have no choice).

Someone on here told me earlier I wasn't left enough when I posted a Karl Marx quote lol

This is off topic but is there something wrong with the hexbear client or is everyone here just making individual comments at each other instead of replying?

Lemmy has this weird point of view, if you aren't extreme left then you are not left at all. I've seen people make comments like "just be honest you aren't a liberal ".

They want to move the bar so they don't have to claim they are extremist. I wouldn't worry about it.

I liked the (long) piece over here: https://slrpnk.net/post/11395506

tldr;

You can’t blow up a social relationship. The total collapse of this society would provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people had the ideas and organization sufficient for the creation of an alternative society, we would see the old world reassert itself because it is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed unchallenged in their own personalities.

Proponents of terrorism and guerrilla-ism are to be opposed because their actions are vanguardist and authoritarian, because their ideas, to the extent that they are substantial, are wrong or unrelated to the results of their actions (especially when they call themselves libertarians or anarchists), because their killing cannot be justified, and finally because their actions produce either repression with nothing in return or an authoritarian regime.

No way.

Anyone who calls for collapse or revolution is playing out a survivor fantasy where they hope they (and their ideology) will come out on top.

Unsurprisingly, people define words in many different ways. What's your definition? We can't tell you how you should be categorized until you tell us what you think the words mean.

And I don't mean that in a snarky way. For example, some people use the words liberal and leftist synonymously. Many other people don't. And there are many other similar examples involving any kind of political terminology. It really does come down to a question of definitions, which is why it's so easy to have miscommunication on political issues, on top of the fact that people have varying opinions on the issues themselves.

I already dropped one wall of text on this post, but something you might find interesting - there was a history podcast called Revolutions that looked at revolutionary periods in history, when it wrapped up the host did a whole series of appendix episodes on different recurring themes he saw in the different periods he looked at, and in one of those he talked about how the word "radical" can be hard to define because throughout history there were people who had radical goals they wanted to achieve through moderate means and people who had moderate goals they wanted to achieve through radical means and the inverse of both of those

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=0nukt_9HmLE&t=2m21s

So yeah, I think it's helpful to separate out how big a transformation in society you want to see from how far you're willing to go to get them

There's no room for centrists on the internet. I seem to only find centrists in real life, face-to-face. I guess we aren't loud but we're here.

(Now here come the downvotes....)

I'm a peaceful person, I try to live by the ethos of causing as little suffering around me as possible. So to me a violent uprising in the name of making a better society is a lot like fighting war in the name of peace: it doesn't make a lot of sense.

When you see a leftist advocating for violence, I think it's usually one of three things: someone who is disenfranchised with their perception of what they can do as a an individual to better society, someone who actively wishes to be violent and will attach themselves to whatever cause justifies that violence, or someone on the internet stirring up trouble.

I'm not aware of a violent leftist uprising which didn't devolve to authoritarianism. Even the French revolution which is often upheld as being a turning point for democracies around the world devolved into a reign of terror and gave us Napoleon.

Leftists have a big problem with purity testing. It's why they never seem to be able to accomplish anything. Instead of joining forces with other leftist groups that share 95% of the same views, they shit all over them for not being 100% aligned.

If they'd suck it up and work together they could actually be a political force and get some of what they want, instead of infighting constantly and accomplishing nothing.

It's the biggest thing turning me off of leftist ideology. I agree with a decent amount of what they want, but as soon as I say something like "Maybe market economies solve real problems and are suitable for some situations like consumer products" I'm basically turbo hitler to them.