The ideas that domination is the goal are correct. The domination goes beyond social issues. Owing someone rent puts them in a position to dominate me. Saying the rent is the people’s rent doesn’t rationalize the domination.
Marxists do not seek “domination” of others, nor do Socialist countries extract “rent.” Using a portion of the social fund to create infrastructure, social safety nets, advance productivity via new Capital, and more are not the same as a landlord extracting surplus value on the basis of owning a scarce resource like land. I think you’re confused on several areas, like what Marxists want, how Socialist states function, and what “rent” is. If you want, I have theory I can recommend for you.
“Tankie” is just the terminally online version of “commie” or “pinko,” it’s just a pejorative for Marxists. The 3 instances you called “tankie” are the 3 biggest Marxist-friendly instances.
To be fair, the political compass absolutely does not bring nuance. All governments are authoritarian, all states are instruments of class opression. What matters is which class is being oppressed, by which. The political compass is closer to astrology for political nerds than a coherent theory.
Yes, absolutely. Socialist states governed by Communist Parties are states where the Proletariat oppresses the Bourgeoisie. You can’t simply eliminate all property relations overnight, the role of a proletarian state is to sieze the large firms and key industries that are necessary to maintain that power, and gradually appropriate firms and industry until the entire economy can be publicly owned and planned.
There aren’t really degrees of authoritarian or libertarian in a state, just what circumstances the system finds itself in. At times where class struggle is sharpened, the state employs more drastic measures to maintain the class in charge, and this goes for bourgeois states or proletarian states.
Even comparing Anarchism with Marxism as “libertarian vs authoritarian” isn’t apt. Anarchists also employ authority in overturning class relations, just via a horizontalist approach. Marxist states also are more comprehensively democratic than Capitalist ones, as they spread democracy to the economy, for the many rather than for the few.
I’m not sure how you would test it, outside of looking at states through history, in different contexts. Germany is a good example. Germany in the early 20th century, after World War I, was in serious debt and had rising contradictions that led to increased worker organization. The bourgeoisie was terrified of a Communist uprising, so they employed the Nazis to purge them. After the fall of the Nazis, the system didn’t radically change, but the need for the Nazis as a sort of alter-ego to stamp out Communism was done. They remained Capitalist throughout the entire time, but each change in policy was driven by changing conditions.
Marxists posit that the Mode of Production is the base, which creates the superstructure, which is the laws, ideology, and culture, which shapes the base. This cyclical relationship shows that biggest shaper of policy is the needs of the ruling class, and the conditions they are dealing with. I am not “inventing” this stance, of course, its been here for a long while.
I think to test it you’d need to do some kind of comprehensive analysis, something like a big spreadsheet of a convincingly unbiased sampling of states (or states-at-points-in-time), evaluated for libertarianism-vs-authoritarianism. But you’d need to have a way to distinguish whether differences between states were caused by inherent per-state effects (or by more mechanistic runs-with-the-state traits, like “having a written constitution” or “being a monarchy”), or by “circumstances”. So you’d need a way to measure plausibly-causitive circumstances and then see how much of the variance they explained.
It’d be a big project and hard to do in a controlled way across a large enough sample, but if you sent enough history grad students out to rate things like “worker organization” in 1925 Germany and “protections for human rights in constitutional law” in 1975 New Zealand on 5-point scales, you might be able to get a data set that could answer this question.
he did say communist governments are authoritarian, in them the capitalist class would be getting oppressed by the state in service of the working class. this is why it’s called the dictatorship of the proletariat - the proletariat should still be getting their interests as a class represented in this arrangement, while bourgious have no special status or access due to their capital.
All governments are authoritarian, all states are instruments of class opression. What matters is which class is being oppressed, by which.
Sure, but I think you’re both missing why I brought up the political compass, to make a distinction between libertarian leftism, and authoritarian leftism.
My point is that there is no genuine divide between “libertarian” and “authoritarian” leftism. There are different types of leftism with different strategies and goals, different views of the state, etc, but there is no continuum between libertarian and authoritarian, period. All systems exist in context and in motion, and depending on the class character of the state will respond differently to heightened contradictions, which sharpen over time.
I understand, the point in response was that non-authoritatian states don’t and haven’t existed. The compass portrays a field that is equal, but in reality only the top half is anything but idealism, historically speaking.
a classless stateless society is what I would prefer. That’s something we can conceive of, but getting there is another issue. Revolutions tend to be pretty authoritarian no matter how you slice it.
Marxists are not “anti-free speech,” nor are Hexbear and Lemmy.ml. Rampant misinformation and bigotry should be removed, and is. Marxists, including .ml and Hexbear, are absolutely pro-Human Rights. Marxists do hate liberals, liberals are pro-Capitalism apologists, and thus liberalism has been a target of Socialists of all stripes since liberalism became a thing.
How do you create so many nearly identical posts? Is it just copy pasta? Is it full automation? I mean holy shit, if I created a bot, it would react to questions like this.
In case you didn’t read that thing here’s that thing again. Ehhh.
In this case, I copied and pasted a response to a comment they copied and pasted. I’m not doing it for them, but for onlookers, I don’t genuinely think psythik is going to be meaningfully convinced either way. Leaving psythik’s comment open and unopposed, though, isn’t preferable either, as bad takes should be properly elaborated on.
I tend to just link previous comments I have made, in most cases. I copy and paste responses far less now than I used to. In my defense, though, when you see the same talking points from different people, they don’t always need a unique bespoke response, and I don’t actually spend all that much time on Lemmy out of my day.
I commented elsewhere, but all states are authoritarian. What matters is which class is exerting its authority. In Socialist states, that class is the Proletariat against the Bourgeoisie. Marxists are not any more “auth” than other ideologies, and not any less.
States can present as more or less auth depending on the circumstances they are in, when the class struggle is a sharpened contradiction, but that doesn’t mean the state is making a choice to be more or less auth, just that it responds to different circumstances.
I wanted to point out that, even though they are authoritarian, they are still leftist. The Political Compass adds a bit of nuance, so there can be a distinction.
Tankies are not leftist lol. They’re authoritarian bootlickers.
🤡
Marxists are absolutely leftists, if you redefine Leftism to only include Anarchism you are making a severe error in political understanding.
Tankies aren’t Marxists lol
They’re more MAGA than anything. Just spend some time on Hexbear or .ml.
They’re pro censorship, anti-free speech, anti human rights, and constantly talk shit about “liberals”. Sounds like a hard authoritarian right to me.
The ideas that domination is the goal are correct. The domination goes beyond social issues. Owing someone rent puts them in a position to dominate me. Saying the rent is the people’s rent doesn’t rationalize the domination.
Marxists do not seek “domination” of others, nor do Socialist countries extract “rent.” Using a portion of the social fund to create infrastructure, social safety nets, advance productivity via new Capital, and more are not the same as a landlord extracting surplus value on the basis of owning a scarce resource like land. I think you’re confused on several areas, like what Marxists want, how Socialist states function, and what “rent” is. If you want, I have theory I can recommend for you.
What no theory does to a mf
Well that’s a strawman that nobody says
a lost redditor appears, it’s very confused
“Tankie” is just the terminally online version of “commie” or “pinko,” it’s just a pejorative for Marxists. The 3 instances you called “tankie” are the 3 biggest Marxist-friendly instances.
Shit on the political compass all you want, it does help bring a bit of nuance into discussions like this:
To be fair, the political compass absolutely does not bring nuance. All governments are authoritarian, all states are instruments of class opression. What matters is which class is being oppressed, by which. The political compass is closer to astrology for political nerds than a coherent theory.
Would you call communist states (an oxymoron, I know) instruments of class opression?
All governments are authoritiarian, but to what extent?
I more-meant the difference between the libertarian and authoritarian right/left, its a useful distinction to have.
Yes, absolutely. Socialist states governed by Communist Parties are states where the Proletariat oppresses the Bourgeoisie. You can’t simply eliminate all property relations overnight, the role of a proletarian state is to sieze the large firms and key industries that are necessary to maintain that power, and gradually appropriate firms and industry until the entire economy can be publicly owned and planned.
There aren’t really degrees of authoritarian or libertarian in a state, just what circumstances the system finds itself in. At times where class struggle is sharpened, the state employs more drastic measures to maintain the class in charge, and this goes for bourgeois states or proletarian states.
Even comparing Anarchism with Marxism as “libertarian vs authoritarian” isn’t apt. Anarchists also employ authority in overturning class relations, just via a horizontalist approach. Marxist states also are more comprehensively democratic than Capitalist ones, as they spread democracy to the economy, for the many rather than for the few.
Just my 2 cents as a Marxist-Leninist.
This sounds like that rare thing in political science: a falsifiable assertion. Do you happen to know if anyone has tested it?
I’m not sure how you would test it, outside of looking at states through history, in different contexts. Germany is a good example. Germany in the early 20th century, after World War I, was in serious debt and had rising contradictions that led to increased worker organization. The bourgeoisie was terrified of a Communist uprising, so they employed the Nazis to purge them. After the fall of the Nazis, the system didn’t radically change, but the need for the Nazis as a sort of alter-ego to stamp out Communism was done. They remained Capitalist throughout the entire time, but each change in policy was driven by changing conditions.
Marxists posit that the Mode of Production is the base, which creates the superstructure, which is the laws, ideology, and culture, which shapes the base. This cyclical relationship shows that biggest shaper of policy is the needs of the ruling class, and the conditions they are dealing with. I am not “inventing” this stance, of course, its been here for a long while.
I think to test it you’d need to do some kind of comprehensive analysis, something like a big spreadsheet of a convincingly unbiased sampling of states (or states-at-points-in-time), evaluated for libertarianism-vs-authoritarianism. But you’d need to have a way to distinguish whether differences between states were caused by inherent per-state effects (or by more mechanistic runs-with-the-state traits, like “having a written constitution” or “being a monarchy”), or by “circumstances”. So you’d need a way to measure plausibly-causitive circumstances and then see how much of the variance they explained.
It’d be a big project and hard to do in a controlled way across a large enough sample, but if you sent enough history grad students out to rate things like “worker organization” in 1925 Germany and “protections for human rights in constitutional law” in 1975 New Zealand on 5-point scales, you might be able to get a data set that could answer this question.
he did say communist governments are authoritarian, in them the capitalist class would be getting oppressed by the state in service of the working class. this is why it’s called the dictatorship of the proletariat - the proletariat should still be getting their interests as a class represented in this arrangement, while bourgious have no special status or access due to their capital.
are there any examples of libertarian states?
a relevant passage from This Soviet World by Anna Louise Strong
In a neoliberal sense, kinda, but those are really just shifting who is oppressing people to capitalists.
I think that still qualifies as a bourgious dictatorship
Sure, but I think you’re both missing why I brought up the political compass, to make a distinction between libertarian leftism, and authoritarian leftism.
My point is that there is no genuine divide between “libertarian” and “authoritarian” leftism. There are different types of leftism with different strategies and goals, different views of the state, etc, but there is no continuum between libertarian and authoritarian, period. All systems exist in context and in motion, and depending on the class character of the state will respond differently to heightened contradictions, which sharpen over time.
I understand, the point in response was that non-authoritatian states don’t and haven’t existed. The compass portrays a field that is equal, but in reality only the top half is anything but idealism, historically speaking.
a classless stateless society is what I would prefer. That’s something we can conceive of, but getting there is another issue. Revolutions tend to be pretty authoritarian no matter how you slice it.
100%, excellent explanation!
Thanks for pulling out the political compass, cause it helps me illustrate my point:
No tankies are authoritarian left.
They’re pro censorship, anti-free speech, anti human rights, and constantly talk shit about “liberals”. Sounds like a hard authoritarian right to me.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
Marxists in general are in favor of controlling the speech of the bourgeoisie, as were Marx and Engels:
>6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Marxists are not “anti-free speech,” nor are Hexbear and Lemmy.ml. Rampant misinformation and bigotry should be removed, and is. Marxists, including .ml and Hexbear, are absolutely pro-Human Rights. Marxists do hate liberals, liberals are pro-Capitalism apologists, and thus liberalism has been a target of Socialists of all stripes since liberalism became a thing.
How do you create so many nearly identical posts? Is it just copy pasta? Is it full automation? I mean holy shit, if I created a bot, it would react to questions like this.
In case you didn’t read that thing here’s that thing again. Ehhh.
In this case, I copied and pasted a response to a comment they copied and pasted. I’m not doing it for them, but for onlookers, I don’t genuinely think psythik is going to be meaningfully convinced either way. Leaving psythik’s comment open and unopposed, though, isn’t preferable either, as bad takes should be properly elaborated on.
I tend to just link previous comments I have made, in most cases. I copy and paste responses far less now than I used to. In my defense, though, when you see the same talking points from different people, they don’t always need a unique bespoke response, and I don’t actually spend all that much time on Lemmy out of my day.
I commented elsewhere, but all states are authoritarian. What matters is which class is exerting its authority. In Socialist states, that class is the Proletariat against the Bourgeoisie. Marxists are not any more “auth” than other ideologies, and not any less.
States can present as more or less auth depending on the circumstances they are in, when the class struggle is a sharpened contradiction, but that doesn’t mean the state is making a choice to be more or less auth, just that it responds to different circumstances.
Karl Marx, famous right-winger? Very silly comment.
Auth-right would be fascism.
I wanted to point out that, even though they are authoritarian, they are still leftist. The Political Compass adds a bit of nuance, so there can be a distinction.
Nuance doesn’t seem to be their strong suit