How do you differentiate yourself from them as a socialist? What is your theory of power and how it relates to authority, revolutions, and the working class that causes you to make this separation between supporting non-western communist countries and not?
I'm sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding here. I think the delineation between authoritarian regimes and non-authoritarian governments is pretty clear - are you implying that all socialist and communist influenced governments are necessarily authoritarian?
No, I'm suggesting that authoritarian is a meaningless term unless defined specifically and was asking what theories of power and authority they had for making the delineation they are.
The derogatory term authoritarian is always leveled at socialist or communist countries, and never capitalist ones even though capitalist countries restrict rights for the majority of their populations by the very nature of the inherent power structure in capitalism. Even though communist countries usually enjoy far more decentralised authority, better voting rights, and higher political involvement in the populace, they are labeled as "authoritarian," the implication being that they need "freedom" aka capitalism
What? The term authoritarian is thrown at non-communist/capitalist nations all the time. Syria, Nazi Germany, Libya, Franco's Spain, Modern Russia, and a million other instances. Authoritarian is a clearly defined term and is in no way exclusively applied to communist nations in almost any circles. It also happens to have been applied to most "communist" countries because most of them have been authoritarian
Notice you didn't name the United States which is just as authoritarian as modern Russia by any definition we choose (voting rights? participation in political process? allowed dissent? access to clean water? basic access to healthcare? food desserts? policies meant to keep people in poverty?). That's my point. It's an ethereal term unless properly defined.
We'll have to set Libya aside since after given "freedom," there are now literal slave traders everywhere.
I don't particularly care as that wasn't my point. My point was to disagree with your comment prior which stated that authoritarian as a term was mainly used as a truncheon against communist nations in order to increase support for capitalism, which it isn't.
Yeah, what they should have said is that authoritarianism as a term is mainly used as a truncheon against non Western countries in order to increase support for Western hegemony, which it absolutely is.
Yeah, but you doing that is unhelpful. It is confusing people because that is not a reasonable place to find criticism with the argument. Too much precision is not helpful in arguments and the CIA literally ran propaganda programs to get people to try to bog down any discussion of communism with meaningless minutiae. So, do better or something.
It's not clearly defined at all; try to give a definition of authoritarianism that applies to all of the countries frequently described as authoritarian, but not to any of the ones that aren't, and you'll see how vague a term it is.
Countries frequently have authoritarian tendencies without being overwhelmingly described as an authoritarian nation. When a nations primary mode of function is in authoritarian action it ceases to be a country I would consider something anyone should aim to emulate, which is why most people have problems with tankies and their support of the USSR or the CCP. It is fine to point at those countries and say "hey for all of their faults they managed to do X pretty well" but an entirely different thing to look at them and say "if only they came out on top, the world would be a much better place today".
I hope you can appreciate that you just said absolutely nothing concrete whatsoever.
Countries frequently have authoritarian tendencies without being overwhelmingly described as an authoritarian nation.
spoiler
When a nations primary mode of function is in authoritarian action it ceases to be a country I would consider something anyone should aim to emulate
ALL nations and ALL governments' 'primary mode of function' is 'authoritarian action'. You can't run a water main without using 'authoritarian action' to secure right of way.
God this is just like being in college again. You can't be serious, as you must understand the difference between using eminent domain vs a pogrom. Like maybe I'm being dramatic, but I think that the Uyghurs might be slightly more inconvenienced than someone who at worst is getting a paycheck in order to move their house. There's is a significant difference in how countries even go about implementing shit as well, as eminent domain in a modern democracy vs eminent domain in a authoritarian dictatorship could be executed radically differently.
You are however disregarding how a nation conducts itself internationally, instead focusing entirely on domestic policy. Should we not consider how a nation acts towards people outside of its own borders as this authoritarianism? If we include a country's imperialism, you'll find the overwhelmingly most violent, brutal and authoritarian nations are the USA, the EU, and the west in general.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that there are serious human rights problems in the way the EU and US has conducted itself overseas in the past, you are grossly underestimating just how fucked up other countries behave themselves when operating past their own borders
Sure, you're right, but again, you are downplaying atrocities by other nations far greater right now. Would I like the US to conduct itself better? Of course. Do I advocate and vote in a way that supports that? Of course. Do I think the US is the worst compared to other countries? Not even close
Who do you vote for to put a stop to US support for the occupation of Syria? Which US politicians are you voting for to end the murderous sanctions against Cuba, Iran the DPRK and Venezuela? Which US politicians have pledged to quit murdering civilians in Yemen? Which US politicians support Palestinian human rights or at least want to quit bankrolling the open air prison they live in? Which US politicians support ending the concentration camps at our borders? Or slowing down all the refugee deportations to Latin American countries we've devastated with all of our "interventions?"
Oh wait, there are none with any power or possibility of getting serious power. Actually the only one putting a stop to the bloodshed in Yemen is China.
The fact is that you probably vote for the Democrats because you wouldn't be shameless enough to vote for Republicans and then claim that you vote against the US's mass murdering behavior, but the Democrats don't have any intentions of ending any of these atrocities and if you're claiming that they do you're either a gullible fool or a murder-supporting liar.
Maybe you vote Green? They might be less evil than the GOP and DNC but they will NEVER hold power so they have no impact on how evil the US is.
The external imperialism of western countries far outweighs the danger, threat, and damage to human life than even the most cartoonish and absurd claims about the alleged internal authoritarianism in countries like Cuba, China, and the DPRK. It's such a massive disconnect and it's also not even a dialectical comparison.
The external imperialism of western nations is precisely what generates the security apparatuses that are developed within modern socialist countries. Most of the time what you regard as gross and needless authoritarianism is in fact socialist states defending themselves from external aggression. Go listen to Parenti talking about the measures Nicaragua had to take in regards to capitalist encirclement.
And furthermore, the decision to not use the term authoritarian to describe western nations constantly confuses me. Is it because the term imperialism is more accurate? If you want my gut feeling on this: authoritarian, totalitarian, and related terms were all cooked up by liberal historians like Hannah Arendt to make the USSR sound like the same type of thing as Nazi Germany, which is frankly Holocaust trivialization.
I disagree and I don't appreciate people splitting hairs when very obviously it is not the case. Anyone can sit down and stare that "oh well this is authoritarian because if you don't pay your taxes you lose your home", and it's completely irrelevant to any legitimate conversation. There's a difference between the United States and Pol Pots Cambodia, and if you're gonna try to argue that they're the same then I'm done
It's not splitting hairs, it's literally the entire point of the discussion. I understand that you've had the idea that there's some fundamental, qualitive, difference between the authoritarianism of Western counties and the authoritarianism of foreigners so deeply instilled in you that the idea of questioning it, or even having to justify it, is absurd to you. But the fact of the matter is that it is perfectly reasonable "legitimate conversation" to actually ask you to back up your claims, and you trying to assert that it's just "obvious" that you're right and if anyone tries to argue "you're just done" just makes it clear that you've never actually examined why you hold these beliefs and you refuse to do so.
There's a difference between the United States and Pol Pots Cambodia, and if you're gonna try to argue that they're the same then I'm done
You're right, there is a difference: an order of magnitude more people have been killed and emiserated by the USA.
Incorrect. In the past I had been a dues paying member of socialist/leftist organizations, I went to school for politics and philosophy, I've spent years of my life having conversations with people like you and reading arguments and following these topics. I'm not done because I'm ignorant or unwilling to face a truth, I'm done because I think you're wrong, and that you're unable to see reason. I've had this conversation dozens of times. No rational person would look at how an atrocity like the Pol Pot regime conducted itself and say "Yeah that wasn't fun but look at America! That's where the real evil is!" It's insane. For that reason I hope you have a nice evening, I will not be continuing this conversation.
Incorrect. In the past I had been a dues paying member of socialist/leftist organizations, I went to school for politics and philosophy, I've spent years of my life having conversations with people like you and reading arguments and following these topics. I'm not done because I'm ignorant or unwilling to face a truth
Didn't ask, don't care.
I'm going off the actual content of your statements, and that content is that you take liberalism as axiomatically true and you fundamentally are unwilling to examine that axiom, instead writing off anyone who challenges it as "not rational" or even "insane" and refusing to engage further.
My guy, that's an awful lot of assumptions to be making about the general mindset of multiple nations, each of which contains millions of people. Derogatory? I'm pretty sure that authoritarianism has a dictionary definition lol. "Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting." From Wikipedia, just as a quick Google grab.
So do you think that, say, WW2 Italy wasn't authoritarian? Or same-era Japan? Fascist nations are (by the above definition) authoritarian, so that actually includes tons of non-communist nations, both current and historical. Similarly, just because a nation is communist, does not make it magically except from having corrupt, authoritarian government. Id even say that America is well on its way to authoritarianism, and the right/neo-libs continue to salivate over the chance to completely fuck over the common person in exchange for a quick buck.
Genuinely, because I'm always looking to learn more; how does capitalism as an economic system inherently restrict rights? My understanding of the core premise is that it turns labor into a conceptual currency that we then use to acquire goods. It's not, theoretically, at least, inherently oppressive. In practice, it's been clearly a shit-show that causes more suffering than just about anything else on the planet.
As a side note; I'm deeply anti-capitalist, I'm also deeply anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian. I hate the idea that a human being is only worth the utility they provide, and I also hate the idea that oppression is a necessary consequence of an attempt to liberate the people of a nation from hyper-capitalist wagemongering. I'd like to think there's a world where we can live and not oppress anyone, can genuinely engage in discourse and learn from each other without judgement.
thanks for the interaction here, and thanks for pushing back. you're getting at what i was hoping to demonstrate, that all political systems inherently have a system of authoritarianism
with the possible exception of anarchism -- I don't know enough about anarchist theory to talk through that and don't want to be sectarian to my anarchist comrades, but your questions about it would be welcome at hexbear. we have a comm dedicated to theory. Bakunin (one of the big names in anarchist theory) wrote about authority, and Engels replied (he was not a fan). you might like their essays. theory has come a long way since then, but it's worth looking at some foundational texts. this topic is what caused the marxist-anarchist split.
capitalism restricts rights by alienating the working class from the means of production. thus, workers have no say over their labor and have the value of the labour extracted. as more exploitation occurs and wealth imbalance increases, the ruling class will always move to consolidate power to protect their capital and positions in society, which naturally leads to one society of the bourgeouise and another for the labourers. this is at the basical level but it is much wider than this and effects all levels of society, e.g., the bourgeouise control media outlets to prevent ideas from taking root (e.g., newspapers in 1800s-1900s) whilst selling the idea of a "free press." It means that all aspects of society are not focused on creating products useful for society but on creating products useful to make capitalist money through further exploitation. It needs to feed and crushes all who oppose it, even ideologically.
that's a decent starting point, I think, but yeah come join us at hexbear. you can jump into the theory comms with questions or head to "askchapo" or just jump into the daily mega thread. we're all nerds over there, so where I don't know something someone else will jump in
I appreciate the super open and honest discourse! I've only studied a little bit of Marx/Engels and then some of the Frankfurt School and some post Marxist and post structuralist stuff, I'm looking forward to engaging and learning more.
If capitalism isn't authoritarian why do we spend most of our federal budget on making sure people can't leave the system?
Why does my boss get to decide my hair color?
Why is everything in my life dictated by the authority of money. How is living with that authoritarian boot on my neck freedom? I would be less free in a country like Cuba where I can marry who I want and leave my job without losing access to medicine?
When you say making sure people can't leave the system, do you mean the military budget? Which is for sure super fucked- no doubt there. I think the driving force behind most warmongering is profit, as opposed to oppression for the sake of preventing dissent. Obviously CIA operations in foreign countries (and within the borders of the US) through time have shown we're certainly willing to kill and ruin economies for control, however my (admittedly limited) understanding of a lot of those instances is that they are primarily built upon promises of extending geopolitical control as opposed to pursuing pure capital.
I think about the difference between the gulf war/Iraq/Afghanistan, which were for sure about extending control in an area rich with a resource that is incredibly valuable, and Korea and Vietnam -huge examples of attempting to avoid allowing political rivals to accumulate power globally.
Honestly I think workers rights is for sure an example of modern American policy being vastly (intentionally, in part) unequipped for modern capitalism. I don't know if I think that it makes the core concepts of capitalism flawed- workers will need to work regardless of the economic system, and as long as people are working, there's a power dynamic between workers and those who are utilizing their labor- the farmer will always need to sell their crops, and they can't control if buyers won't associate with them due to their hair color, or religious preferences, etc.
I don't have an answer for that last bit- I think that's where a just government that serves its people would be able to step in and provide for people who need it. I know countries are toying with Universal Basic Income, but ultimately it's a complicated issue that doesn't have an easy answer that I'm aware of.
I'm not sure how capitalism inherently prevents you from marrying who you'd like - could you elaborate on that? Do you mean things like marrying into debt? I definitely agree that the American healthcare system is oppressive - that's absolutely a symptom of late-stage capitalism and the GLORY OF THE "INVISIBLE HAND" of the unregulated market. I think that's one of those areas where a just government would be providing for its citizens.
What do we do with the economies once we controll them? We open the markets to our businesses and they raid the place. As our government is cpaitlaist all the decisions are based on making money. All those politicians that decide who to go to war with own stock in the companies that will profit. There is no difference between those drives.
Why did we not want rivals to gain power? Just vanity? No. The risk to future profits. When you look at wages and workers rights when the USSR fell the Capitalists had no competition. Wages were lowered everywhere as conditions would permit. After all, where else could people go,?
As to workers rights it is pretty simple. All that needs to be is that workers are given dignity. My boss can fire me and I might starve to death. If my survival wasn't based on pleasing the most greedy people then I could make better decisions about how to use my time. So, just more money and safety. As communists we have a very specific idea we have about how to acomplish that.
Depending on what sate you live in you could very easily be fired for being queer. Because your ability to survive us based on money anything that riskes that is effectively not permitted by capitalism.
I'm in no way here to argue pro-capitalist rhetoric. I'm not super committed to capitalism as opposed to other systems of economic management, I am however willing to posit that the system of trading work for money does not inherently oppress- absolutely late stage capitalism is an unabashed fuck-show responsible for more misery than acceptable by almost any ethical standard. I hate the idea that, ultimately, you're only worth what you can produce. I think that workers rights should be paramount, and there's no amount of money that would be an acceptable profit margin to sell human suffering, full stop.
On the geopolitical scale, I think many decisions during the cold war were driven by fear of nuclear warfare. There's for sure profit in controlling puppet states, but with Cuba on their doorstep and Russia very clearly taking the role of an international superpower, I think that there was some rationale about their ability to become more politically important and influence the world beyond the west's ability to push back, and with nuclear armaments proliferating at a genuinely insane rate, there was a very real threat of apocalypse on the horizon. Do I think that justifies warmongering, interference in legal elections, and killing dissidents? Of fucking course not. But I don't think it was motivated by money alone. Money is just a gateway to power, like anything else.
I think personally, the idea that you can use work to produce capital that you can then spend on other things is not necessarily authoritarian. It's also definitely not a single catch-all solution to "how do we make a society that is just"- obviously unregulated markets go brr. I think the counterbalance needs to be systems that allow for people who can't work to live a high quality of life, regardless of how much they can provide.
That is where history disagrees. In the bargain of trade the people who need money to live can never make deals on an even playing field with those that don't. If trade determines your survival and we know it can't be done fairly than we have created conditions that can only snowball into misery.
I see no reason to belive the people running an apartide government that used weapons of mass destructions on civilians should be given any benefit of the doubt. There is no evidence they were kind or altruistic in any other endeavor. Why would it be different here?
If the cycle was work -> value. Than I would agree that is what socialism calls for. However the accumulation of capital makes it impossible for a worker to get fair and just value for their labor.
I definitely think that if any theoretical government would be capable of making that core work-to-value cycle work, it certainly would look pretty radically different than the US, I mostly live here because I was born here, I have a support system here, and my ancestors were literally bled to death here lol
Yeah, you could make something work. I could make my car fly, it would just be easier to use a plane though.
Most of history worked just fine on other systems. Most of the time this system has worked terribly. The system we had was just the first one to encorporate the scientific method and rationality. It is a historical accident. We can do better.
I think that there's quite a bit to be said for the ability to abstract something like labor and turn it into a common resource that can be utilized by anyone- if I need to buy a Japanese computer part from a very small manufacturing organization, that's about the only way to make sure that all parties are seeing value in a transaction, seeing that there's no guarantee that I have anything they would want or need, and I may never interact with them again.
I agree, we can for sure improve on the concepts involved, but that doesn't mean that they're accidental, and there's a reason that the system was even marginally successful.
I think like, evolution is a great example of a similar process - the biological functions formed by evolutionary processes aren't intentional, because intention implies cognitive processes that a natural law isn't capable of; but they do serve purpose. They aren't accidents, because the system is by its nature iterative and of course something would work eventually. Is there a theoretically more efficient structure than the one that we currently have for the human heart? Sure! That's just not the structure that evolved through selective pressure.
Again, not to say we shouldn't try to improve on systems of economy and government, but more to say that there's still lessons to be taken from what we currently have; it worked in some small way, which means we probably wouldn't benefit from throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
Well no. In the example of buying a small computer part they probably see little value in the transaction. Between parts, overhead, shipping, materials. Ths majority of the economic signal there is lost to inefficient rent seeking, bloat, corrupt middlemen, and management costs. Who in this situation are we concerned about? The people who designed it? The people that assembled it? The people that mined the materials? The people that handled shipping? The market abstracts all this so people.habe a very hard time feeling the relationships between each other. Then rent seeking behavior overshadows all that and makes market forces effectively noise.
I do agree with the idea of evolutionary solutions. Consider the horse. Useful. When we abandoned the solution that evolved and created purpose built solutions we got way cooler and way more effective answers. Like, would you say the rocket ship was just an overcorrection to the inefficiency present in water buffalo based transport? No. It was the application of science, logic and reason to create good answers to hard problems. Every time we try to make something cool we do so. It's rad. We should to do the economy what we have done every other technology
I think that for sure one of the drawbacks of the labor to currency system is the blind consumerism and the unethical conditions necessary to, say, make a bacon cheeseburger. I think the unethical parts of that interaction have more to do with corporate price-gouging and abuse of labor than the consumer themselves, who (in our current system) is kept intentionally blind to the real cost of their meal.
I think that for sure rent-seeking is one of those things that, in this theoretical government, would need to be addressed. Landlords and speculators are clearly opportunists with no connection to the stuff they milk value from, and that's problematic.
On reflection, ultimately I have no problem with the premise that people don't necessarily need to understand how to grow wheat, or even know someone who owns wheat, in order to consume the labor of a farmer- so long as that farmer is capable of truly leveraging their labor favorably and also benefits from that interaction. In that scenario, the farmer also uses the abstraction, which allows them to really utilize all of their labor through a larger base of people to sell to. They can also put this theoretical currency towards things that contribute to their fulfillment and that of their family members without knowing the person who produces those things personally, and so on.
I think one place I'm struggling with this is I'm having a hard time conceptualizing how people with more ephemeral skills would be able to leverage that skill into the resources necessary to obtain other types of fulfillment without a way to hold and transfer the value they generate. I'm sure there are philosophers who've written books on books about it, and I just need to find their work lol.
I think that we stopped using horses and adapted systems to do similar work, for sure, but that was after we had already iterated into the saddle, the cart, the wagon, carriage, etc. Horse to car is a big step if we look at the two of them without the greater context, but it was thousands of years of technology and iteration before we got there. They're fundamentally interrelated- I mean heck, we even measure the power of an engine by horses.
I agree that the natural next step economically is coming, and that's a fact- the questions in my eyes are: what's the horse, what's the carriage, and what are we replacing the horse with?
Cybernetics. The needs of people are essentially known and predictable. We can just make them and give them to people. That is also kinda how most of human history worked and it was fine then. It could be fine now, even better with computer data analysis and rational processing.
Sure there will be exceptions like little Japanese computer parts. However some democratic process could be used. Plenty of writers and scifi stories have possible systems. We can figure that out when we get there.
I'm actually not not into the idea of being able to instantly and accurately judge the needs of a whole nation of people. I mean shit, we already collect so much data through smart watches that once we are able to accurately measure metabolic rate, that's like 90% of it right there I think lol
There is a book, the people's republic of Walmart.
Basically every company with sufficient money does exactly this and they are very effective at it. Just what if instead of using the tech to make Walmart slightly more money we used it to make some public goods cheap and effective
seriously though, we live in a late-stage capitalist hellscape and it's always funny to be when people use government monitoring fears to justify removing core social safety nets while simultaneously Walmart, Google, etc. Know when your balls ache because they have collected data on you from when you were prepubescent.
Those companies use the money they squeeze out of you to buy politicians to make your life worse. So life under capitlaism has trained everyone to mistrust that kinda thing. People have simply never lived in a world where anything like that was likely to improve their lives. So pessimism is a reasonable response to the conditions we find ourselves in. However a better world is possible.
hard agree. I think the only way we can improve our lives and the lives of those in our communities is to unflinchingly believe in the fact that we deserve better, and we can get better
A few things to keep in mind in addition to our comrade's reply:
I've never met or talked online with any tankie who is happy with the fact that the "authoritarian oppression" is necessary. We often just take the position of Marx's quote "we won't make excuses for the terror." You don't have to want it, but because it's necessary according to history and theory, we don't bother with the whole game of waiting for the perfect excuse, because then it's often too late for a movement.
The goal of tankies is to also reach that world of no necessary oppression and liberation from it for all through dialectical progression, however long and arduous that task is. We just try to be technical, tactical, and strategic about it. It can seem callous, but it's a mistake to think we can stay on the emotional/values-only plane of thought while attempting large scale socio-economic changes because the enemies of those changes have a system behind them which fulfills all these tasks with low effort.
When we say authoritarianism is meaningless, we mean that the dictionary definition you gave is all encompassing at state-level analyses, rendering it meaningless for distinctions. There is no power which doesn't fulfill all of those conditions (even just a low-level manager performs the contents of that definition, despite the form it takes being small scale. Like "reductions of the rule of law" can be as simple as asking you to do tasks on outside of your contract). The only difference is a vibe created in the mind of the user of the term.
The end of this authority at societal scale is communism. Countries sometimes called communist are better called socialist countries led by communists or something. The whole discussion is rendered confusing by mistaking a process/movement for some definitional standard. No socialist country is socialist for meeting definitions/conditions; they are socialist because they recognize and continue the process to progression to communism. See point 2 for the strategy which countries led by communists are doing.
Come talk with us, we have interesting ideas and people
I appreciate the reply and break-down of some of these concepts in context. I struggle with the necessity of authoritarianism, not because of the required restrictions on freedom necessary to protect others from oppression, but by shielding a system from criticism as opposed to allowing critique to be heard and resolved through collective discourse. I definitely also recognize that's an arduous process that requires a necessary undermining of governmental authority, but I feel like there's a sort of unintended arrogance in the idea that any system could be free enough of flaws to be above criticism- or that it's good enough to be worth the oppression of the few without hearing their voices and honestly considering their plight.
I'm happy, always, to learn more and engage in conversations about this, I look forward to talking with folks on Hexbear and growing my understanding of these concepts!
Ok, but if that's the case, why are we drawing a line at a nation's internal population and disregarding their external policies? The USA killed three million people in the War in Iraq, including Iraqis who were very critical of the American presence. The USA has assassinated Latin American presidents for speaking out against the USA and replaced them with more America-friendly dictators. And yet everyone who talks about authoritarianism doesn't include western nations in their discussion, they instead make up a cartoon idea of what countries outside the west are like. Your definition of what is or isn't tankie/authoritarian has some kind of nationalist bias built into it.
Every time someone describes what authoritarianism is, it makes me think that America and the EU are the worst perpetrators of this behavior, but they mainly export all their violence rather than use the worst of it domestically. Domestically they use private sector means to distribute violence, such as poverty, prisons, and the facilitation of ambient racism.
This reminds me of the dividing line that liberals use, which is when they say things like "that dictator killed HIS OWN PEOPLE." As if killing people externally is more excusable crime?
If invasions, sanctions, assassinations, and complete immiseration of other nations isn't authoritarian then what is it? Why are we arbitrarily deciding there's a distinction with how a country's internal and external policies? These things inform one another. If a nation like America is doing far worse things than authoritarianism, except externally, why can't we say that's what it is?
Obviously killing people externally or internally is bad, but it's more shocking in the same way that a parent murders their own child.
That makes no sense. Joseph Biden is not my dad and my shared nationality with him means nothing because he represents an economic class at war with my own. Was Hitler the father of German Jews? What the fuck are you talking about
Yeah they do fit the definition, because the distinction between external and international policy you're making is arbitrary and meaningless. I'm a communist. My nation is the working class.
I've got an easier one for you that should help you to understand. The policy of colonies regarding the population within its borders counts as "internal", don't they? What shall we say for the colonial occupation of Afghanistan? Shall we call this liberal?
Come to think of it, what do you think of non-citizen permanent residents, because America sure likes killing those within its borders and treating the rest quite brutally.
I don't know if there is such a thing as a perfectly free, truly democratic society wherein everyone is capable of existing free of oppression lol, but I think there's definitely a spectrum of authoritarian policy and sentiment, often correlated with nationalist and fascist fervor.
I may, as a person of color, experience more oppression in a country where I do not fit the standard vision of what a citizen looks like, and less in a country wherein which I do meet that criteria. That's usually more an issue with nationalist rhetoric than systems of governance - unless that nationalism is codified and enforced by the government, which is the case in many governments that I would consider "more authoritarian." America is one that has tended towards that, historically. Certainly, though, there are others that have also instituted systems explicitly designed to oppress.
I'd say, in general, I have many rights and privileges in current-day America that a truly authoritarian government wouldn't allow. And that's not to say that I think America is the greatest, or even good lmao. We're constantly on the verge of disenfranchisement, and the fact that we're constantly fighting for things that should be just baseline isn't exactly a good look. But, in all, I'm allowed to openly state my thoughts in the court of public opinion, I'm able to vote to elect a representative, able to practice religion as I'd like, etc.
For sure, the validity of all of that is affected deeply by the corruption of capital in those arenas, but there's something to be said about the power to openly share ideas and influence fellow citizens without active censorship. Keeping in mind things like COINTELPRO and Fred Hampton, etc, I obviously can't say in good conscience that the government has never censored it's citizens, but the purported adherence to the first amendment and being "the land of the free" at least makes them work for it.
Sorry for the novel lol. It's a complicated subject and there's a lot of nuance to try and tease out
I think the dictionary definition is as I mentioned in a below comment, but the colloquial meaning has more to do with censorship by the government and restrictions on freedoms than go beyond those necessary for the health and welfare of other citizens.
So just based on a small snippet of reading about them, I think in general I have a favorable opinion of Allende's policy. Part of it is hard because, while he did some things that I agree with 10000% like increasing access to education and making basics like bread accessible, I don't have enough context to accurately judge my feelings on some of the other policies that he enacted, like land seizure. The other half of that is it's hard to see the long-term effects of policies that were then invalidated by a CIA-led coup and Pinochet.
Do you know of any places where his policies actively (for the context of our previous conversation) would be considered "authoritarian"?
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I think you missed the whole point of GarbageShoot asking you specifically about Allende.
just based on a small snippet of reading about them, I think in general [...]
I think this is the main problem here: a lack of knowledge about the historical context of "authoritarian" socialist projects, but nevertheless making generalized statements about them without even considering the material reasons why they were by necessity "authoritarian." Read up more about the history of Chile and consider what happened to Allende and the hope of a socialist Chile. Who came after Allende (and almost as important, who installed that successor)? Why do these events seem so familiar when learning about every other attempt, successful or not, to bring about a communist society? When you've done that, you will at the very least have a leg to stand on when criticizing so-called tankie authoritarianism.
I'd also suggest reading The Jakarta Method. Here's a somewhat relevant quote from it:
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported -- what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.
I was aware of Pinochet and the general CIA coup, but not Allende in particular; I don't think it's a failing to admit that the knowledge any one person has access to is limited. That's why my immediate response was one of attempting to find resources, not trying to generalize about something that I was deeply unequipped to speak on. The world's big, sadly I can't claim to have knowledge of everything on it.
My little reading on Allende makes it sound like he was democratically elected and pretty widely loved among the left-leaning members of his country - again, the only potential authoritarian charges I see levied against him are the socialization of private sectors, which I personally have not enough economic background to really have a stance on either way. If that's the only thing that he's called authoritarian for, I'd say that my understanding of the colloquial definition is probably more focused on aspects like freedom of speech, religion, etc. being limited, as opposed to market freedom.
But maybe my internal understanding of what makes a nation authoritarian is flawed! I'm happy to be wrong if it means I learn something. Maybe there's internal conflation of fascism and authoritarianism happening, and I need to re-draw some of the distinctions between the two.
I appreciate the book recommendation - the study I've done has focused less on political theory and more on philosophy, so if you have any other recommendations that cover things like the Marxist/anarchist split, etc., I'd be grateful!
, the only potential authoritarian charges I see levied against him are the socialization of private sectors, which I personally have not enough economic background to really have a stance on either way.
If someone is complaining about socializing private sectors -- not that the profits of the now-public enterprises were used to enrich bureaucrats, but that the act of socialization itself inherently infringed on the rights of the capitalists -- the correct response is to spit in their face. That's not always the practical response, so I certainly am not telling you to go out and do it, but it's the correct response. Anyone complaining about "market freedom" as though it is remotely comparable to "human freedom" rather than a tool to be used or put away as the people see fit is either a fool or takes you to be a fool.
In a third world country especially, private companies are frequently the basis of staggering siphoning of wealth from the third world to the imperial core, which is why movements to repatriate them are so popular (see also the oil industries of both Egypt and Brazil right before their respective coups).
Being transparent about things, your comments read as one of the relatively rare cases of someone who is deeply submerged in neoliberal ideology but also intellectually honest and open about it. I'd be happy to discuss things with you from a Marxist perspective if you like.
Well, since you like reading (which is cool and good!) there's a neat book on Cybersyn, but I was actually going in a slightly different direction. I respect the project Allende lead, but it's undeniable that it was a catastrophic failure. Allende is one of many examples of attempting a gentle touch and underestimating the sheer brutality that is the reality of capitalist encirclement for a socialist state.
Allende was conciliatory when he should have been firm and his lax approach to purging (i.e. basically not doing it) is what very directly laid the groundwork for the coup that was the death of him and many other Chileans under one of the most vicious dictators the world has ever seen.
Someone recently reposted a Michael Parenti quote that I think discusses elements of this well:
You can look at any existing socialist country— if you don’t want to call them socialist, call them whatever you want. Post capitalist— whatever, I don’t care. Call them camels or window shades, it doesn’t matter as long as we know the countries we’re talking about. If you look at any one of those countries, you can evaluate them in several ways.
One is comparing them to what they had before, and that to me is what’s very compelling. That’s what so compelling about Cuba, for instance. When I was in Cuba I was up in the Escambia, which is like the Appalachia of Cuba, very rugged mountains with people who are poor, or they were. And I said to this campesino, I said, “Do you like Fidel?” and he said “Si si, with all my soul.” I remember this gesture, with all our souls. I said “Why?” and he pointed to this clinic right up on the hill which we had visited. He said, “Look at that.” He said “Before the revolution, we never saw a doctor. If someone was seriously ill, it would take twenty people to carry that person, it’d go day and night. It would take two days to get to the hospital. First because it was far away and second because you couldn’t go straight, you couldn’t cross the latifundia lands, the boss would kill you. So, you had to go like this, and often when we got to the hospital, the person might be dead by the time we got there. Now we have this clinic up here with a full-time doctor. And today in Cuba when you become a doctor you got to spend two years out in the country, that’s your dedication to the people. And a dentist that comes one day a week. And for serious things, we’re not more than 20 minutes away from a larger hospital. That’s in the Escambia. So that’s freedom. We’re freer today, we have more life.”
And I talked to a guy in Havana who says to me “All I used to see here in Havana, you call this drab and dull, we see it as a cleaner city. It’s true, the paint is peeling off the walls, but you don’t see kids begging in the streets anymore and you don’t see prostitutes.” Prostitution used to be one of the biggest industries. And today this man is going to night school. He said “I could read! I can read, do you know what it means to be able to read? Do you know what it means to be able not to read?”
I remember when I gave my book to my father. I dedicated a book of mine to him, “Power and the Powerless” to my father, I said “To my father with my love,” I gave him a copy of the book, he opened it up and looked at it. He had only gone to the seventh grade, he was the son of an immigrant, a working-class Italian. He opens the book and he starts looking through it, and he gets misty-eyed, very misty-eyed. And I thought it was because he was so touched that his son had dedicated a book to him. That wasn’t the reason. He looks up to me and he says ‘I can’t read this, kid” I said “That’s okay dad, neither can the students, don’t worry about that. I mean I wrote it for you, it’s your book and you don’t have to read it. It’s a very complicated book, an academic book. He says, “I can’t read this book.” And the defeat. The defeat that man felt. That’s what illiteracy is about, that’s what the joy of literacy programs is. That’s why you have people in Nicaragua walking proud now for the first time. They were treated like animals before, they weren’t allowed to read, they weren’t taught to read.
So, you compare a country from what it came from, with all it’s imperfections. And those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms? The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and civil liberties of those fascists who are dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has gotta be perfect, it’s gotta be flawless. Well that isn’t my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those people who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies that couldn’t eat, that died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support. Not blindly, not unqualified. And the Reaganite government that tries to stop that kind of process, that tries to keep those people in poverty and illiteracy and hunger, that gets my undiluted animosity and opposition.
Here I mean to most emphasize the last paragraph, though the preceding paragraphs are certainly relevant. "Are there civil liberties for the fascists?"
I believe they are suggesting that, if "authoritarian" means anything, that every large state that has ever existed was "authoritarian," though some diffuse the authority through things like enclosure of the commons combined with strict property laws or other, older methods like religious law.
That's fair- where the line of "authoritarianism" is drawn depends on historic, social, and economic context. I think modern colloquial usage is certainly shaped by western values, simply because America's primary export is culture, and that's what happens when you shout loud enough over enough time.
I never said that I don't support communist countries. What I do not support are abuses of power by authoritarian leaders, even if they claim to be abusing their power in order to bring about a communist state.
Tankies accept most/all atrocities committed by so-called communist leaders with a "the ends justify the means" attitude that I do not share.
Have you never heard the phrase “the ends justify the means” before? It’s a pretty common phrase.
It means that any action, no matter how unethical or morally reprehensible, is acceptable as long as it is done to accomplish a goal that is deemed good.
This is the tankie attitude.
To reject this means that there are limitations on what actions are acceptable in pursuit of a goal. That there are some actions that are too repugnant to be justified.
That's correct. I think in the real world that doesn't come up. What is the hypothetical? would you murder an innocent little girl to save your child. That isn't a gotcha. That wouldn't work. Even if it did work, the ends of that is that everyone has to wory about their children being scrapped for spare parts. That logic works under cpaitlaism. That situation infact happens today for capitlaism. There just aren't situations where if you accurately assess the ends it justifies terrible means. Under capitlaism we do terrible means for terrible ends. We are so used to thinking of that that it us hard to think of alternatives, but your failure of imagination doesn't make you morally right.
I don't think you said anything meaningfully different from what I already said.
You do not consider the abhorrent unethical nature of certain actions as being a valid argument against taking those actions in the pursuit of establishing a communist society. The only criticism you'll entertain is that certain actions may be ineffective or inefficient at accomplishing that goal.
How do you differentiate yourself from them as a socialist? What is your theory of power and how it relates to authority, revolutions, and the working class that causes you to make this separation between supporting non-western communist countries and not?
I'm sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding here. I think the delineation between authoritarian regimes and non-authoritarian governments is pretty clear - are you implying that all socialist and communist influenced governments are necessarily authoritarian?
No, I'm suggesting that authoritarian is a meaningless term unless defined specifically and was asking what theories of power and authority they had for making the delineation they are.
The derogatory term authoritarian is always leveled at socialist or communist countries, and never capitalist ones even though capitalist countries restrict rights for the majority of their populations by the very nature of the inherent power structure in capitalism. Even though communist countries usually enjoy far more decentralised authority, better voting rights, and higher political involvement in the populace, they are labeled as "authoritarian," the implication being that they need "freedom" aka capitalism
What? The term authoritarian is thrown at non-communist/capitalist nations all the time. Syria, Nazi Germany, Libya, Franco's Spain, Modern Russia, and a million other instances. Authoritarian is a clearly defined term and is in no way exclusively applied to communist nations in almost any circles. It also happens to have been applied to most "communist" countries because most of them have been authoritarian
Notice you didn't name the United States which is just as authoritarian as modern Russia by any definition we choose (voting rights? participation in political process? allowed dissent? access to clean water? basic access to healthcare? food desserts? policies meant to keep people in poverty?). That's my point. It's an ethereal term unless properly defined.
We'll have to set Libya aside since after given "freedom," there are now literal slave traders everywhere.
I don't particularly care as that wasn't my point. My point was to disagree with your comment prior which stated that authoritarian as a term was mainly used as a truncheon against communist nations in order to increase support for capitalism, which it isn't.
Yeah, what they should have said is that authoritarianism as a term is mainly used as a truncheon against non Western countries in order to increase support for Western hegemony, which it absolutely is.
You are correct, I should have picked my words more precisely, thanks for explaining what I meant better than I could have
I disagree but that at least would have been a better argument
And you disagree why?
Yeah, but you doing that is unhelpful. It is confusing people because that is not a reasonable place to find criticism with the argument. Too much precision is not helpful in arguments and the CIA literally ran propaganda programs to get people to try to bog down any discussion of communism with meaningless minutiae. So, do better or something.
It is helpful because it's not about having too much precision, he made a bullshit argument and I found it ridiculous.
I'm not sure you if you can see my pronouns because federation is still kinda confusing to me, but I go by they/them please thanks ❤
Didn't see but will keep in mind for the future, sorry and thank you for understanding
No worries mate ☺️
Look at the replies? Was it really helpful? No. I am glad you found it emotionally validating but that is not reason enough do to all that.
Yeah cause I only comment when I think everyone's gonna agree with me
It's not clearly defined at all; try to give a definition of authoritarianism that applies to all of the countries frequently described as authoritarian, but not to any of the ones that aren't, and you'll see how vague a term it is.
Countries frequently have authoritarian tendencies without being overwhelmingly described as an authoritarian nation. When a nations primary mode of function is in authoritarian action it ceases to be a country I would consider something anyone should aim to emulate, which is why most people have problems with tankies and their support of the USSR or the CCP. It is fine to point at those countries and say "hey for all of their faults they managed to do X pretty well" but an entirely different thing to look at them and say "if only they came out on top, the world would be a much better place today".
I hope you can appreciate that you just said absolutely nothing concrete whatsoever.
spoiler
ALL nations and ALL governments' 'primary mode of function' is 'authoritarian action'. You can't run a water main without using 'authoritarian action' to secure right of way.
The terms you're using are vapor.
God this is just like being in college again. You can't be serious, as you must understand the difference between using eminent domain vs a pogrom. Like maybe I'm being dramatic, but I think that the Uyghurs might be slightly more inconvenienced than someone who at worst is getting a paycheck in order to move their house. There's is a significant difference in how countries even go about implementing shit as well, as eminent domain in a modern democracy vs eminent domain in a authoritarian dictatorship could be executed radically differently.
You are however disregarding how a nation conducts itself internationally, instead focusing entirely on domestic policy. Should we not consider how a nation acts towards people outside of its own borders as this authoritarianism? If we include a country's imperialism, you'll find the overwhelmingly most violent, brutal and authoritarian nations are the USA, the EU, and the west in general.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that there are serious human rights problems in the way the EU and US has conducted itself overseas in the past, you are grossly underestimating just how fucked up other countries behave themselves when operating past their own borders
You're running damage control for Western atrocities right now.
Sure, you're right, but again, you are downplaying atrocities by other nations far greater right now. Would I like the US to conduct itself better? Of course. Do I advocate and vote in a way that supports that? Of course. Do I think the US is the worst compared to other countries? Not even close
Who do you vote for to put a stop to US support for the occupation of Syria? Which US politicians are you voting for to end the murderous sanctions against Cuba, Iran the DPRK and Venezuela? Which US politicians have pledged to quit murdering civilians in Yemen? Which US politicians support Palestinian human rights or at least want to quit bankrolling the open air prison they live in? Which US politicians support ending the concentration camps at our borders? Or slowing down all the refugee deportations to Latin American countries we've devastated with all of our "interventions?"
Oh wait, there are none with any power or possibility of getting serious power. Actually the only one putting a stop to the bloodshed in Yemen is China.
The fact is that you probably vote for the Democrats because you wouldn't be shameless enough to vote for Republicans and then claim that you vote against the US's mass murdering behavior, but the Democrats don't have any intentions of ending any of these atrocities and if you're claiming that they do you're either a gullible fool or a murder-supporting liar.
Maybe you vote Green? They might be less evil than the GOP and DNC but they will NEVER hold power so they have no impact on how evil the US is.
I'll put it like this:
The external imperialism of western countries far outweighs the danger, threat, and damage to human life than even the most cartoonish and absurd claims about the alleged internal authoritarianism in countries like Cuba, China, and the DPRK. It's such a massive disconnect and it's also not even a dialectical comparison.
The external imperialism of western nations is precisely what generates the security apparatuses that are developed within modern socialist countries. Most of the time what you regard as gross and needless authoritarianism is in fact socialist states defending themselves from external aggression. Go listen to Parenti talking about the measures Nicaragua had to take in regards to capitalist encirclement.
And furthermore, the decision to not use the term authoritarian to describe western nations constantly confuses me. Is it because the term imperialism is more accurate? If you want my gut feeling on this: authoritarian, totalitarian, and related terms were all cooked up by liberal historians like Hannah Arendt to make the USSR sound like the same type of thing as Nazi Germany, which is frankly Holocaust trivialization.
All nations primary mode of function is authoritarian action, and all revolutions too.
It really isn't, I can tell you from personal experience that this will absolutely get you labelled a tankie.
I disagree and I don't appreciate people splitting hairs when very obviously it is not the case. Anyone can sit down and stare that "oh well this is authoritarian because if you don't pay your taxes you lose your home", and it's completely irrelevant to any legitimate conversation. There's a difference between the United States and Pol Pots Cambodia, and if you're gonna try to argue that they're the same then I'm done
It's not splitting hairs, it's literally the entire point of the discussion. I understand that you've had the idea that there's some fundamental, qualitive, difference between the authoritarianism of Western counties and the authoritarianism of foreigners so deeply instilled in you that the idea of questioning it, or even having to justify it, is absurd to you. But the fact of the matter is that it is perfectly reasonable "legitimate conversation" to actually ask you to back up your claims, and you trying to assert that it's just "obvious" that you're right and if anyone tries to argue "you're just done" just makes it clear that you've never actually examined why you hold these beliefs and you refuse to do so.
You're right, there is a difference: an order of magnitude more people have been killed and emiserated by the USA.
Incorrect. In the past I had been a dues paying member of socialist/leftist organizations, I went to school for politics and philosophy, I've spent years of my life having conversations with people like you and reading arguments and following these topics. I'm not done because I'm ignorant or unwilling to face a truth, I'm done because I think you're wrong, and that you're unable to see reason. I've had this conversation dozens of times. No rational person would look at how an atrocity like the Pol Pot regime conducted itself and say "Yeah that wasn't fun but look at America! That's where the real evil is!" It's insane. For that reason I hope you have a nice evening, I will not be continuing this conversation.
Didn't ask, don't care.
I'm going off the actual content of your statements, and that content is that you take liberalism as axiomatically true and you fundamentally are unwilling to examine that axiom, instead writing off anyone who challenges it as "not rational" or even "insane" and refusing to engage further.
My guy, that's an awful lot of assumptions to be making about the general mindset of multiple nations, each of which contains millions of people. Derogatory? I'm pretty sure that authoritarianism has a dictionary definition lol. "Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting." From Wikipedia, just as a quick Google grab.
So do you think that, say, WW2 Italy wasn't authoritarian? Or same-era Japan? Fascist nations are (by the above definition) authoritarian, so that actually includes tons of non-communist nations, both current and historical. Similarly, just because a nation is communist, does not make it magically except from having corrupt, authoritarian government. Id even say that America is well on its way to authoritarianism, and the right/neo-libs continue to salivate over the chance to completely fuck over the common person in exchange for a quick buck.
Genuinely, because I'm always looking to learn more; how does capitalism as an economic system inherently restrict rights? My understanding of the core premise is that it turns labor into a conceptual currency that we then use to acquire goods. It's not, theoretically, at least, inherently oppressive. In practice, it's been clearly a shit-show that causes more suffering than just about anything else on the planet.
As a side note; I'm deeply anti-capitalist, I'm also deeply anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian. I hate the idea that a human being is only worth the utility they provide, and I also hate the idea that oppression is a necessary consequence of an attempt to liberate the people of a nation from hyper-capitalist wagemongering. I'd like to think there's a world where we can live and not oppress anyone, can genuinely engage in discourse and learn from each other without judgement.
thanks for the interaction here, and thanks for pushing back. you're getting at what i was hoping to demonstrate, that all political systems inherently have a system of authoritarianism with the possible exception of anarchism -- I don't know enough about anarchist theory to talk through that and don't want to be sectarian to my anarchist comrades, but your questions about it would be welcome at hexbear. we have a comm dedicated to theory. Bakunin (one of the big names in anarchist theory) wrote about authority, and Engels replied (he was not a fan). you might like their essays. theory has come a long way since then, but it's worth looking at some foundational texts. this topic is what caused the marxist-anarchist split.
capitalism restricts rights by alienating the working class from the means of production. thus, workers have no say over their labor and have the value of the labour extracted. as more exploitation occurs and wealth imbalance increases, the ruling class will always move to consolidate power to protect their capital and positions in society, which naturally leads to one society of the bourgeouise and another for the labourers. this is at the basical level but it is much wider than this and effects all levels of society, e.g., the bourgeouise control media outlets to prevent ideas from taking root (e.g., newspapers in 1800s-1900s) whilst selling the idea of a "free press." It means that all aspects of society are not focused on creating products useful for society but on creating products useful to make capitalist money through further exploitation. It needs to feed and crushes all who oppose it, even ideologically.
that's a decent starting point, I think, but yeah come join us at hexbear. you can jump into the theory comms with questions or head to "askchapo" or just jump into the daily mega thread. we're all nerds over there, so where I don't know something someone else will jump in
I appreciate the super open and honest discourse! I've only studied a little bit of Marx/Engels and then some of the Frankfurt School and some post Marxist and post structuralist stuff, I'm looking forward to engaging and learning more.
If capitalism isn't authoritarian why do we spend most of our federal budget on making sure people can't leave the system?
Why does my boss get to decide my hair color?
Why is everything in my life dictated by the authority of money. How is living with that authoritarian boot on my neck freedom? I would be less free in a country like Cuba where I can marry who I want and leave my job without losing access to medicine?
When you say making sure people can't leave the system, do you mean the military budget? Which is for sure super fucked- no doubt there. I think the driving force behind most warmongering is profit, as opposed to oppression for the sake of preventing dissent. Obviously CIA operations in foreign countries (and within the borders of the US) through time have shown we're certainly willing to kill and ruin economies for control, however my (admittedly limited) understanding of a lot of those instances is that they are primarily built upon promises of extending geopolitical control as opposed to pursuing pure capital.
I think about the difference between the gulf war/Iraq/Afghanistan, which were for sure about extending control in an area rich with a resource that is incredibly valuable, and Korea and Vietnam -huge examples of attempting to avoid allowing political rivals to accumulate power globally.
Honestly I think workers rights is for sure an example of modern American policy being vastly (intentionally, in part) unequipped for modern capitalism. I don't know if I think that it makes the core concepts of capitalism flawed- workers will need to work regardless of the economic system, and as long as people are working, there's a power dynamic between workers and those who are utilizing their labor- the farmer will always need to sell their crops, and they can't control if buyers won't associate with them due to their hair color, or religious preferences, etc.
I don't have an answer for that last bit- I think that's where a just government that serves its people would be able to step in and provide for people who need it. I know countries are toying with Universal Basic Income, but ultimately it's a complicated issue that doesn't have an easy answer that I'm aware of.
I'm not sure how capitalism inherently prevents you from marrying who you'd like - could you elaborate on that? Do you mean things like marrying into debt? I definitely agree that the American healthcare system is oppressive - that's absolutely a symptom of late-stage capitalism and the GLORY OF THE "INVISIBLE HAND" of the unregulated market. I think that's one of those areas where a just government would be providing for its citizens.
What do we do with the economies once we controll them? We open the markets to our businesses and they raid the place. As our government is cpaitlaist all the decisions are based on making money. All those politicians that decide who to go to war with own stock in the companies that will profit. There is no difference between those drives.
Why did we not want rivals to gain power? Just vanity? No. The risk to future profits. When you look at wages and workers rights when the USSR fell the Capitalists had no competition. Wages were lowered everywhere as conditions would permit. After all, where else could people go,?
As to workers rights it is pretty simple. All that needs to be is that workers are given dignity. My boss can fire me and I might starve to death. If my survival wasn't based on pleasing the most greedy people then I could make better decisions about how to use my time. So, just more money and safety. As communists we have a very specific idea we have about how to acomplish that.
Depending on what sate you live in you could very easily be fired for being queer. Because your ability to survive us based on money anything that riskes that is effectively not permitted by capitalism.
I'm in no way here to argue pro-capitalist rhetoric. I'm not super committed to capitalism as opposed to other systems of economic management, I am however willing to posit that the system of trading work for money does not inherently oppress- absolutely late stage capitalism is an unabashed fuck-show responsible for more misery than acceptable by almost any ethical standard. I hate the idea that, ultimately, you're only worth what you can produce. I think that workers rights should be paramount, and there's no amount of money that would be an acceptable profit margin to sell human suffering, full stop.
On the geopolitical scale, I think many decisions during the cold war were driven by fear of nuclear warfare. There's for sure profit in controlling puppet states, but with Cuba on their doorstep and Russia very clearly taking the role of an international superpower, I think that there was some rationale about their ability to become more politically important and influence the world beyond the west's ability to push back, and with nuclear armaments proliferating at a genuinely insane rate, there was a very real threat of apocalypse on the horizon. Do I think that justifies warmongering, interference in legal elections, and killing dissidents? Of fucking course not. But I don't think it was motivated by money alone. Money is just a gateway to power, like anything else.
I think personally, the idea that you can use work to produce capital that you can then spend on other things is not necessarily authoritarian. It's also definitely not a single catch-all solution to "how do we make a society that is just"- obviously unregulated markets go brr. I think the counterbalance needs to be systems that allow for people who can't work to live a high quality of life, regardless of how much they can provide.
That is where history disagrees. In the bargain of trade the people who need money to live can never make deals on an even playing field with those that don't. If trade determines your survival and we know it can't be done fairly than we have created conditions that can only snowball into misery.
I see no reason to belive the people running an apartide government that used weapons of mass destructions on civilians should be given any benefit of the doubt. There is no evidence they were kind or altruistic in any other endeavor. Why would it be different here?
If the cycle was work -> value. Than I would agree that is what socialism calls for. However the accumulation of capital makes it impossible for a worker to get fair and just value for their labor.
I definitely think that if any theoretical government would be capable of making that core work-to-value cycle work, it certainly would look pretty radically different than the US, I mostly live here because I was born here, I have a support system here, and my ancestors were literally bled to death here lol
Yeah, you could make something work. I could make my car fly, it would just be easier to use a plane though.
Most of history worked just fine on other systems. Most of the time this system has worked terribly. The system we had was just the first one to encorporate the scientific method and rationality. It is a historical accident. We can do better.
I think that there's quite a bit to be said for the ability to abstract something like labor and turn it into a common resource that can be utilized by anyone- if I need to buy a Japanese computer part from a very small manufacturing organization, that's about the only way to make sure that all parties are seeing value in a transaction, seeing that there's no guarantee that I have anything they would want or need, and I may never interact with them again.
I agree, we can for sure improve on the concepts involved, but that doesn't mean that they're accidental, and there's a reason that the system was even marginally successful.
I think like, evolution is a great example of a similar process - the biological functions formed by evolutionary processes aren't intentional, because intention implies cognitive processes that a natural law isn't capable of; but they do serve purpose. They aren't accidents, because the system is by its nature iterative and of course something would work eventually. Is there a theoretically more efficient structure than the one that we currently have for the human heart? Sure! That's just not the structure that evolved through selective pressure.
Again, not to say we shouldn't try to improve on systems of economy and government, but more to say that there's still lessons to be taken from what we currently have; it worked in some small way, which means we probably wouldn't benefit from throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
Well no. In the example of buying a small computer part they probably see little value in the transaction. Between parts, overhead, shipping, materials. Ths majority of the economic signal there is lost to inefficient rent seeking, bloat, corrupt middlemen, and management costs. Who in this situation are we concerned about? The people who designed it? The people that assembled it? The people that mined the materials? The people that handled shipping? The market abstracts all this so people.habe a very hard time feeling the relationships between each other. Then rent seeking behavior overshadows all that and makes market forces effectively noise.
I do agree with the idea of evolutionary solutions. Consider the horse. Useful. When we abandoned the solution that evolved and created purpose built solutions we got way cooler and way more effective answers. Like, would you say the rocket ship was just an overcorrection to the inefficiency present in water buffalo based transport? No. It was the application of science, logic and reason to create good answers to hard problems. Every time we try to make something cool we do so. It's rad. We should to do the economy what we have done every other technology
I think that for sure one of the drawbacks of the labor to currency system is the blind consumerism and the unethical conditions necessary to, say, make a bacon cheeseburger. I think the unethical parts of that interaction have more to do with corporate price-gouging and abuse of labor than the consumer themselves, who (in our current system) is kept intentionally blind to the real cost of their meal.
I think that for sure rent-seeking is one of those things that, in this theoretical government, would need to be addressed. Landlords and speculators are clearly opportunists with no connection to the stuff they milk value from, and that's problematic.
On reflection, ultimately I have no problem with the premise that people don't necessarily need to understand how to grow wheat, or even know someone who owns wheat, in order to consume the labor of a farmer- so long as that farmer is capable of truly leveraging their labor favorably and also benefits from that interaction. In that scenario, the farmer also uses the abstraction, which allows them to really utilize all of their labor through a larger base of people to sell to. They can also put this theoretical currency towards things that contribute to their fulfillment and that of their family members without knowing the person who produces those things personally, and so on.
I think one place I'm struggling with this is I'm having a hard time conceptualizing how people with more ephemeral skills would be able to leverage that skill into the resources necessary to obtain other types of fulfillment without a way to hold and transfer the value they generate. I'm sure there are philosophers who've written books on books about it, and I just need to find their work lol.
I think that we stopped using horses and adapted systems to do similar work, for sure, but that was after we had already iterated into the saddle, the cart, the wagon, carriage, etc. Horse to car is a big step if we look at the two of them without the greater context, but it was thousands of years of technology and iteration before we got there. They're fundamentally interrelated- I mean heck, we even measure the power of an engine by horses.
I agree that the natural next step economically is coming, and that's a fact- the questions in my eyes are: what's the horse, what's the carriage, and what are we replacing the horse with?
Cybernetics. The needs of people are essentially known and predictable. We can just make them and give them to people. That is also kinda how most of human history worked and it was fine then. It could be fine now, even better with computer data analysis and rational processing.
Sure there will be exceptions like little Japanese computer parts. However some democratic process could be used. Plenty of writers and scifi stories have possible systems. We can figure that out when we get there.
I'm actually not not into the idea of being able to instantly and accurately judge the needs of a whole nation of people. I mean shit, we already collect so much data through smart watches that once we are able to accurately measure metabolic rate, that's like 90% of it right there I think lol
There is a book, the people's republic of Walmart.
Basically every company with sufficient money does exactly this and they are very effective at it. Just what if instead of using the tech to make Walmart slightly more money we used it to make some public goods cheap and effective
Ah Yes, another fine addition to my reading list.
seriously though, we live in a late-stage capitalist hellscape and it's always funny to be when people use government monitoring fears to justify removing core social safety nets while simultaneously Walmart, Google, etc. Know when your balls ache because they have collected data on you from when you were prepubescent.
Those companies use the money they squeeze out of you to buy politicians to make your life worse. So life under capitlaism has trained everyone to mistrust that kinda thing. People have simply never lived in a world where anything like that was likely to improve their lives. So pessimism is a reasonable response to the conditions we find ourselves in. However a better world is possible.
hard agree. I think the only way we can improve our lives and the lives of those in our communities is to unflinchingly believe in the fact that we deserve better, and we can get better
A few things to keep in mind in addition to our comrade's reply:
I've never met or talked online with any tankie who is happy with the fact that the "authoritarian oppression" is necessary. We often just take the position of Marx's quote "we won't make excuses for the terror." You don't have to want it, but because it's necessary according to history and theory, we don't bother with the whole game of waiting for the perfect excuse, because then it's often too late for a movement.
The goal of tankies is to also reach that world of no necessary oppression and liberation from it for all through dialectical progression, however long and arduous that task is. We just try to be technical, tactical, and strategic about it. It can seem callous, but it's a mistake to think we can stay on the emotional/values-only plane of thought while attempting large scale socio-economic changes because the enemies of those changes have a system behind them which fulfills all these tasks with low effort.
When we say authoritarianism is meaningless, we mean that the dictionary definition you gave is all encompassing at state-level analyses, rendering it meaningless for distinctions. There is no power which doesn't fulfill all of those conditions (even just a low-level manager performs the contents of that definition, despite the form it takes being small scale. Like "reductions of the rule of law" can be as simple as asking you to do tasks on outside of your contract). The only difference is a vibe created in the mind of the user of the term.
The end of this authority at societal scale is communism. Countries sometimes called communist are better called socialist countries led by communists or something. The whole discussion is rendered confusing by mistaking a process/movement for some definitional standard. No socialist country is socialist for meeting definitions/conditions; they are socialist because they recognize and continue the process to progression to communism. See point 2 for the strategy which countries led by communists are doing.
Come talk with us, we have interesting ideas and people
I appreciate the reply and break-down of some of these concepts in context. I struggle with the necessity of authoritarianism, not because of the required restrictions on freedom necessary to protect others from oppression, but by shielding a system from criticism as opposed to allowing critique to be heard and resolved through collective discourse. I definitely also recognize that's an arduous process that requires a necessary undermining of governmental authority, but I feel like there's a sort of unintended arrogance in the idea that any system could be free enough of flaws to be above criticism- or that it's good enough to be worth the oppression of the few without hearing their voices and honestly considering their plight.
I'm happy, always, to learn more and engage in conversations about this, I look forward to talking with folks on Hexbear and growing my understanding of these concepts!
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Ok, but if that's the case, why are we drawing a line at a nation's internal population and disregarding their external policies? The USA killed three million people in the War in Iraq, including Iraqis who were very critical of the American presence. The USA has assassinated Latin American presidents for speaking out against the USA and replaced them with more America-friendly dictators. And yet everyone who talks about authoritarianism doesn't include western nations in their discussion, they instead make up a cartoon idea of what countries outside the west are like. Your definition of what is or isn't tankie/authoritarian has some kind of nationalist bias built into it.
Every time someone describes what authoritarianism is, it makes me think that America and the EU are the worst perpetrators of this behavior, but they mainly export all their violence rather than use the worst of it domestically. Domestically they use private sector means to distribute violence, such as poverty, prisons, and the facilitation of ambient racism.
This reminds me of the dividing line that liberals use, which is when they say things like "that dictator killed HIS OWN PEOPLE." As if killing people externally is more excusable crime?
And even with lib logic, the US kills its own people who speak out against the government.
See Fred Hampton, the suspicious number of Ferguson protest leaders who have since died in strange ways, etc.
Unless there’s a certain criteria which determines who are your own people…
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If invasions, sanctions, assassinations, and complete immiseration of other nations isn't authoritarian then what is it? Why are we arbitrarily deciding there's a distinction with how a country's internal and external policies? These things inform one another. If a nation like America is doing far worse things than authoritarianism, except externally, why can't we say that's what it is?
That makes no sense. Joseph Biden is not my dad and my shared nationality with him means nothing because he represents an economic class at war with my own. Was Hitler the father of German Jews? What the fuck are you talking about
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Yeah they do fit the definition, because the distinction between external and international policy you're making is arbitrary and meaningless. I'm a communist. My nation is the working class.
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I've got an easier one for you that should help you to understand. The policy of colonies regarding the population within its borders counts as "internal", don't they? What shall we say for the colonial occupation of Afghanistan? Shall we call this liberal?
Come to think of it, what do you think of non-citizen permanent residents, because America sure likes killing those within its borders and treating the rest quite brutally.
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There was disagreement over if the US fits the label
I don't know if there is such a thing as a perfectly free, truly democratic society wherein everyone is capable of existing free of oppression lol, but I think there's definitely a spectrum of authoritarian policy and sentiment, often correlated with nationalist and fascist fervor.
I may, as a person of color, experience more oppression in a country where I do not fit the standard vision of what a citizen looks like, and less in a country wherein which I do meet that criteria. That's usually more an issue with nationalist rhetoric than systems of governance - unless that nationalism is codified and enforced by the government, which is the case in many governments that I would consider "more authoritarian." America is one that has tended towards that, historically. Certainly, though, there are others that have also instituted systems explicitly designed to oppress.
I'd say, in general, I have many rights and privileges in current-day America that a truly authoritarian government wouldn't allow. And that's not to say that I think America is the greatest, or even good lmao. We're constantly on the verge of disenfranchisement, and the fact that we're constantly fighting for things that should be just baseline isn't exactly a good look. But, in all, I'm allowed to openly state my thoughts in the court of public opinion, I'm able to vote to elect a representative, able to practice religion as I'd like, etc.
For sure, the validity of all of that is affected deeply by the corruption of capital in those arenas, but there's something to be said about the power to openly share ideas and influence fellow citizens without active censorship. Keeping in mind things like COINTELPRO and Fred Hampton, etc, I obviously can't say in good conscience that the government has never censored it's citizens, but the purported adherence to the first amendment and being "the land of the free" at least makes them work for it.
Sorry for the novel lol. It's a complicated subject and there's a lot of nuance to try and tease out
Why are you unable to explain it then?
I think the dictionary definition is as I mentioned in a below comment, but the colloquial meaning has more to do with censorship by the government and restrictions on freedoms than go beyond those necessary for the health and welfare of other citizens.
What do you think of Chile under Allende? Do you think it met this standard?
So just based on a small snippet of reading about them, I think in general I have a favorable opinion of Allende's policy. Part of it is hard because, while he did some things that I agree with 10000% like increasing access to education and making basics like bread accessible, I don't have enough context to accurately judge my feelings on some of the other policies that he enacted, like land seizure. The other half of that is it's hard to see the long-term effects of policies that were then invalidated by a CIA-led coup and Pinochet.
Do you know of any places where his policies actively (for the context of our previous conversation) would be considered "authoritarian"?
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I think you missed the whole point of GarbageShoot asking you specifically about Allende.
I think this is the main problem here: a lack of knowledge about the historical context of "authoritarian" socialist projects, but nevertheless making generalized statements about them without even considering the material reasons why they were by necessity "authoritarian." Read up more about the history of Chile and consider what happened to Allende and the hope of a socialist Chile. Who came after Allende (and almost as important, who installed that successor)? Why do these events seem so familiar when learning about every other attempt, successful or not, to bring about a communist society? When you've done that, you will at the very least have a leg to stand on when criticizing so-called tankie authoritarianism.
I'd also suggest reading The Jakarta Method. Here's a somewhat relevant quote from it:
I was aware of Pinochet and the general CIA coup, but not Allende in particular; I don't think it's a failing to admit that the knowledge any one person has access to is limited. That's why my immediate response was one of attempting to find resources, not trying to generalize about something that I was deeply unequipped to speak on. The world's big, sadly I can't claim to have knowledge of everything on it.
My little reading on Allende makes it sound like he was democratically elected and pretty widely loved among the left-leaning members of his country - again, the only potential authoritarian charges I see levied against him are the socialization of private sectors, which I personally have not enough economic background to really have a stance on either way. If that's the only thing that he's called authoritarian for, I'd say that my understanding of the colloquial definition is probably more focused on aspects like freedom of speech, religion, etc. being limited, as opposed to market freedom.
But maybe my internal understanding of what makes a nation authoritarian is flawed! I'm happy to be wrong if it means I learn something. Maybe there's internal conflation of fascism and authoritarianism happening, and I need to re-draw some of the distinctions between the two.
I appreciate the book recommendation - the study I've done has focused less on political theory and more on philosophy, so if you have any other recommendations that cover things like the Marxist/anarchist split, etc., I'd be grateful!
If someone is complaining about socializing private sectors -- not that the profits of the now-public enterprises were used to enrich bureaucrats, but that the act of socialization itself inherently infringed on the rights of the capitalists -- the correct response is to spit in their face. That's not always the practical response, so I certainly am not telling you to go out and do it, but it's the correct response. Anyone complaining about "market freedom" as though it is remotely comparable to "human freedom" rather than a tool to be used or put away as the people see fit is either a fool or takes you to be a fool.
In a third world country especially, private companies are frequently the basis of staggering siphoning of wealth from the third world to the imperial core, which is why movements to repatriate them are so popular (see also the oil industries of both Egypt and Brazil right before their respective coups).
Being transparent about things, your comments read as one of the relatively rare cases of someone who is deeply submerged in neoliberal ideology but also intellectually honest and open about it. I'd be happy to discuss things with you from a Marxist perspective if you like.
Well, since you like reading (which is cool and good!) there's a neat book on Cybersyn, but I was actually going in a slightly different direction. I respect the project Allende lead, but it's undeniable that it was a catastrophic failure. Allende is one of many examples of attempting a gentle touch and underestimating the sheer brutality that is the reality of capitalist encirclement for a socialist state.
Allende was conciliatory when he should have been firm and his lax approach to purging (i.e. basically not doing it) is what very directly laid the groundwork for the coup that was the death of him and many other Chileans under one of the most vicious dictators the world has ever seen.
Someone recently reposted a Michael Parenti quote that I think discusses elements of this well:
Here I mean to most emphasize the last paragraph, though the preceding paragraphs are certainly relevant. "Are there civil liberties for the fascists?"
I'm not familiar with that example; do you have any reading on the subject I can access? I'll do some research and get back with my thoughts
I believe they are suggesting that, if "authoritarian" means anything, that every large state that has ever existed was "authoritarian," though some diffuse the authority through things like enclosure of the commons combined with strict property laws or other, older methods like religious law.
That's fair- where the line of "authoritarianism" is drawn depends on historic, social, and economic context. I think modern colloquial usage is certainly shaped by western values, simply because America's primary export is culture, and that's what happens when you shout loud enough over enough time.
I never said that I don't support communist countries. What I do not support are abuses of power by authoritarian leaders, even if they claim to be abusing their power in order to bring about a communist state.
Tankies accept most/all atrocities committed by so-called communist leaders with a "the ends justify the means" attitude that I do not share.
What atrocities in particular do tankies accept
Soviet architecture.
you know what, fair, sorry brutalist comrades
I'm more of a fan of Socialist Classicism myself
To be fair killing nazis is pretty cool. We made some movies about it.
It is neat you are a fan of doing things where the ends do not justify the means. How do bathing moral decay like that feel?
Have you never heard the phrase “the ends justify the means” before? It’s a pretty common phrase.
It means that any action, no matter how unethical or morally reprehensible, is acceptable as long as it is done to accomplish a goal that is deemed good.
This is the tankie attitude.
To reject this means that there are limitations on what actions are acceptable in pursuit of a goal. That there are some actions that are too repugnant to be justified.
That's correct. I think in the real world that doesn't come up. What is the hypothetical? would you murder an innocent little girl to save your child. That isn't a gotcha. That wouldn't work. Even if it did work, the ends of that is that everyone has to wory about their children being scrapped for spare parts. That logic works under cpaitlaism. That situation infact happens today for capitlaism. There just aren't situations where if you accurately assess the ends it justifies terrible means. Under capitlaism we do terrible means for terrible ends. We are so used to thinking of that that it us hard to think of alternatives, but your failure of imagination doesn't make you morally right.
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I don't think you said anything meaningfully different from what I already said.
You do not consider the abhorrent unethical nature of certain actions as being a valid argument against taking those actions in the pursuit of establishing a communist society. The only criticism you'll entertain is that certain actions may be ineffective or inefficient at accomplishing that goal.