What is conscription? A "fun" way to waste a year of your life doing unpaid labor in some camp. Oh, sorry, it's not "unpaid", the wage is 8 euros.
"What's the big deal?" you say. "8 euros sounds decent for a guaranteed job for 1 year in a place with very low living costs compared to the US. That's about the minimum wage here". And that would be true, if it was 8 euros per hour. Except it is 8 euros PER MONTH. It's almost a joke, like I have no clue what you're supposed to do with 8 euros. But I guess they give you shitty food and a shitty bunker bed to sleep? Awesome. Oh wait they're now saying they're gonna increase the wage to 30 euros. Impressive. Except they're probably doing it because they want to make conscription last longer than a year, whoo!!
Basically it's a great place where a bunch of weirdos with anger issues scream at you while you're mopping floors and you just have to ignore them every day for a year, if you don't have anything left to do in there you can leave for a while but you have to be back by midnight, and you can only take leaves for a total of 18 days throughout the whole year. Dumbasses tend to become fashy in there too. What an amazing institution, I'm so fucking happy the state doesn't want to pay people to work in camps so they just have us do it for free. It's really wild how much you can get away with if you promote it as patriotic.
Lmao so you literally know that the state will simply ban you from the military if push comes to shove, why the fuck are you even making that argument then.
I got lot of friend that made their military service and are committed socialist today. They don’t regret the few years the spent in the woods learning to shoot.
I’m engaging with you, giving you historical and personal examples and trying to argue this thing in somewhat good faith. Maybe try to do the same?
I don't really care much about arguing "in good faith" about discussing the benefits of unpaid labor for hypernationalistic chud factories from a """leftist""" perspective, especially with a person who apparently thinks it is "liberalism" to criticize it. I'm gonna show this to people here btw, it's pretty funny.
Please do. Just make sure to show your weak ass arguments about not wanting to mop floors and getting screamed at too. Oh and re-read those arguments after you spent a decade or so working for a living in this garbage system of ours, and you’ll see how fucking hollow ”someone forced me to do something against my will and yelled at me” rings.
Literally no one wants to do that.
YOU LITERALLY GET PAID TO WORK. YOU LITERALLY DON'T GET PAID TO WORK IN THE ARMY. And you can at least, you know, leave after 8 hours, and live in your own house.
Dude stop being so embarrassing, please lol
"Wow imagine not wanting to do forced unpaid labor for nationalists whose entire purpose is trying to 'break' people into discipline, what a weak ass argument. Yeah, I'm totally a socialist."
What do you mean? conscript armies do pay their soldiers. It’s certainly the norm where I live. And if you think you will “break” from doing military service for a year or two and come out a fucking SS-goon or something on the other side, then I don’t know what to tell you, maybe your not really built for this world.
Did you even read the post?
It doesn't matter if I or anyone else in specific does so. It is their job description. And it does work on many 18 year olds.
Ok, let’s try this again cause we’re both just fucking screaming into the void right now, insulting each other and getting nowhere. And believe it or not, if you are here then your probably a comrade and I’m interested in hearing where you are coming from.
Here’s my argument for a conscript army
• If recruitment is something everyone has to endure then it works as a calming effect on War Hawks and warmongering. When everyone (or at least all soldier age males) got some skin in the game it makes it harder to sell a war, especially if it’s an offensive one and not one of defense. I think this is the reason why a lot of western imperialist states moved away from conscription in the late 1900s. I’m certain it’s a big reason of why the US did after Vietnam.
• conscription gives working class kids some military training which could certainly come in use of the world keeps going to shit.
If I understand you correctly you oppose conscription because its an extreme form of state control and a propaganda mill to turn out well behaved and ideologically conformist citizens. I see your point and understand the unwillingness to get forced to carry weapons I the name of a system and state that I hate. I also understand your argument that on a personal level you would rather do anything else than spending a year taking order from assholes in uniform , also a fair point and one I would have sympathized with when I was of recruitment age. But I would argue that the propaganda angle is even worse in a professional army that gets more time to work their fascist ideology and more willing recruits to turn into foot soldiers for capital. Though I would concide that a conscript system gives the state a wider net of young men to try to influence.
Have I missed something in what you are trying to argue? And if neither of us got anything else to add, then let’s just fucking agree to disagree.
The arguments that it makes a difference with war hawks etc don't work. They don't send the conscripts unless they really really have to. Again, Turkey has conscription and it is also involved in a bunch of wars, but the ordinary conscripts don't take part in any of that, because they ALSO have a professional army, a lot of whom aren't even Turkish citizens. All the conscripts do is take care of the necessities that the "real" army is too busy fighting to take care of. If a major war happens, then any "ordinary" country will draft people anyways regardless of whether they have peacetime conscription or not.
The US never had peacetime conscription in its modern history, it didn't "move away" from it. They only used the draft in the Vietnam war because it was larger than what the professional army could manage on its own. They could have conscripts now and it wouldn't make a difference, they'd just have them sit around never leaving American soil while the professionals are bombing people elsewhere.
All "training" that you might receive in there is stuff that you could have learned in 15 days. It's not high quality training or whatever. You barely even learn how to shoot.
There is also a professional army anyways. That doesn't go away. Except the professional army is a small percentage of the population, not literally every man in the country.