In this thread we post our most :LIB: takes, and discuss whether that is the logical end point on a given topic or whether we need to lose that last bit of liberalism.
Outside of really disgusting shit like CP, Media censorship is usually more effort than it’s worth, and makes socialist governments look insecure and weak. The USSR shoulda let teens listen to Rock music, and better yet encourage them to make their own. The idea that listening to Van Halen makes you a capitalist is stupid.
The thing is, I think in our increasing digital age it will be functionally be impossible to actually censor this stuff, even if it was a good thing to do. So regardless of the justification for it, I think socialist states are gonna have to learn to counter not suppress foreign propaganda. Go ahead and let people consume it but provide a context for it and a counter narrative.
I’m like 95% on board with prison abolition but,
Some people deserve to be imprisoned, namely perpetrators of sexual abuse. I don’t think rape/molestation stems wholly from material conditions, and we won’t eliminate it even with falgsc. Some people will never be rehabilitated and they need to not be wandering about the community.
We say prison abolition because prisons are disgusting reactionary cesspools and counterproductive. That doesn't mean we don't want reeducation camps and other institutions that will replace prisons for cases as you are concerned about.
That doesn’t mean we don’t want reeducation camps and other institutions
This is why prison abolition is a poor framework for the conversation. The absurdity of saying "we don't want prisons, but custodial penal institutions are OK" is an automatic discussion derailer. Any bad faith participants in the conversation will tear into that and not let go. Good faith participants who aren't already on board with you will be confused, and even if you explain what you mean the confusion will only switch to why you labeled it "abolition" in the first place.
It's much more productive to start with "prison as an absolute last resort," and then describe how your "prison" would be far better than prisons are today.
The concept of prison must be purged from peoples minds. The best approach is to have both "radicals" going all the way with their language and also people like you who are more cuddling in their language.
The concept of prison must be purged from peoples minds.
Why? Some people -- at least temporarily -- need to be separated from society, or have their access to society limited. However nicely we dress that up, that's imprisonment. That's not a concept that needs to be eliminated.
because a prison is a reactionary backwards horrible thing. like the police it has to be abolished. this is not about finding an euphemism to replace the word, the point is that the whole modern conception of the prison is rotten to the core, it has to be dismantled and replaced with something different. if you want to call this "something different" a "prison" that's ok but it's only confusing cause the whole point is that the new thing is not a prison. reeducation camps are not prisons, separating someone dangerous from the rest of society is not what defines a prison. what defines prisons is their class control objective, inhumane treatment of prisoners, punitive objective, unjust sentencing, domination of the inmates by chuds, etc.
reeducation camps are not prisons
This is not going to get ordinary people on board, and we need ordinary people if we want to get anything done.
Tell an ordinary person that a reeducation camp isn't a prison and they'll say: "Can you leave? Is that where you put criminals? Yeah, that's a prison."
Well as i said, I think "ordinary" people need to hear both things.
I see the appeal of that communication strategy, but it has the potential to confuse the issue, too.
This is why abolition is a poor framework for the conversation. The absurdity of saying “we don’t want slavery, but having to labor is OK” is an automatic discussion derailer.
Comparing work to chattel slavery is also a poor framework that automatically derails any productive conversation, yes.
Using the term "abolition" as an end goal for chattel slavery was appropriate because you shouldn't be able to own people, you shouldn't be able to buy and sell their children, and you shouldn't be able to beat, rape, or kill them whenever you like. There's no conceivable scenario where you can argue any of that is good. There are conceivable scenarios where the best remedy is to separate dangerous people from society, i.e., imprison them.
Prisons are not just "separating dangerous people from society." That is identical to calling chattel slavery "working for a living." You are taking a possible characteristic of prisons, and magnifying it to be the defining characteristic.
Prisons, particularly in the American context, are inseparable from the enslavement and torture of a lower class deemed "criminal." If you want to create a qualitatively different system which only "separates dangerous people from society", that is prison abolition.
If prisons "separated dangerous people from society", we would not see drug users behind bars, while bankers and war criminals walk free. It is a tool of class warfare that must be abolished.
If you are going to capitulate to the ruling class ideology, why be anti-capitalist? It is "the most efficient tool to distribute good and services; a rising tide which lifts all ships." That is a good thing, right?
You are taking a possible characteristic of prisons, and magnifying it to be the defining characteristic.
I'm doing the exact opposite. The defining characteristic of prisons is separating people from society. There are brutal prisons that do that, but there are also reasonably humane prisons that do that. The concept of "prison" isn't defined by brutality, it's defined by not allowing people to leave.
You're right that in the modern American context "prison" is synonymous with "brutality," but that specific context is by no means the extent of the concept.
If you want to create a qualitatively different system which only “separates dangerous people from society”, that is prison abolition.
Well no, it's not. Say you want to change nothing about the American criminal legal system besides prisons. Your proposal is to tear down the prisons we currently have, but you rebuild them so that each prison cell is a decent apartment, and you closely monitor the guards to ensure they don't just abuse prisoners however they like. That's a qualitatively different system -- it would be far less brutal than what we currently have -- but everyone would tell you it's still a prison (especially the folks inside of it) because the defining characteristic of prisons is not allowing people to leave.
Abolition means abolition. It doesn't mean reform.
If prisons “separated dangerous people from society”, we would not see drug users behind bars, while bankers and war criminals walk free.
If prisons do X + Y, the defining characteristic of prisons can still be X. Prisons do separate dangerous people from society; that's just not all they do.
Prisons do separate dangerous people from society
Bankers and war criminals walk free.
The most dangerous people in the world are not "imprisoned." That is not their purpose. They are a tool of capitalist class war.
I'd sooner say "compassionate prisons" are something qualitatively different than prisons, and should be called something else. Prisons have a clear historical purpose that is not "separating people from society."
Fundamentally, this is a disagreement of terms. Prisons are best defined by their enforcement of class rule, enslavement, and torture from my perspective. They need to be abolished and replaced with qualitatively difference system which address crime and social ills.
There are plenty of people in prison who have committed real crimes, and who are reasonably considered dangerous. That does not mean they separate all dangerous people from society, or that they cater to every small political group's definition of "dangerous." Functionally, anything that separates dangerous people from society -- in any society, controlled by any political group -- will be called a prison.
They are a tool of capitalist class war... Prisons have a clear historical purpose that is not “separating people from society.”
Prisons (in the modern sense) were intended as a less-brutal replacement for public executions and torture. Their original purpose was much more closely tied to enlightenment thinking than to capitalism. While plenty of enlightenment thinking was pro-capitalist or at least capitalist friendly, quite a bit was not, and the two concepts aren't the same.
Functionally, anything that separates dangerous people from society – in any society, controlled by any political group – will be called a prison
Are re-education camps prisons? Are boarding schools prisons? Is boot camp a prison? "Separating 'dangerous' people from 'society'" just seems such a ludicrous definition for a prison that covers basically anything. What is "dangerous", what is considered "part of society"...
I would rather just take a materialist perspective on prisons in my context. They are a system of enslaving and torturing people deemed "criminal," and "criminal" often just means lower class - failing to afford tickets, debts, selling or using drugs, etc. They need to be abolished. Any positive use they served can be incorporated into a new system. Just as you can abolish slavery without abolishing labor.
If you want continue using the word prison for whatever reason, you can still acknowledge that the existing prison system needs to absolutely destroyed, crushed, with every remanent tossed into the dustbin of history. You could make your own "proletarian prison" or "the peoples' prison." At that point, it is just a disagreement of terms.
Are re-education camps prisons?
If you can't leave, and especially if your re-education is aimed at "dangerous" people, then yes.
Are boarding schools prisons? Is boot camp a prison?
You can leave, and they're not aimed at dangerous people, so no.
If you want continue using the word prison for whatever reason, you can still acknowledge that the existing prison system needs to absolutely destroyed, crushed, with every remanent tossed into the dustbin of history.
We're fundamentally on the same page here -- I'm just using the term prison because that's what the term means. It's hard enough to convince people to radically remake how we handle criminal behavior without re-defining words to boot.
What does "dangerous" mean? My high school justified compulsory attendance because they did not kids getting mixed up with gangs. If kids skipped school, their parents were threatened with prison. Schools absolutely consider non-white students "dangerous." Are they prisons?
I’m just using the term prison because that’s what the term means.
I disagree. No one would reach the conclusion that prisons "separate dangerous people from society" when analyzing the material conditions of prisons. Defying reality because the idea some people have of prisons is counter-productive. You are alienating the millions of people who have been imprisoned on drug charges, missed tickets, or false charges to appease a bourgeois understanding of prisons.
There are people in my life define Capitalism as “the most efficient tool to distribute good and services; a rising tide which lifts all ships.” Should I advocate a better Capitalism to appease them? Or should I educate people about the reality of Capitalism?
What does “dangerous” mean?
You can dissect any definition with questions like this.
If kids skipped school, their parents were threatened with prison.
It's hard to argue that schools are prisons when children are able to leave, and when you're acknowledging that there are prison prisons people can be sent to.
There are people in my life define Capitalism as “the most efficient tool to distribute good and services; a rising tide which lifts all ships.” Should I advocate a better Capitalism to appease them? Or should I educate people about the reality of Capitalism?
There's a difference between using a heavily-propagandized definition and using a practical definition.
You can dissect any definition with questions like this.
And in some cases, it is important to dissect. When you are trying to define an institution which imprisons people for riding a train without a ticket, then I think it's important to dissect your use of the word "dangerous." I would not consider them dangerous.
It’s hard to argue that schools are prisons when children are able to leave, and when you’re acknowledging that there are prison prisons people can be sent to.
Sorry, I forgot to add that schools have entire police forces, and have apprehended kids who've skipped and brought them back. I still would not consider schools prisons because of the definition I provided above.
There’s a difference between using a heavily-propagandized definition and using a practical definition.
Yes. I do not consider your definition of prison to be practical. It is a propagandized definition.
When you are trying to define an institution which imprisons people for riding a train without a ticket, then I think it’s important to dissect the word “dangerous.” I would not consider them dangerous.
I agree that person is not dangerous. As I've pointed out, the fact that non-dangerous people are in prison does not keep "dangerous people" from being a defining characteristic of prisons.
All prisons must have X, so something that includes X + Y can be a prison even though it doesn't exclusively include X.
schools have entire police forces, and have apprehended kids who’ve skipped and brought them back
That's closer to a prison, but as the school isn't trying to separate dangerous people from society -- you can get expelled for starting fights, and school isn't anywhere near as separated from society as prisons -- it's still quite a bit different.
It is a propagandized definition.
My definition is the bare bones of what prisons do in practice. It's the core concept, it's the essential elements. There are prisons that do not wage class warfare (see the Soviet penal system, for example), therefore that is not an essential element of the definition.
Isn't this what Tristan da Cunha is for?
Take the people that can't be reformed and pose a danger to others, and make a governance-free zone on a remote island with an artificial reef and monitored waters where they can live away from society as they individually please.
Unironically, bring back marooning.
How is that any different from a prison? Also, what if they have kids there?
I dunno, how is any physically-bounded area any different from a prison?
They're all gonna go to Rapture once Peter Thiel finishes building it.
That's part of why I'm hoping for technological collapse before then.
John Carpenter was in talks to create "Escape from Earth."
That's a ludicrous definition of prison and infantilizes the experiences of actual prisoners.
Prisons are not when "you are forced to be somewhere." Prisons are violent institutions of slavery and torture.
If your definition of prison includes "being required to be in English class" and slaves putting out Californian wild-fires, you may need to rethink it.
Ok, but those things aren't the essential features of prisons. There are prisons in the world without slavery and torture. If you lock someone in a cell for committing a crime, and force them to take a class, I don't see how that wouldn't qualify as a prison.
How would you define a prison?
Edit: And wait, I literally specified "as a punishment", which obviously excludes English class. Are you deliberately trying to misinterpret what I'm saying?
First to address your edit. What is a "punishment?" Who decides when something is a punishment?
Does the subject or the institution decide when they are being "punished?"
A student forced to take a class may see it as a punishment, even if the institution does not consider it a punishment.
A criminal forced in a re-education program may see it as a punishment, even if the institution does not consider it a punishment.
You consider the latter a prison, but you do not consider the former a prison.
It's based on the intent of the person or institution doing the imprisoning. Not just what they say, but what their objectives are, which we obviously can't be absolutely certain about. There are a lot of thing like that. Is there no such thing as a lie just because people disagree on what does or does not qualify as one, or because we can't tell for sure what's going on in someone's head when they apparently tell one?
A student in a high school is objectively not being punished just because they're in high school, because they're there to learn about science and history and stuff, not to be punished. Re-education may or may not constitute a punishment, I don't know, but how the person or institution locking the person up categorizes it doesn't matter. That is, if their intentions are logically consistent with the definition of a punishment, it qualifies as a punishment. If not, it doesn't. Likewise, I would also not necessarily consider a person in a psychiatric hospital to be a prisoner.
And again: what's your alternative? A prison is when you lock somebody up but also it's bad?
Prisons are an instrument which violently subjugates those considered "criminal" by the ruling class. It is not when you force people to go somewhere.
What do you mean by "instrument"? Because guns can do all the things you described, making them prisons per your definition when used as such. I also wouldn't consider an execution to be a prison; not because it isn't a bad thing or because it's not repressive, but because it deviates too much from what people are actually referring to when they say the word prison.
And what defines "violently"? Is locking someone in somewhere not an act of violence? And in what way does directing violence against someone for being considered a criminal differ from punishing someone for a crime?
What do you mean by “instrument”? Because guns can do all the things you described, making them prisons per your definition.
Guns alone cannot do what I'm describing. A person wielding a gun can contribute to a prison.
I also wouldn’t consider an execution to be a prison
Neither would I, that's just executing someone.
And what defines “violently”?
I would consider physical harm or withholding necessities to human life to be violence. The constant use of these are a core component of prisons. Schools, hospitals, re-education camps, etc. all include the threat of violence if someone does not comply, but the institution does not require violence to function.
Guns alone cannot do what I’m describing. A person wielding a gun can contribute to a prison.
Either the gun itself or a person wielding a gun, depending on what exactly you mean by "subjugates", is the prison. If at the very least a person with a gun doesn't qualify as a prison, then it follows that a person with a gun can't subjugate a "criminal".
Neither would I, that’s just executing someone.
But it's (a) an instrument which is inherently violent (b) an instrument that can subjugate criminals and ( c) is used by the ruling class to do so. So what's the difference?
I would consider physical harm or withholding necessities to human life to be violence. The constant use of these are a core component of prisons. Schools, hospitals, re-education camps, etc. all include the threat of violence if someone does not comply, but the institution does not require violence to function.
So if a criminal is locked in a cell, but not otherwise harmed, they aren't in a prison? Or is being locked in a cell inherently violent?
people that can’t be reformed
There's a lot of danger attached to this idea. First, what if we fuck up and declare someone who can be reformed unreformable? Second, saying "we owe this group of people absolutely nothing and they could die tomorrow for all we care" sets the precedent that it's OK to treat some people like that, and that can enable others to be treated similarly.
Something like this seems like a better approach. You still isolate dangerous people from society, but there's a way back, and you're not condemning them to barbaric conditions.
Marooning would of course be a last resort; it would happen only after efforts to rehabilitate someone were fruitless for a few years, or long enough to confidently conclude that someone is permanently damaged beyond societal reintegration.
This circles the question of "how much are you going to invest into someone to reform them". Scandinavian-style prisons sound great but it takes a lot of work to operate them. If you needed 2 full-time-working-equivalents to reform 1 prisoner, would you say that is worth it? If you needed 2:1 but didn't have the certainty that you'd succeed, is that worth it?
Scandinavian-style prisons sound great but it takes a lot of work to operate them.
The prison linked above has a 1.7-to-1 prisoner-to-guard ratio; the ratio in U.S. state prisons is about 4.9-to-1. But note that this doesn't necessarily mean more total guards. If you reduce recidivism (as that prison appears to do) you reduce total prisoners and thus total guards, and so you might see an overall reduction in the guard total even with more guards per prisoner. You could further reduce the total guards needed by legalizing drugs and decriminalizing homelessness, among other policy changes.
This circles the question of “how much are you going to invest into someone to reform them”.
If we're really talking about "last resort" options, than the answer is "a lot." It's not really the last resort if you give up too easily. And we're not particularly close to real resource constraints on rehabilitation efforts; the question is solely whether we want to make those efforts or not.
That's a good point. And I wasn't suggesting that we give up easily, only that there might still be a point where it wouldn't be worth it. Of course there would still be an option to return, but I suppose the marooning option would only be used for people who were resolutely opposed to adhering to the reciprocal foundations of society.
people who were resolutely opposed to adhering to the reciprocal foundations of society
These people exist, and it's good to consider how any hypothetical justice system would handle them.
I think the real lib take is thinking that a 2:1 staffing ratio is prohibitively/impossibly expensive. We already have huge amounts of labor that is currently unutilised or utilised in highly inefficient industries which could be deployed for this use.
In Australia, a staffing ratio of 2:1 for people with disability is not unheard of.
Another factor that would be important to consider is a necessary reduction in the number of criminal offences - even neoliberal economic analyses suggest that it's never useful to lock up drug users and rarely useful to lock up car thiefs (unless they're out stealing expensive new cars, which is rare).
Marooning would of course be a last resort; it would happen only after efforts to rehabilitate someone were fruitless for a few years
I’m kinda curious what “rehabilitate” means.
Outside of periods of extreme social instability most heinous crimes of ones of passion committed by individuals who aren’t really inherently dysfunctional and probably would ever commit the act and continue a normal life again had they never been caught. Idk what a good punishment for those people are.
To be honest, I'm curious what "rehabilitation" is going to mean in a post-revolutionary context as well.
I don't have all the answers.
Hi curious what "rehabilitation" is going to mean in a post-revolutionary context as well, I'm dad!
I'm and welcome to a fresh new episode of Guess What Asshole Made This Useless Piece Of Code, your host and subject material for this episode is me
In the culture books you get one free murder, then you spend the rest of your life with your cool new buddy; A gun drone that will pop your head like an egg if you do anything aggressive.
You know most murders are crimes of passion where the killer has probably never killed before and probably doesn’t plan on ever doing it again. This is basically saying everyone gets to strangle one person who really pissed them off Scott free and then resume life as normal.
Yeah pretty much. I mean, we know more or less for a fact that prison as deterrence doesn't work, especially in crimes of passion. The idea with the culture is that they've removed every conceivable material reason for violence, and all that's left is things they genuinely can't predict and can't prevent, that aren't likely to cause further danger to the community.
Well, there's no way to tell if someone is going to murder people until they murder someone, and after they're still nominally free, unless they try to do murders, in which case their chaperone paints them all over the walls and ceiling. There's no bars or fences, but you're still on a "don't hurt people" leash.
- The "your first murder is free!" rule is ripe for abuse.
- What if the machine fucks up and kills you over something it shouldn't?
- The death penalty is bad and should be abolished; this sentences every murderer to a suspended death penalty with a hair trigger.
Isn't it more "one attempted murder", where "attempted' means "you are up against an AI god whose battles with other AI gods last microseconds at most and also knows everything going on around it, good luck"?
I think the best framing for this conversation is "prison as an absolute last resort," not "prison abolition." You're right, some people do need to be separated from society, and even if we make that as limited and humane as possible it's still imprisonment. Using a term like "abolition" non-literally muddies the water right off the bat.
Besides, if prison conditions are improved to the point where prison is no longer synonymous with being beaten and raped, "imprisonment" takes on a far different meaning. If your average prison looks like this instead of Shawshank, that's going to change the conversation dramatically.
The enlightenment had some good ideas and should not be considered a complete failure.
I feel the attribution of moral value is a bit far - a historical materialist view of slavery or capitalism would see it as a step in the path to communism but you wouldn't say those were 'good'.
OK fair. But also marxism does consider itself something that hails from the enlightenment and rational inquire.
I'll start:
In the most utopian society I can imagine, we will still need professional police. We can get rid of all the economic drivers of crime, we can get rid of all of the bullshit crimes (e.g., decriminalize homelessness, end the War on Drugs), but some people will always end up committing real crimes. Some people will still murder, some people will still rape, some people will still start fights, some people will still destroy, damage, or steal personal property just to be an asshole. We will still need someone to investigate those crimes, and they will need to be professional (as opposed to some sort of part-time, volunteer, community-based quasi-police). Obviously these utopian police will bear little resemblance to the cops of today, but they will still be there.
Modern-day cops can still eat shit, and the police as an institution is so awful today that no current cop should be allowed to work as a cop going forward.
I think maybe the most important progression to make is a response to how police are a catch-all service with a gun. In other words, violence workers whom we also count on to do nonviolent work.
Having a team of social/mental assistance workers to respond to most cases would stop cops from having to wear both the gunman hat and the mediator hat. Then if there's a situation they can't handle, they can pull out and call in the violence workers.
By separating the violent and nonviolent functions, people will better be able to see modern-day police for what they are, and minimize their role. People dig in their heels to defend the police largely because they believe in the effectiveness of the nonviolent functions. Once you split the police into violence workers (current forces) and care workers, it becomes politically much easier to cut funding from the former and shift it to the latter, which probably wouldn't be populated with authoritarian types.
We can train everyone to do police like duties and take on police like duties on a rota, meaning that all people will cycle through police like duties and remove the need for a professional police force. We may still have detectives and investigators, but they will be separate from the day to day duties of community defense and safety.
We may still have detectives and investigators, but they will be separate from the day to day duties of community defense and safety.
That seems reasonable, and those detectives and investigators are what I meant by "professional police."
It's important to remember that police are actually not very good at investigating crime - for the largest Australian state of New South Wales, only about a third of reported sexual assaults, thefts, robberies etc. are marked by police as finalised (i.e. solved with or without prosecution) by 30 days - 30 days being the measure because anything beyond that tends to introduce things like police attributing every burglary in the last 6 months to someone and marked them as solved.
There is also no reason why you'd need to combine the prevention, intervention (often violence but many ambulance staff have to detain people without utilising much violence), crime investigation and prosecution and doing so introduces strong conflicts of interest.
I wonder if police are actually bad at solving crimes, as in unable to do it, or if it's more apathy/poor use of resources. In the U.S., for instance, there's an enormous backlog of rape kits waiting to be processed. Not processing those rape kits isn't the police being unable to solve crimes so much as it's apathy or poor use of resources. As with a lot of other problems, we have the tools to do better, we're just choosing not to.
There is also no reason why you’d need to combine the prevention, intervention (often violence but many ambulance staff have to detain people without utilising much violence), crime investigation and prosecution and doing so introduces strong conflicts of interest.
Absolutely.
There's certainly apathy and lack of effective use of resources, but even if those were solved you'll still have issues relating to who the investigating police are and how they are trained - i.e. largely not drawn from the community they investigate, a previous role arresting and detaining primarily poor and nonwhite people, racist and sexist views, training in dodgy police forensics and interview techniques that are designed to extract confessions - in addition to training in practices that are designed to obtain pleas of guilty in exchange for a reduction in the burden on defendants where police are also the prosecuting agency.
Oh yeah, no current cops should keep their jobs. My thinking is more that the statistics around solving crimes might not be reflective of our maximum capacity to solve crimes.
Universal human rights are an idea that merits further consideration.
It's a fantastic concept, even if "human rights abuse" language is often co-opted to stoke hate for countries that challenge U.S. hegemony.
We have had agreement to universal human rights for the last 70 years and we have only seen the weaponisation of liberal rights with complete neglect of economic and social rights.
I seriously doubt electoralism will achieve much in US politics, but I think it's important to try. Most people in the states still think "left-wing = big gov ; right-wing = small gov". We need figures in the public eye willing to vocalize leftist ideas.
AOC is good for showing how dogshit electoralism is. When she said 'I daydream about quitting because it's hopeless' I clipped it and sent it to all my AOC loving lib friends/family. That should be the message - 'there's no hope via electoralism, mommy and daddy won't save you.'
Well, she didn't say that. She said something closer to "the chances of me quitting and the chances of me running for higher office are about 50/50." That doesn't say electoralism is hopeless, it says that it's frustrating and difficult (and any possible path to socialism will be frustrating and difficult).
Electoralism is hopeless. Dems do not have any kind of ideological project, they are paid opposition. They do not influence opinion or drive narrative like the Republicans, they do not engage in politics. Their ideology is apolitical. And that's the party we have to work with?
It's not happening. Local races, DAs, sure, go hog wild. But at some point a party needs a national strategy that pursues long-term ideological goals. That very idea is anathema to national Democrats.
They do not influence opinion or drive narrative like the Republicans, they do not engage in politics.
Mainstream Democrats don't do this, but the left-ish/DSA/Berniecrat wing of the party does.
Local races, DAs, sure, go hog wild.
I don't think "electoralism is hopeless" is accurate or a good message if many elections matter.
National electoralism is hopeless. The media + donor apparatus will crush any kind of left movement. We just saw it happen.
But your right, local electoralism is not hopeless. I was speaking strategically as to an ideological project - in that regard there is no hope.
it’s unlikely she’ll push most of them to the “far” left because she has stated her brand of leftism is equivalent to Scandinavia.
It's better to view her as one step on people's individual roads to socialism than it is to judge her on the merits of something she's not.
And it's only a short step from "everyone should have healthcare" to "everyone should have a home, and food, and education," and pretty soon you start looking at the humanist justifications for socialism.
Thrift is a good thing to have as a value.
Capitalism is inefficient, and one of the things it is inefficient at is social reproduction/regeneration. One example of this that we see today is compulsive consumerism that has taken over to the point where there's an implicit allocation of it for people to participate in capitalist society. That is, the costs of pre-prepared food, alcohol, drugs, and other nonessentials are understood as part of the cost of keeping a worker alive.
If you can live thriftily and go without nonessentials while earning the same level of income, you can progress in a quantifiable way towards building a commune, removing yourself from capitalist bondage, or contributing to your preferred collective struggle.
[Non-libby part of the take: You can compound this if you do some economic hacking (communal living) where you share things instead of buying everything individually.)
It relates to liberalism because it focuses on individual agency to save money. Obviously not everyone can do it at once; the economy would get jammed and stop werking. Though I don't see how else you're going to build power starting in the present paradigm, besides "one little bit at a time".
One way I've applied this is in bringing up the subject of alcohol to peers in my area, many of whom drink heavily. It's a common complaint that "I can barely get by at the end of the month", but I can't help but ponder that if people spent a given amount of money on projects and organizing locally instead of on alcohol (and coke and excess weed and so on), the local bourgeoisie would be on the back foot, panicking as they were unable to deal with us.
If the personal is political, personal finance is certainly political. How does a communist spend their money/resources?
Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense.
I guess in some way it might to put too much emphasis on people's individual capacity to save. Thriftiness is already used to blame people for their financial situation and ignore the problems of capitalism (like blaming millenials eating too much avocado toast)
Thriftiness is already used to blame people for their financial situation and ignore the problems of capitalism
If it turns into that, it's bad. If it turns into "eat gruel and live in a box or else you have no right to complain," it's bad. If it turns into scolding people about having a beer or smoking a joint now and then, it's bad.
At the same time, it's easy to spend too much money on escapism, and it's fair to criticize how serious someone is if they prioritize escapism over trying to improve the things they claim to care about.
I would happily eat gruel and live in a box for a year if it meant I could save up for enough land and inputs to build a complex to live in with 12-30 other comrades, be able to travel with a velomobile or woodgas vehicle, and not have to worry ever again about affording rent and transportation and so on.
Unironically, I think I can hold up to some of the most ruthless bad-faith criticisms of socialists. I have lived on basically $1 a day for an extended period of time. (BTW, come at me, third-worldists.)
liberalism has uplifted most of the world from an even worse feudal system, long live republican democracy
liberalism has uplifted most of the world from an even worse feudal system
Correct and Marx-pilled
Nah, take the Federici-pill.
Capitalism was a counter-revolution against a more egalitarian Feudal system. The masses were pushed into increasing precarity and suffering as the bourgeoisie overthrew the feudal system.
However, Capitalism is a necessary historical process to get to socialism, then communism. It centralizes production and flattens relations to production into a handful of classes, where the masses are proletarian. It creates the conditions necessary for world revolution.
The improvements since the Feudal era are the product of mass struggle against Capitalism, and the bourgeoisie offering concession to prevent world revolution.
Unironically, I'm fine with politicians lying to get something good done. I understand the necessity of it, and saying something doesn't mean anywhere near as much as doing something.
I guess the reason I'm not an anarchist is because I don't think all hierarchy is bad. Like, I support a more egalitarian approach to wealth distribution than not, but I think some form of inequality is in fact deserved. Let's say we do eliminate structural inequality in a robust way - racism, gender discrimination, neo-colonialism, and culture wars overall are somehow a thing of the past: shouldn't then a person who contributes more have some right to the fruits of their work and production?
I often times point to empirical studies in psychology (Daniel Kahneman) that demonstrate human happiness kind of plateauing at an income level of roughly 90-100k per year. I think that we could make that, or hell, even slightly more than that (200-300k) a maximum income. I think this would incentivize people to work hard and reward that drive or ingenuity in an appropriate way, but it would avoid the bizzaro world wealth distribution see today.
Anarchism recognizes some hierarchy, but only if it's justified. I.e. I listen to a doctor about medicine because he has more knowledge.
shouldn’t then a person who contributes more have some right to the fruits of their work and production?
I get what you're saying, but in a hypothetical anarchist society people wouldn't be working 40 hours a day. All the work that needs to be done get's done, all the people's base needs get met. So assuming those two facts are true, this "problem" solves itself since we would all have more leisure time to pursue our other desires.
Let's say there is a lazy joe who doesn't work, he still gets fed and housed but if spends his days doing nothing then that's it. He lives his life. But you have people who like being productive, like working if the work is justified. Well these people (more numerous than the "lazy" people) will have their free time to pursue other passions. So if you want to build an extension on your house or build a pool and you have the space, nothing's stopping you. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does, and I think if anything this just shows I have somewhat muddled timelines. Maybe that utopian anarcho-communist society is possible centuries down the line, and I can see how my concerns could hypothetically sort themselves out in such a society, though I still have my doubts. But chiefly I don't believe we can leap-frog a socialist state and get there in the way anarchists advocate.
Now, I don't want to be too knit-picky with your hypothetical of lazy joe compared to productive people since I get the point you're illustrating, but there's already a really thorny problem.
"So if you want to build an extension on your house or build a pool and you have the space, nothing's stopping you."
That's the rub of it, isn't it? Space on this earth is finite, and our ability to live in concordance with the environment is definitely a limiting factor. I think it's just a material fact that not everyone can have a private pool (or insert whatever individual or combination of luxury goods you like here). Even if lazy joe and all others like him were suddenly inspired to join the ranks of the productive one day, there simply wouldn't be enough natural resources on the planet to enable everyone to get what they want, and I don't think that we should view the rest of the solar system as "free real estate," simply lying in wait to be exploited for human desires. I think desire management is going to be an important part of our future, and I think it will require some combination of hierarchical institutions to effectively enforce the things we democratically decide are worthy of such management. I'd like to see coordinated efforts at rewilding large swathes of the planet and then protecting the environment in a robust way. I think that, along with a host of other issues, present collective action problems that any form of anarchist society will be poorly suited to address.
But I'm getting a little far afield with my critique here. Thanks for the comment and giving me an opportunity to think on the matter.
If you are interested in anarchist projects, I'd encourage you to look at Revolutionary Catalonia and the modern Zapatistas. The latter are pretty clear that they do not identify as anarchists since the philosophy was born from European ideas, rather than endogenous ones, but I still cite them as something anarchists should learn from. They demonstrably improved the lives of 300,000 Mexicans and eliminated organized crime in their territory. They are both conscious of oppressive hierarchy and good stewards of their environment, though I cannot speak to trying to expand that to the scale you're talking about.
simply wouldn’t be enough natural resources on the planet to enable everyone to get what they want
Simply put, the American dream of white picket fences for everyone is not sustainable. A sustainable society, whether state socialist or anarcho-communist, is going to require a change in standard of living for the west. $5 t-shirts should not exist, the amount of trash we make should never exist. So in those terms, no there isn't enough for everyone to get what they want if everyone wants to maintain a lifestyle dependent on consumer goods.
However, there is certainly enough resources to house and feed every person on Earth and most wouldn't have to move. In the US there are more vacant homes than homeless. No everyone cannot have a pool (bad example because personal pools are bad for the environment, community pools and natural bodies are good) but part of the revolution necessitates a social revolution. Drug addicts call this changing your desires and America is addicted to cheap shit. I'm losing my point here, but I do not claim to know all the answers. What form the revolution takes depends on the circumstances and life certainly won't be uniform around the world or even around a single US state.
and most wouldn’t have to move.
This on its own is a bit of a lib take.
Housing stock in the US is almost entirely dependent on personal cars. Without extensive oil consumption, most people (all except those in urban cores) would not be able to live where they do.
I'm all for housing the homeless and forcibly taking empty property, but we're not going to make it out of our predicament without changing all the 100+ year old habits of the way we live.
What's the point of that? Overconsumption in our current paradigm is on track to kill us all.
(i get it tho, che is chevere)
I often times point to empirical studies in psychology (Daniel Kahneman) that demonstrate human happiness kind of plateauing at an income level of roughly 90-100k per year. I think that we could make that, or hell, even slightly more than that (200-300k) a maximum income.
I'd say we make that the minimum income -- it maximizes human happiness, after all -- and then see if we have a shortage of people willing to do really critical work (e.g., doctors, sanitation workers). If we do, I'm fine with creating an extra incentive to ensure those jobs are filled, although as you say that should be subject to a maximum income as well.
Well now we're conceiving of the problem differently, and my lib is showing. I guess I don't see 100k a year for everyone as a realistic possibility. To put it into perspective, if we were to evenly divide today's GDP among the world population, each person (adult and child) would receive about 11k a year in income. Now that's in part because we are inefficiently utilizing resources to satisfy the preferences of a TINY minority (basically, capitalism only works for the international bourgeois in the long run, the hundred millionaires and billionaires and yes, maybe even eventually trillionaires 🤮). Were we to change production I don't think we'd see the scarcity we have today for so many, so maybe 11k a year wouldn't be so bad, but I think we will always have to deal with some level of scarcity and certain resources or luxury goods will by necessity have to be restricted.
Assuming we can get everyone to an adequate living standard, meaning food, shelter, medicine, school, and some leisure time to boot, then I think anything beyond that should be contingent upon one's ability to add more than they take. Basically, society itself would exploit these exceptional workers. They would receive a part of their additional productivity in the form of special privileges and luxuries (longer/nicer vacations, luxury goods, nicer living conditions) in return for going above and beyond the minimum required to provide the basics for everyone else.
Edit: formatting
Were we to change production I don’t think we’d see the scarcity we have today for so many, so maybe 11k a year wouldn’t be so bad, but I think we will always have to deal with some level of scarcity and certain resources or luxury goods will by necessity have to be restricted.
I was thinking more about far future, utopian goals than what I think we could realistically do in the next few decades. You're right that globally we aren't at post-scarcity in the sense of "everyone has a $100K income and a first-world standard of living," although you're also right that changing production might get us closer than we think.
Assuming we can get everyone to an adequate living standard, meaning food, shelter, medicine, school, and some leisure time to boot, then I think anything beyond that should be contingent upon one’s ability to add more than they take.
Seems like a reasonable place to start.
I've thought about this a lot, but the problem is, anyone who could earn more in the US would just go to the US, which is precisely what's happening now, so unless the US collapses or something, this isn't gonna happen
I was thinking more about far future, utopian goals than what I think we could realistically do in the next few decades.
But to the problem of developing the Global North and incentivizing brain drain from the Global South, I think the only solution to that some form of wealth transfer back to developing countries with no direct benefit for the developed countries providing that wealth. That's something that might be possible in the near term.
Hi not an anarchist because I don't think all hierarchy is bad, I'm dad!
Upzoning is good. Single family detached homes are bad and anything that allows for their preservation is also bad. I have not joined the local chapter of the DSA in my city largely because they oppose blanket upzoning. Denser cities with fewer land use restrictions would be a purely positive change.
Would I prefer housing be decommodified and publicly-owned instead? Absolutely. But that's like saying you can't use an iPhone because it wasn't made under communism. Housing unaffordability and climate change are real problems now that we need to address and waiting until the revolution to change housing policy isn't cutting it.
I have not joined the local chapter of the DSA in my city largely because they oppose blanket upzoning.
While I think you have a great point, it seems like you might have more than enough common ground with the DSA on other issues.
Upzoning does help. There really is a huge problem with lack of housing in the cities. It would be great if we could get huge public housing projects though.
I think that even though we should degrow and build an economy that doesn't need economic growth to work, humans should still strive to become spacefaring eventually.
We should hide our power levels to best move the Overton window
We should tattoo "FALSGC" on our dicks and start an onlyfans then use dick pills to inflate our power levels. We're very popular and we should own that.
