thats the post

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
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    4 years ago

    The act of revolution is authoritarian. You are radically restructuring society through force and coercion. Without force and coercion, there is no revolution. Without force and coercion, you are the Bernie Sanders dick flattening meme. On your knees with hat in hand, asking the ruling class for basic amenities only to getting laughed out of the room - or tear gassed and beaten, depending on their mood.

    You can get yourself some communes on a fully voluntary basis, but communes have existed throughout more or less all of history. They are not a threat to systemic oppression. They are not a threat to any of the powerful, ultraviolent hierarchies which dominate the world.

    • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
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      4 years ago

      I do find it funny when anti-authoritarians whine about revolutionary societies

      The initial act of revolution is about the most authoritarian thing you can do. It is quite literally one part of the population pointing guns at the other and telling them how society is to be structured

      And rarely has that conversation ended in the other side readily agreeing. Theyve ususlly taken up arms and defended their exploitative positions in society until they met their end at a noose, guillotine or summary execution or killed the revolutionaries and resumed their garbage redundant position as a Kinglord/merchant/capitalist/landlord /

      In fact most of the time...they have been willing to tear an entire country in two rather than relinquish their position.

      The second problem is assuming those that have been overthrown are going to accept the new society and not work hand in hand with foreign agents to restore theprevious social order

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
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        4 years ago

        I agree with all of this, but I will grant the "anti-authoritarians" the fact that such a situation is untenable. If we're going to have a class war, it should be expected to come paired with some form of martial law. It's wartime, after all, and the pre-existing civic institutions which served the roles of justice and the protection of civil liberties were toppled because they were deemed incapable of bringing about justice and protecting civil liberties. Things are going to get worse before they get better - but things need to get better.

        I think one of the reasons "socialism in one state" generally turned out to be a failure was that it resulted in a stalemate. A permanent class war being fought through the proxy of the state which in turn required a perpetual wartime footing. This is a trap which needs to be avoided. We want fully automated luxury communism after all, not a drab landscape of Hoxhaist pillboxes and paranoia.

        • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
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          4 years ago

          This is missing a material analysis though comrade

          If people as smart, dedicated and brave as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hoxha, Mugabe, Ortega, Sankara and Qadaffi and the hundreds of millions of brave people that followed them all ended up in roughly the same spot something bigger is at work than "this leader is authoritarian"

          What's more unless we're great man theorists then we understand that the masses sought leaders of men of steel with the caliber of the people mentioned above.

          If US imperialism collapses we can indeed walk into fully automated luxury communism (and thats presupposing another power doesn't simply fill the power vacuum). But looking at Cuba, DPRK or China now who are all still on a perpetual wartime footing I think this is utopian.

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
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        4 years ago

        Don't cede the term "authoritarian" to capitalists as an easy way to denigrate you. I wouldn't call the act of liberation 'authoritarian' even if it involves killing people or taking things from them against their will, as the nature of their existence was already a limitation and imposition on other people.

        "If you have power over someone, don't cause harm to them. If someone has power over you, well, sometimes harming them is an okay way to fix that."

    • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      The act of revolution is authoritarian. You are radically restructuring society through force and coercion.

      Imagine believing this.