Seriously how has Parenti become so popular so suddenly????

  • moist [any]
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    4 years ago

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    • gvngndz [none/use name,comrade/them]
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      4 years ago

      Perhaps, but "Blackshirts and Reds" is a book that explicitly defends the USSR, there is a pretty large gap between it and Chomsky's more popular books.

      • Alaskaball [comrade/them]MA
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        4 years ago

        I mean it helps that parenti spends the first chapter dunking the fuck out of the fascists and the capitalists.

        And when you got some really juicy stuff like that as your opening salvo, people are gonna be more willing to dig into your stuff, especially when your work actually has a nuanced as fuck opinion on stuff you never read about in H.S.

    • CountryRoads [fae/faer,it/its]
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      4 years ago

      Being auth-left is actually acceptable again in the US, for the first time since the 70s.

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

            Accepting the right wing framing of Marxism-Leninism as authoritarian (itself a term designed to conflate fascism with communism) because it "rolls off the tongue" is truly some galaxy brain shit

            • CountryRoads [fae/faer,it/its]
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              4 years ago

              Stop buying into the right-wing framing that "authoritarianism" is a bad thing. The point of "speaking truth to power" is so that you can BE the power. Anarchists, I swear to God...

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

                I'm not an anarchist, lol. Are you under the impression that "dictatorship of the proletariat" means a literal dictatorship rather than proletarian democracy?

                • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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                  4 years ago

                  While we're on the subject of how to best frame leftist ideas, the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" should be retired. It produces exactly the sort of confusion you describe: unless your audience is read up on ML theory, it sounds like you're calling for a literal dictatorship. This is doubly true when you consider how decades of American propaganda have invariably portrayed socialist leaders as dictators.

                  The phrase immediately poisons the well. Unless you very carefully explain the theoretical background before uttering it, your audience unthinkingly rejects it, and now you're playing defense and getting into semantics instead of making a positive case for how a leftist state should be run. And the phrase adds nothing besides a link to other theory (that your audience hasn't read) -- something like "proletarian democracy" conveys the exact same idea without any of the baggage.

                  If the choice is between sticking to verbatim quotes from century-old texts or rephrasing the ideas to maximize their appeal to a modern audience, that's a no-brainer. Lenin himself (and Mao, and others) didn't just stick to what had been written before them; they rephrased the fundamental ideas to better communicate them in their time and place. We should follow suit.

                  • Des [she/her, they/them]
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                    4 years ago

                    Power imbalance reversal. Democratization of the working class. Working class full participatory democracy (?) Socializing (or socialization of) democracy (i always liked this one cause it subverts democratic socialism a bit). Workplace democracy.

                • CountryRoads [fae/faer,it/its]
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                  4 years ago

                  No, but there's nothing wrong with wiedling "authority". Sorry for saying a word from The Bad, Cringe Place with the Nazis and getting you in a tizzy.

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

                    Sorry for saying a word from The Bad, Cringe Place with the Nazis and getting you in a tizzy.

                    ARE YOU TRIGGERED ARE YOU TRIGGERED ARE YOU TRIGGERED ARE YOU

                    No, but there’s nothing wrong with wiedling “authority”

                    Authoritarianism doesn't just mean wielding authority. If it did, then literally any form of hierarchy would be authoritarian, and it would be a meaningless term.

                • CountryRoads [fae/faer,it/its]
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                  4 years ago

                  Ensuring that the power of the masses always supercedes and crushes the power of the bourgeois is inherently democratic.

                  No, it's not, and that's OK. "Democracy" is a fucking sham.

      • moist [any]
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