United States Politics Thread 47

[Travis B.]

Bahahahha. It absolutely is not.

Going by official names, are we? So the Nazis were socialist, because it's in their name?

not name, no. besides, it's not the marxist-leninist republic of china. i think the five year plans, the public ownership of land, the party control over corporations, banking, politics and over the billionaire class [as opposed to capitalism, where it is capitalists that control those things], are better indicators of china being socialist than its name.

The PRC is a mix of state capitalism and private capitalism -- it is not Marxism-Leninism in its current form.

I think it's tempting for leftist regimes to turn to autocracy, using the arguments you outlined (and they may even be sincere).
Then what have you won? The USSR may have "worked", that's true. Was it in any way a good place to live?
China ultimately gave up everything, and while supposedly marxist-leninist it's as tough a capitalist regime as any, even tougher.

Autocracy is antithetical and even lethal to socialism, at least the way I see it. There's simply no way to report problems or condemn abuse.
The end result is China, an horrid caricatural version of capitalism. Is the 996 system of working hours anything but exploitation of the worst kind?

i know you said it rhetorically, but the ussr probably wasn't the hell-on-earth people often portray it as. russians polled on this don't 90% say it was worse than what they have, it's more like 50 to 25% that say capitalism is better. the standard of living in the union went up after the revolution, not down. plus China didn't 'give up everything'... though, granted, it did give up a lot. the chinese have even less vacation days than we do in chile.... though still more than freedom loving americans.

The Soviet Union of the 1980's was indeed much better than the private capitalism of the 1990's. (If one thinks otherwise, look at statistics of mortality in the Soviet Union of the 1980's versus the Russia and the post-Soviet states of the 1990's.) We are not seeking to claim otherwise. Yet that does not excuse the many abuses of Stalinism, including the purges, the gulag, mass deportations of entire ethnic groups, and so on.

I get the idea that autocracy isn't a good thing, but i mean... realistically, i don't think there's a choice. zero libertarian socialist revolutions have "worked" in the more basic sense of not collapsing immediately. doesn't mean they can't, but it doesn't look good. and you observe the same with liberal regimes: the first liberal states that emerged from feudalism weren't very libertarian either.

Libertarian socialist revolutions have failed typically because they during civil wars up against insurmountable odds. Anarchist Ukraine was sandwiched between the Bolsheviks and the Whites. Anarchist Catalonia was crushed by both the Nationalists and the Stalinists.

[Raphael]

I was born, grew up, and have spent all my life so far in a society and economy which, during that time, for all its flaws, neither starved nor murdered large numbers of the people living in it. So, in other words, I somehow managed it to live my life so far with neither the horrors of post-Soviet hypercapitalist Russia nor the horrors of the Soviet Union. But there are people who seriously argue that I have to pick one out of these two types of horrors, and that, if I oppose one of them, it must mean that I support the other.

So I think it's perfectly reasonable that, when people try to make me make that choice, I respond with "Why not neither?"

More generally, there have been many, many cases of mass murder and mass atrocities throughout human history, committed by many different people for many different reasons. And with basically all the better known and more recent ones among them, there have been, and still are, very smart or seemingly smart people who came up with many ingenious arguments for why these bloodlettings were really ok, or at least nothing that should be seriously opposed.

Traditional autocratic monarchies, transatlantic slavery, theocracies of various religions and denominations, Manchester capitalism, Soviet-style socialism/communism, colonialism of both the settler and the just-set-yourself-up-as-the-new-ruling-elite kind, postcolonialist dictatorships run by people who liked or still like to strike an anti-colonialist pose, Friedman-inspired dictatorships, fascism - they all had and still have their defenders. And as far as I am concerned, the works and words of these defenders are all invalid, because if a line of argument leads to the conclusion that a specific case of mass murder or mass rape is ok or sort of ok, then that fact, in itself, stands as a refutation of that line of argument - no matter how beautifully the line of argument might be constructed.

[Travis B.]

I personally arrived at anarchism as essentially such a third option, because I recognized the faults of both capitalism, in its various forms, and big-C Communism, in its various forms, while at the same time seeing parliamentarian democratic socialism as having the problem that if politicians could vote to give you socialism, politicians could also vote to take away socialism.

Of course, I no longer consider myself an anarchist, because of having come to recognize some of its limitations (e.g. the tendency of anarchists to believe that people will necessarily be benevolent if only capitalism and the state were done away with), but I still am very sympathetic towards many anarchist positions, and in particular I still very much believe in direct democracy from the bottom up, and that people cannot be trusted with authority over others.

[Torco]

not name, no. besides, it's not the marxist-leninist republic of china. i think the five year plans, the public ownership of land, the party control over corporations, banking, politics and over the billionaire class [as opposed to capitalism, where it is capitalists that control those things], are better indicators of china being socialist than its name.

The PRC is a mix of state capitalism and private capitalism -- it is not Marxism-Leninism in its current form.

isn't it ? like, isn't the point of leninism to have a vanguard party take control of state power and the means of production in order to effect the abolition of private property while fighting off imperialism and capitalist attempts at restoring the old order? this seems like what the chinese are doing. though they seem to be doing the taking control of the means of production and fending off imperialism bit first. they haven't abolished private property entirely, but it is much weaker than it is in any normal capitalism country.

The Soviet Union of the 1980's was indeed much better than the private capitalism of the 1990's. (If one thinks otherwise, look at statistics of mortality in the Soviet Union of the 1980's versus the Russia and the post-Soviet states of the 1990's.) We are not seeking to claim otherwise. Yet that does not excuse the many abuses of Stalinism, including the purges, the gulag, mass deportations of entire ethnic groups, and so on.

very much agreed. but as i said before, we can't just tally the sins of communist regimes while ignoring the sins of capitalist ones, unless we're just married to communism bad capitalism good.

Libertarian socialist revolutions have failed typically because they during civil wars up against insurmountable odds. Anarchist Ukraine was sandwiched between the Bolsheviks and the Whites. Anarchist Catalonia was crushed by both the Nationalists and the Stalinists.

but that's the point, isn't it? okay, maybe libsoc revolutions just have had bad luck -it is statistically possible, since we don't have a lot of case studies- but it also might be, and it seems fairly plausible, that the fact that they were decentralized and so on made them unable to resist their enemies invading. the reds weren't in such a favourable starting position either, but they managed to fend off a bunch of attacks and ultimate establish lasting territorial control.

So I think it's perfectly reasonable that, when people try to make me make that choice, I respond with "Why not neither?"

well, if you have a better idea for a program of abolishing capitalism i'm listening, but barring that there is no "neither" option. the choices are always either status quo, and sticking with what you have, or revolution and trying something new: we can't opt out (okay, we can but that ends up being functionally the same as sticking with what we have).

I personally arrived at anarchism as essentially such a third option, because I recognized the faults of both capitalism, in its various forms, and big-C Communism, in its various forms, while at the same time seeing parliamentarian democratic socialism as having the problem that if politicians could vote to give you socialism, politicians could also vote to take away socialism.

I mean... i tend to agree, morally, that like, anarchism is probably the most moral political system out of those on offer, in a vacuum, but i'm not convinced we can jump to anarchism without first making it so that the entire world does not revolve around making rich people money.

[Travis B.]

not name, no. besides, it's not the marxist-leninist republic of china. i think the five year plans, the public ownership of land, the party control over corporations, banking, politics and over the billionaire class [as opposed to capitalism, where it is capitalists that control those things], are better indicators of china being socialist than its name.

The PRC is a mix of state capitalism and private capitalism -- it is not Marxism-Leninism in its current form.

isn't it ? like, isn't the point of leninism to have a vanguard party take control of state power and the means of production in order to effect the abolition of private property while fighting off imperialism and capitalist attempts at restoring the old order? this seems like what the chinese are doing. though they seem to be doing the taking control of the means of production and fending off imperialism bit first. they haven't abolished private property entirely, but it is much weaker than it is in any normal capitalism country.

It seems to me that the CCP has accepted this situation of having an authoritarian mixed-economy system as it stands and is mostly interested in perpetuating its power rather than advancing towards the ultimate goal of small-c communism.

The Soviet Union of the 1980's was indeed much better than the private capitalism of the 1990's. (If one thinks otherwise, look at statistics of mortality in the Soviet Union of the 1980's versus the Russia and the post-Soviet states of the 1990's.) We are not seeking to claim otherwise. Yet that does not excuse the many abuses of Stalinism, including the purges, the gulag, mass deportations of entire ethnic groups, and so on.

very much agreed. but as i said before, we can't just tally the sins of communist regimes while ignoring the sins of capitalist ones, unless we're just married to communism bad capitalism good.

Did I ever in this thread here excuse the likes of the US and its right-wing clients for their sins? And to respond to a comment mentioning the sins of Stalinism with effectively "but what about the sins of capitalism" is whataboutism pure and simple.

Libertarian socialist revolutions have failed typically because they during civil wars up against insurmountable odds. Anarchist Ukraine was sandwiched between the Bolsheviks and the Whites. Anarchist Catalonia was crushed by both the Nationalists and the Stalinists.

but that's the point, isn't it? okay, maybe libsoc revolutions just have had bad luck -it is statistically possible, since we don't have a lot of case studies- but it also might be, and it seems fairly plausible, that the fact that they were decentralized and so on made them unable to resist their enemies invading. the reds weren't in such a favourable starting position either, but they managed to fend off a bunch of attacks and ultimate establish lasting territorial control.

We don't have many examples of libertarian socialist revolutions to go off of, but in both of these cases the anarchists put up a damned good fight given the circumstances but were ultimately defeated.

So I think it's perfectly reasonable that, when people try to make me make that choice, I respond with "Why not neither?"

well, if you have a better idea for a program of abolishing capitalism i'm listening, but barring that there is no "neither" option. the choices are always either status quo, and sticking with what you have, or revolution and trying something new: we can't opt out (okay, we can but that ends up being functionally the same as sticking with what we have).

You simply dismiss libertarian socialism and democratic socialism here by boiling things down to an either-or between private capitalism and big-C Communism.

I personally arrived at anarchism as essentially such a third option, because I recognized the faults of both capitalism, in its various forms, and big-C Communism, in its various forms, while at the same time seeing parliamentarian democratic socialism as having the problem that if politicians could vote to give you socialism, politicians could also vote to take away socialism.

I mean... i tend to agree, morally, that like, anarchism is probably the most moral political system out of those on offer, in a vacuum, but i'm not convinced we can jump to anarchism without first making it so that the entire world does not revolve around making rich people money.

The thing is that as soon as you put a Party in power their incentives favor them perpetuating their power indefinitely -- they never 'wither away', and in the long run they either collapse, with things reverting to private capitalism, or things ultimately become an authoritarian mixed-economy system.

[zompist]

The most interesting thing I've read in awhile:

An interview with James Stout

Basically, a comparison of anarchist or quasi-anarchist movements in Syria and Myanmar, with comparisons to Republican Spain and Minneapolis. How anarchists learn to fight, how they support nationality without oppressing each other, how they integrate women and LBGTQ people because they need everyone.

It reinforces Raphael's point-- that you don't have to choose between capitalist and communist dictatorship and genocide-- but maybe in an unexpected way, because centrism isn't the only alternative either. You can be radical and also anti-dictatorship, anti-genocide, anti-fascist.

The movements in Syria and Myanmar are basically forgotten by everyone, mostly on their own, and facing terrible enemies (like the Burmese junta and ISIS). It's not a path I'd wish for anyone. But they've also done far better than anyone expected.

[Travis B.]

The most interesting thing I've read in awhile:

An interview with James Stout

Basically, a comparison of anarchist or quasi-anarchist movements in Syria and Myanmar, with comparisons to Republican Spain and Minneapolis. How anarchists learn to fight, how they support nationality without oppressing each other, how they integrate women and LBGTQ people because they need everyone.

Good article -- I read some of it and hope to read the rest when I get the chance.

It reinforces Raphael's point-- that you don't have to choose between capitalist and communist dictatorship and genocide-- but maybe in an unexpected way, because centrism isn't the only alternative either. You can be radical and also anti-dictatorship, anti-genocide, anti-fascist.

Precisely. It just happens that it is in the interests of both capitalist and big-C Communist authoritarians to promote the view that the only real choice is between the two, with milquetoast centrism in the middle. Libertarian socialism and libertarian socialist-adjacent democratic socialism* provide a real alternative to both of them, which both capitalists and Communists try hard to suppress specifically because it goes against both of their interests so strongly for that very reason.

* e.g. council democracy, as opposed to parliamentarian democracy

The movements in Syria and Myanmar are basically forgotten by everyone, mostly on their own, and facing terrible enemies (like the Burmese junta and ISIS). It's not a path I'd wish for anyone. But they've also done far better than anyone expected.

I've heard bits about them, but unfortunately have not heard as much as I should -- thanks for the article.

[Ketsuban]

isn't the point of leninism to have a vanguard party take control of state power and the means of production in order to effect the abolition of private property while fighting off imperialism and capitalist attempts at restoring the old order? this seems like what the chinese are doing. though they seem to be doing the […] fending off imperialism bit first.

Wow! I had no idea they were planning to allow the Xizang and Xinjiang Autonomous Regions to become fully independent and sovereign Tibetan and Uyghur states and hand control of the Nei Menggu Autonomous Region over to Mongolia. I must have completely missed the news posts about that, can you share them with me?

Anti-imperialism begins at home, or "fending off imperialism" is like standing in a swimming pool while keeping your skin dry.

[Travis B.]

isn't the point of leninism to have a vanguard party take control of state power and the means of production in order to effect the abolition of private property while fighting off imperialism and capitalist attempts at restoring the old order? this seems like what the chinese are doing. though they seem to be doing the […] fending off imperialism bit first.

Wow! I had no idea they were planning to allow the Xizang and Xinjiang Autonomous Regions to become fully independent and sovereign Tibetan and Uyghur states and hand control of the Nei Menggu Autonomous Region over to Mongolia. I must have completely missed the news posts about that, can you share them with me?

Anti-imperialism begins at home, or "fending off imperialism" is like standing in a swimming pool while keeping your skin dry.

Marxist-Leninists only take 'anti-imperialist' stances when it is politically convenient for them to do so, and in general are very often perfectly imperialist in power (cf. the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc).

[malloc]

Marxist-Leninists only take 'anti-imperialist' stances when it is politically convenient for them to do so, and in general are very often perfectly imperialist in power (cf. the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc).

Quite. Although they usually engage in considerable hair-splitting to explain why their invasions and oppression of ethnic minorities don't count as imperialism.

[Travis B.]

Marxist-Leninists only take 'anti-imperialist' stances when it is politically convenient for them to do so, and in general are very often perfectly imperialist in power (cf. the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc).

Quite. Although they usually engage in considerable hair-splitting to explain why their invasions and oppression of ethnic minorities don't count as imperialism.

The Stalinists like to conveniently ignore Stalin's mass deportations of ethnic groups within the Soviet Union.

[Raphael]

Another neat trick they use is to compare the ugly reality of Western countries with the lofty official aspirations of Stalinist countries. E. g. The USA is based on genocide, while the Soviet Union had various constitutions committed to many good things.

Torco: As I pointed out, I've spent my entire life so far under a status quo that is neither. At least in the sense of being neither a post-Soviet Russian or Pinochet-era Chilean version of capitalism, nor a Soviet version of socialism/communism. So either I've only hallucinated my life so far, or there is a neither option.

[Ares Land]

The most interesting thing I've read in awhile:

An interview with James Stout

Thank you, that was very interesting. I think the Rojava is a very interesting example, perhaps an attractive alternative model (except for having to fight war atrocities, of course).

[Torco]

Imperialism is not having provinces with separatist movements. is bolivia imperialist?

Another neat trick they use is to compare the ugly reality of Western countries with the lofty official aspirations of Stalinist countries. E. g. The USA is based on genocide, while the Soviet Union had various constitutions committed to many good things.

Torco: As I pointed out, I've spent my entire life so far under a status quo that is neither. At least in the sense of being neither a post-Soviet Russian or Pinochet-era Chilean version of capitalism, nor a Soviet version of socialism/communism. So either I've only hallucinated my life so far, or there is a neither option.

social democracy is still capitalism. like, social democratic countries are more pleasant to live in than, say, the US, but they're still capitalist in almost all significant respects. and we can't have a global capitalism where all countries are social democratic, where would the cheap raw materials and labour come from? it's not an accident that the US and other imperialist countries insist on keeping the third world poor, undeveloped and laissez-faire. for every norway you need a paraguay.

[Travis B.]

Imperialism is not having provinces with separatist movements. is bolivia imperialist?

Imperialism can be internal and not external. Tell me that the US was not imperialist internally after it de jure extended to the Pacific, really...

Another neat trick they use is to compare the ugly reality of Western countries with the lofty official aspirations of Stalinist countries. E. g. The USA is based on genocide, while the Soviet Union had various constitutions committed to many good things.

Torco: As I pointed out, I've spent my entire life so far under a status quo that is neither. At least in the sense of being neither a post-Soviet Russian or Pinochet-era Chilean version of capitalism, nor a Soviet version of socialism/communism. So either I've only hallucinated my life so far, or there is a neither option.

social democracy is still capitalism. like, social democratic countries are more pleasant to live in than, say, the US, but they're still capitalist in almost all significant respects. and we can't have a global capitalism where all countries are social democratic, where would the cheap raw materials and labour come from? it's not an accident that the US and other imperialist countries insist on keeping the third world poor, undeveloped and laissez-faire. for every norway you need a paraguay.

The crimes of capitalism do not excuse the crimes of big-C Communism and vice versa, and as we have discussed in this thread there are alternatives to both of these which the partisans of both like to conveniently ignore at best and ruthlessly suppress at worst.

[zompist]

Imperialism is not having provinces with separatist movements.

Oh, the PRC is not imperialist because it inherited the provinces of the Chinese Empire? So the French Republic was not imperialist because it inherited the worldwide colonies acquired by the kings?

Do I have to remind you that the PRC invaded Tibet? Then brought in Han settlers to create a numerical advantage. When Israel applies the same strategy in Palestine, somehow you don't like it.

Believe me, I'm not reflexively anti-PRC; you just bring out this stuff because you insist on untruths and hypocrisies about China. Xi has a lot more in common with Putin and Trump than he has with Karl Marx.

[Travis B.]

But but but Actually Existing Socialism!

[Ketsuban]

Do I have to remind you that the PRC invaded Tibet? Then brought in Han settlers to create a numerical advantage.

Also residential schools for Tibetan children, which I would expect any USian or Canadian with a familiarity with their country's history of imperialism to recognise.

[Travis B.]

But but but Tibet was feudal, and those ungrateful Tibetans should have appreciated being liberated by the benevolent CCP!

[rotting bones]

There are also "leftists" supporting indigenous identities against Westernization, and Muslims are a flagship minority behind this cause.

Do you feel that indigenous people should give up their culture and Westernize or am I misunderstanding your post?

Boarding schools against parental consent and so on must be abolished. I also support education and signage in minority languages, no matter how small. Otherwise, I'm a proponent of cosmopolitanism like Nazrul. I'm not offended by "deracination" as such. (Yes, I've read multiple complaints about it from progressives.) I don't think leftists ought to care. It's an astroturfed distraction from the cause of fighting oppression. Everyone should chant in Sanskrit, do their alchemy in Arabic and write their Arthurian legends in Welsh. Personally, I don't think humans have any culture, and they shouldn't be brainwashed to pretend that they do. I know this contradicts everything everyone has said in my lifetime, but I don't have enough faith in the sanity of 21st century humanity to believe in the evidence of their senses.