Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
Ironic as I went the other way. I was a Communist when I got into FOSS and as I got older I realized I could never defend the historical record of Communism.
This is what happens when everything you know is based on vibes instead of actually reading any theory or history from primary source historians instead of third.
Not really sure what you’re trying to say here.
I’m saying I don’t believe you’ve ever engaged with communism. I don’t believe you’ve read a single book. I don’t believe you’ve even read a single pamphlet. I don’t think you could give me a simplified breakdown of what historical materialism is and I don’t believe you could tell me what the 5 basic classes are that marxists define, along with a simple 1 sentence description of their scientific definition. I don’t think you were a communist and I don’t think you know anything about the “historical record of communism” beyond what you have passively consumed from the far right wing fuckwads that you’ve surrounded yourself with and allowed to rot your brain. I’m saying that the confident manner in which you bullshit about these things is a severe personal failing.
All of these are 101 things that anyone who has actually engaged with the topic of socialism for more than like 1 single week would be able to answer instantly and easily.
I’m saying that your political opinions and knowledge of history is based on vibes that you have attained from the massive quantity of propaganda you uncritically consume and not from any actual meaningful knowledge.
Clear enough?
You’ve not looked into Communism too much have you?
Marx had the opportunity to see Communist movements rise in his own timeline. And he opposed the implementation of Communism in a Democratic manner. And wrote about it in his criticiques of the Germany’s Communist movements source. In his criticiques he lays out how he believes a transitional state should be laid out, how it should be organized. And later Lenin refers extensively to this blueprint in his written works and it’s clear to me upon reading that he truly believes what he says.
In my experience about almost every modern day Communist hear arguments made about the USSR not being based in Communism and have failed to even hear of this critique of the mythic Democratic Communism they believe I’m so much.
Read the critique, and given everything you know about human beings tell me honestly, do you truly believe a multi-generational dictatorship of the proletariat, led by you (or someone whom you’d champion), would really work?
I’ve been on the internet a very long time. But this is the first time I’ve seen a Communist (or anyone really) ague their position based on the vibes of the person their arguing against.
Yeah so you’re avoiding everything I said and injecting a completely different topic that you also don’t understand.
Marx’s critique isn’t with democracy it’s with bourgeoise-democracy. You would understand this if you understood even the basic bare minimum about marxist theory. All you are doing here is demonstrating that you do not understand the difference between what marxists refer to as a bourgeoise-democracy and what marxists refer to as a proletarian-democracy. Or if you prefer, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie vs the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx’s “opposition to democracy” that you are utilising for bullshit propaganda here is opposition to using the mechanisms of bourgeoise-democracy to achieve socialism (because they’re designed for the bourgeoisie and to produce outcomes the bourgeoisie want) and instead advocates for revolution to destroy that dictatorship-of-class and install a new democracy of the workers, a new dictatorship of class but one instead run by the working class (the vast majority) instead of the former ruling class (the bourgeoisie, the vast minority).
These are incredibly basic 101 concepts that, if you were a communist as you claim, you would already be aware of and understand. You were not a communist. You haven’t even read a pamphlet like the manifesto, let alone the Critique Gotha Programme that you’re linking to. I have though. And to anyone that actually HAS read these things that you’re pretending to have read you look like and absolute clown who is winging it.
Marx’s critique isn’t with democracy, it’s with democracy that disagrees with him.
I do understand the difference. The difference is that to transition from the former to the later, Marx advocates for violent revolution and the establishment of a dictatorship to “re-educate” the populace. It’s practically hand waved over by Marx and modern Communists, but it’s the most important part of the process. Who controls that dictatorship has all the effective powers of a dictatorship and has the ability to make life for the people they rule hell. Essentially Marx unironically created a worse version of Feudalism where there was no check on the power of the ruler(s) on the assumption that compassion.
Unfortunately, even in a post revolution environment; the working class will never voluntarily choose to rule in the fashion that Marx things they would. No matter the re-education instilled.
My interpretation of it is essentially Lenin and Mao’s interpretation of it, just with the benefits of historical hindsight. I imagine, a younger, more idealistic me in 1920s St. Petersburg would have been a proud Bolshevik with the utmost confidence in the party leadership to lead us into a glorious, worker led future. If that makes me a clown whose winging it; my only request is that I get some ranch dipping sauce so at least I can get my vibes right.
“Dictatorship” doesn’t mean the same thing when Marx uses it vs what you understand the word to mean. Marx is talking about a dictatorship of CLASS. IE a large group of people within society. In liberal democracy the “ruling class” are the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, the billionaires and millionaires. They are the ruling class because when they led the revolutions to overthrow feudalism they designed the new system so that they would be the ruling class. That’s how it works. A dictatorship of CLASS.
Marx calls for exactly the same thing. A revolution that overthrows the current ruling class and installs a new ruling class. When the bourgeoisie overthrew the monarchs and their aristocracy they installed themselves as the ruling class, Marx calls for overthrowing the bourgeoisie and installing the proletariat as the new ruling class.
This isn’t a downgrade to democracy it is an UPGRADE to democracy. The current system only produces the results that the bourgeoisie wants. Socialism on the other hand with the proletariat in charge produces the results that the proletariat want.
No it isn’t because your description above is fucking wrong. I’m telling you what Lenin and Mao’s interpretation is literally right now. This is basic as fuck stuff.
You’re acting like socialist countries don’t objectively provide a better quality of life than capitalist countries when compared at an equal level of development lmao. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/
Your understanding of any of these topics is incredibly vulgar. A warped and contorted understanding that you’ve only learned through extremely passive engagement with the topic.
This happened in Venezuela, Cuba, Russia (and in several of the Soviet satellite states), and China. In all of them but Cuba it was explicitly done by Communists in the name of Communism with the states goal of implementing Communism (Cuba was more of a Fuck Bautista thing that adopted Communism in the post).
Do you believe Democracy was “Upgraded” in those places?
I literally liked to Lenin’s interpretation. Lenin literally followed that interpretation. How is it not Lenin’s interpretation?
Because they don’t over time. The conclusion of WW2 gave us the ability to observe the development of nations over time split into two with one half being Communist and the other being Capitalist. West/East Germany, North/South Korea, pretty clear record there.
I think you may have meant to use a different adjective there.
Let me leave you with this. Do you without the benefit of hindsight in the 1920s would you have been a Czarist/Cossack or a Soviet? Would you have fled to Taiwan or stayed in China in 1945? Would you have fled to Florida or joined Castro in Cuba?
Can you honestly tell me that you in those environments would not have supported the Communist revolution?
You can support some of the ideas while disapproving the leaders whose greed made it fail… which is socialism in a way.
The ideas are why it failed. Thats the core problem. Marx believed he could build in essence a church of Communism that would be incorruptible zealots who would lead society to Communism. A dictatorship of the proletariat led by an enlightened few who could teach and reeducate the masses to live in productive harmony with one another. And that, for many reasons, never works.
Lmao source please? For the church/zealots-part. Also I don’t think you understood the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the way Marx uses language to get his point across. Maybe you should read more secondary literature?
** record of authoritarians that called themself communist.
nOt rEaL cOmMunIsM
You do get that Bad People don’t usually label themselves as such right? It would be like the Nazi party (unironically) labelling themselves as the Fascist Genocidal Aryan Elite Supremacists Party instead of National Socialist German Workers Party.
How many people do you think would support fascist, genocidal dictators if they outed themselves as such to begin with?
I agree on that, but that doesn’t mean that those who outed themselves aren’t communists. They were communists, and all of the attempts at a communist system has failed horrifically. I say this as a person who lives in a ex-communist country.
You’re not more Communist than Lenin. Read his letters and works (they’ve been translated to English) and tell me that’s not a man who truly believes in the things Marx said.
I think if we cooperate like our gentle cousins the Bonobos for a century or two we’d basically have Star Trek. Instead we (Americans) are spending 3x the cost of housing the homeless on hostile architecture and armed goons to raid/destroy their camps with the aim of making our metally ill & vulnerable as invisible as possible- while we slaughter animals we know are able to suffer & grieve as powerfully as any of our beloved dogs, en masse, at absurd environmental cost, washed and neatly sealed from any evident cruelty so they can be consumed or spoil, 50/50 with hardly a thought.
The concept of cooperation transcends any flawed man. We can do better than this but continuing to enable the psychopaths that got us here seems beyond impractical.
Communism isn’t about exegesis. It’s not about who understands the source texts or believes in the correct unadulterated virgin idea. There are many schools of communism and they have all changed with history in some way.
you don’t have to defend the history of communism-aspiring countries to be in favor of communism ;)
You don’t have to, but you should. Lenin and Mao practically worshiped Marx and they both attempted to implement his system faithfully to the spec he advocated for. And I know that viewpoint is somewhat controversial in non-Leninist/Maoist circles but I think it’s true.
What’s more I think the historical records of economic collectivism outside of Socialism and political Authoritarianism outside of Socialism are numerous and expensive enough to justify an opposition to Communism as a system.
I think the main realization that made me nominally support Capitalism is it’s performance in a “degraded” state. You can have the absolute worst scenarios (think Pinoche Chile) and Capitalism provides constant incentive to improve things and doesn’t seize up in the meantime. It continues to function even in the face of severe inefficiencies.