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when they say they're a communist (quokk.au)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/mop
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[–] [S] 41 points 8 months ago* (32 children)

And the Soviets sent us to the gulags.

China likewise treats us like shit.

But cool, one small player gives a shit. That’s about as much as the libs do 🥲 I will be fair though of all the "AES", Cuba is probably the only somewhat tolerable one.

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago* (31 children)

    It's a bit weird to compare the USSR to the west at a time when the west literally imprisoned and/or sterilized gay people.

    As far as the LGBT+ struggle in China goes, conditions simply aren't the sort that create radicals; you don't get stonewall and eventually LGBT+ protections if cops aren't actively harassing LGBT+ people. Oppression takes different vectors and they have a different path forward.

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  • [–] [S] 34 points 8 months ago (29 children)

    If the USSR was only as good as the West today, it's not worth simping over.

    If socialism takes redfash cops harassing LGBT+ people before they take revolutionary action against the state, it's not worth simping over.

    Abolish the state outright and embrace Anarchy.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Interesting take. In my mind, any project that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and given them self-determination despite near-constant existential attacks from capitalists is laudable. Like, obviously no communist state was/is perfect, but almost all of them were/are better than the contemporary capitalist states.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 8 months ago

    And to me that’s dishonest, because you have to add the “attacks from capitalists” clause or else you would also have to laud mercantilism/capitalism as well for lifting the standard of living from straw huts under kings and feudalism.

    What’s the laudable part, lifting standards of living or doing it while under attack. Because as far as I see it, the concern should be with the material conditions not the degree of difficulty.

    What’s even more laudable to me, is doing so without an overbearing brutal state oppressing the people on top of that. We know it can work as we have seen how people flourish both materially and socially under direct community rule whenever it has been tried.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (26 children)

    The USSR and China each brought hundreds of millions from barely subsisting to lifestyles comparable to the west within a single lifetime and made great progress on LGBT+ rights. Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the US despite the blockade and constant attempts at destabilization.

    You shouldn't compare the USSR to a fantasy utopia, you should compare it to the actual alternatives we've seen in reality, Tsarist and modern Russia.

    Anarchist projects have yet to manage step 0: Resist capitalist encirclement for more than like 5 minutes so we don't have any actually existing examples to study.

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  • [–] [S] 25 points 8 months ago (19 children)

    Let’s compare the USSR to itself, an authoritarian shithole that sent gay men to do hard labour.

    The Zapatista have been going strong for 30 years.

    Revolutionary Ukraine fell to Communist backstabbing.

    Historically the biggest threat to anarchist revolution hasn’t been capitalism, it’s been red fash communists.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (18 children)

    Zapatista

    The Zapatistas themselves say they're neither anarchism or communism, but their own thing.

    Historically the biggest threat to anarchist revolution hasn’t been capitalism

    Weird how you've been convinced the guys you literally need a revolution to displace is worth less of your energy than calling other people trying to do the same thing red fash.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 8 months ago* (17 children)

    Being your own thing and living by mutual consent is anarchist. Labels are ultimately irrelevant, actions matter.

    We need a revolution to displace any authority. Authority will never wither away on its own.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (16 children)

    any authority

    P sure you mean unjust hierarchies, your mom telling you to go to bed and the anarchist copelected community representative or whatever telling you you're not allowed to feed the bears in your backyard are examples of authority.

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  • [–] [S] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (15 children)

    No, I mean any authority.

    "Unjust Hierarchies" is Chomsky libshit take on anarchism.

    We want horizontal organisation, not top-down authority. Don't just tell me not to feed the bears, work with me, talk with me, educate me on why not to feed the bears.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (14 children)

    So like when your neighbor in Anarchistan keeps feeding the bears, causing them to overrun the town, is the rest of the town just supposed to tolerate it? How is society supposed to work without any kind of authority?

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 8 months ago* (13 children)

    Anarchistan? Is that implying the 'stan' prefix means some run-down place. That's really bordering onto some racist shit, and I'm already straining my tolerance for you as is.

    Believe it or not, most people are not going to want to invite bears into their backyard especially if aware of the dangers. If the town decides to make rules against it, they town can act on it and solve the problem. Anarchism is not do whatever you want, whenever you want. It's horizontal organisation and mutual consent.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    Anarchistan? Is that implying the ‘stan’ prefix means some run-down place.

    -istan just means "land of", I picked anarchistan because it had a ring to it and I was in Kazakhstan a couple months ago.

    Believe it or not, most people are not going to want to invite bears into their backyard especially if aware of the dangers.

    I picked that example because that happened when a bunch of libertarians decided to make their own town., though usually they dont get beyond 1 person scamming the rest.

    What if the woman who wants to feed bears donuts stops consenting to the town rules? Do they have the authority to stop or remove her?

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I know what it means. I also know it’s used by racist chuds to talk bad about places, and you were using it to highlight a town where bears would run rampant… Not a good look if you had no ill intentions.

    Libertarians are not Anarchists. Ancaps steal anarchist ‘branding’ to push capitalist bullshit. It’s like the Nazis calling themselves socialists, it means nothing and their ideology is not related.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    You're (deliberately?) bendng the definition of aufthority in order to score a point. You know that what you describe doesn't fit the anarchist critique of "authority".

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    I'm asking these open ended questions to give you an opportunity to explain what authority means within an anarchist context and how a community can deal with someone doing something that is potentially harmful to the rest of the community.

    score a point.

    If someone thinks anarchists complaining about communists instead of engaging with the systems that actually have power is silly, how do you think they'd feel about the reverse?

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    But anarchists oppose authority. In an anarchist utopia, there is no authority. Here's an explanation of the distinctions anarchists make

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    You didn't answer my question, but the thing you linked me suggests you don't think industrialized civilization should exist?

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    I didn't answer, because the question didn't make any sense.

    you don't think industrialized civilization should exist?

    Another term that you're probably misunderstanding in bad faith.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    I described a scenario where ordinarily we would use someone with a position of authority to deal with a problem. I asked you what the anarchist solution is.

    All you've done is accuse me of bad faith and tell me I'm not using definitions correctly without telling me what the correct one would be in these contexts or telling me literally anything about anarchy. Oh and linked a paper where a person says they don't believe children should be required to go to school and that Industrial civilization is simply unfit to nurture human life and then told me I must be misunderstanding what is meant by "industrial civilization".

    I am trying my best here, but you're not giving me much to work with.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    I asked you what the anarchist solution is.

    "The anarchist answer"™️ probably looks like a militia of delegates, woven into a process of restorative justice.

    Tap for spoilerAnd now you're probably gonna pull an Engels and claim that that's authority.

    without telling me what the correct one would be in these contexts or telling me literally anything about anarchy.

    That's not true. I shared an article explaining why your definition doesn't fit what we're talking about.

    Oh and linked a paper

    It's an essay.

    where a person says they don't believe children should be required to go to school and that Industrial civilization is simply unfit to nurture human life

    Called it!

    School is an institution that was introduced to prepare the children of the proletariat to work in industry. That's why going to school is mandatory in (most) capitalist countries.

    You better read up on what havoc industrialization wreaked on family condition. The natural urge of children to play and learn being surpressed in order to prepare them for capitalistic exploitation and sort them into the financial caste they're supposed to be in is something you condone?

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    Idk if it's smart to base a system pff the assumption that people always act in their own best interest, that's how we got where we are in the west.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    No it’s not.

    We have a system where we assume someone else is going to act into our best interest and vote for them.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    In practice, yes, but Keynesisn theory, what the west's political economic system is based on is fundamentally based on that assumption that people act in their own best interest. The whole invisible hand theory is also based on the same assumption

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  • [–] 19 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Wow yeah moders Russia! So modern! Soon modern toilet, indoor!!

    And being trans is considered a mental illness there, but you gotta simp for your fav dictator I guess.

    The USSR was a horrible aithoritatian dictatorship murdering millions of people, every western country got a better life than that hell hole lol. They even teamed up with the Nazis and started WW2, can't make that shit up lol. So progressive.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Wow yeah moders Russia! So modern! Soon modern toilet, indoor!! And being trans is considered a mental illness there

    My point is that modern and tsarist Russia are worse than the USSR; opposing the USSR is supporting the alternatives which were far worse.

    every western country got a better life than that hell hole lo

    Before the USSR they were peasants enduring regular famine, by the 50s they put a man in space. The 90s saw the largest drop in human life expectency outside of war or famine in modern history.

    They even teamed up with the Nazis and started WW2

    The USSR spent the lead up trying to ally with every single western country against nazi germany. Instead they all signed non-aggression pacts with nazi germany, and gave Nazi Germany and Poland Czechoslovakia. They even offered to invade Germany with 2 million men if the UK and France would join. Meanwhile the UK literally tried to send troops to invade the USSR during the winter war.

    The capitalist powers intended Nazi Germany and Poland to deal with the greater threat, communism. The USSR signing their own non-aggressing pact is the only way they were able to draw the capitalists powers in against Nazi Germany.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Oh yeah, the west is worse than nazis, gotcha. Lol.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    The west is full of nazis. after the USSR won WWII, the west welcomed the nazis in. The US and Canada gave a bunch of nazis a new home.

    Had the USSR gone stateless, it would've fallen immediately. It was under attack from inception. I'm seeing a lot of uneducated nonsense here. Communists being attacked for reading theory. Very west-like.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago*

    I am saying capitalists feel fascism is a solution to communism, and their countries have always been happy to work with fascists to fight communists. Hence why fascist Portugal was a founding member of NATO, none of the capitalist countries dealt with Franco's Spain, the dictatorships in South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, all of south America, etc.

    Meanwhile, fascists know communists are their biggest enemy.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago*

    This rationale holds for many nations under capitalism over the same time period.

    It in no way justifies the superiority of the model of transition from fuedalism to state-controlled centralized economies to state-controlled capitalism present in the USSR / China

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago*

    It’s a bit weird to compare the USSR to the west at a time when the west literally imprisoned and/or sterilized gay people

    You mean the whole fucking decade when it was not a crime? Between 1920 to 1930? Because after it was Article 121, straight to prison or asylum.

    Because in the same decade gays could have sex without going to prison in France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Belgium (and provably more, but I'm too lazy to check).

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