So, I’m not cool with genocide. Not cool with that at all. Even if they are landlords. I’m much more in favor of reeducation centers, personally. I’m against the death penalty on moral grounds. I believe that everyone deserves a second and third chance.

With that said, economically, I consider myself to be anarcho-communist or communalist or “left-communist” or whatever the fuck you want to call it.

But apparently all of that makes me a lib, and not welcome on the left? Is that correct?

*edit: I’ve now been banned from LemmyGrad, so yeah, that kind of confirms it. You guys are morons. Or a PsyOp meant to forever impede any sort of sea-change towards socialism.

  • GuyDudemanOP
    2•1 year ago

    I appreciate you taking the time, I really really do.

    I don’t support killing all people who were ever a landlord.

    Then you’re definitely not a tankie! :-)

    In the middle of a revolution, we probably won’t have the available resources to “put forth the effort of changing their minds”.

    Granted. In the heat of battle, that’s true. Which is one of the reasons I’m not really in favor of revolutions in general, and take a longer-term approach.

    Most people won’t fight the ruling class just because “they’re evil and it’s our moral duty”, we tend to fight them because we are literally starving and being worked to death and alienated. To be able to care if they’re evil or not is a liberty that comes after we secure our means of survival. The ruling class don’t fight us because they’re evil and just decided they hate poor people, they fight us because we are a direct threat to their comfortable life.

    This is one of the reasons that Marx supported free trade. Because he believed that the only way to communism was through violent revolution.

    As an accelerationist move, it would behoove communists to support anarcho-capitalists in all politics and media, so that capitalism can more quickly reach its inevitable point at which most people are starving and finally willing to revolt.

    I really don’t like that idea. Because this guarantees even more suffering than just working now to gradually make life better for everyone.

    This is a challenge for re-education. How do you convince someone who used to be lazy and rich that they should join our dangerous cause instead of hate us and seek revenge for ruining their convenient exploitation of us?

    I never said that it has to be done immediately. We can hold them in solidary confinement in gulags until they’re ready to sit down and earn their freedom by learning the errors of their ways. Or they can sit there and stew. It may take them 20 years to come around, but eventually the probably will.

    This is why we see Lenin and various Chinese leaders openly saying “we need to allow capitalists in so we can learn their techniques and build our material resources”. An agricultural country can’t just fight the interference of the USA and its allies who had material interests in keeping the USSR and PRC as exploitable.

    I see that, and it makes sense given how much industrial espionage China is engaged in. I just feel like there are much more honest ways of building your industry than stealing the knowledge with which to build it.

    I think compromising those moral principles of honesty etc. is what sets us back in the eyes of those who are already suspicious of the left. It goes against literally everything we stand for, and makes us hypocrites.

    re: Redfash

    I think understanding the popular idoms of the language is important. When anyone, at least in America, thinks of the word “fascism” it basically means authoritarianism. It doesn’t matter what the motivation behind that authoritarianism is. Hitler’s motivation was well-intentioned, in his mind and the minds of his followers too. He didn’t think he was doing evil.

    • comfy
      2•1 year ago

      Hey, and I appreciate you taking the time and respect to have a fruitful discussion :)

      That’s a good point you made, I was writing this with the assumption that social change would be through a rapid revolution uprising, which (unless the bourgeois and their security just let it happen… unlikely, I’d assert) would imply mass violence.

      And while my impression is that Marxists (and certainly M-Ls) assume that is generally inevitable, there is evidence that it is not always the case, even with the transitional-state approach to communism: the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia came to power through a (uncontested) federal election. Sure, this was immediately post-WWII so the conditions can’t be assumed as typical, but it and some other example suggest that mass violence is not inherent for socialists to gain control, at least until resistance against them forces it (such as banning political parties and engaging in violent repression).

      I just feel like there are much more honest ways of building your industry than stealing the knowledge with which to build it.

      I personally don’t support the idea of intellectual property being valid. It’s artificial scarcity, especially relevant when it comes to technology and industry. It’s why we have life-saving drugs with prices arbitrarily raised 5456% (US$13.50 to $750 per pill) or 525% or the many other similar price gouging cases commonplace in the industry. Science should not be proprietary, it’s knowledge that benefits us all. Everyone should be able to use it.

      For an exaggerated example, Cuban scientists or a USA corporation developed a vaccine to a deadly disease, I wouldn’t think twice about whether it’s “honest” to copy that discovery. Letting thousands or millions of people die so a corporation can earn money off their employee’s work is completely immoral. And while that is extreme, the same concept applies to smaller things, like greener technologies and more efficient industries.

      I do acknowledge that copyright has a reasonable purpose under capitalism, but I certainly don’t support it to the extent it is now: copyright for up to a year makes some sense, 90 years after the author’s death is egregious and anti-social. But for materially-significant discoveries like medical and industrial innovation? That is all in the public interest. LibGen, the anit-paywall academic library, is completely justified in their mission and a huge benefit to humanity.

      When anyone, at least in America, thinks of the word “fascism” it basically means authoritarianism.

      And when they say socialism, (according to polls and common discourse) they usually mean capitalism with basic nationalised services like healthcare.

      So I am reluctant to excuse an idiom just because it’s popular. It trivializes important concepts and encourages an ineffective oversimplified view of history, which prevents us forming a model of predicting and understanding present events. At the very least, using those idoms in a political discussion is not appropriate. Even if it weren’t used as a pejorative, it’s still confusing terminology that contradicts the expected meaning of fascism in the context.

      • GuyDudemanOP
        2•1 year ago

        I personally don’t support the idea of intellectual property being valid.

        Totally with you on that! Especially when it comes to medical science and technology. I also agree with you on copyright.

        I am reluctant to excuse an idiom just because it’s popular. using those idoms in a political discussion is not appropriate.

        You’ve got to speak the language of those you’re trying to communicate with, though.

        Granted, since I’m speaking with people like you, who are educated in the vernacular of politics and history, I should probably know better than to use the common vernacular, because it just leads to misunderstandings like this, and people trying to nitpick and split hairs.

        It’s like saying “oh, he’s a dickhead” and someone coming back with, “Wait wait wait, no, he’s not a dickhead. He’s an ignoramus! There’s a huge difference! And until you know the difference between a dickhead and an ignoramus, and have a master’s or doctorate in insultology, I refuse to engage with you. Banned.”