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