this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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My views fall mainly under progressive, between liberal and far-left. I believe we should cap wealth at a billion dollars, and use the surplus capital for alternative energy infrastructure.
That’s far too progressive for liberals, yet I’m not on board with the “burn it all down and let a socialist utopia rise from the ashes” perspective of the far-left.
There are plenty of people on the left that hold non-centrist views, who would also not be considered far-left.
There is no "burn it all down and let a Socialist utopia rise from the ashes" perspective on the far-left, and I say that as a Marxist. Anarchists wish to build a new society out of the shell of the old, from within, while Marxists advocate building up dual power. In neither case do leftists believe in rising from "ashes," but building up and replacing the current system.
too many misunderstand anarchy to be about destroying structures that exist. many of them are doing a pretty good job of that to themselves already, and the ones that are left would rather slaughter us than disarm. it's the final throes of a dying beast. too dangerous to throw more lives at, but nature will run its course eventually.
so we (anarchists) instead create structure to survive where we are, with the goal of directly helping people help each other, aiming to grow past existing power structures. it has been surprisingly possible to do a lot of praxis without even firebombing a second Chipotle
Two points:
I don't know how you combat climate change if you refuse to touch the existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
I don't know how you address mass incarceration if you won't dismantle these massive organizations designed to surveil, arrest, and extort poor and homeless people at the scale we operate.
I don't know how you address greedflation and wage theft on a national scale if you don't touch the banking system, you leave in place these huge wage disparities, and you permit privatized industry to control all our critical natural resources.
When we talk about this kind of institution going away, we're talking about creative destruction. Clear space for Green Energy. Establish real civil rights and social justice, rather than a trillion dollar pack of mall cops guarding the richest people's property. Build an economy that allows public collaboration rather than industrial rent seeking.
That's not even utopian. It's just a step forward from capitalism.
Yeah, I haven't really been able to make sense of all the tailism and accelerationism happening on .ml and hexbear. I don't know how we've gotten to the point where stanning a bunch of right winged authoritarian countries is a form of anti-imperialism.
Unlike anarchists, MLs don't really have a practical plan to get from the here and now to their socialist utopia. All they can do is wait for the collapse of the current society and hope that the subsequent radicalization will lead to them being the vanguard. However aside from the fact that vanguardism (and as an extension, ML) has been an abject failure, they can't cause that collapse, so they do accelerationism instead.
The only rational approach to change this world is anarchist prefiguration which is the opposite of "burn it all down".
Any idea where their current definition of imperialism is being grafted from?
I know they use a lot of language from world systems theory, designating America as the imperial core. However world system theory specifies that it's only a way to analyze global trade, and that global trade is strictly defined by capitalism.
Any time I ask anyone on ml or hex, I just get downvoted and told that If I read lenin I would understand...... But fucking lenin defined imperialism as a competition between Great powers, not a war between peripheral states against the "imperialist core".
Is this all coming from some fucking streamer I don't know about or something?
Lenin didn't define Imperialism as "competition between great powers," just that that was a side effect of the division of most of the world among the Great Powers. The actual definition of Imperialism by Lenin's analysis is better simplified as export of Capital to the Global South to hyper-exploit for super-profits, like what Coke for example does in Columbia. The reason multinational corporations produce in the Global South is because they can weild their power to keep wages low and profits higher by selling back in the Imperial Core.
Ah, yeah, they don't read theory written after the 1970s. I wouldn't try to reconcile it with anything written afterwards.
Well the crazy thing is, I'm starting to think they don't read anything but reductionist interpretations made by their fellow shit posters.
A lot of the language they use are terms made by liberal academics made to critique neoliberal policies in the Regan era. They just ignore the rest of the theory they don't agree with, and then claim it all as Marxist Leninists, despite it being antithetical to actual ML writing.
My main take on Tankies is that they're sort of stealth right-wingers.
They believe that the way to communism is through a strongman dictator who will enforce the communism from the top.
If you sub out communism for "social hierarchies" then you have the right-wing wet dream. Because Tankies worship Lenin, the man who betrayed the revolution to seize power after he lost an election. It was the first and last free election in Russia, and Lenin ignored the results because he lost. Then he spent the rest of his life pretending that an authoritarian dictatorship could ever be communist.
No, true communism needs to come from the people. Extreme democracy is the way.
If you replace "the abolition of social hierarchies" with "the reinforcement of social hierarchies," it makes left wing people sound just like right wing people 🤔
My point is that Tankies love dictators and hate democracy.
Which is the antithesis of communism.
Communism is much closer to a worker co-opt than anything else.
Dictators who seize the means of production are just kings in disguise. That's Feudalism. It's a step backwards.
Turns out when 90±% of people when put into power have to grapple with their own morals and outside pressures they conform to what the situation calls for right then or use it for their own gain. You're never going to get to utopia when there's so much disfunction and division in the human experience
To me the tankies are almost like nazis in that regard that they want to force the issue and create a new world RIGHT NOW. When there are going to be a billion different factors that are going to counter act that notion and with prejudice
I’m much more of a “be the dandelions cracking through the pavement” far left than a “burn it down” type
How did you come up with 1 billion dollars as the cap? You know that's an absolutely absurd amount of money right?
i’d much rather be arguing about what the cap should be than be arguing if there should even be a cap
I chose it arbitrarily. Specifically, I think we should look at historical economic trends, admit that Trickle-Down/Voodoo/Horse and Sparrow economics yielded inequality, redistribute the surplus, and implement equitable economic policies.
But what are we going to do as a society if we don't label all people we don't like as a radical?
If I’ve learned anything from the collective left, it’s that unity comes second to bickering.
Wedge posts like this don’t help.