No, completely fair point! I think on a platform with a lot of Americans (currently locked in an election where many seem to consider the centrist candidate “too far left”) it’s good to call out the differences on the left that aren’t otherwise discerned.
Comment on Lemmy's gaining popularity, so I thought new people should see this.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 2 days agoYes, I hate to be “no true Scotsman”, but they are not actually leftists, just fan of a few dictatorships, some of which claim or used to claim to be socialist.
halm@leminal.space 2 days ago
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Eh, I disagree. Left isn’t “when good,” right isn’t “when bad.” There are bad leftists, and you’re looking at them, right there on .ml, grad, and hexbear. These morons actually believe not only that “those states would have dissolved themselves given the opportunity if it wasn’t for ‘western interference,’” they also have such hubris to believe that if they tried the same thing they’d actually achieve what none of them did in the past. They can’t grasp that their autocrats would never cede power either to usher in Communist Utopia™.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
It’s worth noting that when a Marxist says “stateless,” they don’t mean “governmentless.” The Marxist theory of the state surrounds classes, while the Anarchist theory of the state surrounds hierarchy.
When an Anarchist says they want a stateless society, they envision a complex web of horizontal communes, networks of mutual aid, like a spiderweb.
When a Marxist says they want a stateless society, they envision a world Socialist republic that has managed to fully absorb all private property into the public sector, which no AES state has managed to accomplish thus far.
The idea that Marxists are advocating Socialist states to dissolve into Anarchism is wrong, nobody claims that. What Marxists claim is that their notion of the state will wither away, leaving a classless government.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Actually users on .ml, hexbear, and thank god I’m able to avoid grad but probably them too, claim exactly that all the time. Might want to teach your own commerades instead of me, комиссар.
OpenStars@discuss.online 2 days ago
Just so you are aware, you are replying to a known troll. You will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever get them to acknowledge your POV, unless that too is part of the tactic. That’s just not how that works.
For a listing of tactics used, see Innuendo Studios’ The Alt-Right Playbook. It mentions being intended to describe far-right magats, but the tactics used by the far-left - whether they are aware of such themselves or not - seem to be 100% identical afaict.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Can you point to an example? I haven’t seen any Marxist claim that Communism would be devoid of central planning and hierarchy. If you can point them out, I will be more than willing to correct them, though I am fairly certain you are misinterpreting their words given that you made the statement that “Anarchists and Marxists want the same thing.”
kuato@lemmy.world 2 days ago
What exactly is the “that” that they claim all the time?
socsa@piefed.social 1 day ago
Right, and both of these ideas represent the same form of flawed modernist structuralism which has been largely supplanted by more contemporary theories which take a more pragmatic view on harm reduction as an iterative process in pursuit of post scarcity materialism. The entire problem is that so many MLs immediately reject any form of leftist revisionism which doesn't mesh with, questions, or even dares to reject the authoritarian traditions of Mao or Stalin as some kind of capitalist conspiracy which has infested western academia. This is as ridiculous as it is ignorant and seems to betray their underlying motivation not as one which seeks to uplift workers, but one which seems obsessed with some long defunct geopolitical rivalry. It's exhausting, and frequently very stupid, despite these people believing that they are some collective political ubermensch.
WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Really? I find libs way more interested in rehashing old Cold War arguments. They still reference Stalin and Mao all the time, like you are now, even though they’ve been dead a long time. Communists do advance leftist thought based on the conditions of each country, and usually that requires resisting US imperialism and yes, they of often make a lot of mistakes, but these are criticized or debated in leftist circles, but not usually among the libs, who rehash old, debunked arguments usually.
From what I’ve seen, most MLS support individual liberty but understand it’s curtailing in situations where countries are still the US. The US and the west are still the most powerful empires in the world and they’re still trying to destroy communism and do imperialism. That’s why they support Israel’s genocide. That’s why they keep trying to do coups in Venezuela every election year, why the US still embargos Cuba, why they still are trying to get countries to privatize their natural resources for foreign companies and they destroy the whole country if they don’t (like I’m Iraq or Syria), why they constantly try to yellow scare with China but don’t give a fuck about the wars Saudi Arabia starts with other countries, it’s why we have military bases in almost every country in the world. These things are still happening today, the US didn’t just start becoming good and non-imperialist or pro-communist and no one wants to be like the USSR when it turned into Russia, where everything was sold off to the highest bidder and quality of life fell off a cliff that’s only now just starting to recover again.