Comment on The pipeline
Microw@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Ah yes, famously socially progressive Stalin
Yeah. Tankies always forget you can’t have socialism without democracy, and either no government or a government that is strictly from the bottom up, and fascists gladly play along with that facade as it works in their interests.
“Authoritarian communism” is an oxymoron.
And not an “emphasis” kind of oxymoron like “bittersweet” or “impossible solution”, or a “poetic” kind like “living dead”.
An “absolutely impossible” kind of oxymoron. like “married bachelor” or “squared circle”.
“Authoritarian communism” is an oxymoron.
The definition of “Authoritarianism” seems to be bound up in the libertarian view of free markets versus unfree governments.
There’s a book I like called The People’s Republic of Walmart. It describes how much of the Command Economy practiced in the 60s and 70s by “authoritarian” socialist states was picked up and integrated into the corporate model in an effort to improve efficiency of supply chains and reduce the cost of industrial manufacturing. Walmart’s vertical integration follows a model that any Socialist government would laud. It just hordes the surplus for shareholders, at the expense of its employment base.
When the Socialists were making cars in Yugoslavia with a highly efficient regional distribution of manufacturing and assembly, it was horrifying infringement on the rights of the business community. When Ford and Nissian picked up on these practices and imported them to the US and Japan, it was The Miracle of Free Market Innovation that delivered huge returns to investors.
Liberals love to cringe and wring their hands when they hear about Lenin’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. After all, how can we be free if worker’s council get to dictate our housing stock or our employment opportunities or our transit corridors or our retail inventory? But they’re utterly blaise about living under an economy whose function is dictated by a handful of corporate boards and banking executives making all the same decisions because… freedom?
It’s not a dichotomy. Capitalism inevitably leads to oligarchy, and oligarchies are just authoritarianism rich people being the ones opressing the people. Both China and Russia ended up as oligarchies too, even though they started claiming to be ‘communist’.
A way to prevent authoritarianism is the division of powers, but that only works until the enemies of the people work together to take over all divided powers.
The only system that has proven to work in the public’s best interest so far is social democracy. But even that is hanging by a thread, as it requires higher levels of public education and better control over corruption to maintain.
Soviets removed the “proletariat” from the dictatorship very quickly. About the same time when Lenin decided he didn’t like losing elections or having any sort of political opposition whatsoever.
Soviets removed the “proletariat” from the dictatorship very quickly.
That’s the western liberal line, certainly. The victory of the Leninists and Maoists transformed oppressed into oppressor by virtue of no longer having an aristocracy capable of oppressing them.
About the same time when Lenin decided he didn’t like losing elections
The elections failed to deliver the promised reform. Their biggest promise on taking office was to exit the war and withdraw the troops. And the first thing the Mensheviks did was double-down on defeat. Milyukov’s refusal to exit the Eastern Front kicked off a protest half-a-million men large, right in the heart of the Russian government.
The next three months saw the elected government ordering police into the streets to slaughter hundreds of the people who voted for them. They topped it off by bombing the Bolshevik offices and chasing Lenin back underground for the unconscionable crime of leading peace marches. Bolshevism surged in popularity the following month, to the point that General Lavr Kornilov threatened to bring troops into the city to conduct a full pogrom. Only mass defection within the lower ranks of the military spared Petrograd from an outright holocaust.
This is the democracy you’re defending? Christ. No wonder so many liberals seem perfectly content to see the modern wave of college students being disappeared by ICE.
But if we dislike those corporate policies, does that mean we also dislike the socialist policies they are mimicking?
Are you complaining about the efficient supply chains and low cost-per-unit of production?
Or are you complaining about the high degree of profit-taking and the denial of public benefits to the working class?
Yeah, the guy who thought a ~10 year break in genociding lgbtq people was “a bit much”.
It’s not gay if you’re on top- heir to the Romans Stalin
TwoBeeSan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Stalin was a misunderstood man on the search for bolshevic boypussi