Comment on The pipeline
MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 20 hours agoYeah. 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”.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
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?
rockerface@lemm.ee 14 hours ago
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.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
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.
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.
metaldream@sopuli.xyz 7 minutes ago
Ah right, democracy didn’t immediately solve problems so we should murder all political opposition and install a one party dictatorship where I’m conveniently in charge of everything.
Sounds like sometime that totally benefits “the people”.
rockerface@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
Yes, yes, any criticism of Bolsheviks is made up by The West™
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 16 hours ago
But if we dislike those corporate policies, does that mean we also dislike the socialist policies they are mimicking?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
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?
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 6 hours ago
Efficiency and low-cost comes with baggage too, so I guess both in a way. Efficiency and low cost good, but what is required to achieve those often sucks
The second thing is undeniably bad