Comment on Why is lemmygrad not a banned instance anymore?
jbloggs777@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months agoI appreciate the effort you put into this comment, thank you.
It does however appear that communism is fragile, with opponents having plenty of opportunities and encouragement to throw spanners into the works. Past examples seem to suggest that violence/force will always be required to enact change, which is going to be hard in any region where most people see themselves as doing OK, with food on the table, varying degrees of free expression, and opportunities for at least their children.
I suspect that the best hope of wider success of communist ideals would be to win the hearts and minds of people by having a functioning, peaceful example in the world - perhaps a future China - that can influence public opinion and policies elsewhere.
In the meantime, working to peacefully improve the current systems wherever possible seems much better, and using your feet where not is better for most.
AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org 10 months ago
I’d love for there to be a communist nation in the world. Except the US government won’t allow that. Chile democratically elected Salvador Allende a democratic socialist to be their president. And the United States responded on September 11 1973 (the irony of that date) by backing Augusto Pinochet a fascist who launched a military coup and established a dictatorship marked by his favorite tactic of throwing leftists out of helicopters, the source of one of the alt rights favorite memes.
Isn’t it funny how the CIA always is behind overthrowing attempts at doing communism and socialism well in South America Africa and Asia. And then we all sit here and say “See, communism just doesn’t work!”.
Violence and force is always necessary to extract change from the powers that be. Hell they use violence and force every single day to keep us in line so why shouldn’t we use violence and force to fight back? And you’re right people won’t want to do that when they are safe and cared for. That’s why we aren’t launching a revolution. Communists are instead attempting to organize people and build new (ideally horizontal) power structures so that when the system gets bad enough to mobilize we will be ready.
Allende is all the evidence you need that peacefully bringing about change has its limits. Allende didn’t kill people to get into power. But the fascists and their liberal allies sure killed people to keep their power.
jbloggs777@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
Thanks. The US has a terrible interventionist history in South America - I don’t think anyone can argue that. I feel that they have changed their approach a bit though. Less violence, and more reliance on international and regional organizations, along with “soft” measures like sanctions to maintain the status quo that helps to protect their national interests. Iraq was the major disappointment of my time - despite worldwide protests, the coalition of the willing moved in.
Nowadays, it mostly seems like the US’ enemies are those who position themselves as such. It will increasingly be proxy wars, with the US and their friends and partners providing a mix of carrots and sticks to potential friends and partners, in line with the principles of international law, like we see in Ukraine today.
Similarly, if a country doesn’t want to go that way, it should be free to do so - it cannot expect the same privileged access to markets etc., and there should be carrots offered for “good behaviour” like respecting human rights. Here I see the possibility of China offering an alternative with a protective umbrella for other countries. If respect for human rights is important on both sides, and there are options for citizens to migrate / vote with their feet then this could be a good result, reestablishing a bipolar world along with “value competition”.
China’s rise has been pretty peaceful, and gives me hope. Similarly, the EU continues to be a rich powerful bloc that engages in economic and value competition with the US, and manages to protect its people from some of the worst aspects of the US’ influence. I’d like a little more democracy and freedom back in the EU though … we’ve been slipping into tyranny in some ways (eg. some of the covid politics and resulting witch hunts, and their handling of the financial crisis and greece, putting politics ahead of solid economic advice).