Especially over the past few years, this viewpoint seems to dominate over so many leftist spaces, and I believe it's part of what led to Trump winning the election. I don't particularly like the Democrats either, but so many refuse to vote for anything other than an impossible overnight jump to socialism.
Accelerationism isn't a policy, it's a coping mechanism.
"Actually, I love that things aren't going my way, because it'll all work out in the end" is what you say when you're down bad with no clear hope of recovery.
And complaining about acceleratism is just scapegoating. You're not in this position because a secret cabal of extremists is sabotaging your milquetoast efforts because they think losing harder is good.
Comrade, this time it’s really late stage capitalism comrade, trust me comrade. Revolution is imminent, the workers will rise up. / repeat for 150 years.
To idle along nicely, we need to reach about 800 revolutions per minute. So we need to increase our number of revolutions by about x1,100,000
(And I realise now I've inadvertently worked out that if I left my car idling for 24 hours, the engine would go through over 1.1million revolutions. Cool!)
Really, if there is a sudden turning point, where Eat The Rich becomes common thought, how long does it last? Is it over in a few days? Is it a literal class war going on for years? If the bottom 50 decides to take out the top 5, how long can it go on for?
Depends on the country. China was at war for decades, Russia had several revolutions before the final revolution, Cuba's took years, Vietnam's involved war against the US as well. There are no universal conditions for that.
Well if we look at China, Cuba, the USSR, Vietnam, Laos, you get invaded/bombed by America.
But also continue to work really hard, but now your labor goes to bringing yourself and a billion others out of poverty instead of further expanding the power of the bourgeoisie.
Building socialism, as has happened everywhere else revolution has succeeded. It's a long and difficult process, but it's real and possible at the same time.
Bingo. In my experience people hear "revolution is necessary" and tune out the rest. Expectations need to be grounded, organizing is boring yet necessary.
And tbh I think the more relevant thing that is pointed out here are those that call anyone doing any sort of electoralism/reformism liberals who are worthless. Which, yea, by itself isn't gonna fully fix society but I'd at least rather people suffer less in the meantime
Hate to say it, but I'd argue that this particular leftist sub-group can be ever worse than Christians. At least on paper, Christians are supposed to want to convert sinners and non-believers, and are supposed to work to do outreach to help people explicitly undeserving. The Christian enemy of the devil is effectively an abstract. Yes, there's the anti-lgbt+ bigots, but in my experience they are a minority despite their incessant loudness and overwhelming presence in the public eye.
This particular revolution worshipping sub-group of leftists though? They appear to overwhelmingly just want death and suffering for their "enemies". They have no plans to attempt to convert people and many are actively against even trying.
I can't tell you how much heat I've taken for suggesting that (at best) ignoring all the fuckers that voted for Trump and not trying to find any way to build relationships so you can turn them is a losing strategy.
It makes me sick that so very many people see violent and complete revolution where somehow they never have to deal with opposition voices ever again afterwards (read: purges and re-education camps, ideas I've seen positive unironic support for from this group a shocking amount) as a more viable and desiriable outcome than trying to understand and care for their misguided neighbors and family so they can turn them.
Just because your plan isn't technically genocide due to it falling on lines of political ideology doesn't make it less completely fucked in the head and reprehensible.
If your wishes for the future include "We have to be baddies so we can completely erase the worse baddies from existence and make our utopia" then I strongly suggest you need to reevaluate just about fucking everything in your life and ideals.
That's why they narrowed it to evangelical Christians. There is still your argument that they will try to convert you first, but boy if you don't, it's the same hate. I'd say the leftist hate is at least honest and doesn't try to camouflage it with "love the sinner" lies and cherrypicking from a guide book.
Leftists cherry pick from holy scripture aka. theory ad nauseam to build arguments to support any inhumane action.
The Christian „love the sinner“, „love your enemies“ is different. There you only need to profess your faith to be accepted in the community. Then afterwards the reeducation/indoctrination/conversion happens over time.
With tankies you go to gulag/reeducation/indoctrination first, and if you survive that you can maybe become a comrade. You will never join the party though. You remain irredeemable and a suspect counterrevolutionary.
This is just wrong from top to bottom. Revolutionary theory has always posited that revolution can only come from the large majority, even if we use methods like vanguard parties if the working class at large isn't behind it then it will fail. Every successful revolution has had working class education, organization, and agitation as its basis.
Revolution doesn't mean genocide. Historically, revolution has been less bloody than the systems that upheld pre-revolutionary society. Mark Twain has an excellent quote on this:
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
You mean, the paper that was inked to "allow" divorce & execution of a certain Anglo king's wives, or the "original" low-effort patchwork plagiarism of any/all folklore the ruling class could scrape together? Either way, that's some ironclad foundational document, there. 😝🤌🏼
I can’t tell you how much heat I’ve taken for suggesting that (at best) ignoring all the fuckers that voted for Trump and not trying to find any way to build relationships so you can turn them is a losing strategy.
Look I hate tankies, accelerationists, and purity testing among progressives, but generally speaking the great rural swaths of MAGA chuds are as much of a waste of time as tankies are. They're either completely deluded or sociopathically self-interested. There isn't any moral standing to demanding I go out and have a beer with my racist MAGA neighbor. Nor would that even be a tolerable course of action for me, he could literally die in a fire I'd feel nothing.
So... do you find extermination of these people is a more tolerable course of action than getting to know them?
This is a core point I'm trying to make here, and strive to make fairly often elsewhere. The "rural swathes of MAGA chuds" (keep drinking the 1%s rural vs urban division of the middle and lower classes why don't you) are a large enough group/voting bloc that they cannot simply be ignored.
It doesn't have to be you, but someone has to do something about this group. And I'm not coyly endorsing mass murder or sterilization here. I'm also not sitting on my ass telling others to do work I'm not doing myself.
You can resign yourself to try and just outlive them. You could just keep trying to outvote them every time, forever. Sad, but tolerable and entirely understandable, attitude.
You can come up with a large number of other ways that effectively amount to "remove their ability to vote", most of which would be violations of human rights or elimination of human life. These are the attitudes I find reprehensible, and shockingly fucking common.
Or we could all start making concentrated efforts to start treating people with god awful views as people where some amount of them might be able to be changed. Not as subhuman mosters (the term "chud" is pretty disgusting when you get down to it), as unredeemable fools, as non-entities (wouldn't care if they dropped dead), or at best as roadbumps to be driven over on the path towards the future.
The fact that so many people look around at their neighbors and see so many of them as just useless wastes of space is one of the most effective ways that those in power maintain that power. Keeping those lower than them squabbling among each other so they can't effectively organize against the people on top.
I'm not going to argue for some full overthrow of the concept of capitalism, but there is clearly a hell of a lot wrong. A lot of rot up at the top. Willingly and intentionally saying "but those people are so backwards that I could never work with them" is just a disgustingly elitist concept.
Go and punch the actual nazis. Call out "nazi bar" situations. People who literally want you and yours dead? Fire at will.
But those are levels of hatred that are far rarer than people pretend they are. Most people just want to get on with their day, and a lot of people against certain groups fold very quickly when someone they love turns out say, homosexual. That's not hypocrisy. It's an opportunity to help someone reflect on their biases. We all have them, stop putting yourself up on such a pedestal.
I've rambled enough, but I'll throw this in as a bonus:
The "rural flyover states" have been done so fucking bad by the federal government, by their local politicians, and by corporations for so fucking long that I can't help but see punching down every time someone starts in on the bullshit about "those stupid people out in rural areas". They deal with a lot of similar issues to poor urban areas, and the attitude of the entire fucking world in calling impovershed areas "the global south" should give us all pause, especially when these areas of the US are in no way limited to the former confederate states.
I was born in one of those states. My wife is from one of those counties in a larger state. We're both happy as hell to be out, but seeing what goes on there on a regular basis is terrible.
People talk about tent cities and rising amounts of homeless in major cities. No one talks about the towns that have had every industry pull out over the last 50 years and the homeless and drug abuse problems in them that are only exacerbated by there being literally no homeless shelters or clinics for 30 miles with almost entirely barren highway in between the few pockets of dying towns.
So… do you find extermination of these people is a more tolerable course of action than getting to know them?
False dichotomy. I never said I'd start the fire. I said if they died I'd feel nothing, not that I want to go out and start killing them.
The “rural swathes of MAGA chuds” (keep drinking the 1%s rural vs urban division of the middle and lower classes why don’t you) are a large enough group/voting bloc that they cannot simply be ignored.
I fucking live in the rural areas myself and I'm surrounded by mostly contemptible people. I'm not "drinking" anything.
And I can ignore them because there is nothing realistic that I can do about them with out suffering the absolutely massive waste of my finite time alive interacting with them trying to "turn" a small percentage of them less evil.
But you're right it doesn't have to be me. Could I go that route? Sure, but there isn't much in the way of ROI and I don't owe these people shit. I also can't endorse anyone else do so in my stead though either. I don't think I could with a straight face tell people to waste their own time if I can't justify myself doing it.
You can resign yourself to try and just outlive them. You could just keep trying to outvote them every time, forever. Sad, but tolerable and entirely understandable, attitude.
I mean, technically rural areas are going to slowly and naturally disintegrate economically. Which is good, but its not going to happen fast enough to meaningfully fix the problem in a time frame that matters to me. As for "outvoting", dude I'm really blackpilled on political engagement after Trump won a second time I don't even want to talk about voting anymore. I think we're all getting what we deserve. A very loud part of my mind is extremely vindictive and wants almost all of US voters to suffer even if it includes me at this point. In so far as is possible: we deserve it.
Or we could all start making concentrated efforts to start treating people with god awful views as people where some amount of them might be able to be changed. Not as subhuman mosters (the term “chud” is pretty disgusting when you get down to it), as unredeemable fools, as non-entities (wouldn’t care if they dropped dead), or at best as roadbumps to be driven over on the path towards the future.
I'm not even concerned with the world's future. We lost. I'm just trying to salvage whats left of my life after wasting so much of my time, mind, and body on politics. The only reason I'm still engaging with it on Lemmy still is because I'm at work with nothing else to do. The only reason I still engage with it elsewhere is algorithmic influence. I'm outside of this actively trying to escape politics as much as feasibly possible. I'm putting effort into me and my loved ones now to survive and thrive in the upcoming slow grind collapse. That's it.
Willingly and intentionally saying “but those people are so backwards that I could never work with them” is just a disgustingly elitist concept.
bonus ramble
You know, when I was younger growing up in mostly rural areas, I thought I was a worthless fucking idiot weirdo. I thought all my peers around me had their shit together and understood the world better than me. My peers noticed this and early life for me was fairly awful as a result. Redneck dipshit bullies that TBH I probably would smile at their death if I had learned of now-a-days but back then I thought I deserved it. I thought I was a loser and I just needed to keep my head down. I thought everyone else around me was more competent and put together. I believed this so firmly that I barely engaged with employment early on in my life as I thought the only way for me would be faking my abilities. I ended up barely getting a college degree which I also thought was a fluke. Hoping that just having the degree would "trick" an employer into hiring me for some decent paying but easy office job. Every interview I was a shaking insecure mess and I was stuck for a long time in that state we call "NEET".
Then I finally got a job and I finally started working and realized that holy shit: the people around me are actually moronic. I excelled in my job. Constant remarks from people in disbelief at my performance reviews. I literally had a performance evaluator tell me they had never seen anyone manipulate the UI the way that I did in the 7 years they worked there. At first I felt a blip of pride. Yet later I felt nothing but utter and total horror at this revelation. Not smug satisfaction. Not relief that I was actually smarter than I thought. Pride drained away. Just horror remained. Terror. Shock. Despair. And now bitter anger that I had wasted so much time thinking I was an idiot but that actually I was surrounded by people so stupid they barely managed to do the bare minimum of their jobs, but kept them because they were the bosses nephew or a good christian or vapidly likable or some similar shit. No one fucking tries.
I tell that story because the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump felt like that moment of horror in my life but a million times over. I had spent an absurd amount of time and energy on politics for about 15-20 years because I thought that people were capable of getting better because we lived in an age of abundant information. I joined organizations, I canvassed for Harris, I engaged with my rightwing family members and annoyed my boss and co-workers (risking my job). I hoped people were getting smarter about their own self interest and would start voting in ways that reflect that and but we needed to just dodge a second Trump term. I now feel like I've wasted my life on this. Time and effort I could have spent fortifying my own personal situation because most people are so painfully self destructive and stupid they act as a vortex and will drag you down into them if you let them. And I have been doing that. I'm done doing that.
These people do not deserve another ounce of my respect or time. I've spent too much of my life humbling myself and they almost never returned the favor. FUCK THEM. I'm getting out if it fucking kills me, and it will. No one is going to make it, but I'm going to make sure that on my ride towards the grave I enjoy my remaining chunk of life as much as feasibly possible and giving up on trying to help people who would never do the same for me.
So no, I hope rural communities crumble and everyone is forced to move into cities. People become sociopaths or religious idiots living out so spread out. Let it rot.
And not a single one is doing anything to actually revolt, just sitting online talking shit on people who are actively doing things because "incrementalism is useless, we need a revolution".
Sorry creating lemmy isn't starting the revolution, getting together a small amount of people online to talk about a parallel societal formation isn't starting a revolution, being civically inactive is not starting a revolution, buying a bunch of guns is not starting a revolution, talking about moving away from corporate tracking tools is not starting a revolution, switching from US to Chinese propaganda is not starting a revolution. As lame as all the gravy seal militias in the US are, they are numerous steps ahead on the starting of a revolution.
This is erasure of orgs like The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. One of the number one things leftists try to encourage people to do online is to join an org, because sitting around and talking is useless beyond the entertainment of it and perhaps learning more theory. We do organize IRL, I've met some wonderful people doing so.
Yeah and I am a member of the two that are in my area. They all subscribe to incrementalism as people on your .ml would put it, though. None of these are preparing a revolution, they would labeled terrorist organizations, and destroyed very quickly if they did anything, actually, radical, like the ALF/ELF, while being so visible.
And these are the behaviors I have seen so many people in online leftist spaces call useless, and incrementalist, as they are not preparing to actually revolt, they are working within the legal framework given to them by the capitalists. It seems you and I have a more closely aligned idea of change than a large amount of people who are on .ml. I also highly doubt most of these people will be able to deal with the violence then wish to incite with a revolution. I know how it is to kill, people, so I don't tell people they should.
The ones you posted have had their efforts mocked because they operate within the framework capitalists give them, and are not actually revolutionary. I have watched it happen, many there seem to think if there isn't violence, then nothing is happening. Also, no, I do not apologize for authoritarian governments, regardless of their alignment with capitalism. Nor do I support censorship of criticisms of places because they aren't aligned with NATO.
Revolutionaries don't say that anything less than revolution is worthless, we just point out how electoralism cannot solve the fundamental problems of capitalist society. We also don't say that revolution fixes everything overnight, it merely allows us to start building and developing socialism, with all of the difficulties and new problems we face when that happens. We also don't baselessly say revolution is coming any minute or anything, just that as capitalism decays it grows more and more likely, which is reflected in crisis and more violent reaction, like we are seeing with the Trump admin.
If anyone wants to develop a better understanding of Marxism-Leninism, I made an introductory reading list, feel free to check it out! Even the first 2 works listed will give you a much better understanding of our positions.
The world is sinful anti-democratic backsliding but we just have to wait until the Second Coming the Election happens when everything will be magically fixed. Any attempt to make actual progress makes you a lukewarm Christian tankie anything less than the Apocolypse the Election (which is definitely fair and free and democratic full of extremely popular and nice politicians) is completely useless. Also consuming certian media or makin certain lifesytle choices is sinful and unchristian makes you a tankie or a rebellious ineffective anarchist or a secret conservative.
The Antichrist walks among us, wearing a spray tan and a toupee. We must use our second amendment rights to throw off our oppressors and create the kingdom of Elohim on earth.
I consider myself libertarian, but unlike others, I think my political ideal would be terrible to implement overnight. I see libertarianism more as a direction than an end goal, and we should evaluate how far down that path we want to go.
I'm also Christian and don't believe in Rapture. Instead, I think that if Christ's second coming is literal (don't want to get into a theological debate), any changes will be a process. People won't evaporate or whatever, instead they'll be spared in some form from the wider unrest that will end up destroying the "sinners" or whatever. Things just don't happen all at once like that.
I guess for my personal ideal, the closest would be everyone all of a sudden deciding that their rights are important and worth fighting for?
Out of curiosity, since there aren't really any libertarians where I live, what makes you think that it's the best solution, and how do you intend to solve the two problems I percieve to be the big ones: Who else can properly manage public services and how do you prevent corporations eroding rule of law?
I believe the ends do not justify the means. The primary goal should be maximizing liberty, with some concessions for practicality.
For example, I believe in UBI, but not because it's a human right, but because you can't realistically come back from mistakes or harm from others if there's no safety net. The options for a safety net are government services (healthcare, food assistance, housing assistance, etc) or cash handouts (UBI or NIT). Government services come with inequity in access (whether you're approved can be up to discretion), whereas cash is simple and equitable. Outcomes may be worse with cash for some people (maybe they'll buy drugs or gamble), but that's because people are free to choose how they use it, and freedom is the ideal here. Ideally we don't need a social safety net, but because we do, it should be as simple as possible.
I happen to believe that freedom tends to create opportunity and improves outcomes, but that's not the primary goal.
Who else can properly manage public services?
I absolutely believe government should exist and will have a role to play in this. The goal should be minimal government involvement where competition can exist. Some things cannot be provided ethically by private, competitive companies, such as arrests, but many can.
Some examples:
electricity (and perhaps water) - generation is private, last mile is public; cities basically buy electricity from suppliers with the goal of reliability and price
roads - should be funded based on use, meaning vehicle registration taxes, gas taxes, tolls, etc, not subsidized with income taxes; this allows other methods of transportation to compete, like rail
police - split force into two parts, those that don't need extra authority (could be privatized) and those that do (cannot be privatized); the former can handle citations, trespass, etc, and can only detain, not arrest, search, taze, shoot, etc; the latter would be the current police system, but with higher pay and expectations
Basically, how can we solve problems with less government/force?
how do you prevent corporations eroding rule of law?
Limit what the legislature can do and push regulations and whatnot to court precedence. I trust juries way more than legislators. The attorney general's main job should be to sue companies and set regulations by winning cases and setting precedent.
Legislatures want reelection, so campaign donations have a lot of sway, and that may be more effective than actually doing what constituents want. There's a clear conflict of interest there, so no wonder wealthy companies get their way.
An AG, on the other hand, could be compensated based on winning lawsuits. If they win a lot, they could make a ton of money, perhaps more than whatever the companies they're suing would be willing to pay. Individuals could also bring their own suit, so a bad AG would just push it onto the private sector, which is a check on the AG. And it's not just companies that could get sued, but the regulator bodies themselves, so it's a check on corruption there as well.
The important thing is that regular people decide what's reasonable, not elected legislators. Legislators should set the big picture (pollution is bad), courts get into specifics (pollution value X is too much), and companies respond by making risk-adjusted decisions (test to make sure pollution is sufficiently under X to avoid lawsuits).
Not really, all it means is that as an ecomomy collectivizes and class distinctions fade as ownership of production is equalized, the need for strong institutions to uphold one class and oppress others fades too, as there would be no class.
As production and distribution are collectivized, class fades, and along with it the institutions needed to uphold the working class as the ruling class over capitalists, as there would be no capitalists. It doesn't mean the total erasure of administration and management.
It doesn’t mean the total erasure of administration abd management.
Except they become the new capitalists. They would develop an interest in maintaining their position as administrators and as administrators would have the means even if it conflicts with everyone else's interests. They'd become the new upper class.
Also, I'm surprised you didn't point out that the "withering of the state" was Friedrich Engels' idea technically. Not Marx.
No, they would not become the new capitalists. Collectivized production is based on allocation of labor, means of labor, and distribution of goods and services based on needs and in some cases "labor vouchers." An administrator in such a system is entitely distinct from a capitalist. Even in capitalism, managers are not capitalists and do not play the same role.
Capitalism is predicated on circulation of commodities, and constant reproduction on an expanded scale with profit as the motivator. Capitalists aren't capitalists because they manage, but because they use their money, cast it into the market like a net (buying means of labor and labor-power), and return said net with greater sums of money. Such a system is completely incompatible with collectivized production.
As for the withering of the state, Marx came up with the concept. Engels merely came up with the phrase.
I wasn't saying administrators would become capitalists in the strictest definition, but in the fact that they'd become a class distinct from the rest of the proletariat. You'd still have a state enforced hierarchical structure that has its own interests. It just wont be structured around facilitating various corporations and their profits. You can argue that's an improvement over capitalism, but to suggest the state will naturally wither away in such a system is naive at best and a manipulative lie at worst.
As for the withering of the state, Marx came up with the concept. Engels merely came up with the phrase.
I'm aware of what you meant. Administration isn't a class, and is not based on domination of the means of production through ownership, but is merely a necessary part of the production process. Further, the proletariat wouldn't exist either, proletarians are specifically wage laborers that sell their labor to capitalists, what we are discussing is classless society.
As for Marx and the concept of the state withering, I'm unaware of the first mentionings of it, but the idea can be found all the way back in Economic Manuscripts of 1844:
The first positive abolition of private property — crude communism — is therefore only a manifestation of the vileness of private property trying to establish itself as the positive community.
(2) Communism (a) still of a political nature, democratic or despotic; (b) with the abolition of the state, but still essentially incomplete and influenced by private property — i.e., by the estrangement of man. In both forms, communism already knows itself as the reintegration, or return, of man into himself, the supersession of man’s self-estrangement; but since it has not yet comprehended the positive essence of private property, or understood the human nature of need, it is still held captive and contaminated by private property. True, it has understood its concept, but not yet in essence.
Engels was great at writing and contributed a great deal to the development of Marx's thought, but even before co-writing Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx had already had a fairly developed conception of the negation of the state, as a student of Hegel.
I'm not much of a fan of Engels, as I noticed of what I've read of him that his works or works involving him tend towards subtly implying (or even explicitly stating) top down structures and authoritarianism is initially necessary to achieve communism in the ways he frames his analysis. Something that Marx seemed generally more mixed or neutral on when he wrote independently of Engels depending on how late in his writings you look.
I’m aware of what you meant. Administration isn’t a class, and is not based on domination of the means of production through ownership, but is merely a necessary part of the production process. Further, the proletariat wouldn’t exist either, proletarians are specifically wage laborers that sell their labor to capitalists, what we are discussing is classless society.
Regardless, having access to the controls that gives one power over economic value and the ability to exploit that power, even if its not through ownership its still under their control. For example, someone who runs a non-profit organization but uses all the grant money to build a clubhouse for them and their friends rather than something broadly socially beneficial is exploiting the people who actually generated the value for the grant money in the first place, even if the clubhouse is not the administrator's by deed.
I work for a non-profit. I know a lot of decisions above me get made because its more beneficial for leadership or even employees rather than the greater community.
Why is a class based society bad? Why is it harmful? My personal answer is that it just results in a generally worse world for people through taking away control over their own lives as they end up largely dictated by capitalists. If the system you aim to replace classes with reproduces many of those same kinds of consequences for the average person but just changes who's in charge then its not really what I would describe as a meaningfully better world. Its the same shit but with a different color palette.
I'm not convinced a state with its own self interest would ever permit its power to "wither". That doesn't mean a state can't be used for good, or that states are intrinsically evil, but a state given some ideological revolutionary foundation, monopoly on violence, and a "ends justify the means" attitude towards achieving utopia and an indifference towards individuals under its power is going to commit some atrocities and historically has.
Wake me up when they stop the endless tilting at imaginary counter-revolutionary windmills and actually do that. Somehow there's always some pesky boogeyman that requires benevolent repression. Absolute fantasy that class could ever fade when guns and politicians exist.
"Administrators" are your trickle down "Job Creators"
Class is not administration, and there has never been global socialism to begin with so there hasn't been a point free from capitalism's antagonization.
If a group of people calls the shots they have inherent power and form their own class. You write this problem off via a bedrock axiom starting that a vanguard party is and always will be representative of the proletariat masses. That's fundamentally impossible, humans don't organize or behave like that on historical time scales.
If a new political force cannot supercede their control and externally correct value drift then your system cannot evolve. If you can't correct for that other than by saying "better representation will emerge" then you're flat out anti-revolutionary; a reformist in wolf's clothing.
Administration in socialist countries is not as simple as "a group of people that call the shots and form their own class." Administration is economically compelled by large-scale production, and is to be made accountable via robust systems of democracy. Further, in collectivized production, there isn't the same mechanism built-in for profits and creating whole industries for luxury for the few like there is in capitalism.
To the contrary of your point, systems must evolve, there isn't a way to stop it. Everything is in motion, and history builds up. There are no static systems, you don't enter the same river twice, yada yada. It's not about "better representation emerging," it's about deliberately understanding how the structure of the mode of production impacts how society is run.
What comes after this fabled stateless society? If it isn't a stable system with no possible need for correction then what prevents the re-emergence of states?
The benefits of states are self evident: your immediate group benefits from the use of force to leverage and exploit others. The benefits of remaining stateless are entirely intangible and abstracted.
When a catastrophic event forces your hand, subjugation of your neighbors may be the only way for your populace to survive. One solar flare or meteor or mega volcano and your carefully plotted administration is in the shitter. It's survival of the ruthless and we're off to the races again.
This archaic attempt at dissecting the complexity of human existence into a mathematical and controllable roadmap is absurd. Wake up, it's not the 19th century; we've known better for a while now. Let's fix the world we have instead of having you spending 12.7k comments naval gazing about ideology and which tin pot dictators need our "critical support". I pray to God you're at least cashing a paycheck for that drivel.
This is besides the point, but in what way is a "lukewarm Christian' someone who actually makes progress? I've only ever heard the term be used in the opposite way.
Could it be because extremist platforms (like filthy rich preachers, Fox News, or toxic, algorithmic apps) inevitably lead to this?
It's almost like clergy and retired Silicon Valley royalty and social sciences/social media researchers have been warning of this exact thing, over and over, for decades...
I've been saying this for a long time now. All the "moral" principles that people supposedly just have are actually derived from christian thoughts that have pervaded society for centuries. All the supposedly secular and "ethical" concepts are actually just christian concepts without the brand name "christian".
This is literally just almost every terminally online ML lol
that's why I posted this here lmao
Especially over the past few years, this viewpoint seems to dominate over so many leftist spaces, and I believe it's part of what led to Trump winning the election. I don't particularly like the Democrats either, but so many refuse to vote for anything other than an impossible overnight jump to socialism.
yOu JuSt hATe tHe WoRkiNG cLaSs!1!
Ivory tower leftists hate nothing more than the working man.
How many would "vote with their dollar" if $==🧨, though? 🤷🏼♂️
The Rapture (or whatever no-effort salvation flavor you prefer) will not be televised.
You forgot to mention both have accelerationists willing to make people's lives worse to hasten the
RaptureRevolution.Accelerationism isn't a policy, it's a coping mechanism.
"Actually, I love that things aren't going my way, because it'll all work out in the end" is what you say when you're down bad with no clear hope of recovery.
And complaining about acceleratism is just scapegoating. You're not in this position because a secret cabal of extremists is sabotaging your milquetoast efforts because they think losing harder is good.
Comrade, this time it’s really late stage capitalism comrade, trust me comrade. Revolution is imminent, the workers will rise up. / repeat for 150 years.
This may be the worst take I've ever heard tbh
Both sides same horseshoe isn't even a new take
Straw man level 1000
Great take. We must ask ourselves: what happens the day after the revolution?
1rpd/1440=0.00069rpm
Nice.
To idle along nicely, we need to reach about 800 revolutions per minute. So we need to increase our number of revolutions by about x1,100,000
(And I realise now I've inadvertently worked out that if I left my car idling for 24 hours, the engine would go through over 1.1million revolutions. Cool!)
Really, if there is a sudden turning point, where Eat The Rich becomes common thought, how long does it last? Is it over in a few days? Is it a literal class war going on for years? If the bottom 50 decides to take out the top 5, how long can it go on for?
It's all a crab bucket in a crab bucket in a crab bucket in a... aw, fuckit.
Depends on the country. China was at war for decades, Russia had several revolutions before the final revolution, Cuba's took years, Vietnam's involved war against the US as well. There are no universal conditions for that.
Check out the Russian revolution. The extremists will put the moderate revolutionaries in the gulag or shoot them.
Hey, when you’re 22 you know everything but your brain still hasn’t fully matured and you don’t have time for that kind of stuff!
Death to capitalist oppressors! Let’s fuck!
Well if we look at China, Cuba, the USSR, Vietnam, Laos, you get invaded/bombed by America.
But also continue to work really hard, but now your labor goes to bringing yourself and a billion others out of poverty instead of further expanding the power of the bourgeoisie.
When was the USSR, China, and Cuba bombed by America directly after their revolution?
The USSR was invaded by every capitalist country that still had a significant army after WWI. Bombing civilians in Cuba was just one part of Operation Mongoose. During the Korean war, Shanghai, Dandong, and Ji'an were bombed by the psycho Lemay. They are still somewhat sore about that.
Building socialism, as has happened everywhere else revolution has succeeded. It's a long and difficult process, but it's real and possible at the same time.
We do wait for material conditions to align (our own or our community's). Movements needs a cataclyst. Not every moment is ripe for sweeping change.
And we absolutely expect revolutions to improve life dramatically - often simply by removing the corrupt oligarchs mismanaging the system.
But these are pragmatic approaches to economic management, not magical resolutions to human world events.
It's easier to believe in the End of the World for some people than the End of Capitalism.
you don't, and that's good, but that doesn't make it universal. as for the split between these 2 types, idk so I won't even guess
Bingo. In my experience people hear "revolution is necessary" and tune out the rest. Expectations need to be grounded, organizing is boring yet necessary.
There definitely are those that do though I think
And tbh I think the more relevant thing that is pointed out here are those that call anyone doing any sort of electoralism/reformism liberals who are worthless. Which, yea, by itself isn't gonna fully fix society but I'd at least rather people suffer less in the meantime
Nah I've studied political science at the graduate level and this is pretty much spot on.
I studied psychology at a graduate level and have decided that you’re schizophrenic
"and if you don't live by MY interpretation of some dead guy's beliefs, you are wrong and are worse than the enemy*
Downvote me father for I have committed bad praxis.
Hate to say it, but I'd argue that this particular leftist sub-group can be ever worse than Christians. At least on paper, Christians are supposed to want to convert sinners and non-believers, and are supposed to work to do outreach to help people explicitly undeserving. The Christian enemy of the devil is effectively an abstract. Yes, there's the anti-lgbt+ bigots, but in my experience they are a minority despite their incessant loudness and overwhelming presence in the public eye.
This particular revolution worshipping sub-group of leftists though? They appear to overwhelmingly just want death and suffering for their "enemies". They have no plans to attempt to convert people and many are actively against even trying.
I can't tell you how much heat I've taken for suggesting that (at best) ignoring all the fuckers that voted for Trump and not trying to find any way to build relationships so you can turn them is a losing strategy.
It makes me sick that so very many people see violent and complete revolution where somehow they never have to deal with opposition voices ever again afterwards (read: purges and re-education camps, ideas I've seen positive unironic support for from this group a shocking amount) as a more viable and desiriable outcome than trying to understand and care for their misguided neighbors and family so they can turn them.
Just because your plan isn't technically genocide due to it falling on lines of political ideology doesn't make it less completely fucked in the head and reprehensible.
If your wishes for the future include "We have to be baddies so we can completely erase the worse baddies from existence and make our utopia" then I strongly suggest you need to reevaluate just about fucking everything in your life and ideals.
That's why they narrowed it to evangelical Christians. There is still your argument that they will try to convert you first, but boy if you don't, it's the same hate. I'd say the leftist hate is at least honest and doesn't try to camouflage it with "love the sinner" lies and cherrypicking from a guide book.
Leftists cherry pick from holy scripture aka. theory ad nauseam to build arguments to support any inhumane action.
The Christian „love the sinner“, „love your enemies“ is different. There you only need to profess your faith to be accepted in the community. Then afterwards the reeducation/indoctrination/conversion happens over time.
With tankies you go to gulag/reeducation/indoctrination first, and if you survive that you can maybe become a comrade. You will never join the party though. You remain irredeemable and a suspect counterrevolutionary.
This is just wrong from top to bottom. Revolutionary theory has always posited that revolution can only come from the large majority, even if we use methods like vanguard parties if the working class at large isn't behind it then it will fail. Every successful revolution has had working class education, organization, and agitation as its basis.
Revolution doesn't mean genocide. Historically, revolution has been less bloody than the systems that upheld pre-revolutionary society. Mark Twain has an excellent quote on this:
Overall, I think you'd do well by actually listening to us. I wrote an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, feel free to give it a look!
You mean, the paper that was inked to "allow" divorce & execution of a certain Anglo king's wives, or the "original" low-effort patchwork plagiarism of any/all folklore the ruling class could scrape together? Either way, that's some ironclad foundational document, there. 😝🤌🏼
Look I hate tankies, accelerationists, and purity testing among progressives, but generally speaking the great rural swaths of MAGA chuds are as much of a waste of time as tankies are. They're either completely deluded or sociopathically self-interested. There isn't any moral standing to demanding I go out and have a beer with my racist MAGA neighbor. Nor would that even be a tolerable course of action for me, he could literally die in a fire I'd feel nothing.
So... do you find extermination of these people is a more tolerable course of action than getting to know them?
This is a core point I'm trying to make here, and strive to make fairly often elsewhere. The "rural swathes of MAGA chuds" (keep drinking the 1%s rural vs urban division of the middle and lower classes why don't you) are a large enough group/voting bloc that they cannot simply be ignored.
It doesn't have to be you, but someone has to do something about this group. And I'm not coyly endorsing mass murder or sterilization here. I'm also not sitting on my ass telling others to do work I'm not doing myself.
You can resign yourself to try and just outlive them. You could just keep trying to outvote them every time, forever. Sad, but tolerable and entirely understandable, attitude.
You can come up with a large number of other ways that effectively amount to "remove their ability to vote", most of which would be violations of human rights or elimination of human life. These are the attitudes I find reprehensible, and shockingly fucking common.
Or we could all start making concentrated efforts to start treating people with god awful views as people where some amount of them might be able to be changed. Not as subhuman mosters (the term "chud" is pretty disgusting when you get down to it), as unredeemable fools, as non-entities (wouldn't care if they dropped dead), or at best as roadbumps to be driven over on the path towards the future.
The fact that so many people look around at their neighbors and see so many of them as just useless wastes of space is one of the most effective ways that those in power maintain that power. Keeping those lower than them squabbling among each other so they can't effectively organize against the people on top.
I'm not going to argue for some full overthrow of the concept of capitalism, but there is clearly a hell of a lot wrong. A lot of rot up at the top. Willingly and intentionally saying "but those people are so backwards that I could never work with them" is just a disgustingly elitist concept.
Go and punch the actual nazis. Call out "nazi bar" situations. People who literally want you and yours dead? Fire at will.
But those are levels of hatred that are far rarer than people pretend they are. Most people just want to get on with their day, and a lot of people against certain groups fold very quickly when someone they love turns out say, homosexual. That's not hypocrisy. It's an opportunity to help someone reflect on their biases. We all have them, stop putting yourself up on such a pedestal.
I've rambled enough, but I'll throw this in as a bonus:
The "rural flyover states" have been done so fucking bad by the federal government, by their local politicians, and by corporations for so fucking long that I can't help but see punching down every time someone starts in on the bullshit about "those stupid people out in rural areas". They deal with a lot of similar issues to poor urban areas, and the attitude of the entire fucking world in calling impovershed areas "the global south" should give us all pause, especially when these areas of the US are in no way limited to the former confederate states.
I was born in one of those states. My wife is from one of those counties in a larger state. We're both happy as hell to be out, but seeing what goes on there on a regular basis is terrible.
People talk about tent cities and rising amounts of homeless in major cities. No one talks about the towns that have had every industry pull out over the last 50 years and the homeless and drug abuse problems in them that are only exacerbated by there being literally no homeless shelters or clinics for 30 miles with almost entirely barren highway in between the few pockets of dying towns.
False dichotomy. I never said I'd start the fire. I said if they died I'd feel nothing, not that I want to go out and start killing them.
I fucking live in the rural areas myself and I'm surrounded by mostly contemptible people. I'm not "drinking" anything.
And I can ignore them because there is nothing realistic that I can do about them with out suffering the absolutely massive waste of my finite time alive interacting with them trying to "turn" a small percentage of them less evil.
But you're right it doesn't have to be me. Could I go that route? Sure, but there isn't much in the way of ROI and I don't owe these people shit. I also can't endorse anyone else do so in my stead though either. I don't think I could with a straight face tell people to waste their own time if I can't justify myself doing it.
I mean, technically rural areas are going to slowly and naturally disintegrate economically. Which is good, but its not going to happen fast enough to meaningfully fix the problem in a time frame that matters to me. As for "outvoting", dude I'm really blackpilled on political engagement after Trump won a second time I don't even want to talk about voting anymore. I think we're all getting what we deserve. A very loud part of my mind is extremely vindictive and wants almost all of US voters to suffer even if it includes me at this point. In so far as is possible: we deserve it.
I'm not even concerned with the world's future. We lost. I'm just trying to salvage whats left of my life after wasting so much of my time, mind, and body on politics. The only reason I'm still engaging with it on Lemmy still is because I'm at work with nothing else to do. The only reason I still engage with it elsewhere is algorithmic influence. I'm outside of this actively trying to escape politics as much as feasibly possible. I'm putting effort into me and my loved ones now to survive and thrive in the upcoming slow grind collapse. That's it.
You know, when I was younger growing up in mostly rural areas, I thought I was a worthless fucking idiot weirdo. I thought all my peers around me had their shit together and understood the world better than me. My peers noticed this and early life for me was fairly awful as a result. Redneck dipshit bullies that TBH I probably would smile at their death if I had learned of now-a-days but back then I thought I deserved it. I thought I was a loser and I just needed to keep my head down. I thought everyone else around me was more competent and put together. I believed this so firmly that I barely engaged with employment early on in my life as I thought the only way for me would be faking my abilities. I ended up barely getting a college degree which I also thought was a fluke. Hoping that just having the degree would "trick" an employer into hiring me for some decent paying but easy office job. Every interview I was a shaking insecure mess and I was stuck for a long time in that state we call "NEET".
Then I finally got a job and I finally started working and realized that holy shit: the people around me are actually moronic. I excelled in my job. Constant remarks from people in disbelief at my performance reviews. I literally had a performance evaluator tell me they had never seen anyone manipulate the UI the way that I did in the 7 years they worked there. At first I felt a blip of pride. Yet later I felt nothing but utter and total horror at this revelation. Not smug satisfaction. Not relief that I was actually smarter than I thought. Pride drained away. Just horror remained. Terror. Shock. Despair. And now bitter anger that I had wasted so much time thinking I was an idiot but that actually I was surrounded by people so stupid they barely managed to do the bare minimum of their jobs, but kept them because they were the bosses nephew or a good christian or vapidly likable or some similar shit. No one fucking tries.
I tell that story because the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump felt like that moment of horror in my life but a million times over. I had spent an absurd amount of time and energy on politics for about 15-20 years because I thought that people were capable of getting better because we lived in an age of abundant information. I joined organizations, I canvassed for Harris, I engaged with my rightwing family members and annoyed my boss and co-workers (risking my job). I hoped people were getting smarter about their own self interest and would start voting in ways that reflect that and but we needed to just dodge a second Trump term. I now feel like I've wasted my life on this. Time and effort I could have spent fortifying my own personal situation because most people are so painfully self destructive and stupid they act as a vortex and will drag you down into them if you let them. And I have been doing that. I'm done doing that.
These people do not deserve another ounce of my respect or time. I've spent too much of my life humbling myself and they almost never returned the favor. FUCK THEM. I'm getting out if it fucking kills me, and it will. No one is going to make it, but I'm going to make sure that on my ride towards the grave I enjoy my remaining chunk of life as much as feasibly possible and giving up on trying to help people who would never do the same for me.
So no, I hope rural communities crumble and everyone is forced to move into cities. People become sociopaths or religious idiots living out so spread out. Let it rot.
This leftist believes we are already dead and this is hell.
It's hell all the way down.
Zen makes no sense and all the sense simultaneously, the more you look/don't look at it.
Yeah I'd much rather die in the fast track concentration camps our government is building today than the slow track one our government has us in now.
And not a single one is doing anything to actually revolt, just sitting online talking shit on people who are actively doing things because "incrementalism is useless, we need a revolution".
Sorry creating lemmy isn't starting the revolution, getting together a small amount of people online to talk about a parallel societal formation isn't starting a revolution, being civically inactive is not starting a revolution, buying a bunch of guns is not starting a revolution, talking about moving away from corporate tracking tools is not starting a revolution, switching from US to Chinese propaganda is not starting a revolution. As lame as all the gravy seal militias in the US are, they are numerous steps ahead on the starting of a revolution.
This is erasure of orgs like The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. One of the number one things leftists try to encourage people to do online is to join an org, because sitting around and talking is useless beyond the entertainment of it and perhaps learning more theory. We do organize IRL, I've met some wonderful people doing so.
Yeah and I am a member of the two that are in my area. They all subscribe to incrementalism as people on your .ml would put it, though. None of these are preparing a revolution, they would labeled terrorist organizations, and destroyed very quickly if they did anything, actually, radical, like the ALF/ELF, while being so visible.
Most revolutionary orgs don't outwardly organize for reasons you suggest. Those orgs are still revolutionary.
And these are the behaviors I have seen so many people in online leftist spaces call useless, and incrementalist, as they are not preparing to actually revolt, they are working within the legal framework given to them by the capitalists. It seems you and I have a more closely aligned idea of change than a large amount of people who are on .ml. I also highly doubt most of these people will be able to deal with the violence then wish to incite with a revolution. I know how it is to kill, people, so I don't tell people they should.
I'm not sure what orgs you're talking about, because I align more with most people on Lemmy.ml. Maybe you actually do too?
The ones you posted have had their efforts mocked because they operate within the framework capitalists give them, and are not actually revolutionary. I have watched it happen, many there seem to think if there isn't violence, then nothing is happening. Also, no, I do not apologize for authoritarian governments, regardless of their alignment with capitalism. Nor do I support censorship of criticisms of places because they aren't aligned with NATO.
No, they are not mocked by users on Lemmy.ml. They are broadly supported by communists. I think you're inventing something to be mad at.
Shittiest MadLibs reboot ever.
Revolutionaries don't say that anything less than revolution is worthless, we just point out how electoralism cannot solve the fundamental problems of capitalist society. We also don't say that revolution fixes everything overnight, it merely allows us to start building and developing socialism, with all of the difficulties and new problems we face when that happens. We also don't baselessly say revolution is coming any minute or anything, just that as capitalism decays it grows more and more likely, which is reflected in crisis and more violent reaction, like we are seeing with the Trump admin.
If anyone wants to develop a better understanding of Marxism-Leninism, I made an introductory reading list, feel free to check it out! Even the first 2 works listed will give you a much better understanding of our positions.
The world is
sinfulanti-democratic backsliding but we just have to wait until theSecond Comingthe Election happens when everything will be magically fixed. Any attempt to make actual progress makes you alukewarm Christiantankie anything less thanthe Apocolypsethe Election (which is definitely fair and free and democratic full of extremely popular and nice politicians) is completely useless. Also consuming certian media or makin certain lifesytle choices issinful and unchristianmakes you a tankie or a rebellious ineffective anarchist or a secret conservative.so democracy bad?
The Antichrist walks among us, wearing a spray tan and a toupee. We must use our second amendment rights to throw off our oppressors and create the kingdom of Elohim on earth.
I consider myself libertarian, but unlike others, I think my political ideal would be terrible to implement overnight. I see libertarianism more as a direction than an end goal, and we should evaluate how far down that path we want to go.
I'm also Christian and don't believe in Rapture. Instead, I think that if Christ's second coming is literal (don't want to get into a theological debate), any changes will be a process. People won't evaporate or whatever, instead they'll be spared in some form from the wider unrest that will end up destroying the "sinners" or whatever. Things just don't happen all at once like that.
I guess for my personal ideal, the closest would be everyone all of a sudden deciding that their rights are important and worth fighting for?
Those are very reasonable positions to hold.
Out of curiosity, since there aren't really any libertarians where I live, what makes you think that it's the best solution, and how do you intend to solve the two problems I percieve to be the big ones: Who else can properly manage public services and how do you prevent corporations eroding rule of law?
I believe the ends do not justify the means. The primary goal should be maximizing liberty, with some concessions for practicality.
For example, I believe in UBI, but not because it's a human right, but because you can't realistically come back from mistakes or harm from others if there's no safety net. The options for a safety net are government services (healthcare, food assistance, housing assistance, etc) or cash handouts (UBI or NIT). Government services come with inequity in access (whether you're approved can be up to discretion), whereas cash is simple and equitable. Outcomes may be worse with cash for some people (maybe they'll buy drugs or gamble), but that's because people are free to choose how they use it, and freedom is the ideal here. Ideally we don't need a social safety net, but because we do, it should be as simple as possible.
I happen to believe that freedom tends to create opportunity and improves outcomes, but that's not the primary goal.
I absolutely believe government should exist and will have a role to play in this. The goal should be minimal government involvement where competition can exist. Some things cannot be provided ethically by private, competitive companies, such as arrests, but many can.
Some examples:
Basically, how can we solve problems with less government/force?
Limit what the legislature can do and push regulations and whatnot to court precedence. I trust juries way more than legislators. The attorney general's main job should be to sue companies and set regulations by winning cases and setting precedent.
Legislatures want reelection, so campaign donations have a lot of sway, and that may be more effective than actually doing what constituents want. There's a clear conflict of interest there, so no wonder wealthy companies get their way.
An AG, on the other hand, could be compensated based on winning lawsuits. If they win a lot, they could make a ton of money, perhaps more than whatever the companies they're suing would be willing to pay. Individuals could also bring their own suit, so a bad AG would just push it onto the private sector, which is a check on the AG. And it's not just companies that could get sued, but the regulator bodies themselves, so it's a check on corruption there as well.
The important thing is that regular people decide what's reasonable, not elected legislators. Legislators should set the big picture (pollution is bad), courts get into specifics (pollution value X is too much), and companies respond by making risk-adjusted decisions (test to make sure pollution is sufficiently under X to avoid lawsuits).
Well, Marx’ withering away of the state and the rise of Communism was basically the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
Not really, all it means is that as an ecomomy collectivizes and class distinctions fade as ownership of production is equalized, the need for strong institutions to uphold one class and oppress others fades too, as there would be no class.
"A stateless utopia birthed from the continual consolidation of power in a proletariat dictatorship" gives the same vibes as trickle down economics.
As production and distribution are collectivized, class fades, and along with it the institutions needed to uphold the working class as the ruling class over capitalists, as there would be no capitalists. It doesn't mean the total erasure of administration and management.
Except they become the new capitalists. They would develop an interest in maintaining their position as administrators and as administrators would have the means even if it conflicts with everyone else's interests. They'd become the new upper class.
Also, I'm surprised you didn't point out that the "withering of the state" was Friedrich Engels' idea technically. Not Marx.
No, they would not become the new capitalists. Collectivized production is based on allocation of labor, means of labor, and distribution of goods and services based on needs and in some cases "labor vouchers." An administrator in such a system is entitely distinct from a capitalist. Even in capitalism, managers are not capitalists and do not play the same role.
Capitalism is predicated on circulation of commodities, and constant reproduction on an expanded scale with profit as the motivator. Capitalists aren't capitalists because they manage, but because they use their money, cast it into the market like a net (buying means of labor and labor-power), and return said net with greater sums of money. Such a system is completely incompatible with collectivized production.
As for the withering of the state, Marx came up with the concept. Engels merely came up with the phrase.
I wasn't saying administrators would become capitalists in the strictest definition, but in the fact that they'd become a class distinct from the rest of the proletariat. You'd still have a state enforced hierarchical structure that has its own interests. It just wont be structured around facilitating various corporations and their profits. You can argue that's an improvement over capitalism, but to suggest the state will naturally wither away in such a system is naive at best and a manipulative lie at worst.
Where did Marx originally describe the idea?
I'm aware of what you meant. Administration isn't a class, and is not based on domination of the means of production through ownership, but is merely a necessary part of the production process. Further, the proletariat wouldn't exist either, proletarians are specifically wage laborers that sell their labor to capitalists, what we are discussing is classless society.
As for Marx and the concept of the state withering, I'm unaware of the first mentionings of it, but the idea can be found all the way back in Economic Manuscripts of 1844:
Engels was great at writing and contributed a great deal to the development of Marx's thought, but even before co-writing Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx had already had a fairly developed conception of the negation of the state, as a student of Hegel.
I'm not much of a fan of Engels, as I noticed of what I've read of him that his works or works involving him tend towards subtly implying (or even explicitly stating) top down structures and authoritarianism is initially necessary to achieve communism in the ways he frames his analysis. Something that Marx seemed generally more mixed or neutral on when he wrote independently of Engels depending on how late in his writings you look.
Regardless, having access to the controls that gives one power over economic value and the ability to exploit that power, even if its not through ownership its still under their control. For example, someone who runs a non-profit organization but uses all the grant money to build a clubhouse for them and their friends rather than something broadly socially beneficial is exploiting the people who actually generated the value for the grant money in the first place, even if the clubhouse is not the administrator's by deed.
I work for a non-profit. I know a lot of decisions above me get made because its more beneficial for leadership or even employees rather than the greater community.
Why is a class based society bad? Why is it harmful? My personal answer is that it just results in a generally worse world for people through taking away control over their own lives as they end up largely dictated by capitalists. If the system you aim to replace classes with reproduces many of those same kinds of consequences for the average person but just changes who's in charge then its not really what I would describe as a meaningfully better world. Its the same shit but with a different color palette.
I'm not convinced a state with its own self interest would ever permit its power to "wither". That doesn't mean a state can't be used for good, or that states are intrinsically evil, but a state given some ideological revolutionary foundation, monopoly on violence, and a "ends justify the means" attitude towards achieving utopia and an indifference towards individuals under its power is going to commit some atrocities and historically has.
Wake me up when they stop the endless tilting at imaginary counter-revolutionary windmills and actually do that. Somehow there's always some pesky boogeyman that requires benevolent repression. Absolute fantasy that class could ever fade when guns and politicians exist.
"Administrators" are your trickle down "Job Creators"
Class is not administration, and there has never been global socialism to begin with so there hasn't been a point free from capitalism's antagonization.
If a group of people calls the shots they have inherent power and form their own class. You write this problem off via a bedrock axiom starting that a vanguard party is and always will be representative of the proletariat masses. That's fundamentally impossible, humans don't organize or behave like that on historical time scales.
If a new political force cannot supercede their control and externally correct value drift then your system cannot evolve. If you can't correct for that other than by saying "better representation will emerge" then you're flat out anti-revolutionary; a reformist in wolf's clothing.
Administration in socialist countries is not as simple as "a group of people that call the shots and form their own class." Administration is economically compelled by large-scale production, and is to be made accountable via robust systems of democracy. Further, in collectivized production, there isn't the same mechanism built-in for profits and creating whole industries for luxury for the few like there is in capitalism.
To the contrary of your point, systems must evolve, there isn't a way to stop it. Everything is in motion, and history builds up. There are no static systems, you don't enter the same river twice, yada yada. It's not about "better representation emerging," it's about deliberately understanding how the structure of the mode of production impacts how society is run.
What comes after this fabled stateless society? If it isn't a stable system with no possible need for correction then what prevents the re-emergence of states?
The benefits of states are self evident: your immediate group benefits from the use of force to leverage and exploit others. The benefits of remaining stateless are entirely intangible and abstracted.
When a catastrophic event forces your hand, subjugation of your neighbors may be the only way for your populace to survive. One solar flare or meteor or mega volcano and your carefully plotted administration is in the shitter. It's survival of the ruthless and we're off to the races again.
This archaic attempt at dissecting the complexity of human existence into a mathematical and controllable roadmap is absurd. Wake up, it's not the 19th century; we've known better for a while now. Let's fix the world we have instead of having you spending 12.7k comments naval gazing about ideology and which tin pot dictators need our "critical support". I pray to God you're at least cashing a paycheck for that drivel.
This is besides the point, but in what way is a "lukewarm Christian' someone who actually makes progress? I've only ever heard the term be used in the opposite way.
What you've got there is a tankie
Dear God, the Tankies are fundies!
Workin' on the 0.0002% deep in the comments.
Could it be because extremist platforms (like filthy rich preachers, Fox News, or toxic, algorithmic apps) inevitably lead to this?
It's almost like clergy and retired Silicon Valley royalty and social sciences/social media researchers have been warning of this exact thing, over and over, for decades...
Leftist rapture is The Singularity.
eh... so far the only ones I've seen really perked up about the singularity are techbro libertarians.
No, that’s libertarian tech bro rapture.
Hot bubble baths are pretty transcendent. That would be my vote for leftist rapture.
In the meantime, we still have Bubble's baths. 🤷🏼♂️
mmm, bubble bath
I've been saying this for a long time now. All the "moral" principles that people supposedly just have are actually derived from christian thoughts that have pervaded society for centuries. All the supposedly secular and "ethical" concepts are actually just christian concepts without the brand name "christian".