The Soviet Union was formed in 1917, over a century ago. Sure we need to learn from their successes and mistakes, but its not possible to simply repeat their methods, because society today works completely differently.
Marxism-Leninism has been successful in some places, but in the west it has been a complete failure so far. Blaming others for that failure is not going to help, again we need to learn from the successes and mistakes. Panicking because of climate change isnt helpful.
And people talk about authoritarianism because thats what they have been told all their live, and they worry about it. Its important to take such concerns seriously. Talking down to them and dismissing their concerns means that they will definitely ignore what you have to say.
I completely agree that we live in a very different world today, and the methods used need to be rooted in the current conditions. This is basically the whole premise of the dialectical approach. We must look at the material conditions and adapt our methods based on these conditions as opposed to acting dogmatically.
I understand where you’re coming from. Ideally, we should all be focusing on finding common ground and working together while putting our differences aside. This is basically the idea of left unity, and unfortunately we haven’t seen this work well in practice. There’s also a bigger picture here to consider as well. The reality of the situation is that both communists and anarchists are niche groups in the west right now. My view is that the focus needs to be on the people who aren’t politically active currently, but are starting to realize that the current system isn’t working in their interest. This is a far larger demographic than all the western anarchists and communists combined, and it would be far more productive to focus on steering such people towards effective methods of resistance.
Hence my view is that it’s important to challenge critiques of communism and to provide good answers to people who have reservations but haven’t yet formed strong opinions. Combating dishonest portrayals of USSR is important precisely because the negative image of USSR is used to scare people away from communism. The typical argument that we see is that capitalism is bad but USSR was worse and therefore doing nothing would be preferable to building a communist state. This is precisely the line of argument @poVoq@lemmy.ml is taking.
My view is that anarchist approach is fundamentally flawed and it’s been proven to be ineffective at combating capitalism. However, I’m perfectly fine working with anarchists when there is common ground to be found. On the other hand, I don’t think there is much to be gained trying to change minds of anarchists who are firmly set in their ideology. My experience is that people who’ve already formed strong views aren’t going to be swayed because they’ve already seen the arguments you present and found their own rationalizations for them. So, the focus needs to be on presenting a better argument to those who haven’t yet formed such strong opinions. That’s the real audience for such discussions.
I’m also not suggesting panicking over climate change, but rather noting that it is a huge immediate problem facing all of us. I don’t think people fully appreciate the scope of this disaster or its urgency. For example, Antarctic ice shelf the size of Britain could collapse within 5 years leading to significant sea level rise. This would obviously be devastating for coastal communities, but it would also have an incredible impact on global supply chains as all the ports would become inoperable. Countries that rely on shipping for their economies to function would be plunged into chaos overnight. Climate change will be an increasingly destabilizing factor in the world, and as it progresses it will also impact our ability to deal with it in any sort of organized fashion. The severity of the problem cannot be overstated.
I’m not sure how you can say you’re being misrepresented when you say:
Yeah, maybe. But is it usually better to err on the side of caution and often the devil you know is better than an unknown one (as shown by history over and over again).
You’re literally saying that it’s better to stick with capitalism than to move to a Soviet style system that would result from ML approach.
Meanwhile, the only one here with a fundamentally flawed understanding of why USSR failed is you as clearly evidenced by your nonsensical claims in prior comments. The fact that you lack basic intellectual honesty to acknowledge that USSR existed under duress discredits any arguments you make against it.
My reading of the original quote was that we are already fighting the beast, so why take a dangerous detour with provably-failed methods to do so? So it’s not that capitalism is exactly better, but why trade a wrong for a different kind of wrong?
Failed is an interesting word to use when describing liberation of billions of people from the yoke of capitalism and colonialism. Only somebody who’ve never had to personally experience capitalist exploitation would make the sort of false equivalence you’re making between communist and capitalist states.
Millions of people “liberated” so they can work in the people’s factories and labor camps, spend time in the people’s prisons for political activities, be executed for being gay or muslim, and starve while those in power feast in abundance. Please tell me more about how that’s different from capitalism?!
(i’ll ignore the ad-hominem which really doesn’t serve your point :))
Are you saying the queer/muslim massacres of Stalin are just a dream? That Trotsky’s political police was in fact throwing parties with the people they disappeared? Or that the labor camps were just a day spa for exhausted workers? I implore you to learn a modicum of history.
The Soviet Union was formed in 1917, over a century ago. Sure we need to learn from their successes and mistakes, but its not possible to simply repeat their methods, because society today works completely differently.
Marxism-Leninism has been successful in some places, but in the west it has been a complete failure so far. Blaming others for that failure is not going to help, again we need to learn from the successes and mistakes. Panicking because of climate change isnt helpful.
And people talk about authoritarianism because thats what they have been told all their live, and they worry about it. Its important to take such concerns seriously. Talking down to them and dismissing their concerns means that they will definitely ignore what you have to say.
I completely agree that we live in a very different world today, and the methods used need to be rooted in the current conditions. This is basically the whole premise of the dialectical approach. We must look at the material conditions and adapt our methods based on these conditions as opposed to acting dogmatically.
I understand where you’re coming from. Ideally, we should all be focusing on finding common ground and working together while putting our differences aside. This is basically the idea of left unity, and unfortunately we haven’t seen this work well in practice. There’s also a bigger picture here to consider as well. The reality of the situation is that both communists and anarchists are niche groups in the west right now. My view is that the focus needs to be on the people who aren’t politically active currently, but are starting to realize that the current system isn’t working in their interest. This is a far larger demographic than all the western anarchists and communists combined, and it would be far more productive to focus on steering such people towards effective methods of resistance.
Hence my view is that it’s important to challenge critiques of communism and to provide good answers to people who have reservations but haven’t yet formed strong opinions. Combating dishonest portrayals of USSR is important precisely because the negative image of USSR is used to scare people away from communism. The typical argument that we see is that capitalism is bad but USSR was worse and therefore doing nothing would be preferable to building a communist state. This is precisely the line of argument @poVoq@lemmy.ml is taking.
My view is that anarchist approach is fundamentally flawed and it’s been proven to be ineffective at combating capitalism. However, I’m perfectly fine working with anarchists when there is common ground to be found. On the other hand, I don’t think there is much to be gained trying to change minds of anarchists who are firmly set in their ideology. My experience is that people who’ve already formed strong views aren’t going to be swayed because they’ve already seen the arguments you present and found their own rationalizations for them. So, the focus needs to be on presenting a better argument to those who haven’t yet formed such strong opinions. That’s the real audience for such discussions.
I’m also not suggesting panicking over climate change, but rather noting that it is a huge immediate problem facing all of us. I don’t think people fully appreciate the scope of this disaster or its urgency. For example, Antarctic ice shelf the size of Britain could collapse within 5 years leading to significant sea level rise. This would obviously be devastating for coastal communities, but it would also have an incredible impact on global supply chains as all the ports would become inoperable. Countries that rely on shipping for their economies to function would be plunged into chaos overnight. Climate change will be an increasingly destabilizing factor in the world, and as it progresses it will also impact our ability to deal with it in any sort of organized fashion. The severity of the problem cannot be overstated.
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I’m not sure how you can say you’re being misrepresented when you say:
You’re literally saying that it’s better to stick with capitalism than to move to a Soviet style system that would result from ML approach.
Meanwhile, the only one here with a fundamentally flawed understanding of why USSR failed is you as clearly evidenced by your nonsensical claims in prior comments. The fact that you lack basic intellectual honesty to acknowledge that USSR existed under duress discredits any arguments you make against it.
My reading of the original quote was that we are already fighting the beast, so why take a dangerous detour with provably-failed methods to do so? So it’s not that capitalism is exactly better, but why trade a wrong for a different kind of wrong?
Failed is an interesting word to use when describing liberation of billions of people from the yoke of capitalism and colonialism. Only somebody who’ve never had to personally experience capitalist exploitation would make the sort of false equivalence you’re making between communist and capitalist states.
Millions of people “liberated” so they can work in the people’s factories and labor camps, spend time in the people’s prisons for political activities, be executed for being gay or muslim, and starve while those in power feast in abundance. Please tell me more about how that’s different from capitalism?!
(i’ll ignore the ad-hominem which really doesn’t serve your point :))
I implore you to learn a modicum of history.
Are you saying the queer/muslim massacres of Stalin are just a dream? That Trotsky’s political police was in fact throwing parties with the people they disappeared? Or that the labor camps were just a day spa for exhausted workers? I implore you to learn a modicum of history.