Scenarios where socialists ought to support liberals? - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14507202
Dagoth Ur wrote:Gonna stop you here and point out the difference between communism and socialism. Socialism is a Proletarian Dictatorship (ie a state).

I don't agree that direct democracy is a workable premise outside of local affairs.

The Supreme Soviet is made of of representatives from local soviets (all recallable), who meet to discuss and vote on issues that effect several Soviets. There needs to be some central organ that is capable of binding us together while we are still at war with the capitalists.

The local soviets would ideally do most of the heavy lifting in the decision making process. The less stable the socialist state the less ideal the circumstances obviously.


Several more questions:

1) Is socialism the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat, or is it the stage just after the dictatorship of the proletariat? The way I always understood the terms was that the dictatorship of the proletariat is when workers take control of the state and run it in the interests of the proletarian class. The state takes control of the means of production and then builds socialism by slowly handing over the means of production to the workers.

2) You said that the Supreme Soviet is a central organ that binds us all together while we are still at war with the capitalists. What capitalists? I thought you said earlier that "socialism is presumed to be global and peaceful", and since private property is abolished (which is the whole point of this argument) and the Supreme Soviet is a global state, then how can there possibly still be any capitalists left to war with?

How is giving your life for something you care about not a vain reward? Dying for the nation, dying for the cause, dying for your family. Even talking about them gets people excited.


That's just word games. A sacrifice is not undertaken because the idea of it gives you a buzz, you do it because you have to, despite the fact that it will probably involve suffering or the loss of your own life or something else you care about.
#14507204
Saeko wrote:1) Is socialism the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat, or is it the stage just after the dictatorship of the proletariat?

They are one in the same. The DotP deteriorating as socialism becomes more entrenched and state functions are assumed by the people. Once the DotP has withered we have communism. Think of it like the proletariat are the thesis, the state is the antithesis, and communism is the synthesis. There is no proletariat or state in the end.

Saeko wrote:The way I always understood the terms was that the dictatorship of the proletariat is when workers take control of the state and run it in the interests of the proletarian class. The state takes control of the means of production and then builds socialism by slowly handing over the means of production to the workers.

Essentially yes, the vanguard seizes state power initiating socialism which is the period where vanguard rule is socialized over a period of time.

Saeko wrote:2) You said that the Supreme Soviet is a central organ that binds us all together while we are still at war with the capitalists. What capitalists?

Those who are capable of mounting a successful counterrevolution.

Saeko wrote:I thought you said earlier that "socialism is presumed to be global and peaceful", and since private property is abolished (which is the whole point of this argument) and the Supreme Soviet is a global state, then how can there possibly still be any capitalists left to war with?

Most modern communists acknowledge that socialism being able to start evolving into communism requires at least a majority of the world united. By internationalist we mean that we aim to cover the world, in fact we believe it is required. There will of course be a period of time, much like with the Soviet Union, where we will be in a state of war with existing powers and as such many of our goals are simply not rational to pursue at the time. I think the lesson of the Soviets is that you cannot bide your time forever. Eventually the Soviets had gamble with the future of the Union, they had to pursue revolution abroad genuinely (rather than as the proxies most 3rd world Soviet-aligned states really were despite revolutionary rhetoric).

Saeko wrote:That's just word games. A sacrifice is not undertaken because the idea of it gives you a buzz, you do it because you have to, despite the fact that it will probably involve suffering or the loss of your own life or something else you care about.

Exactly, the payment is achieving some goal. You'd have no family or nation to die for without our present cultural systems.
#14507237
Dagoth Ur wrote:@TIG: I don't know any Stalinists who leave the USSR unquestioned (outside of RedAlert "Stalinists"). In fact most of them rehash Trotsky's argument against Stalin but put the blame on Khrushchev instead (which led to the hilarious Bizzaro-Trotskyism called Hoxhaism). Greggers was the last Stalinist I remember with a ridiculous blindspot for the USSR. Is there someone specific that you are thinking of?


Of course. You and Decky are amongst the worst at this. Sure you're both mostly kidding, but it's a total propaganda fail.

Further, I have argued with people defending Stalin on this site who have actually PM'd me to tell me that they agree with what I'm saying, but they want to keep the pretense up that Stalin wasn't a bumbling moron that lost us the whole revolution.

The shit ye spew about Stalin is a lie. And in fairness, the Trotsky that Trotskyists portray is a lie. We're never going to get anywhere perpetuating a lie. The world, the material, is true. What's the point in even pretending to be a Marxist if you're going to be an idealist pandering to made-up history and peddling lies?
#14507240
The Immortal Goon wrote:Of course. You and Decky are amongst the worst at this. Sure you're both mostly kidding, but it's a total propaganda fail.

It's not propaganda to joke about Uncle Joe on PoFo. I don't remember ever seriously trying to say that the union was some perfect entity. But in a world where the anti-soviet chorus is on all sides why join in? Is that effective propaganda to you?

The Immortal Goon wrote:Further, I have argued with people defending Stalin on this site who have actually PM'd me to tell me that they agree with what I'm saying, but they want to keep the pretense up that Stalin wasn't a bumbling moron that lost us the whole revolution.

Pinning this all on Stalin is very idealist TIG and we both know it. Stalin was a product of what was, and in no way independent of it. He kept the Union together in some of its most trying times, even if only as an icon. I do not think it is fair to label Stalin a bumbling moron either. Being wrong doesn't make you stupid.

And I never attack Trotsky like you attack Stalin. Probably because I agree with so much of what Trotsky had to say, but still in the end with you Stalin is always some kind of extreme pejorative or anti-marxist.

The Immortal Goon wrote:The shit ye spew about Stalin is a lie. And in fairness, the Trotsky that Trotskyists portray is a lie. We're never going to get anywhere perpetuating a lie. The world, the material, is true. What's the point in even pretending to be a Marxist if you're going to be an idealist pandering to made-up history and peddling lies?

We are just continuing to do what Stalin and Trotsky did themselves, puffing up an ego that was always partially false. You take jokes about Trotskyists and Stalinists too seriously. And then you get all mean with this dagoth-is-a-shit-marxist angle. I mean that's totally unfair right? Or is what I say about Marxism really that far off the mark? I'd appreciate some explanations.
#14507250
It's not effective propaganda to deny reality and to make bold face lies. It puts us all at a place where we're forced to defend something that we all know doesn't exist. People that don't know you're joking about Stalin are going to take it seriously, and they're going to to take the flaws and errors of the entire Soviet Union to be the incarnation of what we want. It is not. It's bad propaganda, and it's not true.

The anti-soviet chorus is what it is. We should acknowledge truth and move on, that's the way to confront it and move on. For instance, there are people that say Marx was a dick in his personal life. Sure, fine, whatever. It doesn't at all take away from the theory. It's not something that's even worth arguing about because we can actually fight on the merits of truth rather than petty gossip. The deliberate, even if joking, Cult of Personality to fight against the anti-soviet chorus won't win. It's us falling back on lies and deliberate distortions of history when we don't have to do it. We can stand up on truth alone.

Someone says that we fucked up in Spain? Great. Let's get into that and let's see where we went wrong and why the failure of a proper analysis failed, and that capitalism had already failed there and had to be held together wiith fascism. That's an actual truth that's effective, instead of hailing our failure as success. Which is so blatantly not true that it further compounds our errors instead of demonstrating the truth.

I'm not pinning everything on Stalin, I'm saying that I've actually had public fights with people that agree with me. Why can't we just use the truth in our favour instead of having to rely on some false reality?

So far as you never attacking Trotsky, that's mostly irrelevantt. There are no Trots on this site so it rarely comes up, but this is true for them too. Their Trotsky is some hippy-dippy guy that thinks that bourgouis intellectuals should run everything. They're as guilty as the Stalinists.

What you say about Marxism is fine, when you're serious about it and start getting into the theories. In other words, when you're speaking truth. When you--and other Stalinists, and Trotskyists--start parading around the corpse of a cult of personality instead of actually getting into the theory and the facts, it's always a fail.

And Stalin was a bumbling moron. He failed at almmost everything he tried, and then covered it up. What should China do? Join Kang Khi Shek. He's purging you and killing the communists? Keep joining his side.

The Bolshevik right is correct, we must purge the left. Just kidding, the Bolshevik right are all traiters now. Lenin wanted the proletariat to come up with culture dialectically. In order to respect that, Socialist Realism is the only real art and now gays are banned because gross. The church? YES! What to do in France? Ignore the communists and make friends with the bourgouis government. Germany? Vote Hitler! Spain? Focus on killing all the other communists; then maybe the fascists something something.

I'm not even getting into all of it, but he was a failure of a leader for the movement in all these instances. Had he gone back to the drawing board and figured out went wrong instead of insisting he was always consistent and right, then he may not have been such a fumbling loser the whole time. But he was. So it goes.

And, because it hurts people feelings to say such a thing, Trotsky wasn't much better in anything he did. He was completely sidelined by Stalin, he relied on artists instead of proletarians when he was out of Russia, his policies in the Spanish Civil War and Germany may have been technically correct, but he had no way to implement them effectively, despite being one of the most famous Marxists in the world with a legion of followers. He, most importantly, didn't have the chance to fail the way Stalin did because he had isolated himself and could snipe via writing.

But this dirty laundry should be something that gives us strength in our analysis as we have more information, and we can clearly see where things go wrong.

The Stalin (and in other places Trotsky) promoting and personaly wanking hurts us, not helps us.

To get to a better party, we need to stop doing it.

And EDIT--

I want to say that this in no way means I do not support the Soviet Union under Stalin for the reasons previously stated. You are right in that there was a certain situation that was taken care of and the advances of the proletariat and the workers' state needs to be defended.

But just because I love a football team doesn't mean I have to support a quarterback that keeps dropping the balls and scoring points for the other team.
#14507433
So I wanna argue with that but I can't help but agree about almost all of it, excepting your continued stance of Stalin being stupid rather than wrong. Really I guess a distinction should be made between Stalin, Leader of the USSR, and Stalin, Leader of the ICM. The latter Stalin looks really bad, the former one looks pretty good compared to his peers. But whatever, not relevant.

Oh and you bring up a good point that Trotsky, and especially Trotskyists, always did their best to avoid mentioning: Why was Stalin even able to do what he did to Trotsky? Popularity isn't a meaningless metric.
#14507480
Dagoth Ur wrote:They are one in the same. The DotP deteriorating as socialism becomes more entrenched and state functions are assumed by the people. Once the DotP has withered we have communism. Think of it like the proletariat are the thesis, the state is the antithesis, and communism is the synthesis. There is no proletariat or state in the end.

Essentially yes, the vanguard seizes state power initiating socialism which is the period where vanguard rule is socialized over a period of time.

Those who are capable of mounting a successful counterrevolution.


So at which point can we definitely say that private property is abolished, because that's what I'm interested in. What exactly is the difference between private property and property relations under communism.

Saeko wrote:Most modern communists acknowledge that socialism being able to start evolving into communism requires at least a majority of the world united. By internationalist we mean that we aim to cover the world, in fact we believe it is required. There will of course be a period of time, much like with the Soviet Union, where we will be in a state of war with existing powers and as such many of our goals are simply not rational to pursue at the time. I think the lesson of the Soviets is that you cannot bide your time forever. Eventually the Soviets had gamble with the future of the Union, they had to pursue revolution abroad genuinely (rather than as the proxies most 3rd world Soviet-aligned states really were despite revolutionary rhetoric).


That's not how most people would use the term "internationalism". Because if you're gonna use "internationalism" in the sense of "world conquest" then I'm an "internationalist" too.

Exactly, the payment is achieving some goal. You'd have no family or nation to die for without our present cultural systems.


That's not what "payment" means under any sensible definition.
#14507483
Saeko wrote:So at which point can we definitely say that private property is abolished, because that's what I'm interested in.

At the point the vanguard takes power. Public property is held by the state in order to protect it to keep it accessible to the people (ideally), Private property is held by individuals to protect it from the people and to make money off of it (ideally).

Saeko wrote:What exactly is the difference between private property and property relations under communism.

In communism, the people are the communist "state" and this "state" owns all property.

Saeko wrote:That's not how most people would use the term "internationalism". Because if you're gonna use "internationalism" in the sense of "world conquest" then I'm an "internationalist" too.

Conquest implies that we aim to take more land so we can take from that land imperialistically. Internationalism is where we combine our resources for our mutual benefit. Both aim to cover the world. Most people use Internationalist instead of what they mean: cosmopolitan.

Saeko wrote:That's not what "payment" means under any sensible definition.

Except by the people who die for it all the time. Spiritual payment has been acceptable for millennia. From promises of Val Halla, to Family Honor, to the survival of your Ancestor's Spirits. You may not believe in anything but most humans have considered these things important enough to die for, worthy.
#14711793
Though I'm not sure if it'll necessarily go in such a direction, I see Zizek shows concern about the success of China's version of capitalism and that there may be some use in resisting this with liberals.

http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2009/10/today-interview-capitalism
This is typical theoretical arrogance. We don't know what is going on. This is the point of my book: terrific new things are emerging. What's going on in China today is something very ominous. Here I disagree with liberals who say, wait for another ten years and we'll have another Tiananmen in China. I doubt it. Something genuinely new is emerging today in the guise of what are ridiculously called "Asian values", authoritarian capitalism. A capitalism which, we can see now, is doing better in the crisis than the west. A capitalism that is more dynamic and efficient than our Western, liberal capitalism, but precisely as such functions perfectly with an authoritarian state. My pessimism is that this is the future. This is what I think we should watch. This is why I wrote that piece about Berlusconi [in the LRB], which many people thought was crazy - Berlusconi's still democratically elected, after all. But I see signs of this new authoritarianism. There's a kind of total devaluation of politics. Of course, this new post-democratic capitalism will take different forms. There will be Asian values, more traditionally authoritarian; in Russia, it's emerging; in Italy, it's emerging in its own way. This is the fear. We who pretend in some way to be more radical, where we should make a pact with honest liberals is precisely along this axis: we should all be aware that what was precious in the liberal democratic legacy. What, for example, Hannah Arendt noticed in the US during the Vietnam War. What fascinated her was the level of public debate - people in town meetings debating. This is disappearing.

The problem for me is that if we don't want to end up in some kind of neo-authoritarian society, in which we'll have all our private freedoms (you can have sex with animals and so on), but in which the social space will be depoliticized and much more authoritarian - here we should make a pact with liberals.


And though it's unclear to me whether with China's economic success that they'll be the new standard for rest of the world, I do think there is an apathy towards politics and disillusion with liberal democracy. Liberals should be supportive of resisting such things surely.

What exactly is wrong? We know how many rockets w[…]

Leslie woman gets to the point. Lol. https:[…]

I'm surprised to see the genocide supporters (lik[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

This is the issue. It is not changing. https://y[…]