The Political Sextant: it's like the political compass but a bit nerdier I guess

Rightey wrote:The reason the far-left ideologies have failed literally every single time is because they have a fundamentally bad design, it's not just some terrible coincidence.

Communism by the book is:
1) Dehumanize large parts of the population (land and business owners, political rivals, farmers, anyone associated with religion etc.).

2) Steal the assets of the people you've dehumanized (it's ok they're just parasites and evil!)

3) Murder the people whose assets you've stolen (again this is justified because they were just trying to keep you down).

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that having theft and murder as among your core principals is going to attract thieves and murderers into your ranks, and is going to lead to a shitty government.

All three of those also apply to capitalism.

True, I remember after the last election here when the Liberals won, they rounded up all the conservatives and had them shot.

Good riddance I say, all hail our glorious leader Justin Trudeau.

Rightey wrote:True, I remember after the last election here when the Liberals won, they rounded up all the conservatives and had them shot.

Good riddance I say, all hail our glorious leader Justin Trudeau.

You don't think people die because of capitalism? And why would a capitalist system be murdering the conservatives? It's the poor that they dehumanise, steal from and murder.

I never said capitalism is all sunshine and fun, there are obvious places to improve and there's some ideas from the left like welfare programs, public health care etc. that have done a great job at improving living conditions.

Communism (the far left which is what Prezzy originally mentioned) on the other hand goes the same way every single time, communists take power, everyone who is against them is an evil parasite, they start stealing and murdering people, and then most of the time beg capitalist countries for food aid.

Rightey wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Rightey wrote:Our current system absolutely does not require violence, we're lucky enough to live at a time and in a place where we can make huge changes through the use of grass roots activism, and reaching out to the masses for the price of a smart phone.

Do you think we need violence?

How is private property protected? Do the police ask nicely for it to be returned? How are borders controlled?

So is that a yes regarding your opinion on violence?

Yeah, if you try and steal someones stuff there is a chance they will get violent with you. Clearly our society is a terrible cesspit of evil right? Just imagine people defending their property!

Regarding borders, again the risk of violence if very easily avoided if you don't do something illegal like trying to hop them. You seem to be implying borders are a bad thing, which I totally disagree with as well.

You've missed the point totally.

Capitalist societies require violence and the threat of violence to work. Private property is protected by police who will detain and incarcerate those who infringe property rights. This isn't about individuals protecting their property themselves, but the state threatening violence against those who infringe the property rights that are required for capitalism to work. The police will attempt to forcefully evict those who squat in unoccupied buildings. If you are hungry and steal to eat, you will be arrested, and may be imprisoned. If you are a benefit recipient, and you breach a term of the conditions for receipt, the state will threaten to withhold that payment, even if that means you will go hungry. This is all violence, and all is required by the system we live in. Legitimate asylum seekers are currently being held in concentration camps in the US.

Your solution to avoiding violence in a system that absolutely uses it as a tool is basically just "play the game by the rules be don't lose."

Rightey wrote:I never said capitalism is all sunshine and fun, there are obvious places to improve and there's some ideas from the left like welfare programs, public health care etc. that have done a great job at improving living conditions.

Communism (the far left which is what Prezzy originally mentioned) on the other hand goes the same way every single time, communists take power, everyone who is against them is an evil parasite, they start stealing and murdering people, and then most of the time beg capitalist countries for food aid.

What you said was:

1) Dehumanize large parts of the population (land and business owners, political rivals, farmers, anyone associated with religion etc.).

2) Steal the assets of the people you've dehumanized (it's ok they're just parasites and evil!)

3) Murder the people whose assets you've stolen (again this is justified because they were just trying to keep you down).

All 3 also apply to capitalism.

1. Capitalism dehumanises people - under capitalism people just become numbers/cogs in the wheel. Nobody is cared for, they are just meatsacks designed to increase profit.

2. Stealing assets of the people you dehumanise - absolute classic capitalism. Do you think land, resources and people's labour have been fairly divided up?

3. Murder the people you dehumanise - the whole US military industrial complex is designed to increase profit through war. Dehumanise populations, make them your enemy, kill them, make stacks of cash. You also have the capitalist healthcare system that charges utterly disgusting prices for drugs and treatment, which directly kills poor people.

Pure capitalism is just as bad as soviet style communism.

I don’t think I’m as nuts as rightey but afaic communism is a nice idea but fails at the human level

I do not trust a single person on this planet to be the guiding light and arbiter of instituting this utopian system, human nature corrupts all things it touches and it doesn’t work

Current stage capitalism is shite too

False wrote:I don’t think I’m as nuts as rightey but afaic communism is a nice idea but fails at the human level

I do not trust a single person on this planet to be the guiding light and arbiter of instituting this utopian system, human nature corrupts all things it touches and it doesn’t work

Current stage capitalism is shite too

Agreed.

I think Rightey thinks I am defending communism, whereas I’m actually just saying that capitalism is also just as gooseberry fool.

Karl please can you do a post summarising the results posted, thanks

Knoyleo wrote:Capitalist societies require violence and the threat of violence to work.

To be fair I think that probably applies to communist societies as well. The USSR was notorious for its secret police and gulags. The threat of "the state" coming to get you was ever-present.

At least in the West today you don't have to worry about your neighbour spying on you for the NKVD, with the potential (and often very real threat) of both you and your family being arrested and sent to Siberia for seemingly-minor political infractions.

Rightey wrote:Communism by the book is:
1) Dehumanize large parts of the population (land and business owners, political rivals, farmers, anyone associated with religion etc.).

2) Steal the assets of the people you've dehumanized (it's ok they're just parasites and evil!)

3) Murder the people whose assets you've stolen (again this is justified because they were just trying to keep you down).

I think your objection is more to revolution than communism itself.

The French Revolution was notoriously violent. The nobility and their associates were dehumanised, their assets stolen, and themselves murdered. It was a bad time. However, which do you think is a better system - the Kingdom of France, or the Republic?

In cases like this revolution was "necessary" because no other avenue of change was open. The existing system was oppressive of the population, incapable of being changed through democratic means.

You should remember that the Russian Revolution was against the Russian Empire, a Tsarist autocracy. Similarly to the French Revolution, gradual change was not possible. There was no democratic process available to the people. (The Russian Republic briefly existed, but I think it's erroneous to separate the revolutions as separate affairs, and no real resolution was achieved until after a lengthy civil war.)

The Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of the USSR was a failure as far as implementing communism goes. Even according to Marx, the initial revolution does not result in communism, but was seen as a necessary first step towards it. The revolution overthrows the existing state and brings about a form of socialism, which must further evolve into the endgame of communism. The USSR never got there, due to a corrupt vanguard and a hijacking of the revolution.

I think you're right in as far as pointing it out as an example of how vanguardism is flawed and corruptible. I myself am definitely more of a gradualist - especially because I live in a democracy (of sorts).

Britain has a history of socialist policy being brought about through democratic process. Nationalisation I would hazard falls under your view of "stealing assets" as it is the enforced transition of property from private to public ownership. There are many examples of this being done peacefully and without a need for violent revolution or upheaval, and certainly without any murder.

If a society votes to bring about communism through a gradual trend of increasingly socialist policy, do you think that would suffer any of those same "fundamental" criticisms?

Preezy wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:Capitalist societies require violence and the threat of violence to work.

To be fair I think that probably applies to communist societies as well. The USSR was notorious for its secret police and gulags. The threat of "the state" coming to get you was ever-present.

At least in the West today you don't have to worry about your neighbour spying on you for the NKVD, with the potential (and often very real threat) of both you and your family being arrested and sent to Siberia for seemingly-minor political infractions.

I'm not denying that authoritarian communist regimes were violent, but just because they were more explicitly violent, does not mean that capitalism isn't violent.

My main issue was with Rightey pointing out that seizing the means of production could only be achieved with violence, while totally ignoring that maintaining private property is also violent. It's not a peaceful system being disrupted with violence, but a violent system, being upended.

Also, there are certainly non - violent ways of seizing the means of production, albeit much more gradual, and likely to be heavily resisted by the system.

Rightey wrote:

Karl_ wrote:Both classical Marxism and anarchism (incl. anarcho-communism) are all about direct democracy and individual / local rights

Yeah let's just ignore the whole "dictatorship of the proletariat" part where we murder everyone who disagrees with us. It's really all about direct democracy

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" refers to proletarian control of the means of production and the systems of political power. In Marxist philosophy, we currently live in the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" because the bourgeoisie are in charge of society. A society can be both democratic, and be a philosophical "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both Marx and Engels explicitly wrote that the goal of a revolution should be the establishment of a direct-democratic constitution that empowers the proletariat. They believed the nation-state would then rapidly "wither away" entirely as socialism progressed to communism.

The idea that "dictatorship of the proletariat" should involve a "vanguard party" which centralised control was emphasised by Lenin. That was considered a "right-wing" strain of communism. There were always "left-wing" Luxemburgists and council communists who argued against this, saying the nation-state should be structured bottom-up in a decentralised direct democracy; there were also anarcho-syndicalists who argued that the nation-state should be immediately abolished.

I am not a Marxist-Leninist, I'm an anarcho-syndicalist, what I advocate for couldn't be further from political dictatorship. You are of course free to think it might not work, whatever, but it won't be because it's totalitarian.

Knoyleo wrote:You've missed the point totally.

Capitalist societies require violence and the threat of violence to work. Private property is protected by police who will detain and incarcerate those who infringe property rights. This isn't about individuals protecting their property themselves, but the state threatening violence against those who infringe the property rights that are required for capitalism to work. The police will attempt to forcefully evict those who squat in unoccupied buildings. If you are hungry and steal to eat, you will be arrested, and may be imprisoned. If you are a benefit recipient, and you breach a term of the conditions for receipt, the state will threaten to withhold that payment, even if that means you will go hungry. This is all violence, and all is required by the system we live in. Legitimate asylum seekers are currently being held in concentration camps in the US.

Your solution to avoiding violence in a system that absolutely uses it as a tool is basically just "play the game by the rules be don't lose."

So still no answer on whether or not you think violence is acceptable?

Regarding your examples, they're all awful.

Yes, if someone calls the police on you for squatting they will come and boot you out. It's not because of evil capitalist oppression, it's because of crap like squatters rights laws. It's because using something wears it down and then results in repair costs for the owners (flooring, paint, doors etc. all get damaged through use). It's because if the owner let them stay, and then the squatter was injured or died on their property they might be liable.

Literally all your examples are the same, if you take even two minutes to think about why things are like that you would see that there's a logical order here. If you still think that this society is so awful why don't you up and move to Somalia where it's pure anarchy in 95% of the country? See how wonderful it is not to have to worry about police coming in and forcibly removing you from some hut you're squatting in.

Moggy wrote:All 3 also apply to capitalism.

1. Capitalism dehumanises people - under capitalism people just become numbers/cogs in the wheel. Nobody is cared for, they are just meatsacks designed to increase profit.

2. Stealing assets of the people you dehumanise - absolute classic capitalism. Do you think land, resources and people's labour have been fairly divided up?

3. Murder the people you dehumanise - the whole US military industrial complex is designed to increase profit through war. Dehumanise populations, make them your enemy, kill them, make stacks of cash. You also have the capitalist healthcare system that charges utterly disgusting prices for drugs and treatment, which directly kills poor people.

Pure capitalism is just as bad as soviet style communism.

Yes, all 3 apply to pure capitalism, something which no one was talking about. The people here are saying how great communism is over our current system. No one is saying that pure capitalism is the best system here.

I'm saying communism is gooseberry fool, and you're cherry picking examples of places capitalism has failed, when there are countless examples of how it's done a far better job than communism which has been a disaster in every single place it's been tried, but of course as soon as you point that out one of the revolutionary guard will come and tell you "that wasn't real communism so we should try it again".

OrangeRKN wrote:I think your objection is more to revolution than communism itself.

The French Revolution was notoriously violent. The nobility and their associates were dehumanised, their assets stolen, and themselves murdered. It was a bad time. However, which do you think is a better system - the Kingdom of France, or the Republic?

In cases like this revolution was "necessary" because no other avenue of change was open. The existing system was oppressive of the population, incapable of being changed through democratic means.

You should remember that the Russian Revolution was against the Russian Empire, a Tsarist autocracy. Similarly to the French Revolution, gradual change was not possible. There was no democratic process available to the people. (The Russian Republic briefly existed, but I think it's erroneous to separate the revolutions as separate affairs, and no real resolution was achieved until after a lengthy civil war.)

The Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of the USSR was a failure as far as implementing communism goes. Even according to Marx, the initial revolution does not result in communism, but was seen as a necessary first step towards it. The revolution overthrows the existing state and brings about a form of socialism, which must further evolve into the endgame of communism. The USSR never got there, due to a corrupt vanguard and a hijacking of the revolution.

I think you're right in as far as pointing it out as an example of how vanguardism is flawed and corruptible. I myself am definitely more of a gradualist - especially because I live in a democracy (of sorts).

Britain has a history of socialist policy being brought about through democratic process. Nationalisation I would hazard falls under your view of "stealing assets" as it is the enforced transition of property from private to public ownership. There are many examples of this being done peacefully and without a need for violent revolution or upheaval, and certainly without any murder.

If a society votes to bring about communism through a gradual trend of increasingly socialist policy, do you think that would suffer any of those same "fundamental" criticisms?

My objection to communism as told by the likes of Marx et al. is that there is no way to get there than to murder everyone who thinks differently to you, as you said the revolution is a necessary first step. Therefore it's a fundamentally flawed system.

You mentioned the French and Russian revolutions, but what about all the other countries that went through slower shifts from monarchies to constitutional monarchies where a huge chunk of the population didn't have to end up dead?

There are tons of countries where these revolutions left them off far far worse than they were before.

Look at China, over 70 million people died in the great leap forward, and where are they now? Adopting tenants of a free market economy which caused the largest increase in the middle class in history, and yet the common person has virtually no rights when going up against the government. Are you really going to say, well it would be worse if they hadn't had the revolution! Compare them to Taiwan, which while not perfect was built by the people who lost against the communists and is a far more free country...

https://www.worldfreedomindex.com/

Consider how we may well reach a post-scarcity world with the advancement of AI workers and autonomous space travel, where we harvest all our resources off world. That future is one brought about by capitalism, democracy, and the organization of huge numbers of people working in tight hierarchies, and again, no engineered famines to wipe out troublesome peoples, no gulags etc.

Regarding nationalisation, I think it's wrong, but I can at least see some benefit for things like utilities provided that those who are being forced to sell are getting a fair deal, something which has never happened in communism as the people who are forced to sell are always just considered parasites who were basically just stealing by owning something.

Karl_ wrote: The "dictatorship of the proletariat" refers to proletarian control of the means of production and the systems of political power. In Marxist philosophy, we currently live in the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" because the bourgeoisie are in charge of society. A society can be both democratic, and be a philosophical "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both Marx and Engels explicitly wrote that the goal of a revolution should be the establishment of a direct-democratic constitution that empowers the proletariat. They believed the nation-state would then rapidly "wither away" entirely as socialism progressed to communism.

Doesn't Marx himself say that the revolution basically must be protected by the proletariat? Basically they don't know what's good for them so this dictatorship is justified. In Marx's time before universal suffrage it might have been fair to say we live in a dictatorship, but given that 1 person= 1 vote now a days, the idea doesn't really stand up to scrutiny does it?

Anyways guys, I really should be working on my thesis now so if you reply more don't expect quick replies, it might take me a few weeks as I really shouldn't be getting so distracted on here.

Yes, all 3 apply to pure capitalism, something which no one was talking about.

I was.

It's pretty easy to think of examples of bourgeois capitalist democracies doing evil things.

The slave trade; hundreds of thousands being tortured in concentration camps in Kenya and the Boer Republics; use of chemical weapons; developing nuclear weapons, and then using them against foreign civilians; implementing apartheid; causing genocide-level famines by asset-stripping their imperial possessions, like in Ireland and in India, where millions and tens of millions respectively were killed or displaced; lying about a country posing a grave existential threat so it could invade and destabilise it, it later being revealed these wars were waged for purely economic reasons; sending secret agents to destabilise other countries---even other democracies---and what's more, being caught doing this dozens-upon-dozens of times; overthrowing the governments of Iran over and over until it gave up on democracy and now exists as a brutal theocracy; setting up concentration camps for migrants with the explicit goal of interning, harassing, and torturing vulnerable asylum seekers including children; maintaining a gulag on some god-forsaken island in which suspected criminals can be held indefinitely without trial; and did you know a group of fourteen bourgeois capitalist democracies collaborate to spy on each other's citizens, providing their respective secret polices with the intelligence, and on foreign nationals of every country, for the purpose of imperialist interference?

And I could fill pages ranting about how short-termism and the profit motive are encouraging the destruction of our only planet, and how bourgeois democracy is doing nothing to prevent capitalists from dooming us, and cannot even provide us with a credible plan to limit the damage to that which has already been done.

...But let's take a deep breath and a step back.

I am not a Marxist-Leninist and I won't make excuses for Stalinist or Maoist dictatorship, just as I wouldn't make excuses for the oppressions of fascism or theocracy. The West has granted its citizens a few hard-fought liberties; it constantly tries to take them away, but it is better than nothing, I agree. Of course I would rather live in Britain than the USSR. I'm not saying we are in every single respect bad, or that we are the worst ever. What I'm saying is that we are still very often the bad guys; that our system is absolutely bad enough to be ashamed of, bad enough that we should be disgusted and seek radical change. I don't have to invoke a spectre of "unfettered" or "pure" capitalism to critique capitalism, because our system as-is is demonstrably broken and terrible.

I'm not an ideological purist when it comes to anarcho-syndicalism for what it's worth. I read party manifestos and listen to politicians, I try to insist my friends and family go out and vote, I'll mostly-support classical Marxists and left-communists and democratic socialists and the green left movement and Labour-style social democrats and even New-Labour-style genuinely-left-leaning centrists (as long as they are actually that, and not antifa-are-the-real-Nazis "centrists").

The danger with pragmatism is that, if you don't strongly believe in an ideology, your ideology becomes compromise. To compromise like Democrats reaching across the aisle to Trump is to compromise for compromise's sake. Anyone who wants to be pragmatic must also develop an honest sense of what they truly want. The right have a strong "utopian" (ugh) vision that guides their "praxis"---a powerful nation inhabited by powerful, rich white people---and that is a strength for them. My utopian vision is for a generous community inhabited by an educated, enfranchised proletariat.

Drumstick wrote:Karl please can you do a post summarising the results posted, thanks

Okay! I double-counted if there was a tie, which is why it adds up to more than 100%.



Ideology:

Anarchism xxxxxxxx 21.6%

Classical Marxism xxxxxxxxxxxx 32.4%

Authoritarian communism xx 5.4%

Market socialism xxxx 10.8%

Social democracy xxxx 10.8%

Environmentalism xxxxxxxxx 24.3%

Centrism xxxxxxxxxx 27.0%

Libertarianism x 2.7%

Conservativism x 2.7%

Nationalism xxx 8.1%

(ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo N=37)

How would we best name a political party based on the top three outcomes there and who wants to lead it?

On an unrelated note, I am open to all forms of bribery. I just wanted to put that out there.

Preezy wrote:At least in the West today you don't have to worry about your neighbour spying on you for the NKVD, with the potential (and often very real threat) of both you and your family being arrested and sent to Siberia for seemingly-minor political infractions.

Ugh, Degenerate Neighbour Bloke's being a dick again!

*calls secret police*

Muahahahaha!

Vermilion wrote:

Preezy wrote:At least in the West today you don't have to worry about your neighbour spying on you for the NKVD, with the potential (and often very real threat) of both you and your family being arrested and sent to Siberia for seemingly-minor political infractions.

Ugh, Degenerate Neighbour Bloke's being a dick again!

*calls secret police*

Muahahahaha!

I'd tread extremely carefully if I were you. Stool Bloke is the bookies' current favourite to take the reins at the new GRcade political party.

Post bookmarked for posterity .