At some point, you have to get passed “true whatever” and accept certain institutions already exist.
Also helps to recognize that communism as a movement has been anti-colonialist first and democratic only as it serves the former cause. Communists aren’t receptive to a liberal democracy that allows half the people to sell out the other half.
Folks love to get lost in the sauce talking about what Marxism really truly means, as an ideology, without asking why people adopt it or how they apply it in practice.
You’re hopped up on that US propaganda, bud. The USSR was democratic from the ground up. Working people’s voices had more power there than almost anywhere else at any other point in history.
The alternative is that you actually believe authoritarianism to be morally superior
Which enemy state of the US isn’t classified as “authoritarian” in the modern era? The very etimology of the term gets chased back to the Anarcho-Capitalist heyday of the Coolidge Era. It’s a token phrase that’s intended to denounce any government institution. Since Reagan, we’ve adopted it to mean “any government we don’t like”.
I don’t believe the system of government establishes any inherent morality. A democratic slave state is not morally superior to a liberated theocracy. A multi-party parliamentary system that starves and imprisons its homeless population to the applause of a supermajority is not ethically superior to a revolutionary junta that strives to feed every mouth and shelter every head.
I think the long term impulses of a single-party state or a consolidated leadership tend towards corruption. And egalitarian governance can alleviate tension between state bureaucrats and lay civilians by offering them a hand in oversight and intervention. But the sin is in the corrupt practices, not the composition of the state. Corrupt mass media, disinformation, and corporate capture of social institutions undermine the foundations of
Go crack a copy of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. Its a fairly short story, but it illustrates my point. Democracy is not a panacea nor should it be expected to function as such.
At some point, you have to get passed “true whatever” and accept certain institutions already exist.
Also helps to recognize that communism as a movement has been anti-colonialist first and democratic only as it serves the former cause. Communists aren’t receptive to a liberal democracy that allows half the people to sell out the other half.
Folks love to get lost in the sauce talking about what Marxism really truly means, as an ideology, without asking why people adopt it or how they apply it in practice.
Do you actually think that’s worse than the elite deciding who is going to starve and who’s going to be disappeared to maintain their power?
Why bother pretending to return the means of production to the worker only to rob them of their voice?
You’re hopped up on that US propaganda, bud. The USSR was democratic from the ground up. Working people’s voices had more power there than almost anywhere else at any other point in history.
You’re discussing with a tankie. For them the gulags and the holodomor will only get the response “what about xyz in the west”.
I think that’s how it is accomplished. Divide and conquer.
Why do you believe elections are a voice of the people when they do routinely reproduce the plutocracy people say they despise?
I think you’ve been living in a broken democracy too long, you can’t examine it objectively anymore.
The alternative is that you actually believe authoritarianism to be morally superior, which is just disturbing.
Which enemy state of the US isn’t classified as “authoritarian” in the modern era? The very etimology of the term gets chased back to the Anarcho-Capitalist heyday of the Coolidge Era. It’s a token phrase that’s intended to denounce any government institution. Since Reagan, we’ve adopted it to mean “any government we don’t like”.
I don’t believe the system of government establishes any inherent morality. A democratic slave state is not morally superior to a liberated theocracy. A multi-party parliamentary system that starves and imprisons its homeless population to the applause of a supermajority is not ethically superior to a revolutionary junta that strives to feed every mouth and shelter every head.
I think the long term impulses of a single-party state or a consolidated leadership tend towards corruption. And egalitarian governance can alleviate tension between state bureaucrats and lay civilians by offering them a hand in oversight and intervention. But the sin is in the corrupt practices, not the composition of the state. Corrupt mass media, disinformation, and corporate capture of social institutions undermine the foundations of
Go crack a copy of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. Its a fairly short story, but it illustrates my point. Democracy is not a panacea nor should it be expected to function as such.