Listen man I know I’m edging pretty close to “no true Scotsman,” but hear me out… it’s not that it wasn’t “true socialism,” but whether something is socialist economically isn’t necessarily tied to authoritarianism. Like, fuck tankies, but also I do think that combining market economics and truly representative democracy with proportional representation and freedom of speech and association with socialist ownership structures (as in the abolition of corporate governance from any input from, frankly, absentee “owners”) is the move. Socialism doesn’t have to be authoritarian, nor does it have to be against market economics. Ya know?
It’s just that that’s not socialism either. You’re no true scotsmaning existing socialism, and idealizing not-socialism. You’re a social democrat, a cooperativist, maybe a mutualist, which is the right thing to be. You seek to manage contradictions, you don’t idealize their synthesis.
That’s true, but i don’t know if it’s fair to say that mandating employee ownership is anything other than socialist. Not Marxist, sure. Certainly leftist. But isn’t employee ownership and governance of the means of production, by definition, socialism?
It is not, by definition, socialism. Socialism has other elements. Marx did not think it was socialism. He thought political economy also likely made it impossible, because it didn’t abolish capitalism. Socialism is the global abolition of capitalism in all its forms, capitalism being the private ownership of the means of production (a group of workers still privately owns a factory, its private unless its public), via all means it might re-emerge, it’s not a spectrum of redistribution of wealth or government intervention.
I did in other comments. Usually because he utterly destroyed those other socialists in arguments. Proudhon is basically the main pre marx socialist, invented mutualism, I like him, but it’s just easier to say you’re a mutualist, because Marx wrote against him and most socialists see his ideas as primitive or wrong or “utopian”.
Then there were the Christian socialists. They are somewhat accepted. But you know, in Christian circles.
Ah I see. I definitely have more learning to do than. In that case how is libertarian socialism socialism? Doesn’t that definition invalidate basically everything but vanguardism?
Libertarian socialism is either what people call market socialism, which simply isn’t socialism, or anarchism, which is actually communism. But anarchists, which market socialists see themselves as being on the spectrum of, are actually a different intellectual tradition than Marxism.
Some groups have historical reasons to use the term socialism that are not Marxists, but if you go to a socialist group around the world and claim you are one of those (like I did) you basically will be stonewalled. These days socialist traditions are the Marxist traditions, and the rest are usually anarchist traditions.
Oh I definitely think my position is more informed by anarchist traditions (eg, see my username lol) than socialist traditions, but it’s not exactly anarchism either. I’m never really sure what label to use tbh.
Personally after examining and leaving on the table both Anarchism and Marxism, I went on to study Nietzsche, the Frankfurt school, reformists like Bernstein, and old school socialists like Proudhon. I’ve just landed far-left-of-liberal. There’s plenty of precedent for that too, for example in Rousseau and Rawls.
And going to europe, I basically just want what they have. So that’s socdem.
yeah I keep hearing how we’re a democracy but I’ve never felt it ever was. We have the technology to do a direct democracy but no one really wants to do it.
Sure but words have philosophical pre-definitions and real world usages. It’s also possible that the pre-definitions are impossible, and that all attempts to achieve them lead to something else, it’s natural then that that something else becomes the new meaning of the word.
If I gave a recipe for bread, and it always came out to be shit, that word “bread” would come to mean “shit”, even if the old book said “bread is not shit”
In that case we’d say “X can’t exist”, not “X is Y”. That’s the case for the word utopia, for example. Also non-state capitalism socialism exists and includes for instance the Paris Commune, anarchist Ukraine and for a surviving example Rojava.
Logically you might do that, but linguistically you certainly would not. Words drift in meaning all the time. No other country actively calls itself utopian. Many still actively call themselves communist, and are led by people who call themselves communists, and think they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.
Think of the term Christian. Christian used to mean people who did what Jesus said to do, or maybe what Paul said Christian meant in that book we all have. But now, academically, Christian means any tradition which claims to be following Jesus, which includes Mormons and Jahovas Witnessess and Catholics and that weird doomsday cult down the road. If you wanted to clarify, you’d say “Pauline Christianity” or more likely “Lutheranism” or something. Only Christians clap back and say things like “true Christianity” because of course they would.
I hate to say it but small and or temporary implementations of “true communism” do not break the trend. Let them fight a war against overwhelming capitalist powers and then call me back.
And better than real existing what-was-called-communism (as to not trigger the no true Scotsman leftists)
Listen man I know I’m edging pretty close to “no true Scotsman,” but hear me out… it’s not that it wasn’t “true socialism,” but whether something is socialist economically isn’t necessarily tied to authoritarianism. Like, fuck tankies, but also I do think that combining market economics and truly representative democracy with proportional representation and freedom of speech and association with socialist ownership structures (as in the abolition of corporate governance from any input from, frankly, absentee “owners”) is the move. Socialism doesn’t have to be authoritarian, nor does it have to be against market economics. Ya know?
I got a death threat from a tankie today because I suggested that Kamala would have not been as bad as the current administration.
That was fun, don’t worry I was banned shortly thereafter from that community
Accelerationism is a hell of a drug. You would have thought they would learn something from Weimar Germany, but no.
Was it that six-sided ursine one…?
It’s just that that’s not socialism either. You’re no true scotsmaning existing socialism, and idealizing not-socialism. You’re a social democrat, a cooperativist, maybe a mutualist, which is the right thing to be. You seek to manage contradictions, you don’t idealize their synthesis.
That’s true, but i don’t know if it’s fair to say that mandating employee ownership is anything other than socialist. Not Marxist, sure. Certainly leftist. But isn’t employee ownership and governance of the means of production, by definition, socialism?
It is not, by definition, socialism. Socialism has other elements. Marx did not think it was socialism. He thought political economy also likely made it impossible, because it didn’t abolish capitalism. Socialism is the global abolition of capitalism in all its forms, capitalism being the private ownership of the means of production (a group of workers still privately owns a factory, its private unless its public), via all means it might re-emerge, it’s not a spectrum of redistribution of wealth or government intervention.
I think your argument might be more convincing if you actually mentioned these elements.
Other people had other definitions even before Marx, so I’m not sure why his should be the only valid definition.
Just my two cents.
I did in other comments. Usually because he utterly destroyed those other socialists in arguments. Proudhon is basically the main pre marx socialist, invented mutualism, I like him, but it’s just easier to say you’re a mutualist, because Marx wrote against him and most socialists see his ideas as primitive or wrong or “utopian”.
Then there were the Christian socialists. They are somewhat accepted. But you know, in Christian circles.
Ah I see. I definitely have more learning to do than. In that case how is libertarian socialism socialism? Doesn’t that definition invalidate basically everything but vanguardism?
Libertarian socialism is either what people call market socialism, which simply isn’t socialism, or anarchism, which is actually communism. But anarchists, which market socialists see themselves as being on the spectrum of, are actually a different intellectual tradition than Marxism.
Some groups have historical reasons to use the term socialism that are not Marxists, but if you go to a socialist group around the world and claim you are one of those (like I did) you basically will be stonewalled. These days socialist traditions are the Marxist traditions, and the rest are usually anarchist traditions.
Oh I definitely think my position is more informed by anarchist traditions (eg, see my username lol) than socialist traditions, but it’s not exactly anarchism either. I’m never really sure what label to use tbh.
Personally after examining and leaving on the table both Anarchism and Marxism, I went on to study Nietzsche, the Frankfurt school, reformists like Bernstein, and old school socialists like Proudhon. I’ve just landed far-left-of-liberal. There’s plenty of precedent for that too, for example in Rousseau and Rawls.
And going to europe, I basically just want what they have. So that’s socdem.
yeah I keep hearing how we’re a democracy but I’ve never felt it ever was. We have the technology to do a direct democracy but no one really wants to do it.
I mean state capitalism is by definition not communism. This isn’t a no true Scotsman they’re just two different things.
Sure but words have philosophical pre-definitions and real world usages. It’s also possible that the pre-definitions are impossible, and that all attempts to achieve them lead to something else, it’s natural then that that something else becomes the new meaning of the word.
If I gave a recipe for bread, and it always came out to be shit, that word “bread” would come to mean “shit”, even if the old book said “bread is not shit”
In that case we’d say “X can’t exist”, not “X is Y”. That’s the case for the word utopia, for example. Also non-state capitalism socialism exists and includes for instance the Paris Commune, anarchist Ukraine and for a surviving example Rojava.
Logically you might do that, but linguistically you certainly would not. Words drift in meaning all the time. No other country actively calls itself utopian. Many still actively call themselves communist, and are led by people who call themselves communists, and think they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.
Think of the term Christian. Christian used to mean people who did what Jesus said to do, or maybe what Paul said Christian meant in that book we all have. But now, academically, Christian means any tradition which claims to be following Jesus, which includes Mormons and Jahovas Witnessess and Catholics and that weird doomsday cult down the road. If you wanted to clarify, you’d say “Pauline Christianity” or more likely “Lutheranism” or something. Only Christians clap back and say things like “true Christianity” because of course they would.
I hate to say it but small and or temporary implementations of “true communism” do not break the trend. Let them fight a war against overwhelming capitalist powers and then call me back.