Votes are earned.
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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I see this attitude a lot in the auth-left. Is this a general thing or only counts when talking about voting?
What about driving SUVs? I'm just one person, doesn't matter if I drive an SUV right? It's only one automobile. And promoting the concept that people shouldn't drive SUVs would be silly right?
What about consuming animal products? It wouldn't matter if people become vegan or not right?, the cow is already dead, the carbon emissions already emitted, and one person eating a hamburger won't make any difference, no sense in eating less meat or trying to promote eating less meat, it'd be no more useful than voting/promoting voting. The only solution would be to outlaw being non-vegan, and anyone who wants a burger deserves the wall right?
There is no fucking "auth-left" get outta here with that liberal bs. Also real "you want to decolonize? wow so you want to shoot all white people" energy there
Polcomp is a stupid meme that it is below you to believe in even as a liberal
What should I use instead? And what other ways should I differentiate myself, an anarcho-communist, from other leftists who want to use state power to get their way? Is that not authoritarian?
There may be dumb people making dumb memes about it, but I haven't seen anything that makes more sense. If you can point me to something better I'd appreciate it.
You can just say Marxist
Ok
The political compass makes no sense
Chain link fences are useless. See I can spout random statements that sound like facts too.
Is right libertarianism not a real ideology? I recognize that it's awful, but that doesn't mean it's not a political position that can be taken. I only use the political compass because it seems more useful than the simple left-right spectrum.
I might say Marxists denigrate the political compass because it lays bare the authoritarianism of the position and the fact that communism is bigger than that specific position.
If there is a system that works better, please give me a link.
Your buying into the central assumption that their is such a thing as authoritarianism. All governments are authoritarian its a meaningless distiction in political economy.
Right libertarianism is a bullshit ideology, because its just liberalism.
The system that works better is just reality. Understanding that political economy is a single entity not separate axis
What!? Are you claiming there is no such thing as authoritarianism? What do you call it when one group of people claims more territory then they need for themselves and then claims they have the right to use violence to get their way and you don't?
All governments are authoritarian its a meaningless distiction in political economy.
If you see government as the only way politics can exist I guess that would make sense. You really should learn about anarchism.
Libertarianism is about maximizing autonomy and reducing or eliminating state power. The reasons why one might want those things, and the methods used to attain and maintain them make a distinction between left and right libertarianism.
This is exactly my problem with the political compass and why i said it was bullshit to start with. You are defining libertarianism as an ideology that can only be described by the political compass. Methods and distictions that are only meaningful if you sunder the concept of political economy. That's why i said its only purpose is to make "right libertarianism" seem like a real ideology when its just liberalism
"You're defining speed as something that can only be described by a speedometer" I can spew nonsense too.
You certainly can spew nonsense
He's saying that it's not a coherent political ideology so it exists only on the political compass
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
I've read this, I just think it's wrong. Marx isn't a god, he not everything he said is unquestionable truth.
Engels wrote On Authority, not Marx
This wasn't written by Marx but by Engels, how closely did you actually read this?
Basically, all bourgeois states are constantly "authoritarian" and any revolution against them must also be "authoritarian" (ie, it must use organized applications of force targeted at specific enemies)
Just to point out how bullshit it is.
There was a thread maybe a month back where we all took the test and everyone is "left libertarian," because the entire design of this thing is ridiculous.
Ah, ok I think I see where some of your problems with this come from and where our disagreements come from.
You and many others see the political compass and the questions as one and the same. I'm seeing the compass square itself as a tool, the same way way I view the left-right political spectrum. The tool is distinct from any set of questions one might ask to locate an individual on the scale.
The fact that some horrible person or group came up with a tool doesn't make that tool inherently useless. Now the questions they ask, sure, those are probably stupid and problematic.
Ignore the stupid questions and website and use the squares the same way you use the spectrum. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There is no baby here, only bathwater
Ok, please tell me the problems you have with the political compass disregarding the website and questions. If it's so flawed, you should easily be able to point them out right?
I already have told you. Political economy is one thing not two separate axis. Promoting the opposite is promoting political illiteracy, which is the "tools" whole point. Its not educating its obfuscating.
I'd say your obfuscating by conflating politics and economics. Sure they are closely related and thus the X,Y graph, but they are not the same. Neither of us is the arbiter of truth so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here.
You could say that, but only because you've fundamentally bought in to a right wing framing through belief a right wing propaganda tool.
Ok? Thats a complete thought terminating cliche. No one has to be the sole arbiter of truth to say things that are true about our material reality.
I didn't invent the concept of political economy. If you think its obfuscation, take it up with the political theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries and the socialist theorists of the 19th who drew on their work.
I'm not inventing things and arbiting truth, im talking about actual theory and not propaganda models, that have clearly worked in your case.
This is the problem with the political compass, and its entire reason for existing. Its to decouple politics from economics and create a belief that some things are similar or related when they are not - a flattening of political understanding to render people illiterate.
The use of "authoritarianism" as an axis - a word that is not meaningfully definable - is only used to perpetuate the Cold War mythologies of communists being the same as nazis. Just like double genocide theory, this view of politics is ultimately nazi apologia.
On the reverse, it serves to legitimize "right libertarianism" by flattening peoples understanding to make it look like it has something in common with actual ideological traditions like anarchism. As a professed anarchist, you should abhor this flattening and equivocation and the model that promotes it. I'm not personally an anarchist, but i find it disgusting how they've sought legitimacy by trying to tie themselves to actual intellectual and political tendencies.
Fair argument, I disagree. Tools are for measuring things, disagreeing with something doesn't mean it shouldn't be learned about, measured, and viewed in context. If you have a better tool that contains virtually all positions without simply leaving out those you disagree with please show me.
I don't use any tool. Politics is not a grid or a spectrum, and there is no point forcing one on it, unless you want to increase political illiteracy.
Reddit has completely broken your brain.
Rad fash has completely broken yours. "Your rich powerful guy is evil, mine is righteous and we should kill you all if you don't fall in line behind my guy" is what your ideology boils down to.
When you totally understand Marxism-Leninism.
This is exactly what the political compass does to your brain
'Red fash' isnt a thing you fucking baby, read a fucking book
We aren't the ones who support every NATO invasion and bombing campaign
I just wanna say, youre my favorite lemmitor around these parts, keep up the amazing posts
They got
-ed. I'll miss their work.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
How do you type this out without spotting the obvious absurdity, just what do you think the point of politics is?
There can be no conflation because politics and economics are inseparable, like how hardware and software are inseparable components of computerization
Every civilization has a mode of production that allows said civilization to reproduce itself, and that reproduction is implemented as a matter of political will shaped thru the realities of whatever specific mode defines the civilization, it's not a "close relationship" that may or may not interact depending on some vacuum context, instead politics and economics are literal embodiments of each other that always interact in the physical world humans inhabit
Power
Yes, but power to do what?
Explain how you can affeft social issues without affecting class dynamics. Explain how you can affect class dynamics without affecting social issues.
Explain why you think class dynamics --> social issues is a one-way street. Change can and does flow both ways.
I'm literally saying they're interconnected systems, youre the one claiming economics and politics are seperable. Marxism is literally political economy, we don't think they can be meaningfully separated.
Bad examples.
The idea of voting is for collective action (maybe). If 51 % vote for something, the we all are supposed to do the thing.
It would be like, "If 51% of people went vegan, then 100% of the population would be required to be vegan. But since vegans are not 51% of the people, no concessions should be made towards their beliefs."
Honestly, the Republicans and conserva-Dems are doing that right now with an transphobic arguments along the line of, "Hey, trans people are such small portion of the population, wouldn't it be easier for them all to just, you know, not be trans?"