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this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2023
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Communism
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It's the authoritarianism that makes these governments bad, not the type of economic system.
You need to ensure a good democracy, regardless of economic policy.
Alright, thanks for helping me understand your argument.
What do you mean by authoritarian?
The opposite of democratic. It's a gradient. The people of a nation either has equal influence on how the nation is run, you have something in between or a very small minority has all the power.
The extreme where everyone have equal influence (impossible in reality) is perfect democracy. The extreme where a single person has all the influence, is an perfect authoritarian. Then you draw rough lines at points where the democracy is as good as you can possibly get, a flawed democracy, authoritarianism light, etc, depending on how unequal the influence is between people.
Also, I am not the one who you originally replied to.
Where are you getting this definition from? It doesn't match what I've seen.
I'm not clear on how you're determining which flawed political project is "as good as you can possibly get". Is there some non-authoritarian political project you support? If not, is there a level of authoritarianism you find acceptable?
You are trying to be way too specific in your counter questions for it to ever be meaningful. A better question would be, why isn't it possible to get a perfect democracy.
The answer is simple, if you have any influence over another person, it's already not perfect. As in a well spoken person at any workplace can voice their support for certain policies and create a higher influence for some stated ideas than a person being silent.
Your final question does not make sense. The point is to try to find more and more democratic systems regardless of initial conditions. Forced transparency for people in power for example increases democracy, nice, then we do it.
I have not stated any specifics on what constitutes what to what degree, I only defined the entire solution space. So it's no wonder it's not clear.
I'm trying to use the specific questions as a rhetorical device, so that you can't avoid defending your position with a vague out like this:
I'm trying to get you to argue for the political system you support. I'm frankly not very clear on your explanation of an authoritarian gradient, but it's very common for "anti-authoritarians" to support a wide range of things that are very authoritarian.
I'd like to highlight one bit you said:
This is basically the goal of the political philosophy of Marxism-leninism. Like, idk if we have much to argue about if that's your goal.
I can't avoid defending my position? I havent stated my position... How can you attack something I havent even stated. I just stated the only possible solutionspace which is valid regardless of position. Go watch Rules for Rulers by CGPgrey, it gives a better description than what I can.
What are you talking about? I have absolutly no idea what "Marxism-leninism" is, so this label means nothing to me. The possible combinations of political policies is WAY larger than the total combinations of a list of political philosophists.. So trying to collapse it any position into these few labels is just crude.
You state "but it’s very common for “anti-authoritarians” to support a wide range of things that are very authoritarian" and then point at my "The point is to try to find more and more democratic systems regardless of initial conditions". You are literally saying that trying to make society more democratic is authoritarian. There is absolutly no logic to this and you need to really clear up your ideas, cause and effect, because that does not compute in any universe.
So I agree, using a math metaphore, if we are discussion any solution, but you have made up your own axioms, then you can never get a good understanding, because your priors are incompatible with eachother.
You clearly hold a position, otherwise we wouldn't be here going back and forth. You're going to have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. You can't argue against something, without arguing for something. What are you arguing for? Is your position (as I've assumed) that authoritarian government is bad?
I'm not going to watch your video. You need to make your arguments for yourself. No one else can.
Marxism-leninism is the dominant communist tendency in the world, and the tendency of the Lemmygrad instance this post is in.
It's not weird that you're not familiar with it as such; education in the West is super anti-communist.
Yes. That's my point! Marxism-leninists hold authoritarian (here I'm using it to mean "the state monopoly on violence" or "the oppressive power of the state") means as a necessary tool.
You can't seize the means of production without fighting the owners for it (a revolution) and you can't hold onto that means of production without continuing to defend against capitalism/the owner class. Once that class contradiction has been removed (by oppressing the bourgeoisie out of existence), and once foreign capital isn't fighting for control of your society. You can drop the use of state oppressive power - because it's not a tool you need anymore!
Holy shit, bro actually linked CPG Grey as a source. The dude notorious for making videos based on a single book/source, and deliberately ignoring criticism of that book when making his videos. The video in question splits "rulers" into "democratic rulers" and "authoritarians" and makes no attempt to actually define these terms. Essentially, it argues that a ruler has a certain number of "keys" that they need to keep happy in order to stay in power (the people, the military etc.) and that democracies are democracies and authoritarian dictatorships are authoritarian dictatorships and one cannot be halfway between them lest it collapse or something. Dude is the epitome of the smug reddit intellectual who reads a single source and believes themselves to be an expert on a topic they didn't know existed 5 minutes ago. Only difference is Grey makes videos rather than reddit posts.
If that isn't enough, he also said that the Monarchy in the UK shouldn't be abolished because of "tourism." Yeah.
Thanks for explaining the video! I'm now very happy I didn't watch it 😄
It's not very long, so it wouldn't be a huge waste of time, but it does the standard "lib theory" thing of simplifying everything into binaries to the point of meaninglessness, then trying to retrofit reality onto their binary. It's worth a watch if only to see how this stuff looks when it is presented in a "slick" sort of way, and is superficially convincing, but only to those that agree with the core premise that societies can be split into "dictatorships" and "democracies."