Yeah. Tankies always forget you can’t have socialism without democracy, and either no government or a government that is strictly from the bottom up, and fascists gladly play along with that facade as it works in their interests.
“Authoritarian communism” is an oxymoron.
And not an “emphasis” kind of oxymoron like “bittersweet” or “impossible solution”, or a “poetic” kind like “living dead”.
An “absolutely impossible” kind of oxymoron. like “married bachelor” or “squared circle”.
The definition of “Authoritarianism” seems to be bound up in the libertarian view of free markets versus unfree governments.
There’s a book I like called The People’s Republic of Walmart. It describes how much of the Command Economy practiced in the 60s and 70s by “authoritarian” socialist states was picked up and integrated into the corporate model in an effort to improve efficiency of supply chains and reduce the cost of industrial manufacturing. Walmart’s vertical integration follows a model that any Socialist government would laud. It just hordes the surplus for shareholders, at the expense of its employment base.
When the Socialists were making cars in Yugoslavia with a highly efficient regional distribution of manufacturing and assembly, it was horrifying infringement on the rights of the business community. When Ford and Nissian picked up on these practices and imported them to the US and Japan, it was The Miracle of Free Market Innovation that delivered huge returns to investors.
Liberals love to cringe and wring their hands when they hear about Lenin’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. After all, how can we be free if worker’s council get to dictate our housing stock or our employment opportunities or our transit corridors or our retail inventory? But they’re utterly blaise about living under an economy whose function is dictated by a handful of corporate boards and banking executives making all the same decisions because… freedom?
It’s not a dichotomy. Capitalism inevitably leads to oligarchy, and oligarchies are just authoritarianism rich people being the ones opressing the people. Both China and Russia ended up as oligarchies too, even though they started claiming to be ‘communist’.
A way to prevent authoritarianism is the division of powers, but that only works until the enemies of the people work together to take over all divided powers.
The only system that has proven to work in the public’s best interest so far is social democracy. But even that is hanging by a thread, as it requires higher levels of public education and better control over corruption to maintain.
Soviets removed the “proletariat” from the dictatorship very quickly. About the same time when Lenin decided he didn’t like losing elections or having any sort of political opposition whatsoever.
Soviets removed the “proletariat” from the dictatorship very quickly.
That’s the western liberal line, certainly. The victory of the Leninists and Maoists transformed oppressed into oppressor by virtue of no longer having an aristocracy capable of oppressing them.
About the same time when Lenin decided he didn’t like losing elections
The elections failed to deliver the promised reform. Their biggest promise on taking office was to exit the war and withdraw the troops. And the first thing the Mensheviks did was double-down on defeat. Milyukov’s refusal to exit the Eastern Front kicked off a protest half-a-million men large, right in the heart of the Russian government.
The next three months saw the elected government ordering police into the streets to slaughter hundreds of the people who voted for them. They topped it off by bombing the Bolshevik offices and chasing Lenin back underground for the unconscionable crime of leading peace marches. Bolshevism surged in popularity the following month, to the point that General Lavr Kornilov threatened to bring troops into the city to conduct a full pogrom. Only mass defection within the lower ranks of the military spared Petrograd from an outright holocaust.
This is the democracy you’re defending? Christ. No wonder so many liberals seem perfectly content to see the modern wave of college students being disappeared by ICE.
Ah right, democracy didn’t immediately solve all problems so we should ban or murder all political opposition and install a one party dictatorship where I’m conveniently in charge of everything.
Sounds like something that totally benefits “the people”.
I love how liberals constantly downplay shit like this. If you’re upset about your friends and family being shoveled into a pointless meat grinder and you’re experiencing mass death and oppression, then you’re just upset that “democracy didn’t immediately solve all problems.” In the same way that opposition to genocide is frequently framed as, “throwing a fit because you don’t get your way,” and such.
It’s literally just the Joker speech from The Dark Knight, as long as there’s a plan, it’s fine, even if the plan is horrible, the only thing that matters is that the norms are respected and the proper procedure is followed. You and everyone you care about can be sent to concentration camps, just so long as the decision is made by a legislative body following proper procedure. Systemic violence, like dragging people from their homes to die in a trench en masse, is perfectly acceptable, just so long as it isn’t disruptive, just so long as everything is going according to plan. The only problem y’all have with fascism is that it’s so rude and blunt, if it persued the same goals respectfully you’d be completely fine with it.
Yes, it did benefit the people immensely to get out of the war. Aside from the horrors of WWI, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that if they hadn’t dropped out and focused on rebuilding and industrial development at that point, there’s a fair chance that they lose to the Nazis in WWII and we’d all be speaking German right now. Besides, in the chaos of this period the so-called “democracy” wasn’t some kind of established, functional system, we’re talking about a provensional government, and one that completely failed to address ongoing crises (which is kinda the point of having a provisional government). Under the conditions of the time, sensible people radicalize, and then they force things to change and get rid of those conditions, and then people 100 years later to whom the conditions are utterly foreign waggle their fingers about it, but they don’t care because they’re no longer dying in a ditch.
democracy didn’t immediately solve all problems so we should ban or murder all political opposition
The democratically elected government murdered hundreds of Russians - people who originally supported the government - because they protested the state’s continued disastrous warmongering.
The liberals were doing the murdering. The Bolsheviks responded in self defense, often by cajoling infantry into not killing protesting civilians.
This is what brought down the “Democratic” pre-Lenin government. Liberals couldn’t order their soldiers to massacre the Bolshevik civilians, so the democratic government fell apart.
Efficiency and low-cost comes with baggage too, so I guess both in a way. Efficiency and low cost good, but what is required to achieve those often sucks
Yeah. Tankies always forget you can’t have socialism without democracy, and either no government or a government that is strictly from the bottom up, and fascists gladly play along with that facade as it works in their interests.
“Authoritarian communism” is an oxymoron.
And not an “emphasis” kind of oxymoron like “bittersweet” or “impossible solution”, or a “poetic” kind like “living dead”.
An “absolutely impossible” kind of oxymoron. like “married bachelor” or “squared circle”.
The definition of “Authoritarianism” seems to be bound up in the libertarian view of free markets versus unfree governments.
There’s a book I like called The People’s Republic of Walmart. It describes how much of the Command Economy practiced in the 60s and 70s by “authoritarian” socialist states was picked up and integrated into the corporate model in an effort to improve efficiency of supply chains and reduce the cost of industrial manufacturing. Walmart’s vertical integration follows a model that any Socialist government would laud. It just hordes the surplus for shareholders, at the expense of its employment base.
When the Socialists were making cars in Yugoslavia with a highly efficient regional distribution of manufacturing and assembly, it was horrifying infringement on the rights of the business community. When Ford and Nissian picked up on these practices and imported them to the US and Japan, it was The Miracle of Free Market Innovation that delivered huge returns to investors.
Liberals love to cringe and wring their hands when they hear about Lenin’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. After all, how can we be free if worker’s council get to dictate our housing stock or our employment opportunities or our transit corridors or our retail inventory? But they’re utterly blaise about living under an economy whose function is dictated by a handful of corporate boards and banking executives making all the same decisions because… freedom?
It’s not a dichotomy. Capitalism inevitably leads to oligarchy, and oligarchies are just authoritarianism rich people being the ones opressing the people. Both China and Russia ended up as oligarchies too, even though they started claiming to be ‘communist’.
A way to prevent authoritarianism is the division of powers, but that only works until the enemies of the people work together to take over all divided powers.
The only system that has proven to work in the public’s best interest so far is social democracy. But even that is hanging by a thread, as it requires higher levels of public education and better control over corruption to maintain.
Um… You do know what Lenin and the Bolsheviks did to the worker’s councils right?
Soviets removed the “proletariat” from the dictatorship very quickly. About the same time when Lenin decided he didn’t like losing elections or having any sort of political opposition whatsoever.
That’s the western liberal line, certainly. The victory of the Leninists and Maoists transformed oppressed into oppressor by virtue of no longer having an aristocracy capable of oppressing them.
The elections failed to deliver the promised reform. Their biggest promise on taking office was to exit the war and withdraw the troops. And the first thing the Mensheviks did was double-down on defeat. Milyukov’s refusal to exit the Eastern Front kicked off a protest half-a-million men large, right in the heart of the Russian government.
The next three months saw the elected government ordering police into the streets to slaughter hundreds of the people who voted for them. They topped it off by bombing the Bolshevik offices and chasing Lenin back underground for the unconscionable crime of leading peace marches. Bolshevism surged in popularity the following month, to the point that General Lavr Kornilov threatened to bring troops into the city to conduct a full pogrom. Only mass defection within the lower ranks of the military spared Petrograd from an outright holocaust.
This is the democracy you’re defending? Christ. No wonder so many liberals seem perfectly content to see the modern wave of college students being disappeared by ICE.
Ah right, democracy didn’t immediately solve all problems so we should ban or murder all political opposition and install a one party dictatorship where I’m conveniently in charge of everything.
Sounds like something that totally benefits “the people”.
I love how liberals constantly downplay shit like this. If you’re upset about your friends and family being shoveled into a pointless meat grinder and you’re experiencing mass death and oppression, then you’re just upset that “democracy didn’t immediately solve all problems.” In the same way that opposition to genocide is frequently framed as, “throwing a fit because you don’t get your way,” and such.
It’s literally just the Joker speech from The Dark Knight, as long as there’s a plan, it’s fine, even if the plan is horrible, the only thing that matters is that the norms are respected and the proper procedure is followed. You and everyone you care about can be sent to concentration camps, just so long as the decision is made by a legislative body following proper procedure. Systemic violence, like dragging people from their homes to die in a trench en masse, is perfectly acceptable, just so long as it isn’t disruptive, just so long as everything is going according to plan. The only problem y’all have with fascism is that it’s so rude and blunt, if it persued the same goals respectfully you’d be completely fine with it.
Yes, it did benefit the people immensely to get out of the war. Aside from the horrors of WWI, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that if they hadn’t dropped out and focused on rebuilding and industrial development at that point, there’s a fair chance that they lose to the Nazis in WWII and we’d all be speaking German right now. Besides, in the chaos of this period the so-called “democracy” wasn’t some kind of established, functional system, we’re talking about a provensional government, and one that completely failed to address ongoing crises (which is kinda the point of having a provisional government). Under the conditions of the time, sensible people radicalize, and then they force things to change and get rid of those conditions, and then people 100 years later to whom the conditions are utterly foreign waggle their fingers about it, but they don’t care because they’re no longer dying in a ditch.
The democratically elected government murdered hundreds of Russians - people who originally supported the government - because they protested the state’s continued disastrous warmongering.
The liberals were doing the murdering. The Bolsheviks responded in self defense, often by cajoling infantry into not killing protesting civilians.
This is what brought down the “Democratic” pre-Lenin government. Liberals couldn’t order their soldiers to massacre the Bolshevik civilians, so the democratic government fell apart.
Yes, yes, any criticism of Bolsheviks is made up by The West™
But if we dislike those corporate policies, does that mean we also dislike the socialist policies they are mimicking?
Are you complaining about the efficient supply chains and low cost-per-unit of production?
Or are you complaining about the high degree of profit-taking and the denial of public benefits to the working class?
Efficiency and low-cost comes with baggage too, so I guess both in a way. Efficiency and low cost good, but what is required to achieve those often sucks
The second thing is undeniably bad
Automation under capitalism: Tons of unemployment and poverty while a few insiders get lots of treats
Automation under socialism: Shorter work weeks, more vacation, and the standard of living for everyone goes up
Did the shorter work weeks and more vacation after automation materialize in socialist states?
Yes.
Where did that happen, I’m curious about specifics