Socialists Can Be Very Ideological

[Rilles]

I made a question on a Socialist sub-Reddit asking about their opinion on political pluralism which means openness to different political parties and ideas in their future Socialist society. 

The response that got upvoted the most was from a guy who said a One-Party state was the best way to go and that "pluralism" was liberal capitalist propaganda... And my original question got downvoted to hell. 

I dont know why it shocked me, I had always flirted with socialism a bit but the ideological bent just really showed itself when I posted that. 

I am definitely still a Social Democrat though. Just posting this to tell yall to be careful to fall into extreme ideology. Dont get stuck in a bottleneck, take ideas from different perspectices but dont get fooled!  

[Rilles]

There were some people that were open to it but they got downvoted too. 

[Tim R]

Of course r/socialism is home to political ideologues. most political subs are. Better to stay away from political reddit, stick to memes and r/animalsbeingderps?

Quote

This is a liberal and fundamentally bourgeois way of thinking that completely misses the central aspect of socialist thinking which is class analysis. What is the class character of a state, what class interest does a given party represent, which class does it serve? There is no reason for a proletarian state to give democratic franchise to parties which serve the class interest of capital, that would be damaging to the socialist project at best, if not outright self-defeating and suicidal.

What was your question exactly? @Rilles

[Rilles]

1 minute ago, Tim R said:

Of course r/socialism is home to political ideologues. most political subs are. Better to stay away from political reddit, stick to memes and r/animalsbeingderps?

What was your question exactly? @Rilles

I deleted the exact question but it was something like "How will you deal with political pluralism in your future socialist society?" Dont know why I deleted the thread but here we are. 

Haha... yeah I should have known, I just wanted some clarification because I have been stuck between SocDem and Soc for a long time leaning heavily toward SocDem. Guess I got some real heavy clarification now.

[DocWatts]

Socialism isn't really a united movement so much as a tent of Left wing ideologies that range from Anarchist (Mikhail Bakunin) to Libertarian (Noam Chomsky) to Authoritarian (Vladimir Lenin), with infighting between the various sects.

I'd argue that there's more overlap between Libertarian Socialism (Green) and Social Democracy (Orange / Green) than there is between Libertarian Socialism and Anarchist / Authoritarian Socialism (both at Red / Blue).

People who outright reject political pluralism aren't worth engaging with, regardless of whether they're on the Left or Right.

Edited November 24, 2021 by DocWatts

[Rilles]

10 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Socialism isn't really a united movement so much as a tent of Left wing ideologies that range from Anarchist (Mikhail Bakunin) to Libertarian (Noam Chomsky) to Authoritarian (Vladimir Lenin), with infighting between the various sects.

I'd argue that there's more overlap between Libertarian Socialism (Green) and Social Democracy (Orange / Green) than there is between Libertarian Socialism and Anarchist / Authoritarian Socialism (both at Red / Blue).

People who outright reject political pluralism aren't worth engaging with, regardless of whether they're on the Left or Right.

Yeah there are degrees to Socialism, youre right, some of them are more conscious than others, then you have tankies who are just batshit lmao. 

Yeah to me its blatantly obvious that if you repress half the political spectrum thats gonna cause a major backlash and wont be a pleasant society to live in.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Rilles

[DocWatts]

Politically, I'm flexible enough to see Social Democracy as a huge improvement over what exists in places like the United States, while also recognizing there are some problems inherent to that system (such as unequal trade with the developing world).

Market socialism is quite promising in the ways in which it proposes to fix many of the issues inherent to capitalist economies, yet at the same time I'm able to recognize that because this system hasn't really been implemented on a large scale anywhere in the world there are going to be inherent challenges that will need to be worked out for it to translate in to real world policy and economics. And if it's going to be adopted, it should be done in a gradual and measured way.

Never made sense to me to overly ideological about this, healthy politics is about dialogue, consensus, and coalition building rather rigidly adhering to a single viewpoint.

I was listening to a political podcast once where someone described their viewpoint as the 'non-ideological Left', and even if that's a bit self contradictory I find it to be a healthier ethos to embody.

Edited November 24, 2021 by DocWatts

[AdroseAkise]

Socialism within a multi-party system is the definition of Democratic Socialism. The 'Democratic' in Democratic Socialism refers to multi party liberal Democracy. 

Social Democracy suffers from the issue of not fixing the contradictions and worldwide exploitations of capitalism, but masking it with half assed solutions.

[DocWatts]

7 minutes ago, AdroseAkise said:

Socialism within a multi-party system is the definition of Democratic Socialism. The 'Democratic' in Democratic Socialism refers to multi party liberal Democracy. 

Social Democracy suffers from the issue of not fixing the contradictions and worldwide exploitations of capitalism, but masking it with half assed solutions.

To be fair it's masking it with solutions that functionally make life much better for the people living within that particular country, but it does little to address exploitation of developing countries nor the contradictions which put democracy and capitalism at cross purposes

Edited November 24, 2021 by DocWatts

[Terell Kirby]

7 hours ago, Rilles said:

I am definitely still a Social Democrat though.

The key is not identifying with any of these constructed political sects. You can't avoid ideology through claiming a specific belief system as absolute.

What you can do, though, is see the positives and the negatives of each. Systems thinking and holism is the best repellent for these matters.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Terell Kirby

[Leo Gura]

Of course, Lol

[Girzo]

15 hours ago, Tim R said:

Better to stay away from political reddit, stick to memes and r/animalsbeingderps?

Nice reddit. My favourite lately is r/unclebens, lot's of info for amateur mushroom growers, not talking only psychedelic mushroom, but something like Lion's Mane, so cool to grow your own edible mushrooms.

I guess reddit is good for that, too.

[Rilles]

10 hours ago, Terell Kirby said:

The key is not identifying with any of these constructed political sects. You can't avoid ideology through claiming a specific belief system as absolute.

What you can do, though, is see the positives and the negatives of each. Systems thinking and holism is the best repellent for these matters.

Im not clinging to my Social Democrat leaning. Its just what I prefer. If anyone asks your political stance you have to answer something, right? 

Edited November 25, 2021 by Rilles

[Rilles]

13 hours ago, AdroseAkise said:

Social Democracy suffers from the issue of not fixing the contradictions and worldwide exploitations of capitalism, but masking it with half assed solutions.

I wish there was something better, but at this moment it is the best we got, atleast for developed countries. 

[Blackhawk]

I hate the Social democrats party and all other left parties in Sweden.

I will vote for the Moderate party in the swedish election.

[Rilles]

2 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

I hate the Social democrats party and all other left parties in Sweden.

I will vote for the Moderate party in the swedish election.

I respect that. Do you! 

[Opo]

18 hours ago, DocWatts said:

 there are some problems inherent to that system (such as unequal trade with the developing world).

How would socialism improve this? 

[Lyubov]

This is why these people are just as useless interacting with as right wing nutjobs. You can't build a consensus with such people or actually enact change. Democratic socialism is still very much baking in the oven. It has yet to materialize and no one knows what it will actually look like when it arrives in 20-60 years from now. The liberal's heart may be in the right place but they are as useful at getting the job done as a croissant used as a dildo. 

[DocWatts]

1 hour ago, Opo said:

How would socialism improve this? 

Multinational corporations directly benefit from keeping the third world from developing, because it's a source of cheap and easily exploitable labor. They can also pay far less than full market share for resources that are extracted from very poor countries. They can benefit from the opening of developing countries as new markets for their goods, regardless of whether its to the detriment of the receiving country whose local industries aren't developed enough to compete with foreign imports. Institutions like the IMF and World Bank use debt as leverage to foster unequal exchange between the developing and the developed world.

Multinational corporations lobby state governments to interfere with the development of poor nations, and prevent them from doing things like nationalizing natural resources, erecting protectionist trade barriers, or instituting labor laws. Naomi Klein wrote about this extensively in Shock Doctrine (which is on the book list I believe), and details how countries like Russia in the 90s were devastated by these practices.

Even if Social Democracies such as Norway or Denmark don't directly participate in Imperialism, multinational corporations operating within their borders still benefit from the Imperialist practices and institutions put in to practice by countries like the United States.  Consumers benefit from a flow of cheap goods made by people in countries with incredibly low wages and non-existent labor laws. In countries like the United States, this flow of cheap goods is used to 'subsidize' and let people survive to some degree on poverty wages payed by huge employers like WalkMart and McDonalds.

Corporations are allowed to do this because the current way of running a large business is as a completely undemocratic and unaccountable syndicate, which uses the incentive structure of Capitalism to capture political institutions within governments to lobby for their private interests (up to and including imperialism). Generally it's a small handful of people making these decisions, and it's much harder to imagine how an organization that's run democratically and with transparency could condone half of the evil shit that many of these transnationals are up to.

A socio-economic system such as Market Socialism where private industry is far more democratic and not given the opportunity to capture political systems by amassing enormous amounts of wealth and influence, would be far more limited in the ways it could motivate States to interfere in the developing world.

 

Edited November 25, 2021 by DocWatts

[LfcCharlie4]

Lol, try interacting with Communists on Twitter, they'll outright call themselves 'Marxist-Lenninists' and some even idealize Stalin, kinda low-key scary how easy it is to be radicalized these days, to either side. 

I feel at school (at least in the UK) we were taught just how evil & horrific the Nazis were, but never properly learned about Stalin / Lenin. Maybe this explains why so many young people cling to communism as some ideal? Not sure