You are quite literally a genocide supporter. You support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I remember you from that other post about Ukraine where you were all of over the thread simping for Putin, blaming the US for the invasion, and calling the 2014 revolution in Ukraine a US orchestrated coup. You’re in no position to call out fascists when you’re one yourself.

For anybody who’s curious, I highly recommend you read his comments on that read. This guy is nuts. Here is the link:

https://lemmy.world/comment/11122109

It’s really not. Let’s go through some basic stats:

• There are 330 million Americans
• There are 258 million adults
• There are 161 million registered voters
• Of those, less than 1/2 vote in midterms and less than 2/3 vote in presidential elections
• Of those, only around half vote Republican and that includes independents

If we include the Republican leaning independents, that number comes out to around 40 million to 50 million people depending on the election cycle. That’s 12-15% of all Americans, 15-19% of all adults, 24-31% of registered voters, and around 50% of active voters. Keep in mind, this includes independents, if we only includes partisan identified Republicans, all these percentages would be lower. Keep in mind, this includes the very small minority of reasonable Republicans like Adam Kinzinger or Mitt Romney.

The reality is that the Trump and his brand of fascism is pretty unpopular. People mistakenly think that the country is split 50/50, but that’s not true. While most people dislike both Trump and Biden, the amount of people who actively like either is very small. But that’s how far right and far left movements gain power, not through popularity but through technicalities, violence, and the zealously of a propaganda fueled base of supporters. This is why it is so important to try and get people who are usually disconnected with politics to tune in and vote against these extremists.

No, I’m talking about the actual far left. The Afd has more momentum atm, but there has always been presence of both the far right and far left in East Germany. Here’s some bits of an interesting article from September 2023 by Bloomberg that demonstrates what I’m talking about:

A fifth of German voters would consider backing a new party that may be established by a far-left politician who has opposed weapons deliveries to Ukraine, according to a poll published Monday.

Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left party — which traces its roots to East Germany’s communist party — has said she will make a decision on whether to set up a breakaway group by the end of this year.

Wagenknecht’s move is potentially significant, since she could potentially woo voters away from the far-right Alternative for Germany, which is leading in the polls in the three eastern German regions due to hold elections next fall.

Among AfD voters, 29% said they could contemplate backing Wagenknecht, compared with 55% of Left voters, according to the Sept. 15-20 YouGov poll of 2,134 people. At 29%, potential support for Wagenknecht is higher in eastern Germany than in the west, where it’s at 19%, the poll showed.

Source: https://archive.is/20230925113239/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-25/fifth-of-germans-open-to-backing-new-far-left-party-poll-shows#selection-4885.0-4885.13

That’s quite a bit of overlap. The far left isn’t exactly dead in East Germany as you seem to describe it, and neither is the far right. They work in tandum alongside jihadists to keep normal Germans up at night. That’s why Germans constantly protest extremism and vote in guys like Scholz.

Being an introvert does not mean being socially inept, it just means that you prefer certain types of stimulations. You can be introverted and socially capable at the same time.

I’m not too tuned in into European politics outside of specific areas, but my understanding is that people generally gravitate towards the boring moderate types because they tend to be the most safe and pragmatic option. The choice becomes a no brainer when the alternative is indeed fascistic. It’s kind of like how we ended up with Biden. During the Democratic primaries, guys like Bernie or Yang had a more populist appeal. However, Biden was seen as the moderate with the wide appeal because he was safe, boring, pragmatic, experienced, etc even though nobody really had him as their initial first choice. When he won the nomination and the general election came down to him and Trump, everybody flocked to Biden because Trump is batshit crazy.

At the moment? None, but East Germany used to be a part of the eastern bloc, and there’s still an uncomfortable amount of far left whackos that want that era back. They’re not as popular as Afd right now because the big issue in the country at the moment is immigration, and Afd’s platform is more much more hardline on that which is more appealing to the whackos than what the far left is offering.

Germany and France in particular are worrying cases when it comes to Europe because the have a sizable far left and far right that can be unhinged at times. What’s worse is that there a good amount of whackos that are even further left than the fringe far left Marxist parties and the fringe neo Nazi parties.

In the case of Germany, it’s pretty plausible that some infinitely far right neo Nazi would try assassinate her because she’s a lesbian or some infinitely far left Marxist would try the same because she’s the leader of the Afd or perhaps some crazy jihadist would try to assassinate her because she’s both a woman and a lesbian.

I hope Europe in general tries to keep the lunatics out of power and continue to have pragmatic people rule. I don’t want Europe to go through what we’re going through with the Republicans right now. The end result would be something like Hungary with Orban, and nobody wants that.

Let me put things in German terms for you, this is like Alice Weidel and Olaf Scholz running against each other in a close election for Chancellor, where Weidal is the batshit crazy candidate that spews conspiracy theories and Scholz is the sane guy that nobody likes but is better than the alternative. While Weidal is doing a rally for her campaign, some neo nazi, perhaps even further right than she is, attempts to assassinate her for whatever reason. Despite Scholz having nothing to do with the incident, Weidal and the entire Afd crowd start blaming him for it because of the conspiracy theories that she, her party, and her supporters spew and believe. That’s how you get our current situation.

Kevin Roberts reminds me a lot of Carl Schmitt. He is one dangerous motherfucker. Everybody talks about Trump, but Trump is just a figurehead. It’s parasites like Roberts that are actively seeking to destroy the foundation of this country.

Alright, you’re brainless. I’m done wasting my time

Removed by mod

I’ve seen a lot of Marxists like you. Hell, there’s at least half a dozen of you on this very thread typing the same exact unoriginal replies talking about MUH THEORIES and how I’m wrong but then you refuse to elaborate your positions. It just goes to show that you either have nothing or you’re just disingenuous. In the off chance that I do get one to actually elaborate, they almost never actually disprove anything that I said, they’re just made because I disagree with their holy ideology. You can scroll through my account history and see numerous examples of this.

If you’re as confident and well read as you portray yourself to be then you would’ve just proved me wrong from your first couple of replies, or at least presented an argument that would’ve opened the way for a discussion. But you didn’t and now you’re approaching a dozen replies in this thread and you still haven’t presented anything, and I doubt that you will either. The reality is that you’re just mad that I’m vocal about my disdain for how shitty Marxism is and you can’t stand it. You’ve spent so much energy trying to character attack me instead of trying to be even at least a little substantive. If you don’t want to believe that I read any Marxist works then that’s your problem. I literally don’t care. This is the internet, you won’t believe my credentials and I won’t believe yours, that’s why arguments speak for themselves. But’s it’s clear at this point you have no arguments against anything that I said, this circular accusation is the only thing you have to offer.

You’re certainly adding on a lot of shit that Communists have never suggested. Communism would have scarcity

Your understanding of Marxism is limited and it shows here, which is ironic for a Marxist. One of the biggest selling points of communism that Marx and Engels kept bringing up was that communism would either greatly mitigate or entirely eliminate scarcity. They argued that the technological advancements brought by the transitional phase would generate a rapid development in advanced technologies that would increase production and efficiency, and this technology would be one of the things that characterizes communism. They also argued that

public property

I actually meant to write private property, but that’s besides the point.

disagreements on ideas, and more.

Let’s suppose in a hypothetical world where the communist utopia is possible and is achieved, okay? Okay, now let’s suppose there’s a significant group of people who don’t like it and want to reimplement capitalism. What would happen to those people? Can they voluntarily opt of communism? If that’s the case then what’s the point of the violent revolution and the tyrannical transitional state? If it was on voluntary basis, then there wouldn’t be a need for those. So the face that they are integral part of the ideology proves that communism is not voluntary. If that’s the case then communism then who’s going to keep these people in line? The military? Perhaps the police? Well, it can’t be either because both got “withered” away.

The reality is that there would be no state enforcement, so any significant degree of disagreement would snap the utopia in half. Marx envisioned a communist society to be governed by decentralized, participatory decision-making by local communities… that’s not going to be effective against wide scale disagreements. Unless the majority of people decide to abandon the communist utopia to bring back the transitional state to squash the disagreements, the idea will simply break. Communism is a flawed idea to its very core.

You’re correct in saying it would no longer have the oppressive elements of the state, nor would it have Money or classes, but the way that works is via tracking labor inputs and outputs. Marx makes it pretty clear in Critique of the Gotha Programme. You added on a bunch of unsupported baggage and said your fantasy version of a proposed society can’t exist.

Wtf are you talking about? The idea of communism is ultimately have labor and resources to be distributed from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. The idea might in a very technical sense get rid of classes or money, but it is NOT a replacement for things like not having social order. Just apply basic common sense here:

Carl: murders someone

Paul: Caaaaaaarl why did murder that person

Carl: “because I felt like it”

Paul: “I’m going to report you to my local direct democracy communist council”

Paul: goes to the council and explains the murder

The council: “We hear what you’re saying Paul, but check out these spreadsheets of our labor inputs and outputs”

Like what? Are you actually out of touch enough to think this is a proper way to run a society? The idea is like a comedy skit, except nobody’s laughing.

No, government does not need to actively work on dismantling their institutions. Withering away does not mean the government eating parts of itself. Redundant systems get phased out over time in the modern day all the time. Communism would have police, courts, and so forth as well.

You absolute dingleberry, what the fuck do you think phasing out means? Do you honestly think that the police or the courts are going to literally wither away like a rotting plant? No, the government would have to take steps to dismantle itself in order to get rid of the state apparatus. That’s the only way it can happen, the state is not going to magically disappear on it’s own.

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Reason: Communism is not going to have police, courts, and the like. This is just what think communism is like due to your ignorance of it, this is not actually what it’s like. The communist utopia is anarchist in nature and won’t any elements of the state apparatus which includes the police and courts. There won’t be anything to maintain social order. The idea of communism is obviously stupid, but this is still very basic communism theory. You know for a MUH THEORIES guy who keeps accusing me not understanding Marxism, you sure know very little about it.

You still didn’t answer the question, where is the definitive metric that something becomes authoritarian or not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices

You’re more than welcome to go to any of these indices and read their methodologies.

Mao’s cultural revolution was largely a failure, and he was democratically removed for it. Secondly, economies which have democratic participation are more democratic than Capitalist economies, which are governed by essentially warlords.

What the fuck are you talking about? Mao ruled until his death in 1976. He was never at any point removed from his position as ruler, he wasn’t even challenged by anybody to step down.

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Reason: How you imagine Mao’s reign to have gone does not reflect how his reign has actually gone in reality.

It does disprove your point, Allende got couped by the US.

No, it doesn’t. You saying it is doesn’t actually make it true. This is just the proof by assertion fallacy. Keep in mind, this was the original claim:

“Marx and Engels were both very vocal and notorious authoritarians who specifically advocated for this stuff. They went out of their way to mock and criticize pacifist socialists who wanted to make progress without bloodshed via things like reform.”

In what way is the coup that ousted Allende in any way prove that they were right? Whether Allende got voted in or took over via violent revolution, the results would have been the same as he would have been ousted either way. The only difference is that if he was violent, he would’ve killed a lot more people before his ousting. Where’s the logical jump from the original claim to this? It’s just a non sequitur.

Secondly, putting the USSR and the US as equal evils and simply saying it’s fine because the USSR voted to balkanize late in its life is silly.

I didn’t say they were equals, I just said that the cold war wasn’t a one way street. It was a competition between two superpowers vying for influence and power. With that being said, when it comes to being evil, the USSR was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more evil. It’s not even a competition. The USSR is one of the most evil regimes in human history. It’s on par with Nazi Germany and the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. From torture to gulags to genocides to engineered famines to tyrannical censorship and oppression to democide to imperial conquest to ecological disasters to forced deportations of entire ethnic groups to so many more, and all of this was inside the Soviet Union against their own people. Outside the Soviet borders they started civil wars, overthrew governments, invaded countries, committed mass rapes, launched massive propaganda campaigns, brutally oppressed half of Europe, and the list goes on and on. Stalin literally had death battalions to genocide people, including women and children in the Baltics.

The sheer amount of genocides and massacres committed by the Soviet Union is so great that it’s both horrifying and leaves in awe at it’s scale. They might rival the British Empire or the French Empire, the only difference is that it took these empires centuries to rack up their numbers, the Soviet Union did just as much in less than a century. Russia already has a long and extensive history of genocide before the Soviet Union era, but during they just went into maximum overdrive.

The US is absolutely hated by the global south,

According to what? Where’s your source?

while Marxist revolutions were popping up all the time during the cold war, and still do at a lower rate today.

That’s because the Soviet Union was funding and propping virtually all of them. This is pretty common knowledge.

There have two Marxist insurgencies since the fall of the Soviet Union, one in Nepal and the other in Myanmar, both of which are China’s neighbors whom the Chinese been eyeing them for quite some time.

There was a clear difference in which society was better for the global south.

Yes, capitalism proved to be way, way, wayyyyy better. The global south is currently the richest it has ever been thanks to free market capitalism and the globalized economy.

The USSR collapsing via vote wasn’t due to lack of resiliance, it didn’t crumble or fail to support itself, it was killed off.

What planet do you live in? The Soviet Union collapsed precisely because it’s crumbled and it couldn’t support itself. The dissolution was just the cherry on top, but Marxism collapsed before the the oppressed had the opportunity to escape. The Soviet economy towards the end completely collapsed, the oppression and tyranny was reaching a breaking point with the people, and when Gorbachev showed that he wasn’t a cold blooded psychopath like the Soviet leaders before him… the dam finally broke.

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Reason: Your ignorant misconception of the how the USSR collapsed does not actually align with reality.

All in all, you need to check your history, and read Marx if you want to have such strong yet wrong understandings of Marxism. Even reading Critique of the Gotha Programme would help you a lot.

You make me so tired…

2/2

Marxism is not destroying a system, but replacing it and moving beyond. Capitalism is failing and continues to see increased disparity over time.

This is a dumb statement. How do you replace a “failing” system without destroying it? Especially when the replacement is prescribed in the form of violent revolution.

Also I’m going to insert a little counter to add up how many times you try to pass your opinion as fact.

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Reason: Capitalism isn’t failing, that’s just your opinion.

Petite bourgeoisie have more to gain under Socialism than they would under Capitalism, typically.

By losing their livelihoods and their life’s work? Actually delusional.

Secondly, managing to be a lawyer with a firm is not simply “a good choice,” it takes luck and a safety net that allows for that.

You could say that about everything in life.

The idea that most people would opt out of Socialism is historically inaccurate as well. All in all, you’re deeply goofy here.

I’m the goofy one? You’re literally making stuff up because you can’t come with any evidence based rebuttals.

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Reason: Most people not wanting socialism is not historically inaccurate, hence why so much violence is necessary. You just simply think that is the case.

You’re inserting your own conclusions here, yet again.

No, my argument is logically sound. In fact, it’s common sense.

These instutitions would be removed or replaced, sure, but not firebombed. You can see historical Marxist revolutions to know that wasn’t accurate.

This is just the red herring fallacy. I already said that I was being hyperbolic with that, even though the statement does hold some truth to it. Regardless, you’re intentionally dodging the actual point made with this.

Representative democracy is still democracy, I cannot believe you are genuinely suggesting otherwise.

Authoritarianism and democracy aren’t opposite concepts. If you consider CPSU and the CCP examples of democracy then your threshold for what a democracy is not right.

Oh, more historical inaccuracy. Marxist revolutions have been because of civil unrest, which is why they were supported by the mahority of people.

You make this claim twice now without any evidence. In Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the list goes on all resulted in civil wars where the majority of the population, or the very least around half, did not support the Marxists. In all these cases, the Marxists groups tried to instigate coups or civil wars with the aim of grabbing power. These aren’t civil unrest turned revolution like the French revolution.

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Reason: Marxist revolutions have not been supported by the majority of people. You just think that’s the case.

Secondly, you’re asserting that a party cannot be controlled democratically by the general public, and that the general public cannot enter the party, which is also wrong.

/>sees a claim

/>calls it wrong

/>refuses to elaborate

Winning formula you got there. But no, this is not what I said. I said that the volatility and fragility of a post revolution society controlled by the Marxist faction that initially took control won’t allow any dissent or a diversity of opinion because it’s threatens their newly found authoritarian powers and the fate of the revolution they fought for. There’s a reason why every single Marxist revolution ended up being either an authoritarian dictatorship or an authoritarian one party state dictatorship.

America is a dictatorship of the bourgeoise as described by Marx. The state is run by parties that are nearly entirely funded by wealthy Capitalists, with media funded by wealthy Capitalists that manufacture consent in the general public. This is basic Marxism here, not understanding what Marx meant has been a core issue with your entire argument.

You know what? Let’s use basic Marxism to disprove your ridiculous claim. While Marx didn’t have a specific definition of what a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is, he did talk a lot about it was through his works. It could be boiled down to these five points:

1. Marx thought that an integral part of the the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was the use of the state apparatus such as government institutions, the legal system, police, and military to protect their dominance and interests.

Is this true here? No, from Teddy Roosevelt all the way up to today, the state apparatus has constantly stood alongside the American people, and especially the American workers. There’s a tug of war that pulls one way or another, but the state is not a tool of the bourgeoisie as Marx defined it.

2. Marx viewed the enforcement of capitalist Interests as a key part of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie refers where the bourgeoisie use state power to impose their economic and political interests on society. This includes protecting private property, enforcing laws that benefit capitalists, suppressing dissent and resistance from the working class, and maintaining social order favorable to capitalist accumulation.

Is this true here? Sort of. It true that bourgeoisie as defined by Marx do impose their economic and political interests on society to their benefit. This isn’t exactly a big secret and it is why a lot of people are calling for stronger economic regulations and accountability in political discourse. However, at the same time, Marx viewed objectively positive things like protecting private property, promoting capitalism, or maintaining social order to be examples of the state doing the bidding of the bourgeoisie when that’s not true, these things are to the benefit of everybody.

3. Marx constantly argued that the bourgeoisie would resort to authoritarian measures, such censorship, repression of political opposition, and the use of state violence to maintain its rule and protect its privileges.

Is this true here? No, the US has pretty strong laws that ban such practices and punishes those who do. Not to mention that most of these actions would be protected by the 1st amendment of the constitution. This Actually used to be more true during the gilded age, but that stopped being a thing in the early 20th century.

4. Marx saw the bourgeoisie as a historical phase that emerged with the rise of capitalism where the bourgeoisie replaced the feudal nobility as the ruling class and reshaped society according to capitalist principles.

Is this true here? No, the US was never a feudalist society. It was always capitalist liberal democracy.

5. One of the things that Marx kept harping on is the idea that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie would eventually give way to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Is this true here? Lol no, Americans overwhelmingly reject Marxism, and no this isn’t a result of propaganda like you keep telling yourself to cope. It’s an objectively bad ideology that most people reject on the basis of it’s own atrocious history and bad merits that don’t hold up. If Marxism didn’t take hold back during the gilded age where things were wayyyyyyy worse and Marxism was way more popular, then it’s not going to happen any time soon.

So let’s tally up how many of these points apply… and the results are? 1/5, maybe. The US today is not a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as Marx defined it. Do you know what was? 19th century Britain, France, and Prussia… the place he’s from. This is because his ideology is a result of the location where he lived and of era when he lived. But Prussia is no more and so is the 19th century, Marxism is irrelevant.

Democratic for the people. Owning stocks doesn’t make you bourgeois, neither does owning your home. Petite bourgeoisie are suppressed by larger bourgeoisie into the proletariat.

What people dingus? Saying for the people is meaningless when most people will end up suffering and being in a worse position.

Secondly, the idea that the average worker with a 401k would be upset to not have to worry about saving for retirement ever again, with higher wages and free healthcare, education, and shorter work weeks is silly.

Ah yes, everybody also gets free ponies, genies, and a state of the art AI powered sex robots. You’re actually out of touch. For the record, I am actually in favor of all of those things, but none of these are going to be brought by Marxism. Do you know how I know? Because every Marxist attempt in history has brought the opposite. In the situations where these were implemented, the results abysmal and conditions actually got worse. The real irony here is that all the things you listed exist under capitalism, and they are implemented best under capitalist societies.

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Reason: Writing as delusional wish list of what you think Marxism would bring doesn’t actually mean Marxism will bring those things, it doesn’t even promise or advocate for those things.

“It’s accurate because I say it is.”

Uhhh that’s what you’re doing, not me. You’re the one who claimed that my phrases were loaded, wrong, fearmongering, and a bunch of other nonsense without providing any arguments to support claims whatsoever. That is literally “you’re wrong because i said so”. I merely pointed out the fact that your opinions on my descriptions don’t invalidate them. You not liking them does not make them any less true or valid, especially when you don’t even have an argument to go off of. Trying to pull a “no u” is not going to work here.

1/2

My perspective isn’t really that complicated, I think Marxism is pretty flawed and this is evidenced by the logical gaps in the theories and the constant failure in practice. You’re talking as if Marxism is the truth and it is beyond criticism. Marxists treat Marxism, for all intents and purposes, like a religion. Marx is treated like a prophet, his theories are treated like holy scriptures, the communist utopia is like the promised afterlife, critics are attacked and dismissed, and so on. Obviously, I’m not saying Marxism is a religion, but you’re acting no differently than a muslim or a Christian whenever somebody criticizes their religion. Why is hard to accept that Marx was a imperfect person from a bygone era with theories that have many flaws? He and his work are not above criticism. Marx dedicated his whole life to his ideology, of course he thought about it as much as he could, but what I am saying is that despite that the end result is still not that great. Communism remains a utopia in the mainstream sense that won’t ever be achieved.

I’m offering to do that because we’re so far apart in understanding

The idea was for you to explain your own positions.

that it would take a huge amount of my time to get you to where I’m at

Then why engage in discussion with me at all if you’re not willing to contribute anything of value?

and just judging by the length of our responses, it really seems like you’ve got a lot more time than me.

I was hoping that we would have some sort of intellectual discussion where we would critique each other’s views. However, that proved to be futile because you turned out to be absolutely r*tarded. Not only are you incapable of explaining your own positions, but you’re also incapable of comprehending mine. But I don’t blame you for this, this was my mistake. I know there was nothing there coming in, but the optimist in me still tried to give you the benefit of the doubt.

If you just want to call me names for being a communist then that’s fine too.

Rightfully so.

To bring us way back to the whole point of our conversation, I asked why you were so dismissive of the psls platform and after rereading all your very long responses it seems like you think it would be a hard platform to implement, would significantly change the way the world works and Americas role in it and you take issue with communist ideas because of past failures.

If this is what you got from what I said then you’re a lost cause.

I agree with all those. It’s not an easy task, would result in systemic change and upend old relationships. That’s the point. I see everyday that the institutions we have aren’t functioning for the good of the American people. I want something different.

To bring us way back to the whole point of our conversation, you’re a fucking clown, Claudia De La Cruz is a fucking clown, the socialist party is a circus, your ideology is fucking disgusting, evil, and a colossal failure that just as bad as fascism, and I am very happy there is only a few thousand of you across the whole country. If this is the level of intelligence that comes out Marxists, then no wonder it has resulted in failure every single time. It wouldn’t so bad if it didn’t result in the deaths of tens of millions of people. I will make sure that I do everything I can to keep you idiots as far away from power as possible.

With that being said, this has been a complete waste of time and I have no intention of engaging with you any further. This will be my last reply to you. If you want to have any last words, go ahead, but I’m done.

Marxists believe revolution is inevitable as long as Capitalism is not transitioned from willingly, as a consequence of Capitalism itself.

This is like a bully punching their victim and then telling them “why are you hitting yourself”. No, a violent revolution is an integral part of Marxism. No society is going to destroy it’s functioning system willingly. Even if capitalism failed, which it hasn’t, Marxism is not the logical replacement. Literally only Marxists believe that it is, and most people aren’t Marxists.

Secondly, killing the bourgeoisie is not a necessary step, removing the apparatus that entails their positions, ie private property rights, is necessary.

Killing the bourgeoisie is not a step, but it’s a pretty implicit part of process. Under his class definition, somebody like a lawyer owning their own firm and hiring a couple secretaries makes them a part of the bourgeoise. That’s not a billionaire, that’s an average person who made good choices in their life. The same goes for someone who owns their own convivence store and hires a couple of part timers. These type of people aren’t going to give up their livelihoods in the name of some brain dead ideology. Why would they? So what the Marxist solution for this? You can’t just let these people be because the ideology revolves around total control of a society. If people can opt out of Marxism then most people would and the ideology would collapse. The only viable solution is to forcefully seize their life work. That’s if they cooperate, what if they don’t? What if they resist Marxist tyranny? Well it’s simple, if they resist then they’re counterrevolutionaries who ought to be killed.

Thirdly, “Capitalist Institutions” being burned down is vague and likely not what Marxists believe. Replacing, or reconfiguring them along collectivized lines, sure, burning for the sake of burning, no.

Marx thought of the state as tool of the ruling class, which is a very flawed view in it’s own right, but I digress. In his view, the institutions of the state, aka the state apparatus, are all tools used by bourgeoisie to maintain class domination. He had the state apparatus split into two categories, the first is the “repressive” institutions such as the government, police, courts, and military and the second is the “ideological” institutions like schools, media, churches, etc. If a Marxist revolution were to happen all these institutions, ranging from a state run university all the way to the supreme court would be on the chopping block. The job of a government is maintain the status quo, the job of the police is to enforce the current laws, the job of the courts is to uphold the current laws, the job of the military to protect all these institutions from existential threats. Perhaps not all of them will be literally burnt down, but the point remains that the ultimate goal of Marxism is to get rid of these institutions all together because that’s what communism seeks to establish, a stateless society.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is simply democracy with the proletariat in control, and the Bourgeoisie suppressed.

Calling it democratic is a pretty big stretch because the idea itself is flawed. Marx wanted the proletariat to be directly involved in the decision making process but also have the decision making process be centralized. The only way that’s possible is via direct democracy but that’s not feasible in any society that’s not on the scale of a small tribe. The alternative would be to do it by representative democracy, which would mean a one party dictatorship similar to the CPSU or the CCP.

Why a one party dictatorship? Because that’s the only way it would work in this context. A Marxist revolution will never be a result of civil unrest, it will always be a result of a political faction trying takeover the government. That faction will have leaders who will lead the violent revolution. That faction will become dictatorship of the proletariat. Since politics is divisive by it’s nature, it’s safer for the revolution for that faction to claim to be the one and only legitimate one and all other attempts are counterrevolutionary. That way they get to enjoy all the power, silence dissents, avoid civil war or coups, and implement all the tyrannical policies as they see fit.

This is a direct counter to the modern Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, such as what is found in America.

That is not what is found in America. If you’re trying to be fictitious and hyperbolic then okay I guess, but if you’re trying to pass this off as some sort of fact then you’re off the rails.

The idea of it being “authoritarian” is only true with respect to Capitalists, it is a more democratic state for more people.

Democratic for who exactly? Take the US as an example. Around 66% of Americans are homeowners. Around 58% own stocks. About 17 million own their own business. Around 99.9% of businesses in the country are small businesses which employ around 46% of the workforce, 80% of those are mom and pop business that have 0-9 employees (a good chunk of which are family members). All these people and many more are going to be quite pissed to have their property seized. Putting the majority of society in a worse position by force isn’t democracy, that’s tyranny.

The phrase “iron fist” is also loaded, in reality it means Capitalists cannot be allowed to take back control. Same with the phrase “by any means necessary,” it’s just fearmongering.

Both of those phrases are perfectly accurate descriptions of the proposed transitional government. You simply not liking them because you’re a Marxist doesn’t invalidate their use here.

That’s unfounded. Reading Critique of the Gotha Programme gives an idea of what Marxists actually believe can be done to achieve Communism, it isn’t an impossibility but it also isn’t a utopia like you claim. It’s certainly a better society, but not one with infinite replicators or anything.

Wtf are you talking about? Communism is a utopia by definition. It is an imaginary society where everything works perfectly. Communism is about a perfect society where there’s no money, no state, no exploitation, no classes, no scarcity, no property, no disagreements on the idea of common ownership, an abundance of everything that will be distributed accordingly from ability to need, and everybody gets to hold hands while they dance, singe, and fart rainbows. Marx and Engles, and their followers can pretend that their utopia is not like the other girls all they want, but it ultimately is. Utopias aren’t realistic you can’t have a perfect or near perfect society in a non perfect world. There’s a reason why these brain dead utopia driven ideologies always fail while more pragmatic ideologies always succeed. You can’t run societies off of fantasies.

Marx himself never believed Communism was about government “deciding” to leave, but the State as defined by Marx would wither. Government as we commonly understand it would still exist in Communism!

In order for that to happen, the government has to actively work on dismantling itself and it’s institutions… and that doesn’t happen. Governments don’t give up their power. The communist utopia will always be just right around the corner, but never actually there. Also Marx defines the government as one of the institutions in the state apparatus, which would eventually get dismantled and “wither away”. Even if there was a government under communism, it literally cannot function without the other institutions of the state like the police to enforce it’s laws, courts to uphold it’s laws, the military to protect it, it’s own media to promote it, and so on.

More vibes based, generally. What metric is the distinction between “tyrannical” and “fair and democratic?” Are there any non-tyrannical states, in your eyes?

Ah yes, we’re running socities based off of vibes. I’m sure those 40 to 80 million Chinese who were murdered under Mao were totally not vibing with his tyrannical Marxism. Do you even hear yourself? Governments don’t exist in a binary states of tyrannical and free, the levels of authoritarianism exist in a spectrum. But the levels of tyranny and freedom are measurable, and we do have stats for them. But even if there weren’t it really easy to tell the difference between the extremes. Anybody with a shred of common sense can see that New Zealand and Norway are free and democratic countries while Iran and North Korea are tyrannical. All Marxist attempts have been on the more extreme end of tyranny than anywhere near the free and democratic end.

They ended up being correct, reform has never once worked in the favor of the Proletariat in establishing Socialism. The closest was Allende in Chile, and he was couped by the US within 2 years of democratically taking office.

This doesn’t disprove my point. Whether Allende took power democratically or by force, the result was going to be the same. So no, Marx and Engles were not right. Not to mention, that the cold war wasn’t just the US, the USSR was the other superpower who was also overthrowing governments, starting civil wars, invading countries, and so on. The only difference is that history proved that capitalist societies to be more resilient.

The fact that it’s a utopia? What kind of question is that? A utopia by definition is an imaginary place where everything is perfect. It will never exist because the world is imperfect. You can’t run societies on fantasies, especially through violence and tyranny. The ends don’t justify the means, especially when the ends are impossible to achieve.

I’ve studied the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital in college, which is pretty standard. I’ve also read a few of his shorter works like the Critique of the Gotha Programme and On the Jewish Question (which is interestingly one of the more antisemitic works I’ve ever read despite him having Jewish heritage). I also read a few newspapers that featured him during his time, but I don’t really count those.

There’s no denying that his work is influential. This is evidenced by the fact that we’re talking about it right now. But just because it’s influential that doesn’t mean it’s right, or even good. His analysis was flawed and criticized quite a bit, even during his time. But today? A lot of analysis is just irrelevant because it’s a product of a bygone era. You could make an argument that his analysis led to some objectively good things, and that would be true to an extent, however, this is overshadowed by all the disasters that his views led to. What he envisioned for communism and how to get there was a failure in both theory and practice, and this evidenced by the fact that every implementation of his ideas has resulted in catastrophes.

Marx proposed a temporary state wherein proles, collectively, use the apparatus of the state in an authoritarian manner to manage a transition to a non authoritarian non state.

The issue here is that the “non authoritarian non state” is communism, and communism for all intents and purposes is just a utopia. It was Marx and Engels vision of a perfect society. It’s nothing more than a fantasy. Utopias don’t exist and never will. When these types of violent revolutions happen and the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, it’s going to remain there indefinitely because communism is an unachievable goal. The theory itself is flawed.

The significant debate and purging around the formation of, for instance, the USSR should be a hint that endorsement of authoritarianism is not really something everyone takes away from a reading of Marx. Incidentally, have you? read marx?

Marx laid out what he meant by dictatorship of proletariat in his short work, Critique of the Gotha Programme. In this critique he went after the German Social Democratic Party program for being too pragmatic, pacifist, and wanting reform which he deemed didn’t go far enough in overthrowing capitalism and establishing communism. As a part of his critique, he explained what a post revolution dictatorship looks like. There’s a lot to it but it could more or less be summed up in these points

1. He saw the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessary transitional phase between capitalism and communism. During this phase, the proletariat will hold all the political power and use it to reorganize society and the economy.

2. He doubled down on the idea that the proletariat must seize political power through revolution in order to exert control over the state apparatus, which he thought was a tool of class oppression under capitalism.

3. He emphasized that the dictatorship of the proletariat is aimed at dismantling capitalist relations of production, including private ownership of the means of production, and replacing them with collective ownership.

4. He viewed the dictatorship of the proletariat as a form of state in which the working class, organized as the ruling class, actively suppresses the resistance of the bourgeoisie and other counter revolutionary forces (read: democide).

5. He thought that once the conditions for communism have been established, the need for a state will slowly wither away… which would ultimately lead to communism

This is pretty well defined and not nearly as vague as you’re trying to make it out to be. Points 1 and 5 won’t ever happen as previously explained, and points 2-4 are pure violence and authoritarianism. This is fascism levels of violence and tyranny. His idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat is flawed as well because of the way he framed it. He wants the proletariat to rule with an iron fist as a collective, however, that’s not really feasible. You would need to have something like a one party state that “acts on the behalf of the workers” to make it work… which is what the Soviet Union went with as it’s the most obvious implementation of such an idea… and that ended up being a disaster. While the ideology does leave room for interpretation, all the attempts of Marxism ended up being authoritarian. This is not a coincidence, it’s an integral part of the ideology.

You can read the full critique here btw:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/

Everything except the most radical anarchist ideologies makes some use of authority in certain circumstances, I think it’s somewhat farcical to draw parallels between crisis and the proposed status quo.

This is a pretty disingenuous take. The type of authority that Marx wished for is not anywhere near the realm of reasonable. It’s silly to try and present this false dichotomy between tyranny and pure anarchy. What’s interesting is that Marxism wanted both of these extremes at different stages of his ideology, but not anything in the middle. It’s like that man was allergic to anything that wasn’t extreme.

Wat? This is so ludicrously broad as to apply to everything… Is there an ideology that doesn’t declare itself against some enemy which is protects against?

Perhaps I worded myself poorly there. When you look at the more pragmatic ideologies around, you’ll notice that they don’t have enemies that define the ideology. Take for example, modern day social democracy. Who are it’s enemies? It doesn’t really have any. The ideology is more focused on specific values and approaches to issues rather than trying to define an enemy group as the root cause of everything. The same goes for liberalism. You could say that the ideology views monarchies in such a light, but that’s only true in a historical sense. Monarchies are mostly no more, but the ideology is still alive despite that. This is because this is another ideology that doesn’t really have enemies, it’s revolves around approach and adherence to a few principles.

It’s not as core to the ideology as it is to radical ideologies Marxism or islam or Nazism or anarchism. islam as an ideology revolves around fighting the nonbelievers because they are ignorant sinners, Nazism revolves around killing all the Jews because they control everything, Marxism revolves around eradicating the bourgeoisie because they’re the cause of everything wrong with society, anarchy revolves around blaming the state or any kind of authority for all the problems in the world. Do you see the difference I’m trying to point out? These radical ideologies wouldn’t function without their perceived enemy, while pragmatic ideologies can. Marxism without it’s hatred of the bourgeoisies used to justify a lot of it’s unpleasant elements is a pretty hollow ideology.

Sure I guess. Again this is hardly unique to the two. I mean Buddhism does this along with monastic Christianity and new age smoothie cults /shrug

I mean none of these similarities are exclusive to Marxism or Fascism, they’re all found in a lot of different ideologies. Their similarity stems for their aggregate commonalities.

Seems pretty clearly individualistic to me!

Lol individualism in this context doesn’t mean having a personality. Collectivism isn’t about turning people into identical drones with no personalities, it just means that the well being and cohesion of the collective take precedence over the individual and personal pursuits. That’s literally the whole point of Marxism. Both Fascism and Marxism are collectivist ideologies, something like liberalism is individualist.

Actually Marx said it was magically scientifically inevitable that capitalism would collapse in violence.

It’s good to know with power of hindsight that he was wrong on this.

Not that people should set out to do it. Also Marx didn’t want to “burn down the capitalist system and institutions” actually in a straight reading of Marx capitalism is a necessary step to communism. Marx didn’t think it was good, he thought the bourgeoisie would never willingingly surrender power because of their material interest and thus the only way for proles to avoid mass death was instead to unify and take power through violence.

You contradicted yourself here. Marx doesn’t want a violent overthrow of capitalism because he thought that capitalism was a necessary step to communism, therefore, he just wants a violent overthrow of capitalism to prevent mass violence by using mass violence. This is some grand logic lol

This sounds a lot like “Both involve violence therefore the same” but that’s extraordinarily reductive. I mean literally all governments make themselves governments through control of violence.

What you’re doing here is extraordinarily reductive. What you’re doing here is like trying to equate a paper airplane and a real airplane because they’re both technically airplanes that can fly. Marxism and Fascism don’t just use violence to maintain control, they view violence as a perfectly acceptable way of achieving political goals. Is there a system you don’t like? You violently overthrow it. You have group of dissenters you don’t like? You just call them bourgeoise or counterrevolutionaries and kill them all. Are there people who don’t want to give up their private property? You go there and violently seize the property by force. You get the idea. This is vastly different than a government having a monopoly of violence to ensure law and order.