On Authority is a pointed response to the thought-terminating pejorative of “authoritarian.” If you haven’t read it, you should! It’s short and important =)
You want a change in society? You don’t care that fascists don’t want that change? Then you’re an authoritarian. Everything after that is a matter of degree.
Is considering sex work generally non-consensual a SWERF thing? I’d guess most people who think that don’t at all want to exclude sex workers…it’s not a criticism of sex workers. I also don’t think it precludes that some people might not have a coercive experience with sex work. Im sure there are plenty of people selling feet pics on instagram and feeling great about it, and maybe that’s fine…but I don’t think that’s the norm!
Maybe I’m wrong though; I don’t intend to be a swerf, but I do think sex work is generally non-consensual. Most paid work is probably non-consensual on some level but I think sex kind of has a special place in non-consensual activity.
Sex work is obviously something many people feel forced into. 73% of sex workers have at least one disability; maybe they feel they have other options, but it looks like that’s not most people’s experience: https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/nearly-3-in-4-sex-workers-live-with-a-disability-rare-bc-report-finds/
You know, you think that the first time, but if you go for it (and have the storage) you’ll be surprised at how glad you are to have them!
Or we can be part of making that a condition of the democrats doing well. Not supporting a genocide isn’t something we can or should “strip out” of our expectations of politicians. If you’re right, then burning the system down is the only feasible thing. Nothing else is feasible.
It’s infeasible to expect decent people to rally around genocidiers.
Don’t let the people with power tell you what is or isn’t feasible. Not supporting a genocide is easy for them. They may lie to themselves about it, but it’s obvious.
I agree it’s scummy to wish death upon a stranger you know nothing about. In this case, the guy thinks he knows the stranger is a fascist. I think that’s jumping to a conclusion, plenty of non-fascists do really dumb stuff with regard to health. This particular dumb thing with regard to health was popular among fascists, so it’s not totally nuts to think he might be.
Anyway, wishing death upon a fascist (stranger or no) is not scummy. Only a bootlicker would think it is! That said, I also don’t think you have to be a bootlicker to think we shouldn’t assume someone’s a fascist because they want ivermectin.
This is lovely :)
I love the patient fella at the end.
It’s to stop all the SEESEEPEE spies from slacking off at work…that’s gotta be it!
Joke went way over my head; thanks for the context!
This but unironically? lol the US is bad. do china next!
But I think most MLs would assume everyone already knows this and would instead want to argue about whether the bad things china does are actually “imperialist,” technically.
IDK maybe this is an accurate depiction of some kind of rabid sinophile…I haven’t had the joy of meeting any.
You fool! Chevron 7 is locked not encoded!
Unless…actually I can’t remember. Maybe it still gets encoded if you’re going to another galaxy or something? Anyone remember?
I’m so used to seeing the joke version of this that I was confused by the traditional version lol
Delete the gym, hit a lawyer, facebook up.
Yeah this was a good and interesting article. Not sure what it’s doing here. Not mad I got the chance to read it, but…definitely not a shitpost!
Sure, that’s why comments on shitposts are such high quality!
This is a good post! 🎉
I hope this is a nice conversation and you’re not frustrated; it’s nice for me!
inside
I don’t disagree it shouldn’t be an echo chamber; I’m glad you’re here (not that I have or should have any say in the use of the space!). Definitely not “inside” though. When I say “inside” I mean within a democratic centralist organization with some kind of political discipline. Organizations I’ve been part of would, from time to time, task members with researching and creating a report on AES countries, and then presenting their report internally to help develop well-considered positions on them. That’s the level of “internal” that I mean! Like…among people who trust each other, and only those people.
strategic criticism
If you mean that “strategic criticism” winds up just being “no criticism” I think that may be a fair critique of a lot of ML orgs.
Theory
Obviously the importance of theory is something people disagree about heatedly but to me, resistance to imperialism in the imperialist countries is so minimal that I’m happy to see a wide variety of tactics and let what happens happen. I got my theories but I ain’t gonna go out of my way to criticize someone else’s (hell, I was general Secretary of an IWW branch for several years…Marxist friends joke thay of course the anarchists made the Marxist be the organized one)
authoritarianism
When it comes to the word authoritarianism, I think a lot of Marxists have the same knee-jerk traction, which is to turn to Engels’ On Authority. Not for no reason, I think he makes a good point:
But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.
So am I authoritarian? I mean I guess so, in that I believe in revolution. I believe “authoritarian means” may be appropriate. I don’t think any MLs see authoritarian means as a desirable feature in and of themselves. I think every ML wants to see them discarded as soon as they are no longer necessary. I think reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like, obviously…but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind, right? At least I would see it that way.
Big agree that intellectual dishonesty is bad. We should all think and speak and work as clearly as we can. Insofar as MLs (or anyone else for that matter) think unscientifically (worshiping books, class reductionism, etc), that’s bad!
I think some people can hold China accountable; Chinese people! When I say “we can’t hold them accountable” I mean “the internet.” (Of course I think people in the CPC have the most power and greatest obligation to hold the government accountable, but I understand skepticism about that, obviously. I don’t think that skepticism is merely a result of western propaganda or something. I worry about that too; they clearly don’t do a stellar job lol).
propaganda
You said your categories but not what you meant by them, just that they are important factors for you. So having a target audience makes something more likely to be propaganda, as does intention to spread a political message, as does the actual effectiveness of reaching people? That’s all fine; I don’t think these really help us come to agreement on what is or isn’t propaganda. Like…it looks to me like your messages in this thread have a target audience (tankies and/or potential tankies), they intend to carry a political message (comparing china and the us like this let’s China off the hook for its own evils)…maybe they don’t reach many people (maybe even just one?). But in the scheme of things I don’t think that factor particularly weighs in favor of anything on Lemmy being propaganda lol; way too puny for reaching any substantial number of people (And fwiw I would say the same thing about my own messages).
I don’t think tankies think what you think tankies think. Maybe I’m wrong, but my impression is that when Marxist Leninists get together, criticism of “AES” countries is a perfectly fine topic of conversation “inside” the group, but when it’s done “outside” it serves the interest of the US/capital/imperialism. And I think there’s something to that; it does! A little full of yourself to think it could matter more than looking reasonable to outsiders or educating your insiders…but it’s not totally crazy. I don’t know, there is plenty though, like look at bad empanada (I think he’d be considered a tankie, right?). Guys done quite a bit on the Uyghurs.
I say all this as a Marxist Leninist (I assume I’m a “tankie” to people who use the word “tankie” lol).
Of course, I’d also say it’s a bit silly to think one could “hold [China] accountable” by the opposite means.
We disagree about what propaganda means, I guess. I don’t think “doing anti-China propaganda” means you hate China or something, I think it just means you’re conveying a political message that runs counter to their political message. I don’t understand the distinction between political messaging that is or isn’t propaganda?
I mean, I do understand that context; it is a propaganda piece portraying China as comparatively better than the US.
China is comparatively better than the U.S.
Making propaganda to that effect is good.
Everything is propaganda. You’re doing anti-China propaganda; I’m doing pro-China propaganda. with a veneer of nuance or whatever but my words have political meaning and so do yours…
I’ve never understood how any expression of political thought could not be propaganda… or that there’s an especially good/principled way to separate what you and me are doing from whatever you mean by propaganda…if it’s a government paying for it I really don’t think OP qualifies…or else the PRC should get its fuckin money back lol
If you’re willing to do something about that wish, then you’re an authoritarian too.
And FWIW, casting it in personal terms makes that wish tautological. No one wishes for a system where they have to cater to the whims of someone else. I’m sure you meant to say “no one has to cater to anyone else’s whims,” and that’s all well and good. Still authoritarian if you’re willing to see anything at all done to overcome the desires of the powerful to maintain the status quo (and in case it’s not obvious, that’s a good thing to be authoritarian about).