While I appreciate the flattery, I want to begin with a few misconceptions.
First, there is no such thing as “true” socialism. Socialism is not a religion, nor a holy vow, nor scripture to be followed to the letter. Socialism is a material system, one that exists in real life, and is compelled by real forces. Calling someone a true socialist is like calling someone a true scientist, in my opinion. There are scientists with wrong understandings of the world, but we don’t call them “false” or “fake” on the basis of purity.
Secondly, about consolidating power in the government. This is a bit misleading, I do not wish to consolidate power in just any government, but specifically states run and controlled by the working classes. The capitalist state must be smashed and replaced, it cannot become socialist. This is how the majority begins to run society.
With that out of the way, I’ll return to your main points.
First, your understanding of corruption. Corruption is not a supernatural force, a sickness to be overcome. Corruption is an expression of people acting in their own interests. In capitalism, since the state is under the control of capitalists, this manifests in naked bribery and revolving door practices. The class interests of those in power side with keeping private property and helping the largest and most corrupt capitalists stay afloat, which is why there can be no democracy in capitalism.
Socialist systems, on the other hand, are remarkably resiliant to corruption. Many socialist states feature recall elections, and communist parties often regularly kick out corrupt members, enforcing strict discipline. This is because the class interests of those in power in socialism is collectivization of production and distribution, which is the same as the broad population, because the class in power is the working class, which is the majority.
Secondly, your understanding of centralization. Collectivizing all of production and distribution does not mean there are no redundancies, no “rungs” on the ladder with regional autonomy. China, for example, has local, regional, provincial, and national organizations, and electoral candidates must win elections from the bottom upward in order to advance. They cannot come from the outside to the top, but must come from the bottom. This is why even western data like NIRA data find China and Vietnam (to a slightly lesser extent) to have citizens extremely confident in their democracy:
In actual fact, collectivization of all of production and distribution is a combination of centralization and decentralization. This is why I stressed the nature of autonomous zones and regions in China, for example. Each level of a system corresponds to that which is most relevant to it. Socialism can be best seen as both top-down and bottom-up.
Regarding your stated position, “electoral democracy with a market pluralism explicitly biased towards democratic institutions,” this sounds like you’re erasing class struggle from its existing and omnipresent role. It’s vague enough that I could say you are describing China, yet your issues with central planning make it seem like you aren’t. Further, China is leveraging markets as far as they contribute to advancing along socialist construction to communism (see here, from Cheng Enfu):
As for revolution, contrary to what you claim, they have in fact managed to successfully establish socialism. Revolution is the only way socialism has ever been established. That isn’t to say that they haven’t come at often enormous human cost, it’s more that reform is an impossibility, and thus the loss of life was never pointless. The working classes gave their lives for their future generations. For the results of reformist approaches, see what happened to Allende in Chile, what’s happened to Maduro in Venezuela, or Nkrumah in Ghana, etc. Marxists are revolutionaries not for the LARP of it, but because the state is a product of class struggle, and as such serves a definite class. You cannot ask the state to pivot to socialism, this can only happen through the conquest of political power via force.
If you’re curious about Marxism-Leninism, I made a basic study guide. The first section has some great introductory pieces, such as Albert Einstein’s case for planned economy in the Monthly Review essay Why Socialism? | Audiobook [~10 min / 22 min]. Lemmy was made by communists, there are lots of resources here you can find if you would like to see them.
I truly don’t see why you wish to Balkanize and pit the entire working class against itself, with no unifying body, treating any attempt at unifying the people as “dystopian.” The government is not outside of society impressing onto it, but a product of society. Socialist systems are run by the people, through councils and systems of governance. I think you’re taking your impressions of how capitalist governments work and are projecting it onto socialism.
What you are advocating for is a transiant, impermanent system that will inevitably centralize in the long run, only without the working classes in charge, but instead capitalists. As some firms grow and others shrink, your petite-bourgeois quasi-socialism will evolve into an outright capitalist system. This trend towards balkanization and disunity goes against the scientific advancement of humanity, against a form of society where we become the masters of production and distribution.
I have absolutely no clue what you mean by saying “I cannot think of rules to prevent corruption.” I gave ample examples of how corruption is addressed in socialist countries, and explained the root causes. In communism, a post-socialist society, collectivization will be complete and thus class will no longer exist either. Corruption will lose its biggest basis. Socialist countries already make corruption illegal, and punish those found corrupt.
Balkanization, on the other hand, allows corruption to fester. Neocolonialism is a great example of this. Nkrumah in Ghana was ousted for advocating a Pan-African coalition, as countries kept broken up into tiny statelets are utterly incapable of certifying their own sovereignty. This results in compradors in government, and control by foreign neocolonial powers, like France and the US. Your insistence on breaking up society into tiny competing cells and minimal intervention is economic suicide, especially considering production is already as centralized as it is.
Further, production did not just scale in degrees. It transformed qualitatively. Mass production in the modern era is not simply a bunch of 1950s factories, but instead new, ever-more massive supply chains, factories, and socialized systems of production. These groups cannot be broken up without having disastrous impacts on production, their size became a material necessity for production to advance. By trying to Balkanize production, you are saying no to mass availability of medicine, no to smartphones, no to mass solar and no to mass scale public transit.
Independence, on the other hand, can only be found truly through unity and sovereignty. This requires progressing forwards, not backwards towards an era that never truly existed. The cooperative model was already debunked by Friedrich Engels in Anti-Dühring as a non-scientific, Utopian form of socialism. Making people weaker and disunited makes them less sovereign and less able to chart their own course.
As for China, I don’t see how it doesn’t qualify as an electoral democracy. What’s your problem with how China is democratically run?
You say your desire for balkanization is not a product of capitalism, but to the contrary, it is impossible not to have the ways we think be shaped by the ways we live and the conditions of our lives. We make history, but do not choose the conditions for our existence coming into it, we must confront the past. It’s entirely in line with existing socialism for various localities to have their own laws and unique differences, from culture to governance, while also being a part of the same unified whole.
You’re continuing to look at centralization/decentralization as a gradiant, but this isn’t how it actually functions. Systems can be layered, making room for each. Independence can only be achieved through meeting the needs of everyone. In a cooperitarian system like you describe, you are creating a destruction of independence and instead the subservience of worker-owners to those in more powerful firms.
As for China, it sounds like you just want ranked choice voting with a lottery option. This is placing too much of an emphasis on the form of democracy, and not the essence. The people of China created the democratic system they want, which features recall elections, rungs, and mass consensus building. Policy comes from the people first, is interpreted by the CPC, and then is enacted from the top, with regular consensus being gathered. This is outside the limits of standard electoral democracy, and instead is a whole-process democracy.
I’m not dismissing your views as irrelevant, I am stating that, whether we intend it or not, all of our ideas come from our material conditions. The way we live does shape the way we think, even if we are aware of it. It is impossible to separate the two. As for only being able to think of solutions for the ideology I support, that’s a bit backwards. I support socialism because it answers the problems of systems that depend on markets.
As for your point on democracy, you are focusing on form without acknowledging the class structure of society. Measures you describe are good or bad depending on what class controls the state, without looking at that your measures fall flat, as you see with the US. You cannot draw a line between politics and economics. When I say you focus on form over essence, I mean your focus on secondary policy over the primary aspect, the class nature of society, causes you to miss the core. Implementing your measures in the US would not save it, but implementing them in Cuba, for example, would likely be fine (even if their form of democracy is better in my opinion).
You’re not a fool, never insinuated that. However, I do think that you could stand to be more scientific with your approach to political economy. You cannot slice up parts of a system and treat them as disconnected from the rest.
The mode of production determines the class structure, not laws. Laws are a component of the superstructure of society, not the base. The base and superstructure mutually reinforce each other, with the base being primary.
In other words, the ones who control the commanding aspects of the economy control the state, and as such taking a legalistic approach to undermining that is a political dead end. I gave ample examples of this earlier, and you just ignored those points. The consequences of this structure are as follows:
All laws passed in capitalism come directly with the consent of capitalists.
All laws that stand to change society in a fundamental way will be revised, de-fanged, and stripped of power before passing
This is why the measures you propose are incomplete. We cannot simply pass what you want, and even if we could, they would be de-fanged. Socialism is a prerequisite for democracy. Revolution is the only way to actually change the mode of production.
Science isn’t only related to biology, physics, chemistry, etc. Science also applies to human development and socioeconomics. Marxism created historical materialism, which helps us analyze human development scientifically and avoid the pitfalls of idealism and metaphysics.
While I appreciate the flattery, I want to begin with a few misconceptions.
First, there is no such thing as “true” socialism. Socialism is not a religion, nor a holy vow, nor scripture to be followed to the letter. Socialism is a material system, one that exists in real life, and is compelled by real forces. Calling someone a true socialist is like calling someone a true scientist, in my opinion. There are scientists with wrong understandings of the world, but we don’t call them “false” or “fake” on the basis of purity.
Secondly, about consolidating power in the government. This is a bit misleading, I do not wish to consolidate power in just any government, but specifically states run and controlled by the working classes. The capitalist state must be smashed and replaced, it cannot become socialist. This is how the majority begins to run society.
With that out of the way, I’ll return to your main points.
First, your understanding of corruption. Corruption is not a supernatural force, a sickness to be overcome. Corruption is an expression of people acting in their own interests. In capitalism, since the state is under the control of capitalists, this manifests in naked bribery and revolving door practices. The class interests of those in power side with keeping private property and helping the largest and most corrupt capitalists stay afloat, which is why there can be no democracy in capitalism.
Socialist systems, on the other hand, are remarkably resiliant to corruption. Many socialist states feature recall elections, and communist parties often regularly kick out corrupt members, enforcing strict discipline. This is because the class interests of those in power in socialism is collectivization of production and distribution, which is the same as the broad population, because the class in power is the working class, which is the majority.
Secondly, your understanding of centralization. Collectivizing all of production and distribution does not mean there are no redundancies, no “rungs” on the ladder with regional autonomy. China, for example, has local, regional, provincial, and national organizations, and electoral candidates must win elections from the bottom upward in order to advance. They cannot come from the outside to the top, but must come from the bottom. This is why even western data like NIRA data find China and Vietnam (to a slightly lesser extent) to have citizens extremely confident in their democracy:
In actual fact, collectivization of all of production and distribution is a combination of centralization and decentralization. This is why I stressed the nature of autonomous zones and regions in China, for example. Each level of a system corresponds to that which is most relevant to it. Socialism can be best seen as both top-down and bottom-up.
Regarding your stated position, “electoral democracy with a market pluralism explicitly biased towards democratic institutions,” this sounds like you’re erasing class struggle from its existing and omnipresent role. It’s vague enough that I could say you are describing China, yet your issues with central planning make it seem like you aren’t. Further, China is leveraging markets as far as they contribute to advancing along socialist construction to communism (see here, from Cheng Enfu):
As for revolution, contrary to what you claim, they have in fact managed to successfully establish socialism. Revolution is the only way socialism has ever been established. That isn’t to say that they haven’t come at often enormous human cost, it’s more that reform is an impossibility, and thus the loss of life was never pointless. The working classes gave their lives for their future generations. For the results of reformist approaches, see what happened to Allende in Chile, what’s happened to Maduro in Venezuela, or Nkrumah in Ghana, etc. Marxists are revolutionaries not for the LARP of it, but because the state is a product of class struggle, and as such serves a definite class. You cannot ask the state to pivot to socialism, this can only happen through the conquest of political power via force.
If you’re curious about Marxism-Leninism, I made a basic study guide. The first section has some great introductory pieces, such as Albert Einstein’s case for planned economy in the Monthly Review essay Why Socialism? | Audiobook [~10 min / 22 min]. Lemmy was made by communists, there are lots of resources here you can find if you would like to see them.
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I truly don’t see why you wish to Balkanize and pit the entire working class against itself, with no unifying body, treating any attempt at unifying the people as “dystopian.” The government is not outside of society impressing onto it, but a product of society. Socialist systems are run by the people, through councils and systems of governance. I think you’re taking your impressions of how capitalist governments work and are projecting it onto socialism.
What you are advocating for is a transiant, impermanent system that will inevitably centralize in the long run, only without the working classes in charge, but instead capitalists. As some firms grow and others shrink, your petite-bourgeois quasi-socialism will evolve into an outright capitalist system. This trend towards balkanization and disunity goes against the scientific advancement of humanity, against a form of society where we become the masters of production and distribution.
I have absolutely no clue what you mean by saying “I cannot think of rules to prevent corruption.” I gave ample examples of how corruption is addressed in socialist countries, and explained the root causes. In communism, a post-socialist society, collectivization will be complete and thus class will no longer exist either. Corruption will lose its biggest basis. Socialist countries already make corruption illegal, and punish those found corrupt.
Balkanization, on the other hand, allows corruption to fester. Neocolonialism is a great example of this. Nkrumah in Ghana was ousted for advocating a Pan-African coalition, as countries kept broken up into tiny statelets are utterly incapable of certifying their own sovereignty. This results in compradors in government, and control by foreign neocolonial powers, like France and the US. Your insistence on breaking up society into tiny competing cells and minimal intervention is economic suicide, especially considering production is already as centralized as it is.
Further, production did not just scale in degrees. It transformed qualitatively. Mass production in the modern era is not simply a bunch of 1950s factories, but instead new, ever-more massive supply chains, factories, and socialized systems of production. These groups cannot be broken up without having disastrous impacts on production, their size became a material necessity for production to advance. By trying to Balkanize production, you are saying no to mass availability of medicine, no to smartphones, no to mass solar and no to mass scale public transit.
Independence, on the other hand, can only be found truly through unity and sovereignty. This requires progressing forwards, not backwards towards an era that never truly existed. The cooperative model was already debunked by Friedrich Engels in Anti-Dühring as a non-scientific, Utopian form of socialism. Making people weaker and disunited makes them less sovereign and less able to chart their own course.
As for China, I don’t see how it doesn’t qualify as an electoral democracy. What’s your problem with how China is democratically run?
deleted by creator
You say your desire for balkanization is not a product of capitalism, but to the contrary, it is impossible not to have the ways we think be shaped by the ways we live and the conditions of our lives. We make history, but do not choose the conditions for our existence coming into it, we must confront the past. It’s entirely in line with existing socialism for various localities to have their own laws and unique differences, from culture to governance, while also being a part of the same unified whole.
You’re continuing to look at centralization/decentralization as a gradiant, but this isn’t how it actually functions. Systems can be layered, making room for each. Independence can only be achieved through meeting the needs of everyone. In a cooperitarian system like you describe, you are creating a destruction of independence and instead the subservience of worker-owners to those in more powerful firms.
As for China, it sounds like you just want ranked choice voting with a lottery option. This is placing too much of an emphasis on the form of democracy, and not the essence. The people of China created the democratic system they want, which features recall elections, rungs, and mass consensus building. Policy comes from the people first, is interpreted by the CPC, and then is enacted from the top, with regular consensus being gathered. This is outside the limits of standard electoral democracy, and instead is a whole-process democracy.
deleted by creator
I’m not dismissing your views as irrelevant, I am stating that, whether we intend it or not, all of our ideas come from our material conditions. The way we live does shape the way we think, even if we are aware of it. It is impossible to separate the two. As for only being able to think of solutions for the ideology I support, that’s a bit backwards. I support socialism because it answers the problems of systems that depend on markets.
As for your point on democracy, you are focusing on form without acknowledging the class structure of society. Measures you describe are good or bad depending on what class controls the state, without looking at that your measures fall flat, as you see with the US. You cannot draw a line between politics and economics. When I say you focus on form over essence, I mean your focus on secondary policy over the primary aspect, the class nature of society, causes you to miss the core. Implementing your measures in the US would not save it, but implementing them in Cuba, for example, would likely be fine (even if their form of democracy is better in my opinion).
You’re not a fool, never insinuated that. However, I do think that you could stand to be more scientific with your approach to political economy. You cannot slice up parts of a system and treat them as disconnected from the rest.
deleted by creator
The mode of production determines the class structure, not laws. Laws are a component of the superstructure of society, not the base. The base and superstructure mutually reinforce each other, with the base being primary.
In other words, the ones who control the commanding aspects of the economy control the state, and as such taking a legalistic approach to undermining that is a political dead end. I gave ample examples of this earlier, and you just ignored those points. The consequences of this structure are as follows:
All laws passed in capitalism come directly with the consent of capitalists.
All laws that stand to change society in a fundamental way will be revised, de-fanged, and stripped of power before passing
This is why the measures you propose are incomplete. We cannot simply pass what you want, and even if we could, they would be de-fanged. Socialism is a prerequisite for democracy. Revolution is the only way to actually change the mode of production.
Science isn’t only related to biology, physics, chemistry, etc. Science also applies to human development and socioeconomics. Marxism created historical materialism, which helps us analyze human development scientifically and avoid the pitfalls of idealism and metaphysics.