Jury’s out on whether or not I’m a liberal. I tend to get accused of all variety of political positions depending on the political affiliation of the speaker in attempt to either generalize to unite their tribe against me or to purity test me out of a shared space of allies.
In other words, Republicans tend to call me “liberal,” “communist,” “socialist,” a “radical leftist,” etc. and tankies tend to call me “liberal,” “fascist,” etc.
I gel pretty well with sane socialists though, which I’m told is distinct from liberalism?
Either way, I’m anti-tankie, so you can go ahead and lose your mind at me if you like.
Geling with sane socialists is enough for me to have a decent opinion of you off the bat. Lol I’ll be long winded but I won’t lose my mind at you🙂
I’d draw the line for socialist at with anyone that’s for abolishing private property. (Not personal property like your tooth brush or house). Any property that generates money like factories, work equipment, stocks, apartment buildings.
I don’t care if you think the government should own these things or if you think co-ops that give all their workers a seat on the board should. As long as you think the workers should own and control it collectively you’re cool in my book.
Curious if you agree with that or if you think the Nordic capitalist states are socialist.(They’re just capitalist states with nice welfare programs built on top, still better than other forms of capitalism) But they are called social democracies and that gets confusing for a lot of people.
We might disagree on China and Russia but I we both probably have the complaints with them you do. Real difference would probably be how we order which countries are worse and how. I’d order these three this way
Worst USA, Russia, China Best
USA is worse then Russia in my mind solely by its capacity for doing evil. I think the will to do it is about on par for the two.
“Socialism” is a direction on a spectrum to me, not a destination. If something is kinda socialist but not completely “socialist,” I don’t think it’s meaningful use of time and energy to label it No True Socialism.
You brought up the example I’ll use: The Nordic states are more socialist than the US, for example. I think they do their economy better than we (the US) do things. In other words, we in the US need more socialism, like the Nordic states have.
Are they adhering to Marxist principles strictly, by some the definition of “socialism?” Of course not.
I also don’t think Russia or China are either, nor was the USSR. As in Animal Farm (for obvious reasons), a visionary’s vision was perverted by people who sought to seize power for themselves and just go right back to doing 9/10 of the misdeeds the old regime did under a different flag.
I don’t think a socialist revolution to install a socialist state, let alone one free of innocent blood, is even possible. We don’t have many examples to go off of in history, but it’s like, 3/3 off the top of my head went very sour a la the above. The tankies that are so bold as to risk being banned for “racism” by their home instances by admitting the USSR/China/DPRK aren’t perfect all claim that they are only imperfect because capitalists opposed and ruined their revolutions from within and without, but that stinks of fascist/authoritarian-type logic of, “The enemy is both weak and strong, and anything that we do wrong is their fault, not ours.”
In sum, I don’t think we’re likely to live to see a true national-scale Marxist economy, let alone enough to get a good sample size that it’s worth stating Marxism is clearly superior to capitalism in every way, but from what I’ve read Marx write, I think he had much more right than he had wrong. I think Stalin, Putin, Xi Jinping, and the Kim dynasty are awful. As you say, the only limit to the horror they’ve imposed on the world is their GDP and military might. Stalin had a really strong run on record-setting atrocities what with things like the Holodomor.
China is playing a thousand year game, so as their GDP and military might meets and likely exceeds ours, they may or may not start invading everyone they think they can get away with to do increasingly awful things to the people of the world. Obviously they’re genociding the Uighurs as we speak. I imagine they’re smart enough to stay under what they perceive as the nuclear line. I don’t think they think the US is willing to nuke them over Taiwan, so I think it’s likely we’ll see an invasion of Taiwan soon, and I’m honestly surprised they haven’t done it while the US is busy with Israel/Iran and Russia/Ukraine. Maybe they’re waiting to get their microchip factories up first.
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Damn seems like it’s the “tankies” getting removed and not the smug liberals. I wonder what else you’re wrong about.
Your comment appears to bear very little relevance to what I said, other than maybe it being translated to “ha ha, you got your comments removed!”
I wasn’t really responding to you, since I couldn’t see your comment. The thread just appeared to be leftist responses being removed.
Were you posting like a stinky lib or posting like a cool tankie?
Oh, I’m definitely not a tankie, no.
Jury’s out on whether or not I’m a liberal. I tend to get accused of all variety of political positions depending on the political affiliation of the speaker in attempt to either generalize to unite their tribe against me or to purity test me out of a shared space of allies.
In other words, Republicans tend to call me “liberal,” “communist,” “socialist,” a “radical leftist,” etc. and tankies tend to call me “liberal,” “fascist,” etc.
I gel pretty well with sane socialists though, which I’m told is distinct from liberalism?
Either way, I’m anti-tankie, so you can go ahead and lose your mind at me if you like.
Geling with sane socialists is enough for me to have a decent opinion of you off the bat. Lol I’ll be long winded but I won’t lose my mind at you🙂
I’d draw the line for socialist at with anyone that’s for abolishing private property. (Not personal property like your tooth brush or house). Any property that generates money like factories, work equipment, stocks, apartment buildings.
I don’t care if you think the government should own these things or if you think co-ops that give all their workers a seat on the board should. As long as you think the workers should own and control it collectively you’re cool in my book.
Curious if you agree with that or if you think the Nordic capitalist states are socialist.(They’re just capitalist states with nice welfare programs built on top, still better than other forms of capitalism) But they are called social democracies and that gets confusing for a lot of people.
We might disagree on China and Russia but I we both probably have the complaints with them you do. Real difference would probably be how we order which countries are worse and how. I’d order these three this way
Worst USA, Russia, China Best
USA is worse then Russia in my mind solely by its capacity for doing evil. I think the will to do it is about on par for the two.
“Socialism” is a direction on a spectrum to me, not a destination. If something is kinda socialist but not completely “socialist,” I don’t think it’s meaningful use of time and energy to label it No True Socialism.
You brought up the example I’ll use: The Nordic states are more socialist than the US, for example. I think they do their economy better than we (the US) do things. In other words, we in the US need more socialism, like the Nordic states have.
Are they adhering to Marxist principles strictly, by some the definition of “socialism?” Of course not.
I also don’t think Russia or China are either, nor was the USSR. As in Animal Farm (for obvious reasons), a visionary’s vision was perverted by people who sought to seize power for themselves and just go right back to doing 9/10 of the misdeeds the old regime did under a different flag.
I don’t think a socialist revolution to install a socialist state, let alone one free of innocent blood, is even possible. We don’t have many examples to go off of in history, but it’s like, 3/3 off the top of my head went very sour a la the above. The tankies that are so bold as to risk being banned for “racism” by their home instances by admitting the USSR/China/DPRK aren’t perfect all claim that they are only imperfect because capitalists opposed and ruined their revolutions from within and without, but that stinks of fascist/authoritarian-type logic of, “The enemy is both weak and strong, and anything that we do wrong is their fault, not ours.”
In sum, I don’t think we’re likely to live to see a true national-scale Marxist economy, let alone enough to get a good sample size that it’s worth stating Marxism is clearly superior to capitalism in every way, but from what I’ve read Marx write, I think he had much more right than he had wrong. I think Stalin, Putin, Xi Jinping, and the Kim dynasty are awful. As you say, the only limit to the horror they’ve imposed on the world is their GDP and military might. Stalin had a really strong run on record-setting atrocities what with things like the Holodomor.
China is playing a thousand year game, so as their GDP and military might meets and likely exceeds ours, they may or may not start invading everyone they think they can get away with to do increasingly awful things to the people of the world. Obviously they’re genociding the Uighurs as we speak. I imagine they’re smart enough to stay under what they perceive as the nuclear line. I don’t think they think the US is willing to nuke them over Taiwan, so I think it’s likely we’ll see an invasion of Taiwan soon, and I’m honestly surprised they haven’t done it while the US is busy with Israel/Iran and Russia/Ukraine. Maybe they’re waiting to get their microchip factories up first.