On stuff outside of lemmygrad, we are receiving a lot of hate, especially by those who just moved from Reddit. Guess they lost their hidden privilege at Reddit as their rhetoric used to be almost universal over there, while genzedong and our other subs get censored and banned. And now, on lemmy, their stuff isn’t universal, as we are more prevalent here. Seems like they really want that hidden privilege back
I don’t think I’m a liberal. If you have any kind of empathy at all for a fellow human and look outside (in the US, at least), I really don’t see how you can come to a conclusion that isn’t “Holy shit capitalism causes so much harm and suffering we need to find to do something else.”.
I don’t know what flavor of leftist I am. I looked at anarchism for a bit and I ultimately found it really idealistic. No one seems to agree on what a “just hierarchy” is, and anarchists as a whole seems to argue for the complete annihilation of any hierarchy. I really wonder how they’re going to run a hospital in an anarchist fashion.
But at the same time, I don’t want to create something worse. I don’t want to help build an authoritarian regime that paves over people’s individuality and rights. I’ve seen the outcomes of that and I just can’t agree with that.
I probably look dumb saying this but my preferred ideal society is pretty much Star Trek.
Hey, just want to say that I think you’re on the right track! A lot of us felt this way before (at least I know I did for the most part), I would highly reccomend reading marxist theory, imo it really does answer a lot of these misgivings. If you don’t want to read, there are a lot of audiobooks out there, or even just starting with beginner socialist videos is ok
I’ve read the communist manifesto in high school. Since those years, I’ve struggled with reading any kind of long-form text. It’s something I’m trying to work on as it causes a lot of strife in day-to-day life.
I will gladly take audiobook recommendations.
I don’t know much about audiobooks, but I recommend reading/listening to Principles of Commumism. It’s, in my opinion, a better introductory text than the manifesto and also quite short. It’s essentially a communism FAQ written by Engels.
A link to the audio of Principles of Communism by Dessalines:
https://youtu.be/IS4cpvvLeYo
Dessalines has a shitload in his YouTube:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoak57jcXDh1rY4n7Ic-EVsE
I didnt get a notification for this for some reason, damn lemmy bugs… anyways I’m not super into audio books, but I like socialism for all’s voice, here’s a playlist starting with “On Authority” by Engels and going through a lot of other ones on socialism vs anarchism.
If you want something more modern, there’s also this audiobook of Black Shirts and Reds by Michael Parenti, which is less theory and more a history book in a way. I would probably recommend at least listening to On Authority first, it’s only 9 minutes compared to like 6 hours for Black Shirts and Reds
If you like his voice, there’s a ton of playlists labeled by author or topic on his channel
Dessalines also has a lot, like non-degetic said
Look up and see what good was created in socialist countries before and after the revolutions. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=nFUC0UWgdGY
Hi Izzy,
Thanks for joining us for a bit! I think it’s worth digging into what “authoritarian” means. ML’s think of using the power of authority/force and the oppressive structure of a state as a temporary tool to oppress the “haves” into being equal with the rest of us.
I think most of us would agree that something like Star Trek is one possible vision of an ideal end system - a high industry, post-scarcity society that has an efficiently centralized administration apparatus, but doesn’t have bodies of armed men to oppress it’s people.
The structure of the “socialist state” is just a tool to (eventually) get the “communism” end. It’s a work in progress, though!
And if that’s not your thing, there’s no need to make this a debate or anything. I just thought the clarification might be helpful! Have a good one! 😁