The merits of taking an anti-anti-communism stance | Aeon Essays
The merits of taking an anti-anti-communism stance | Aeon Essays
aeon.co
The merits of taking an anti-anti-communism stance | Aeon Essays
37 comments
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Well, authoritarianism isn’t the enemy of the authorities. It usually works out quite well for them, at least for a while. It’s definitely detrimental to society as a whole though, where communism is generally neutral (though more easily abused than capitalism).
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We already live in a nightmare capitalist autocracy and people still fearmonger about the USSR.
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That’s because it’s demonstrably worse than capitalist autocracy. Communism itself isn’t a problem, but it has yet to function properly at a state level; China came the closest, but that was still based on stratification and a ruling elite. And now it has the worst of capitalism as well.
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Communism is on the same level as Nazism. Evil and rotten to the core.
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Didn't expect to see this in beehaw. I'm really confused with lemmy's ongoing drama. D:
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I swear the instances better actually start moderating or are all the lemmy mods fucking communists...
37 comments
The real problem was never about communism, it was about authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism is the enemy of everyone.
Everyone but the state, and unfortunately the capitalist states have much more power to push their narrative. Thus "communism" became the enemy to latch onto, and now it's synonymous with Stalinism in the eyes of many.
Same thing happened with "anarchy" and it being synonymous with "chaos" in the eyes of many. But indeed, anarchy is order.
Edit: A quote from the linked article, absolute nonsense lmao.
Can you have communism without authoritarianism though? How would distribution of resources be enforced without control?
Democratically.
well, we'd have a more settled answer if historically communists of all stripes weren't immediately persecuted wherever they win power (whether democratically or through revolution), but Revolutionary Catalonia strongly suggests the answer is yes. its most anarchist regions successfully managed themselves pretty well for more than 2 years during a vicious civil war before being crushed, and those are the literal worst circumstances possible to try and build an egalitarian, stateless, classless society in. i would imagine doing this is substantially easier without a well-armed state trying to murder you.
(also ironically, the anarchists in Catalonia sometimes had to fight the Marxist-Leninists who were ostensibly united with them against the Francoists, because the two sides had such radically different visions of society)
It's not possible to have a benevolent authoritarian government.