I tried to read that shit and am definitely dumber for it.
Meanwhile, I can’t, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to be communist rather than being a libertarian socialist or anarchist. Unless they think that they’re the ones that will be telling people what to do, rather than be the ones getting told what to do?
M-Ls generally hold to the idea that revolution is necessary and M-L is, pretty indisputably, the most successful ideology at launching a worker’s revolution.
Keeping Da Revolushion socialist is something I assume they think they’ll be able to do a better job at, if they’re not just in full on tankie denial.
Yeah, I got downvoted once the MLs found my comment (in a .world thread) for wondering why far leftists were so convinced that the only answer was socialism (as opposed to soc dem) when we haven’t seen it work very well in the real world. I guess Cuba and China are good enough examples for them to be fully convinced that we shouldn’t emulate Scandinavia, because that’s built on oppression and China isn’t, or something like that.
The funny thing about Scandinavian economics is that it proves that social democracy both improves the average standard of living and doesn’t even inconvenience the oligarchy, the wealth gap in Scandinavian countries is (or was) larger than America’s. That’s also what they find unacceptable about it though.
But you do need to note that Marxist revolutions don’t happen in countries where people are mostly comfortable or hopeful, they happen in Tsarist Russia and Warlord Era China, and I think that’s ultimately why they’re not willing to settle for compromise of what an actual centrist economic position looks like, it’s an expression of accelerationist thought.
it’s an expression of accelerationist thought.
…And that’s the really terrifying thing. How many vulnerable people are they willing to see die for their accelerationist fantasy?
I think they’d argue that capitalism is on track to kill every living human being, but it’s not like China is meeting their climate goals so 🤷♂️
TBF, China is doing a good job at transitioning to renewables. Which isn’t the same as meeting their climate goals, but it’s better than we’re doing in the US overall.
Yeah, China is more than aware than oil dependency is both a guaranteed disaster and a national security issue when you don’t have any or enough, while our dumbass oil barons can’t quite grasp the idea that it’s a limited resource if nothing else.
These ones love authoritarianism far more than they like leftist economics, so yeah I suspect that’s it.
They go around calling people bootlickers. That’s projection. They fantasize about cozying up to Stalin and his jackbooted thugs. It’s the same fantasy as the one shared by Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, and their neofeudalist followers. Same goes for all the MAGA morons, the Putinist Z radicals, the 50 cent army, and countless other authoritarian groups.
The world is a very complicated, dangerous, and frankly scary place right now. When people are unable to cope with all the uncertainty they reach for a strongman. This leaves the rest of us Ambiguity tolerant folks to actually try to deal with all the insanity, or to keep our heads down.
Beautifully put. Never considered it’s projection but that makes so much sense why they exclusively praise dictators as opposed to activists
Yeah, I’m also libertarian and generally a bit to the left of mainstream libertarianism, and I honestly don’t understand why anyone would legitimately be on the more authoritarian end of the spectrum.
I appreciate that just plugging in libertarianism today could be bad, but surely most people want fewer people telling them what to do, right?
You would think. I mean, that’s the whole principle behind things like reproductive rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, isn’t it? The freedom to control your own body without the government telling you what you can and can’t do with it, as long as you aren’t directly harming someone else? And yet. Ignore the fact that Stalin et al. almost always had purges of LGBTQ+ people, and that the rights of women were–and are in current Russia–sharply curtailed.
I don’t like libertarians
Not sure what people call libertarianism here. For me it’s the american mad child of anarchism, individualism and far right capitalism. Certainly not something I would support !
my local libertarians unironically said that people shouldn’t pay for roads. They also ranted about drag queens despite them not existing in my area.
Libertarian just screams to me, ‘remove minimum wage! more power to corporations! sell your health!’
Well, there are those. But libertarianism is a big tent, with everything from socialism to anarcho-capitalism underneath it.
I went into detail on my personal ideology using specific issues as examples. I think drag queens are great, and I’d love to take my kids to a drag queen story telling session (provided the show was intended for kids). I think road users should pay for roads, and they should pay roughly proportional to their destruction of the roads (i.e. trucking companies should pay much more than regular cars), and we should be investing in alternatives to using roads (so trains, cycle paths, etc) because that should reduce overall costs.
I do believe in eliminating the minimum wage, but that’s because I believe in the NIT (Negative Income Tax), so if you make under a certain amount, you’d receive a check in the mail, which would replace the minimum wage (i.e. it would guarantee everyone makes at least $7.5-15/hour, adjusted to local cost of living). I also believe in less power to corporations, and we get there by making it easier for small companies to compete against large orgs (i.e. remove liability protections for larger orgs).
No minimum wage is fucking stupid
Why? All a minimum wage does is prevent people from taking jobs that would otherwise go to automated systems. If someone wants to work for $5/hr, who am I to say that’s wrong?
The real concern here, I think, is that the minimum wage isn’t enough to sustain an individual or a family. The solution there isn’t to raise the minimum wage, but to ensure everyone has enough, regardless of wage. So hand out cash so everyone has enough, and then let people work for whatever price they want. Cash handouts should only go to citizens or permanent residents IMO, but everyone is free to compete for whatever wage they feel is fair, and wealthy people can pay the difference.
Libertariansism is just edgy facism. They pretend to have different ideals but in reality they only care about stomping on others.
Then I guess I’ll describe a few policies I believe in and how that fits into my personal ideology. In general, libertarians believe in the Non-Aggression Principle, meaning if it requires an initiation of force to achieve some ends, it’s immoral. Many libertarians are willing to throw some asterisks on there for pragmatism, so I’m more interested in libertarianism as a direction, not an end goal.
Welfare
I support a UBI-like program called NIT. Basically (FPL = federal poverty line, LW = living wage):
- $0 up to FPL - receive full benefits, no taxes due
- FPL up to LW - receive graduated benefits
- above LW - start paying taxes
I want to eventually replace current welfare programs, but I’d start with Social Security, which rewards based on how much you put in, instead of how much you need. I think we should flip that on its head and give more to people with less saved, and nothing to people above a certain retirement income (they don’t need it), so it would be an actual safety net instead of a retirement plan. Benefits would be adjusted based on local cost of living.
Justification:
I find redistribution of wealth to technically go against the NAP (i.e. take from one to give to another), but welfare programs are worse because it generally rewards those with the time to navigate the welfare system. This would be automatic, when you file your taxes, if you’re below a certain income limit, you start getting payments.
Immigration
I’d like to move toward open borders, and make the immigration process as easy as possible. I’d make a one-time offer to currently undocumented immigrants to become documented; if they currently have a job or means to support themselves, they can stay, with some contingencies (i.e. start filing taxes, etc). I’d also increase the quotas for legal immigration, and work visas would constitute a 5-minute form, monthly digital reports for the first year to document your job situation, and if you get a stable job, this temporary visa would transform into a permanent one.
Justification:
Restricting free movement is immoral and against the NAP, unless there’s a legitimate reason to believe you’re moving with malicious intent (i.e. you’ll likely hurt someone).
Taxes
- eliminate tariffs - this is basically a national sales tax and is regressive
- eliminate corporate taxes - they encourage companies to leave, discourage wage growth, etc
- raise capital gains taxes for high income earners - should match regular income tax rates
- tax corporate stock grants to high income earners (say, >$400k) as regular income - whether an exec gets stock or cash shouldn’t matter from a tax perspective
- sales taxes, if they exist, should be included in the list price of goods at physical stores; online stores should only include it if they know the shipping address; they should continue to be itemized separately in receipts
- property taxes are effective, and we should be moving closer to a land-value tax
- create carbon tax, and estimate carbon footprint of all imports unless the importing org provides believable documentation
We should require a balanced budget on average (say, over 10-years, tax revenue should match spending). A big part of this is spending cuts, primarily on our ridiculous defense spending.
Justification:
Taxes should be progressive, simple, and sufficient to fund the government. Taxes are a larger aggression against the poor than the wealthy. We should lean on Pigouvian taxes before resorting to regulations.
Social Issues
- end qualified immunity - bad cops should be required to defend themselves as private citizens
- same-sex marriage - rework marriage as set of simple, legal contracts, which each has requirements and benefits; marriage should be defined by those entering into it, the IRS, hospitals, etc should only care about legal contracts
- drugs - legalize marijuana, decriminalize use/possession of any controlled substance, and only enforce actual violations of rights (i.e. violence, abuse, etc)
- prostitution - legalize nationally, but also require it to only happen in areas zoned for it (states can decide what that looks like)
- abortion - few restrictions during the first trimester (i.e. normal duty of care rules) until learning the gender of the baby, no “convenience” abortions until viability, and funded delivery and adoption after viability if the child is unwanted; after the first trimester, abortion is only allowed to protect the life of the mother or relieve suffering from severe developmental issues
Justification:
In general, if doing X doesn’t impact others, X should be allowed. If doing X hurts yourself, doing X should be allowed, but controlled such that those selling it would have a duty of care (can’t provide to those they believe it would hurt). This would be broad enough to apply to things like credit cards, gambling, and microtransactions in games.
For abortion, the rights of the mother and fetus need to be protected. To do that:
- first trimester - privacy issue, because this is the highest risk of miscarriage
- second trimester and beyond - symptoms tend to be much lighter, to carrying the baby to a safe term is reasonable
- funded delivery and adoption - we cannot cause a financial hardship if we’re going to disallow abortion; decision must be made before delivery
IP Law
- dramatically reduce copyright duration - roll back to original law, which was 14 years, with an optional, one-time renewal; also expand fair use
- dramatically reduce patent duration - 5-7 years, with an optional, one-time renewal if they can show economic need
- keep trademark law as-is
Justification:
IP law in general is illegitimate, but smaller creators need some protection from larger orgs that can beat them in production and marketing. IP law has been abused by large orgs against smaller creators, so it needs to be rolled back, but I think eliminating it entirely is also irresponsible.
Foreign Policy
- no foreign wars w/o declaration of war by Congress
- no funding for other countries unless they’re fighting a defensive war (i.e. fund Ukraine, not Israel)
In general, I believe in:
- broad expansion of individual liberties (drugs, prostitution, same-sex marriage, abortion)
- simplification of taxes, and elimination of federal deficit
- fewer restrictions on citizens and visitors alike
- prefer Pigouvian taxes over regulations
So I generally agree with Democrat rhetoric about social policy, Republican rhetoric about fiscal policy, and I disagree with both about most of what they actually do.
I lean authleft because it’s too easy to manipulate people into voting against their interests.
I don’t like Libertarians.
I wonder if it’s because they realize that roleplaying revolutionaries does nothing to advance the working class, and that the main job right now is to pull the populace left and organize labor so there CAN be a sustainable socialist future, not to live out your wildest ML fantasies where you get to shoot all the anarchists and exile all the Whites?
I think it’s more apt to say they roleplay the working class. I’ve found most of them are just rich, bored kids
They certainly all sound like 12 year olds.
Immature losers can be any age, it’s usually more pathetic when they are full grown adults.
Teenagers and 30-year-old men… Definitely sus
It sounds miserable to be them
Yeah I don’t get how people can be so hateful of everything
That place is just 4chan for commies, isn’t it?
Yes
I question if they’re even communists, considering most commie-spaces throw them out, and I’ve never actually seen them talk about communism in the modern day.
Marxist-leninist is the term they use (.ml) which should be called stalinism as that’s it’s ideological father.
If called out they can confront with huge diatribes with often ready maar copy pastes from red sails.
Why do you think they turn tankie instead of being a communist?
Easily sucked in an information funnel that’s very hard core. This is not unique. In the nineteenth century some hard core communists bored against help for laborers, as they felt it would happen their appetite for revolution.
Mostly salon communists, mind you.
Inability to create honest discourse. It’s why they rely on copy-paste responses for most comments and an image macros of a pig shitting on its own balls when you really get them cornered in a fallacy.
Also why they rely on brigading/“dunking”. It shuts down any real discussion and makes it clear they’re out of actual arguments.
Fortunately, they have never actually tried to ‘dunk’ this community. I think it’s because they fear they’ll be mocked and questioned.
Honestly it is probably just old style USSR propaganda
No! It’s actually a real fun and friendly place.
bwwaaark… bwark bwark bwark
Basically except they don’t use anonymous accounts like 4chan does, I imagine it would be even worse if they did.
they’d get their feelings hurt with mean words
-Hates anyone who isn’t a complete believer in the “cause” -Praises genocidal countries like USSR and China who killed millions -Absolute dicks and generally people who irritate others “wHY DoES nO ONe LIkE uS?1?1”
I’ve read the screen copy and can’t see any reference to “genocidal countries” at all (BTW you forgot Israel, didn’t you?). They are just telling the american way of life won’t cope with inequity, climate change and other countries wanting to live the same way, and centrist lefitism is not enough to change things…
I hate all genocides.
Unlike tankies.
you can view multiple posts throughout this community where they praise genocides
and again, man, what is it with people always trying to find anything they can to squeeeeze in israel and palestine. like bruh, come on, you’re more obnoxious than preachers on a train.
Well, genocide is a word calling for references to Israel these days… Having extremists religious supremacists leading a country is rarely a call for humanism.
Yeah, I don’t care. Just try to stay on topic.
You can view multiple posts throughout this community of tankies praising massacres and genocides.
I’m not saying Israel isn’t genocidal, cause it most definitely is. I’m saying that tankies support for other genocidal countries is evil. Also hypocritical seeing how they support one genocidal regime and with another.
If that last sentence is all that tankies believed in, this community wouldn’t exist. People aren’t against tankies because they’re against the problems we face, it’s because they hate the American regime so much that they see the Chinese and Russian regimes as a better option despite them all being terrible
Well, I guess I’m not a tankie then, nor an American either. I was born as a western citizen, in the good side of the world. Then… I have been fooledva deceived by the western world. I don’t expect China, or Russia, or any dictatorship to do any good. I was expecting the US and Europe and even Israel to do so. Then… About Grahib, Guantanamo, Gaza, Snowden’s revelations, Rainbow warrior, hate, lies, massacres, … Western world in not any better than the rest… Not worst, but certainly not better. And I’m sad.
What is the best? If you even think there’s such a thing
I hate all genocides.
Unlike tankies.
I’ve read the screencopy and can’t see any reference to America.
“Brown People”
Least racist Tankie
?
I read it as specifically criticising NIMBYs and suburban redlining/urban sprawl.
Because obviously that’s what turning people off, not their full throated support of Putin’s invasion and “protest voting” to put a fascist in office.
