Fair enough! For me I think it came down to a perspective shift on the design of liberal democracies. I would love it if the owning class was forward-thinking enough to allow social democracies to function well longitudinally. It seems that the dynamic is that workers fight for protections and social safety nets and then owners slowly gut those programs and push austerity. On a long enough time scale, social democracy decays.
I used to think we could essentially protest and activism our way out of this because I viewed liberal democracy as something which was fundamentally designed to serve the people and was corrupted to serve the owning class. Now I view liberal democracies as something which was designed to serve the owning class from the start. There was a big reason land ownership was originally required to vote in the United States. Lenin says in State and Revolution:
A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell … it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.
I think this naturally leads to questions about how to deal with the entrenchment of capitalists at a fundamental level and the answers lie in historical examples of societies which were able to do so. And all of this is made significantly more urgent by climate change.
To me the truly troubling thing about it is that I think social democracy works when people are educated, because educated people understand the role of trust, respect, and fear in the social contract. Unfortunately, we live in a world of half-educated, or frankly mis-educated people, that think magic thoughts about manifesting lottery wins and such. I think social democracy currently doesn’t work for the same reason communism wouldn’t which is that half of us are too stupefied to grasp the concepts. I’m not sure how to solve that, and alternatively (and somewhat tangentially) I despise people who lean into capitalism as a reaction to that fact. They’re a bunch of Erika Kirks to me.
People are actually very smart, and education works well. The problem is with systems run by capital is that they culturally reinforce bourgeois ideology and the state is ultimately run in their interests. Socialism on the other hand works for the people, and history has proven the people fully capable of grasping complex problems.
I think I’m a bit confused by the fact that when I was younger my conclusion was that everyone is smart, they just need access to information, but that wasn’t true. They need to be taught to process information first. What we have instead is everyone in their own little virtual reality where facts are estimated based on what feels best, because too few people understand the value and necessity of critical thinking and instead apply religious reasoning and whatnot.
It’s a bit deeper than that, though you’re close! What actually is going on is that people license themselves to believe that which benefits them is good, effective, etc. Education is critical, yes, but people’s receptiveness to new ideas depends on their material conditions.
I see what you’re saying. It’s how people like Trump can convince them he’s after their best interests; from the things he says to what the news reports, they’re conditioned to not be concerned with data points that are “true”, so much as which data points work for them emotionally because the consequences are intangible and modern life is so automatic. Idiocracy, basically. Kinda funny that people always boogieman with slippery slope fallacy of “the end result of socialism is communism” while we watch the end result of this capitalist society become some mutation of idiocracy and authoritarianism.
They are correct in saying that the end result of socialism is communism, though they imagine that’s a bad thing. Communism is the result of socialism working out its various contradictions, just like socialism comes as a result of capitalism’s contradictions. Capitalist decay is built into it as a system, but this very same decay is what prepares the ground for socialism.
Understood. Education is an absolutely vital aspect of worker liberation, which is why historical communist governments have prioritized mass literacy programs. It is unfortunate that in many cases it required a revolution and a change of ruling class for this education to be prioritized.
Good points, and to counter my own point: the source of a lot of the mis-education is capitalists attempting to maintain this lop-sided status quo… lol
Fair enough! For me I think it came down to a perspective shift on the design of liberal democracies. I would love it if the owning class was forward-thinking enough to allow social democracies to function well longitudinally. It seems that the dynamic is that workers fight for protections and social safety nets and then owners slowly gut those programs and push austerity. On a long enough time scale, social democracy decays.
I used to think we could essentially protest and activism our way out of this because I viewed liberal democracy as something which was fundamentally designed to serve the people and was corrupted to serve the owning class. Now I view liberal democracies as something which was designed to serve the owning class from the start. There was a big reason land ownership was originally required to vote in the United States. Lenin says in State and Revolution:
I think this naturally leads to questions about how to deal with the entrenchment of capitalists at a fundamental level and the answers lie in historical examples of societies which were able to do so. And all of this is made significantly more urgent by climate change.
To me the truly troubling thing about it is that I think social democracy works when people are educated, because educated people understand the role of trust, respect, and fear in the social contract. Unfortunately, we live in a world of half-educated, or frankly mis-educated people, that think magic thoughts about manifesting lottery wins and such. I think social democracy currently doesn’t work for the same reason communism wouldn’t which is that half of us are too stupefied to grasp the concepts. I’m not sure how to solve that, and alternatively (and somewhat tangentially) I despise people who lean into capitalism as a reaction to that fact. They’re a bunch of Erika Kirks to me.
People are actually very smart, and education works well. The problem is with systems run by capital is that they culturally reinforce bourgeois ideology and the state is ultimately run in their interests. Socialism on the other hand works for the people, and history has proven the people fully capable of grasping complex problems.
I think you’re right.
I think I’m a bit confused by the fact that when I was younger my conclusion was that everyone is smart, they just need access to information, but that wasn’t true. They need to be taught to process information first. What we have instead is everyone in their own little virtual reality where facts are estimated based on what feels best, because too few people understand the value and necessity of critical thinking and instead apply religious reasoning and whatnot.
It’s a bit deeper than that, though you’re close! What actually is going on is that people license themselves to believe that which benefits them is good, effective, etc. Education is critical, yes, but people’s receptiveness to new ideas depends on their material conditions.
I see what you’re saying. It’s how people like Trump can convince them he’s after their best interests; from the things he says to what the news reports, they’re conditioned to not be concerned with data points that are “true”, so much as which data points work for them emotionally because the consequences are intangible and modern life is so automatic. Idiocracy, basically. Kinda funny that people always boogieman with slippery slope fallacy of “the end result of socialism is communism” while we watch the end result of this capitalist society become some mutation of idiocracy and authoritarianism.
They are correct in saying that the end result of socialism is communism, though they imagine that’s a bad thing. Communism is the result of socialism working out its various contradictions, just like socialism comes as a result of capitalism’s contradictions. Capitalist decay is built into it as a system, but this very same decay is what prepares the ground for socialism.
If you’re interested, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, feel free to give it a look.
I will, thank you!
No problem!
Understood. Education is an absolutely vital aspect of worker liberation, which is why historical communist governments have prioritized mass literacy programs. It is unfortunate that in many cases it required a revolution and a change of ruling class for this education to be prioritized.
Good points, and to counter my own point: the source of a lot of the mis-education is capitalists attempting to maintain this lop-sided status quo… lol