Reddit admins don’t like it when you say John Brown did nothing wrong.
His soul goes marching on!
How leftist is the group? Further than liberal?
neoliberalism is a conservative philosophy which seeks to perpetuate an unjust and unsustainable capitalist hegemony.
So too far for me. Thanks 😂
It’s not actually that crazy, it’s just that all these words like “liberalism” are thrown around in an utterly meaningless way.
The pillars of liberal philosophy are (1) fundamental rights are inviolable by the state (2) the right to privately own property that is exchanged through markets (3) egalitarian democracy (one vote per person) (4) the rule of law cannot be ignored and due process must be pursued.
People on the left see these as the policy points “conservatives” obsess over in their rhetoric, so they call it conservative politics. Entirely ignoring the fact that conservatives throughout history care little about fundamental rights, egalitarianism, or rule of law… Ignoring the fact that the original “right” opposed a “left” that WERE the liberals, when liberalism was the new progressive politic.
Socialism is a quite different thing from liberalism. Both liberalism and socialism are opposed by conservatives (the right), but liberalism and socialism have some serious, fundamental tensions and reasonable people may argue they are fundamentally incompatible. I personally think they mostly are, though tools from each are going to be part of making a more just world.
To be clear, neoliberalism differs from classical liberalism (the french revolution kind) in that it tries to fundamentally associate these values with a free market capitalist system.
It’s also not some all or nothing divide like some socialists try to make it out to be, there’s a huge spectrum of opinions between “totally free market” and “totally socialized command economy”. The vast majority of liberals/progressives support a mixed market, where the damage markets can do is kept in check by strong regulation, and there’s a robust safety net to catch people who fall through the cracks.
the actual criticism by those on the left is that private ownership of the means of production necessitates an inequitable heirarchical relationship between an ownership class and the working class.
this relationship is enforced by the state, which is essentially an abstraction of capital, by inflicting violence in order to protect the interest of the capital owning class.
neoliberalism is conservative in that it functions to conserve this status quo, offering incremental material improvement as a social pressure-release valve, but liberal democracy can not deliver liberation to the working class because of its primary function of enforcing private capital.
most liberals don’t consider neoliberalism conservative because the coloqial usage in US contemporary politics is referring to the reactionary position of the christo-fascist right.
even internationally, the divide between left-wing and right-wing is rarely “do they believe in completely abolishing private ownership”
the actual criticism by those on the left is that private ownership of the means of production necessitates an inequitable heirarchical relationship between an ownership class and the working class.
I have to strongly disagree here. Human nature results in inequitable hierarchical relationships between upper and lower classes-- not just between the rich and poor, but between the dominant racial / ethnic group and minorities, between men and women, between cis heterosexual people and queer people. No matter what kind of economic system we use, assholes are going to try to game it to cement themselves and their cronies in power, and the out groups they hate at the bottom. It happens in capitalist systems just as often as it happens in communist systems.
The only way to counter it is by building safeguards that prevent people from accumulating too much power, and prevents those who do have power from abusing the power they have. (That’s why I’m personally skeptical of anarchism; removing all safeguards that prevent power-hungry people from consolidating power is deeply concerning to me.)
this relationship is enforced by the state, which is essentially an abstraction of capital, by inflicting violence in order to protect the interest of the capital owning class.
True. The state is also the abstraction of minority groups, inflicting “violence” in order to protect minorities from having our rights trampled by the majority (although I’d personally go with “arresting fascist motherfuckers”). It’s both at the same time, because in a democracy the state is a giant organization made up of thousands of legislators and literally millions of bureaucrats. Oh, and they’re all divided into dozens of factions with completely different goals that are at each other’s throats all the damn time. Attributing one set of motives to such a diverse group of people doesn’t really ring true to me. Especially when you’d need literally millions of people to be in on this evil plot for it to work.
neoliberalism is conservative in that it functions to conserve this status quo, offering incremental material benefit as a social pressure-release valve, but liberal democracy can not deliver liberation to the working class
When my grandmother was my age, here in the US she couldn’t legally open a bank account, divorce her husband, or pursue charges against him if he r*ped her. Jim Crow was a thing, and gay marriage was illegal in all 50 states. Liberal democracy has already delivered liberation to us-- except I don’t like that passive voice, we the people fought for a better world, and thanks to millions of people’s hard work and sacrifice, we won. There are still huge problems, don’t get me wrong, and there’s a huge amount of work left to be done. But I can’t help but look back at the legacy of my ancestors and feel inspired, energized to take up the fight and keep working for a better world.
most liberals don’t consider neoliberalism conservative because the coloqial usage in US contemporary politics is referring to the reactionary position of the christo-fascist right.
Definitely true, but even in Western European countries true Reagan / Thatcher style neoliberals are considered center-right, and “neoliberals” in the modern Democratic party sense are considered center-left. (For what it’s worth, the Dems are actually a bit to the left of most major Western European center-left parties on social issues, most notably trans rights!)
Sorry to write such a wall of text, I just feel really passionately about this kind of stuff, lol. Feel free to ignore this post if you don’t feel like a political debate ATM (which is totally valid, please don’t feel bad if you aren’t feeling it).
I’m not even going to read this. The differences between these ideologies have litigated and re-litigated continuously for the past century. Whether you agree with them or not, you have to recognize at some point that some people have a slightly different perspective and you don’t have to word vomit every time that comes up.
For …what
Basically a libertarian socialist/anarchist gun club
A better version of the SRA that hasn’t been taken over by the PSL
A better version of the SRA that hasn’t been taken over by the PSL
Someone explain please, I’m curious.
The SRA is the Socialist Rifle Association. It started out as a group of all flavors of leftists (anarchists, MLs, demsocs and everything in between) working together to create a positive gun culture for leftism and to train people to defend their communities and themselves during the rise of the alt-right and Donald Trump-style fascism in the States.
However, many branches of the PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation, a strongly ML political party in the States) decided that the SRA was the perfect vehicle for them and so instructed their members who were also members of the SRA to do everything they could to push out the anarchists and demsocs. Now it is just another branch of the PSL.
instructed their members who were also members of the SRA to do everything they could to push out the anarchists and demsocs
HA. At least they’re keeping it historically consistent.
Hurr durr muh leftist unity, hurr durr.Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate it!
yep, tankies never change
I’m not American myself and this was just explained by a few American friends of mine who were formerly in the SRA and even had leadership roles in their chapters; one was a demsoc and two were anarchists. In my own country there are almost no MLs; they came to power back in the 60s and 70s as part of our national liberation but then they just ended up being power hungry, as all MLs eventually become (or were in the first place). Nobody has faith in them anymore so anybody who is leftist is pretty much anarchist or at least demsoc.
And anybody who praises the government of North Korea has absolutely zero moral high ground on which to stand
I’m not one of these guys masturbating over my dream revolution or anything, but armed minorities are harder to oppress, and are less tempting targets for individual or group violence.
I’m a queer guy in Portland. There are violent extremists in my town who want to kill me, and are organizing and rallying. I’ve seen them in the streets, and they’ve attacked people and places I care about because they know that the left wing is broadly non-violent, and that cops are on their side.
Looking at the political climate in the US, I don’t think it’s too unreasonable of a reaction to buy a gun and learn to defend yourself, just in case.
Authoritarian this, authoritarian that. How about you read this pamhplet by famous authoritarian and co-founder of the Black Panther Party; Huey P. Newton:
We should understand there is a difference between the rebellion of the anarchists and the black revolution or liberation of the black colony.
This is a class society; it always has been. This reactionary class society places its limitations on individuals, not just in terms of their occupation, but also regarding self expression, being mobile, and being free to really be creative and do anything they want to do.
The class-society prevents this. This is true not only for the mass of the lower or subjugated class. It is also true within the ruling class, the master class. That class also limits the freedom of the individual souls of the people which comprise it.
In the upper class, the individuals always try to free themselves from these limitations — the artificial limitations placed upon him through external sources: namely, some hierarchy that goes by the name of State or Governmental Administration.
In America, we have not only a class society, we also have a caste system, and black people are fitted into the lowest caste. They have no mobility for going up the class ladder. They have no privilege to enter into the ruling structure at all.
Within the ruling class they’re objecting (resisting?), because the people have found that they’re completely subjected to the will of the administration and to the manipulators. This brings about a very strange phenomenon in American. That is, many of the rebelling white students and the anarchists are the offspring of this master class. Surely most of them have a middle class background and some even upper class. They see the limitations imposed upon them and no they’re striving, as all men strive, to get freedom of the soul, Freedom of expression, and freedom of movement, without the artificial limitations from antique values.
Blacks and colored people in America, confined within the caste system, are discriminated against as a whole group of people. It’s not a question of individual freedom, as it is for the children of the upper classes. We haven’t reached the point of trying to free ourselves individually because we’re dominated and oppresses as a group of people.
Part of the people of this country — which is a great part — part of the youth themselves. But they’re not doing this as a group of people. Because as a group they’re already free to an extent. Their problem is not a group problem really, because they can easily integrate into the structure. Potentially they’re mobile enough to do this: They’re the educated ones, the “future of the country,” and so forth. They can easily gain a certain amount of power over the society by integrating into the rulership circle.
But they see that even within the rulership circle there are still antique values that have no respect for individualism. They find themselves subjugated. No matter what class they’re in they find themselves subjugated because of the nature of this class society. So their fight is to free the individual’s soul.
This brings about another problem. They’re being ruled by an alien source that has nothing to do with freedom of individual expression. They want to escape this, to overturn this, but they see no need to form a structure or a real, disciplined vanguard movement. Their reasoning is that by setting up a disciplined organization they feel they’d be replacing the old structure with other limitations. They fear they’d be setting themselves up as directing the people, therefore limiting the individual again.
But what they don’t understand, or it seems that they don’t understand, is as long as the military-industrial complex exists, then the structure of oppression of the individual continue. An individual would be threatened even if he were to achieve his freedom he’s seeking. He’ll be threatened because there will be an organized lower group there ready to strip him of his individual freedom at any moment.
In Cuba they had a revolution, they had a vanguard group that was a disciplined group, and they realized that the state won’t disappear until imperialism is completely wiped out, structurally and also philosophically, or the bourgeois thoughts won’t be changed. Once imperialism is wiped out they can have their communist state and the state or territorial boundaries will disappear.
In this country the anarchists seem to feel that if they just express themselves individually and tend to ignore the limitations imposed on them, without leadership and without discipline they can oppose the very disciplined, organized, reactionary state. This is not true. They will be oppressed as long as imperialism exists. You cannot oppose a system such as this is to oppose it with organization that’s even more extremely disciplined and dedicated than the structure you’re opposing.
I can understand the anarchists wanting to go directly from state to non-state, but historically it’s incorrect. As far as I’m concerned, thinking of the recent French Revolution, the reason the French uprising failed is simply because the anarchists in the country, who by definition had no organization, had no people that were reliable enough as far as the mass of the people were concerned, to replace DeGaulle and his government. Now, the people were skeptical about the Communist Party and the other progressive parties, because they didn’t side with the people of medium living. They lagged behind the people, so they lost the respect of the people, and the people looked for guidance from the students and anarchists.
But the anarchists were unable to offer a structural program to replace the DeGaulle government. So the people were forced to turn back to DeGaulle. It wasn’t the people’s fault; it was Cohn-Bendit’s fault and all the other anarchists who felt they could just go from state to non-state.
In this country — getting back home to North America now — we can side with the student radicals. We would try to encourage them and persuade them to organize and weld a sharp cutting tool.
In order to do this they would have to be disciplined and they would have at least some philosophical replacement of the system. This is not to say that this itself will free the individual. The individual will not be free until the state does not exists at all, and I think — I don’t want to be redundant — this cannot be replaced by the anarchists right away.
As far as the blacks are concerned, we are not hung up on attempting to actualize or express our individual souls because we’re oppressed not as individuals but as a whole group of people. Our evolution, or our liberation, is based first on freeing our group. Freeing our group to a certain degree. After we gain our liberation, our people will not be free. I can imagine in the future that the blacks will rebel against the organized leadership that the blacks themselves have structured. They will see there will be limitations, limiting their individual selves, and limiting their freedom of expression. But this is only after they become free as a group.
This is what makes our group different from the white anarchist — besides he views his group as already free. Now he’s striving for freedom of his individual self. This is the big difference. We’re not fighting for freedom of our individual selves, we’re fighting for a group freedom. In the future there will probably be a rebellion where blacks will say, “Well, our leadership is limited our freedom, because of the rigid discipline. Now that we’ve gained our freedom, we will strive for our individualistic freedom that has nothing to do with organized group or state.” And the group will be disorganized, and it should be.
But at this point we stress discipline, we stress organization, we do not stress psychedelic drugs, and all the other things that have to do with just the individual expansion of the mind. We’re trying to gain true liberation of a group of people, and this makes our struggle somewhat different from the whites.
Now, how is it the same. It’s the same in the fact that both of us are striving for freedom. They will not be free — the white anarchists will not be free — until we are free so that makes our fight their fight really. The imperialists and the bourgeois bureaucratic capitalistic system would not give them individual freedom while they keep a whole group of people based upon race color oppressed as a group. How can they expect to get individual freedom when the imperialists oppress whole nations of people? Until we gain liberation as a group they won’t gain any liberation as an individual person. So this makes our fight the same, and we must keep this in perspective, and always see the similarities and the differences in it.
There’s a tremendous amount of difference in it, and there’s a due amount of similarities between the two cases. Both are striving for freedom, and both are striving for liberation of their people, only one is advanced to a degree higher than the other. The anarchists are advanced a step higher, but only in theory. As far as actuality of conditions, they shouldn’t be advanced higher because they should see the necessity of wiping out the imperialistic structure by organized groups just as we must be organized.
counterpoint;
eat my entire ass, red fash.
you might find a podcast home at Behind The Bastards https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/
love btb.
I would also recommend
“it could happen here”
“cool people who did cool stuff”
“live like the world is dying”
Poor prole’s almanac is also pretty great.
