• doingthestuff@lemy.lol
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        22 days ago

        WWIII hasn’t officially started, as of today. But history may yet point a finger at Biden if his longer range missiles heading towards Russian lands end up being a major factor in it beginning. That’s one hell of a hot potato to pass to the next admin. Certainly Biden received some hot potatoes too. Well see how the next six months go.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        22 days ago

        I don’t know what you’re trying to refer to, here. Marxists have always discredited the Political Compass as overly simplistic and erasing nuance.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        22 days ago

        Many. Which is more “authoritarian” and which is more “libertarian,” a fully publicly owned and democratically controlled economy, or a highly decentralized market economy with a nightwatchman state?

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            22 days ago

            See, this is where your analogy falls apart. Marxist-Leninists support recall elections and more democratic methods than what you describe as “democratic socialism.” You’re trying to add to the existing example to make it mean something it doesn’t, I asked you a straightforward question and you had to add to it in order to force it into your tidy and neat boxes.

            Same with what you call “lib-right,” I would consider that more “authoritarian” because people have far less actual control over their lives than they would in the other example, despite focusing on decentralization. In such an economy, warlordism would be the dominant factor in decision making.

            This is why the Political Compass is an exercise in absurdity, you cannot simplify viewpoints to 4 quadrants because that’s not how economics or politics actually works. You can only describe them by their real and existing mechanisms.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                6
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                22 days ago

                My point is that using it as a tool ends up doing more to obscure the actual mechanisms at play than it does to reveal them, and thus is useless when you can just state the general guiding principles themselves.

                Your analysis of Marxism-Leninism is a good example of the dangers of over-simplifying and trying to make sense of it in a manner that fits on the political compass. Marxism-Leninism proposes democratic centralism and a mass line, concepts that have no way to fit on the political compass and yet give more power to the working class than Anarchism would, because Anarchism limits their reach of influence to their internal communes or syndicates. Even in practice AES states have had recall elections.

                Additionally, there is no such thing as a “libertarian right,” because there cannot be a market based Capitalist economy without corporations dominating it, no matter how small the state, because there is no chance of working class power.

                The political compass erases nuance and oversimplifies to dangerous degrees. It’s an idealist framing of material reality and distorts trends and mechanisms, rather than helping track them. The sooner it leaves discourse the better the discourse will be.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    4
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    22 days ago

                    You have not demonstrated any usefulness, and in fact its flaws have caused you to contradict yourself.

                    If these mechanisms genuinely empower the working class without coercion, they would trend toward a libertarian-left position.

                    Here, your framing of the lib-auth scale is empowering the working class without coercion. It doesn’t matter if a system is highly centralized with thorough planning and full public ownership, what matters in this context is the extent to which the working class has power.

                    However, if in practice they require centralized enforcement or suppress dissent, they trend toward authoritarian-left. That’s it!

                    This contradicts your previous statement, where centralization doesn’t matter, only working class power does, assuming there is no “coercion,” which you leave vague and ill-defined.

                    Moreover, if we define lib-auth as working class power, that means Marxism-Leninism is less authoritarian than Anarchism. I want to reiterate that point, because communes or syndicates have horizontalism in place, there is no control from one commune over another, giving rise to potential power differences and coercion. This doesn’t make any sense in the traditional notion of lib-auth!

                    What this means is that lib-auth must mean, instead, size of government, not how democratic it is, in order to be somewhat useful. This means Marxism is fully auth, as it is for a fully centrally planned economy, yet also democratic. This also seems oversimplified. If we define it as working class power, however, the dynamic flips, and Marxism becomes fully libertarian! This also doesn’t make sense.

                    You can see that, rather than being useful in any capacity, trying to force ideologies and structures onto a grid does more for misinformation than information and needs to be thoroughly forgotten. Ignoring your oversimplification (and frequently wrong, such as the fact that Stalin tried to resign no fewer than 4 times and was democratically rejected, and Mao actually successfully was recalled after the struggles of the Cultural Revolution) analysis of Socialist history, this point remains clear.