this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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Authoritarianism is cool when you’re the one being an authoritarian.
Really sucks when someone you don’t agree with decides what is allowed or not.
If you give a government power to decide who is allowed in the government, even if you think it’s for the right reasons, you’ve now created a system where all it takes is one or a few people to turn a utopia into a grueling dictatorship.
That’s not really a good gamble
If we want to get out from the late capitalist dystopia, repression against reactionary forces is the only way.
And then what? Yes, identifying and resisting an oppressive power structure is all well and good, but any revolution has to grapple with the fact that you will still have a massive population with cultural and ideological structures that can only conceive of the world in terms of the old system. Congratulations, you've toppled the government and now you have the power to implement a new system. What will you do with that power? Will you implement yet another system in which there is a powerful in-group that the law protects but does not bind and a disempowered out-group that the law binds but does not protect?
We force them in the new system
No, the new system would be "right-wingers and rich lobbyists fuck off while normal people thrive and late stage capitalist dystopia is finally unwinded, and whoever opposes it gets rekt"
Okay, but you haven't really answered the question of "what's the new system". You don't have to solve all the problems of creating a new society, but you should have a general idea. "Not the old system and not the past people" is not an actual system. "Normal people thrive" is not an actual system.
For example, monarchy would be a system where "capitalist dystopia is finally unwinded and whoever opposes it gets rekt," but somehow I don't think that's what you want.
You have to make an actual positive claim about what you envision, about your ideology, values, ethics, etc.
A system that doesn't fuck up the environment and creates people as wealthy as entire states should be enough.
"not fucking up the environment" and "not creating wealthy elites" are descriptions of outcomes, not descriptions of political/economic systems like democracy, capitalism, monarchy, or Marxism.
So given that you want to achieve these outcomes, what political/economic system do you think would better help us achieve them? What system of governing people and economic product do you think would help us better preserve the environment and avoid wealthy elites?
For example, Marxism suggests a transitional phase of "dictatorship of the proletariat" that might align with things you've said. However it is exactly that, transitional. Historical examples of this we've seen such as Cuba, Vietnam, and China have transitioned to some form of market economics and with that, re-emergence of wealthy elites.
I'll take anything to fix this mess of a world. ANYTHING. Marxism, Communism, whateverism.
The risk with that position is that if you don't have an idea of what the system to fix things ought to look like, other people will tell you what idea to have, and you may accept it without any real critique because it sounds like it will give you the outcomes you want, because you'll accept ANYTHING.
This is how we ended up with Trumpism. Conservatives also felt the country was broken, they felt left behind by Washington elites, and what they wanted was to feel secure, stable, and represented. So when someone comes along and says they're gonna "drain the swamp" and "build that wall", they ate it up. Because ANYTHING seemed better than the status quo. Many regretted it.
The onus is on every citizen to develop some idea of how society ought to be governed, especially when one of has the means and most of us have the means nowadays. It sucks because that exposes you to personal critique and problems are all hard and complex so it never seems good enough. But that's the only way to develop better ideas. Otherwise we end up with another Stalin.