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But "socialism" is a scary word
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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Bud, I'm reading theory, and you're literally telling me I'm not reading the right theory.
Kinda? If you want to have an opinion of Marxists, I would read Marx and historical accounts by Marxists to even understand better what they are trying to do better, rather than Anarchist critiques of Marxism. Your initial comment came out attacking Marxists, so I tried to contextualize that more.
I don't know how to more emphatically tell you that Debord was such a Marxist his many of his theses from Society of the Spectacle literally were copying/detourning Marx lines. His "plagiarism is necessary" thing is something he lived up to when writing the book. Like three quarters of things in the book are other writers words twisted into what Debord wants to talk about. The Lettrists/Situationists were literally building on what came before.
Sure, and I am telling you that based on your assertions thus far he evidently isn't enough to actively take a hostile stance towards Marxists.
I have known Marxists, and they didn't self-ascribe the term "tankie" to mean "Marxist." In fact the ones I've known would bristle at the suggestion.
Clarify the difference, then, because whenever anyone seems to do so they end up just clarifying a tiny minority of western orthodox Marxists as "real Marxists" and the billions of practicing Marxists as "tankies."
No country has made it to a Communist mode of production yet, only Socialist, and all countries use violence to perpetuate their systems. By that metric, anyone who supports any Socialist country is a tankie. No, China isn't perfrct, but it's much better than western countries on average. You only seem to accept perfection as valid.
Just quoting myself here because yeah dude, all countries are guilty of this and it makes me ill. Just because I was born into a specific country doesn't mean I have some fucking grand allegiance to it. The US is categorically the worst and most despotic country on the planet and it's where I'm from, no argument. I'm from the tippy top of the worst of the worst. Sorry, not sorry, I don't really have a voice in any of it.
Am I, or am I the only one here dreaming of anything outside of what already exists? Like I said, we have a different opinion on centralization versus decentralization and I don't think that's going to change, and that deeply impacts how we both view these issues. You'll just have to accept that when you say "centralize with democatic controls so no one can take advantage" to me that's Utopian thinking. (Because once it's centralized and a bad actor somehow does take over, then you can't decentralize it quickly.) That's acting like you already have the perfect solution. That's not critiquing the status quo. Sure China is better than the West, but that doesn't mean China can't be better than it is now. And dear God, I hope that for China, because the West sure ain't up to the charge of leading the world through climate change and mass extinction.