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this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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Asklemmy
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Imagine believing you can defeat capitalism without central authority.
Imagine not recognizing that central authority is the problem.
Central authority is a tool. In different hands it does different things, but if you disarm yourself you'll lose.
If you do not choose your leaders they will choose themselves. We tried the whole leaderless, decentralized anti-authority thing throughout the 2010s. At best you might be able to collapse the central authority of the currently existing government regime, but what comes after that is always much much worse: civil war, invasion, or an even more repressive government regime. But, more likely, the movement will just collapse because it lacks the structure to actually sustain itself.
We need to be centralized and we need to be ready to assert our authority when the old one is destroyed, or we will lose.
Ok so lets say you get rid of the central authority in one fell swoop. What happens when the millions of people who really really benefitted from that authority or atleast believe themselves to benefit decide they want it back. Can a decentralized stateless society truly win political or military battles against them? I can tell you from history that everyone who has tried this eventually resorted to their own centralized authority in order to survive, failed, or both. Communist do not see centralized authority as good, we see it as a means to survive.
You know how a certain faction in the USA keeps screaming about "states rights?โ
In my view, central and decentralized authority have their issues. And here come the down votes. The way the Russian voting system was explained to me by the good people of .ml makes a lot of sense and circumvents the worst issues of both.
Russian meaning Soviet, or Russian meaning the current electoral system? Very different.
Thanks for holding my feet to the fire. I believe current, but I could be mistaken, it's been a long time since I read it, so forgive my sketchiness, but each region having elections until one person wins a final vote, to represent their constituency. I just checked Wikipedia and didn't remember the representative voting part, so maybe my bad memory. Is there a post somewhere that compares and contrasts Soviet and Russian models?
Not sure about a post comparing the two, but the Soviet model was more comprehensively democratic, and functioned like this:
Thank you; as always, you're very generous and informative. I have a friend in the mood to chat here, I will read and probably ask dumb questions later.
No worries! I've been less active lately so it might be a while before I see any response anyways.
That's ok. I'm not sure where you are, but things seem to be getting real real, globally. A lot of us are focused on community, paying bills, family and organization, and I'm okay with it!
Eta, that picture is perfect, I shared it with my friend. I wish I could get them over here, I feel they might appreciate it, but old dogs/new tricks.
No problem! I live in the US Empire, hopefully the age of Imperialism is coming to a close. Contradictions are sharpening, eventually quantitative buildup will result in a qualitative and rapid change, and it's up to the working class to make that a positive one.
Glad the figure was useful!
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We gotta do it, so it helps to be optimistic!
I said in some other thread: hope + will gets results. They may not look exactly like we imagine, but results.