USSR was a degenerate workers state, though the degeneration didn't fully take hold until 1930s. The concept of socialism in one country was a revisionist drivel against which Lenin fought his entire life. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 established soviets (worker and peasant councils) with direct democracy without privilege all over the country. it's a shame that the political upheaval in the USSR didn't go further and the calls to not only criticize Stalin but also Khrushchev didn't materialize, as well as his plan to return at least some democracy to the party for which he got ousted.
pkill
joined 2 years ago
ok dear agent, you cannot admit losing the discussion so you'll just resort to namecalling, so vice versa 💅
the fuck are you talking about
I finally feel like agreeing with you here. Yes we need to build such a system. But it won't be built by complacency and idle talk while the billionaires rob us in broad daylight. It requires struggle. The law is only an ideal but it's interpretation and execution depends on the material reality whether you like it or not and that was recognized even by people you wouldn't call materialists and who made great contributions to the modern philosophy of the law, such as Hegel.
Hegel also had this concept of Sittlichkeit, which is closely linked to the teleological interpretation of the law, namely that what matters is the intent and purpose of the laws and that the purpose of the law should be the greatest common good.
But that is just a beautiful vision that is not realisitically attainable in a system controlled by a tiny minority which can afford better lawyers, bribe the lawmakers and even the justice system at times, essentially to rig the system to fit their needs.
We do need a system that does not perpetuate violence against anyone. But that system is irreconcilable with class society where the antagonisms between the exploiters and the exploited will sooner or later lead to one eruption or another. Social peace is over. The question is how we secure a system truly fit for the needs of many against the attacks by the deposed few furious at the lost comforts attained at the expense of their fellow human beings with as little bloodshed as possible and establish a society where the antagonisms and stratification of yore are no longer relevant.
But before the working class firmly secures it's power, it will have every right to defend itself, even if it involves such counterattacks for the suffering caused by the other party. Sitting idly and flinching at the very thought of violence will end to the same tragedies as those that happened in Chile in 1973 and in countless other places.
I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!
But dreams are nothing without a clear and uncompromising strategy for making them a reality.
yes because those parasitic companies need to be expropriated without compensation and healthcare put under democratic control of the real stakeholders: frontilne medical workers and patients
everyone I don't agree with is a tankie: an emotional child's guide to political discussions online
Once again, your idea that violence leads to a “system where the strong kill the weak” is ironic because it perfectly describes capitalism. Under capitalism, the strong (the wealthy) already exploit and oppress the weak (workers and marginalized groups). Capitalism is a system of structural violence: people die of preventable diseases, starvation, imperialist wars and workplace accidents because profit is prioritized over human life. The strong kill the weak daily, but they often do it quietly, through markets and laws, not just the rifles and bayonets. And bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends.
I'll reiterate with hope that you cease your baseless fearmongering: revolutionary forms of social organization, when properly rooted in democratic proletarian control, aim to abolish the conditions under which “the strong” exploit “the weak.” The dictatorship of the proletariat, as articulated by Marx and Engels, is not a tyranny of individuals but a transitional state where the working class wields power collectively to dismantle class hierarchies.
It is capitalism, not socialism, where the strong exploit the weak. In the present system, billionaires exploit the workers, devastate the planet, and use their power to crush resistance. What you fear is the inversion of this state of affairs: a society where the oppressed assert their collective strength to abolish oppression altogether.
Your apparent appeals to moralistic platitudes ignore the material realities of class society. Under capitalism, it is the ruling class that pits the poor against one another through systemic inequality, wage suppression, and imperialist wars. Revolutionary movements aim to unite the working class against their true enemies: the capitalist class.
To denounce revolutionary struggle while ignoring the daily violence of capitalism—poverty, police brutality, environmental destruction—is to tacitly side with the oppressors. Revolutionary action is not about chaos or "killing each other" but about dismantling the systems that perpetuate such violence.
Yes because if you don't pay the taxes, armed men will come and put you in a prison where you'll work for fucking dogshit, taxation is not chipping in some spare cash for a fundraiser like in some ancap wet dreams.
Oh and they'll make damn sure you do not cheat on your taxes either, because the tax authorities in most countries have the prerogatives comparable to those of intel agencies, which means encroaching upon your privacy.
lesser evil
Jfc that narrow-minded idealist obsession with Trump. Trumpism cannot be defeated with lesser evilism when the lesser evil is basically also far right, only slightly more to the left and that is also dubious with all the war mongering, which Trump's promise to put it to an end indisputably helped him secure a victory, alongside a slew of economic shortcomings affecting the working class (even though his solutions are no solutions at all)
(2/2)
A system where the faction with the most absolute and unquestioned loyalty wins fights and slaughters their intellectual betters.
This reeks of a bourgeois fear of the masses rising up to demand what’s rightfully theirs, of thinly veiled elitism and misunderstanding of the basics of class relations. No, it's not blue vs white collars but people living off others' toil and the toilers.
Who are these “intellectual betters”? Capitalist apologists? Corporate technocrats? The same people whose “brilliance” built a world teetering on ecological collapse? Spare us the melodrama. Revolutions don’t thrive on blind loyalty; they’re built on solidarity and the shared understanding that the status quo is unsustainable.
Your argument boils down to a defense of complacency: ballots over barricades, submission over struggle. You seem more afraid of the risks of change than the certainty of suffering under capitalism. But history teaches us that systemic change demands courage—not the cowardice of hoping billionaires and their henchmen will play nice. Keep clutching those ballots; the rest of us will be busy building a world where they aren’t needed to decide who gets to live with dignity.
trolley problem