this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2020
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the_dunk_tank
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It's the dunk tank.
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I think falling into "libertarian Marxist" sounds fuckin stupid, but I do appreciate his getting over the tankie phase. At least stan a country that doesn't have an embarrassing record in the World Press Freedom Index (177th out of 180 lol) so you can adequately filter news that isn't blatant state propaganda.
Out before the "Reporters Without Borders is some Western capitalist CIA op" canard gets tossed around (America is a pretty abysmally-ranked 43).
if you are basing your opinion of a country on World Press Freedom Index then idk what to tell you man. You're gonna have an aneurysm when you find out what socialists plan to do with reactionaries and capitalist reporters
So what do socialists do with independent reporters? Is this a basic cop out that, "Yeah, China silences it its critics...for the greater good." Shit is creepy...
And wtf is a "capitalist reporter"?
One, I'm not talking about China specifically, but socialist countries in general. Second, yeah, socialists do plan on silencing the press for the greater good. Reactionaries shouldn't have a foothold in the media. Capitalists shouldn't have a foothold in the media. If you can't get on board with this very basic method of power-wielding then you're not a good leftist, you're a liberal that wants to play by liberal rules. Socialist governments have historically only survived with rightist-censorship and rightist-purges. It's a hard truth but it's something you're going to have to accept if you really wanna upend the current order of things. There's a reason Castro wasn't overthrown while Allende was.
Not gonna answer that last question because it's obvious.
So it's akin to theology. Just gotta have "faith" that your representatives and leaders don't have a shred of self-interest in their arsenal, and anyone that brings up criticisms is sent to the gulag.
Doesn't inspire confidence.
I mean, yeah, the best we can do it hope the DOTP is founded by a dedicated group of revolutionaries that create the necessary structures to prevent overt abuses of power. This is true for literally all social projects in general. You need faith that your Union leaders don't sell you out and take bribes from capitalists, you need to have faith your Catalonian anarchist commune doesn't set up labour camps, you need to have faith that your Fred Hamptons of the world don't work with the feds, you need faith for any sort of organization. You could maybe argue that we shouldn't have these organized structures with leaders in the first place, but I find this argument to be pretty stupid considering disorganized, leaderless movements don't have the track record that movements with Fred Hamptons do.
It's not that I disagree with the conclusions, hell, you gotta take out your enemies and obstacles to make things happen, but as someone who's not quite convinced that authoritarianism is the way to run things, it means I'd probably be offing myself before they send me to the concentration camp/gulag.
I won't deny that 1) authoritarianism is not a desirable tool to use and 2) authoritarian socialist states more often than not abused authoritarianism on behalf of the ruling elites. Nobody wants the press to be censored, to be interrogated by a counterintelligence agent, or anything like that. But when the alternative to this dreaded authority is a right-wing coup (Allende), leftist purges (Pinochet), and the rolling back of any socialist policies (Nazis decollectivized Soviet farms), then authoritarianism is really the better alternative. It's the paradox of tolerance.
Yes, this often results in abuse, and this is why it's up to us to create structures that let us wield state power while stopping power-hungry dictators from using it for their own needs. I personally don't really believe this is possible, since history seems to tell that as long as these mechanisms exist, they will be abused. But, the alternative to left-wing authoritarianism is right-wing authoritarianism. Pick your poison. I know what I choose.
I choose the Nordic model.
The nordic model is a failure, the last 30 years the social democrats have been responsible for 50% of austerity cuts and privatization in the Nordic countries.
The nordic model only exists as a middle point between existing socialism and capitalism, when the USSR fell that middle point dissapeared.