this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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I don't get it and I'm much more comfortable asking for clarification here than anywhere else.
Explain?
The point is that liberalism and facism are intrinsically linked. Liberalism does not seek to change the world and stems from philosophies instead seeking to explain it. Accordingly, liberalism is a philosophical justification for the capitalist status quo. As such, when contradictions in capitalism accentuate with time, such as those between classes, liberalism turns to fascism. Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds, because the liberal is a closet fascist when times are good; when class struggle poses a threat, it clamps down. You can see this throughout history.
That a poor, simplified explanation, but I hope it helps.
In all fairness, liberalism did change the world already. It replaced the old status quo of absolutist monarchism and was literally revolutionary in its time. It's simply a matter of 250 years of civilizational advancement leaving it behind at some point.
The point is not about impact but intention. Evidently liberalism, for all its flaws, certainly has had a significant impact. The progressive forces 250 years ago where for the most part already proto socialists. Fundamentally liberalism has been reactionary, even in the case of feudalism and monarchy, liberalism has tended to air for maintaining monarchy; such as constitutional monarchies where one can find leberals having preference for this rather than republics. This can be observed in historical cases such as France where many liberals wished to maintain the monarchy, but the contradictions and progressive forces where too great. Rather than a progressive force, I would contend that liberalism tends to be reactionary to development and progressive forces. Today this can be seen in the liberal leaders of developing countries handicapping themselves and their sovereignty by maintaining economic relations to the benefit of the imperial core. See ECOWAS and 'preserving democracy' as of late.
Just to make sure we get this correct.
Are you talking about the skewed USA definition of Liberal, or the one the entire rest of the world uses?
Pretty sure the "real" definition the rest of the world uses, i.e. "liberalism" as an economic and political ideology
This is not exclusive to liberalism, the radicalization and individualism in tough times is part of human nature. When your family's livelihood is at stake, you'll stop caring about society and only care about yourself.
And there will always be people who'll pose as the saviours of the homeland and champions of the people, just to gain power and enrich themselves, while fucking over everyone else. This is how Mussolini got to power, how Hitler got to power and how many other dictators did too, including communist ones.
Btw, the dictatorship of the proletariat, aka communist dictatorships are just fascist states in disguise, concentration camps and totalitarian bullshit included.
Phrases like those are a quick hint that you are stuck in outdated thinking.
I love how people use this kind of metaphysical argument, invoking human nature and such, and then have the nerve to call Marxism idealistic.
Marxist logic is literally about eschewing idealistic metaphysical arguments and focusing on the material conditions that influence history. Go read the Misery of Philosophy, people ffs.
Guys, you can keep jerking off each other all you want, but pseudo-scientific arguments are simply not sufficient to prove your point.
Science persists over millennia, builds compasses and then ships and then rockets and now computers. Science makes whole societies vanish or survive. Over the course of too many years.
Now let's look at communism. It's not science, it's a socioreligious sect, of the kind that Lucian of Samosata was ironic about, as those were plentiful in his time.
You clearly are not educated in communist ideology and philosophy. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" does not mean a literal dictatorship of a singular person or even a small group.
The dictatorship of the proletariat means that the entire working class, as a people, collectively own and run the entire state. As opposed to what we have in the world today, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie--either outright dictators, monarchs, or increasingly the tiniest fraction of the ultra rich controlling everything.
One person controlling a state with an iron fist, like Stalin, is not a dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class controlling the state is. It is called a "dictatorship" not because a singular person controls it, but a singular class. The largest class. The class of almost everybody but a fraction of a percent of outliers.
No country on Earth today has a dictatorship of the proletariat, because only the monied elite get to control the government. Whether it be through bribery (lobbying), captured government, literal monarchies (even if "symbolic", they still have massive sway given their expansive wealth), literal dictatorships, theonomic regimes, elite and rich leaders of military juntas, etc.
There's a reason that only the rich attend summits like Davos. There's a reason nearly every country has golden passport/golden visa schemes which let the rich effectively buy citizenship.
The ultra rich, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, have strong class solidarity. That is why the world is the way it is.
Well, I've always seen the dictatorship of the proletariat argument to defend the fact that every communist country ends up devolving in a dictatorship.
If you remove that excuse, then I might start thinking that the issue is with communism in itself and we might need to look around for a new theory.
Then you clearly have not understood the argument.
Btw even the CIA stated that the idea of Stalin being some megalomaniac dictator is nonsense. Turns out your entire premise is based on you not getting the topic in the first place.
Or maybe you haven't? If no communist country has the dictatorship of the proletariat, a democracy or even a decentralized government like a communion of soviets, then what does it leave? Just a normal, shitty dictatorship (or pseudo-monarchy in case of NK).
Still, I don't understand the cheering for brutal dictators. Why the fuck would you what that? Saying Stalin wasn't "actually that bad" is akin to saying that about Hitler or Mussolini or Pinochet or any other brutal selfish dictator. Fuck that.
What are you even on about? What does CCP/CPC stand for in your opinion?
The other commenter said they are not dictatorships of the proletariat. Make up your mind guys
Yeah, he's no true Scotsman
Individuals in struggling societies don't always atomize, many revolutions occurred due to degradation in conditions. When the cost of fighting for change is less than doing nothing you will fight, and you will fight with others, or else you will quickly fail and be forgotten.
Curious what your definition of facism is. With a few exceptions, communist inclined states have always lead to unprecedented economic development, education, improvement of quality of life, etc. If you take all cold war propaganda at face value, you can not deny the development seen in such states; when balanced by alleged atrocities, you see a stark contrast to colnialist nations that too committed atrocities but with little to show for it.
I find the surface level historical criticisms of communist states, even if applied at an equaly superficial level, is applied to capitalist states, you would find a staggering contradiction. Maybe you should read more. Add to your socioeconomic calculus the fact that no communist state benefited from the same starting point as colonizer countries, and try to be critical of this. Consider that none of these communist states had the benifits of colonization, and when compared to other developing countries did remarkably better.
There is no contradiction. Both kinds of states are bad. Economic growth is not a "level of country goodness" meter. If it happens through horrible and harmful means I don't care about it.
Economic growth itself is just a number, development is what matters. In addition and as a part of development I also specifically mentioned education and improvement of quality of life. You could add literacy, housing, levels of nourishment, and much, much more.
I won't argue about history or its interpretations with you now. Just consider the path to development wealthy capitalist countries took, which involved slavery, colonialism, genocide, brutal worker suppression, and perhaps the worse working conditions in history during industrialisation.
You may attribute many horible things to communist countries. I might argue much of this is exaggerated by the media of the anti-comunist country you live in. Even if it is all true, developed capitalist countries did the same to themselves, and other peoples around the globe.
Then consider the development communist countries have had compared to undeveloped capitalist countries. People can have better lives, that is what matters.
Hey, thanks a lot for the respectful reply.
I don't really understand what kind of point you're making, though. There are plenty of economic and political systems that can reach all the development and improvement to quality of life and literacy you want, yet they do it through horrible, brutal and harmful means. You yourself would be opposed to attaining these things you're talking about through colonialism or slavery, or even through capitalism as I'm sure you're also against social democracy like I am. My argument is that the means communist countries used to get to these ends are bad enough that I don't care about the ends they reached. Just like I would never care about the ends reached by colonialist means.
I am not denying capitalist countries didn't suffer from the same problems or didn't commit the same or even more attrocities. This doesn't excuse anything though. I am opposed to these things by principle, no matter who does them. And I'm not going to pick between two systems that do the things I'm against all the same, but one leads to prosperity quicker. I'm not playing that game.
I also want my entrance into this convo to be respectful but I don't know how else to ask this question; can you give examples of such systems?
Sure, that's a valid and respectful question.
I would say the biggest example is social democracy. There is no denying it brings great improvements to quality of life and general happiness. They are obviously not enough to us radicals, but they do exist. Greater healthcare, greater education, greater prison systems, less homelessness, etc etc etc. But we of course know the dark side of all of that. The colonialism and "soft power" behind it. We know that, because it is still ultimately capitalism, it doesn't eradicate the misery, it just hides it away. It makes other people have it instead of them. And we also know all of those nice things are merely concessions given by the ruling class that can easily be taken away at any time. Thus, if such a system brings improvements through means like those, I don't care how great the improvements are, I don't support that system.
We can also use what I'm saying to refute the fascists who say "oh, at least the trains came on time" "oh, at least everyone had a house" "oh, at least there was less crime". Rather than going into the long and most probably ultimately pointless task of proving none of those things were historically true to the person saying them, I prefer to simply say "I don't care. Even if that was true, if it was achieved with fascism I don't want it."
That is good and yet: Which country are you living in?
I would rather not say for privacy. But my country of origin is irrelevant to my points. I do not support it in any way and I try to rely on it as little as possible, if that's what you're asking. It's also not a colonial power at all.
Example:
You can improve your literacy stats by killing illiterate people.
That wouldn't be a good development.
Why would any government ever do that? It benefits the ruling class to have illiterate people.
“I love the poorly educated!” — Donald Trump
It's an expression that nods to the tendency of liberals to empower, enable and ultimately align with fascists against socialists, communists and the labour movement generally. There are a great many historical examples of this phenomenon, but among the most prominent are:-
The German SDP aligning with the remnants of the German Imperial Army and supporting the proto-fascistic Freikorps as it savagely suppressed the rising of communist revolutionaries at the end of WW1 in order to preserve German bourgeois rule
The reintegration of the defeated Nazi and Imperial Japanese leadership into anti-communist organisations and state organs in the new west German and Japanese nations by the triumphant capitalist powers at the end of WW2, including leadership of NATO by a senior commander of the Nazi Wehrmacht and leadership of the rebuilt Japanese state by one of the most brutal colonial oppressors from Japan's old regime.
Unapologetic support for Augusto Pinochet's murderous takeover of Chile by a wide range of liberal powers and voices, most ardently by figures such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the former of whom considered offering him political asylum in the 80s and the latter of whom publicly expressed outrage when Pinochet was arrested and subsequently subjected to justice in the international criminal court for the crimes he committed against his own people.
It's not that you are completely wrong in anything, but:
I'll just inform you here that German aristocracy and "bourgeoisie" are usually used as antonyms, not synonyms.
Also Germany was starving, the logic was that they can't afford more chaos, even if it means conservatives.
Soviets did the similar thing with GDR and Hungary and what not in the Eastern block. Though of course they preferred their existing communist buddies who somehow survived the 30s and 40s.
USA wouldn't have such still already existent friendly factions, so they tried to grow some new ones, initially from people who'd be moderates in former regimes.
I'd still prefer Pinochet to Khmer Rouge.
Essentially, it means fascism is the method by which liberalism defends itself in the face of progress and revolution.
I would like to add that liberal well of people and large land owners which also labeled themselves as somewhat liberal in Italy before the Fascists came to power were quick in allying with the Fascists and enact violence against socialist and communist groups and structures they supported, for example unions. The liberals did use violence to shut off that political and economic enemy, yet they didn't then to fight the fascists and also didn't ally with socialists to stand against the fascists.
You can find very extensive studies about that which use voting shares before the take over and alike.
To put it bluntly while liberals espouse liberal values when the situation is rough they - or be it people with means, economic, political, parliamentary or party mandates - regularly did chose to fight socialists, anarchists and communist to not rock the boat and to not be uncivil.
You're a fount of knowledge, new (to the grad) comrade. Keep it coming.
Thanks I try to achieve at least 30% good and 70% bad comments.
https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/
It makes for a snappy one liner to try and equate common non-communist ideologies. It effectively reduces extraordinary different ideologies with extremely different views on just about everything that isn't private property to the same thing.
It's as ridiculous as saying "potatoes are practically tree bark, because they're both plants that rely on photosynthesis" when you're discussing what to eat for dinner.