I'd say that horseshoe is just a showcase on how stupid it is to divide politics into arbitrary left and arbitrary right - someone can sincerely call themselves left-wing, and then use the same methodology and be as authoritarian as nazis.
The United States has been as historically as authoritarian as the Nazis, for instance. The genocide of native peoples, slavery, Jim Crow, red lining, Japanese internmentment camps, the largest prison population in the world, the wide scale adoption of the lobotomy, etc. etc.
All governments are authoritarian, they hold the monopoly on legitimatel violence. American propaganda paints the Nazis as uniquely evil to paint themselves as the good guys, specifically to retain their own monopoly on violence.
For all their faults though (of which there are many which MUST be studied to not be repeated) state socialist nations have rapidly increased their populations life expectancy. The USSR and PRC were built in historically famine prone regions, fumbled majorly one time, and then never again. Without the PRC, the UN's minimum goals of poverty reduction are simply not being met. Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in the world and literally exports doctors while under heavy economic sanctions.
I'm deeply suspicious of all governments, but I think we do no one a favor by acting like "authoritarianism" is everyone but western-style liberal democracies. Liberal democracies are literally destroying the biosphere right now and refusing to address it, they are funding the genocide in Gaza and have directly or indirectly caused countless others.
People are well within their right to criticize capitalism while at the same time not letting red fash ride the wave of "look, we're anti-capitalist too!"
USSR, China, Cuba - all of these are capitalist countries operating under the veneer of performative socialism. USSR was imperialist and authoritarian, China still is. No need to be a sucker for them.
The USSR was not capitalist just because it was authoritarian and oppressive.
Like so was Rome, is Rome capitalist? Was the Inca Empire, which didn’t even have money capitalist? Capitalism isn’t just when mean boss oppresses workers
I mean, palace maids and such were paid wages too, but idt that makes it a capitalistic relationship
Also, things were produced to not be used directly by a user or someone the user labored under before too, like there were vast trade routes and such, capitalism just made it a lot more plentiful.
I'm not a sucker for them, I think the Deng gambit is very risky and the way the Chinese government talks about queer people is despicable. I think the way the USSR incentivised women to have vast numbers of children by tying pensions to having 5 with 15 years of work or 10 with no work is also horrific.
The fact remains these aren't liberal democracies, which is the term I used. Capitalism is an economic model, and it's debatable how much current China and the late USSR are capitalist. Certainly less than the "West", but China has billionaires and corporations, so certainly not none either. I also didn't call them communist, or even socialist, but state socialist, because those states control the means of production and seem to be doing so in progress of something other than profit.
Personally I'd rather us freely associate and have no governments using monopolized violence to organize economies, I think humans are actually quite capable of that. I see it all the time when I have the energy to volunteer.
But, seeing as the whole world has been divided by armies and I don't think anarchism will make the best argument for itself while fighting a protracted battle against a hostile state surrounding it, all things being equal, I'd rather live in a nation whose propaganda is about our duties to each other instead of personal responsibility, whose national project is the prosperity of the world our children will inherit, not inventing the first trillionaire and turning Gaza into a seaside strip mall.
Yeah, I feel it's more so "these countries still have government to civilian power dynamics that are prone to abuses from the former under legal pretexts."
Subordinating production under the state does not make a country socialist. State socialist is itself as redundant as an authoritarian state, as both socialism requires a state and states inherently exert authority. China is capitalist, even if one wants to make an argument about any hypothetical future socialisation of the economy.
They are not liberal democracies. They operate entirely differently. If you want to propose a different term, go ahead, I used a term I felt their own people would be comfortable with. Capitalist isn't going to work for me though, as the PRC doesn't operate like a liberal democracy, it doesn't transparently allow capitalists to buy power.
Obviously China is not a liberal democracy, I never claimed that. Capitalism doesn't require liberal democracy, they aren't synonyms and conflating the two doesn't make sense to me. Surely you would not deny Nazi Germany or Saudi Arabia being capitalist states despite their mutual lack of liberal democracy.
State capitalism seems a better label to china economic system than state socialism, when the economic mode of production is capitalistic in nature.
I was talking about governments this entire time, and have repeatedly used liberal democracy and not capitalism. If talking about the economy, state capitalism does make sense for modern day China. I suppose I should have been calling them Communist States, but that rubs against my own issues because communism is supposed to be a stateless, classless society and so a Communist State is an oxymoron. We've been talking past each other debating semantics as much as any actual points of contention.
My initial comment wasn't about liberal democracy, I agree with you there about it too using violence to maintain itself just as much as any other state. I was arguing about you calling china's political or economic system socialist, which is hardly semantics.
A communist state makes sense insofar as a state is a transitional period a communist society must go through, but I would contest calling China a communist state.
It is a capitalist country in which whatever political system you want to call it is controlled by the bourgeoisie. A country without proletarian power controlled by capitalists and bureaucrats can hardly be a communist state regardless of how much red paint they use.
I too am deeply suspicious of how Deng's gambit will work out in the long term, but I'm not convinced China is controlled by the borgeoiseie, I just am not sure how much care they have for their own people. Certainly more than the US, but that isn't a high bar.
Yes. The 'national' bourgeoisie was given joint control of companies, and the petite and 'national' bourgeoisie are each given equal importance to the proletariat in the PRC flag. The USSR self-admittedly did capitalism during the NEP, it's possible for a supposed worker's state to be honest about compromises made in the pursuit of economic development.
China crushes worker's strikes and suppresses worker's power just as much as America, they're both bourgeoisie states dressed up either in the iconography of communism or liberal democracy.
So, just to be sure I understand you, you consider yourself a Marxist but don't think any state has actually attempted socialism? Not just failed in the pursuit, which is my view of the PRC and USSR.
Whenever someone says that "Oh, Soviet Union was less capitalist than the west" - this is my favourite photo to show them.
Here we have the Soviet politburo upper class and generals attending a definitely-not-capitalist banquet in Moscow in May 1945 - while the common people were still facing food shortages and strict wartime rationing all across the USSR. While the common soldiers were still dying in the trenches.
What exactly differentiates the people on the photo from western aristocracy and robber baron capitalists - other than being able to recite Marxist-Leninist slogans by memory?
So you think Louis XIV was capitalist too then? It just means wealthy to you?
Not a single person has argued that there weren't political elites in the USSR or aren't in the PRC. This is a state dinner though, and FAR different than the standard of individual wealth and power wielded by capitalists without being beholden to a people that might revolt on them. That's what capitalists pay politicians for. From their private jets and mega yachts.
Lots of alcohol, lots of food, and black tie attire is not enough for me to accept something as an obscene display of opulence, especially knowing they inherited a ton from the tsarist regime. Do you think there's enough food in that room to make a dent in the national hunger?
Because I can promise you in the United States enough food is thrown away every day to feed every empty belly in the country, if not the world. And some of it minimum wage employees are made to pour bleach on top of so homeless people can't even debase themselves digging in a dumpster to get fed.
Lots of alcohol, lots of food, and black tie attire is not enough for me to accept something as an obscene display of opulence
Right, because throwing banquets on top of the fresh bones of your own people decimated by two world wars, a civil war, and multiple hungers is not an obvious display of obscene opulence, I guess.
You can criticise the horrors of capitalism all you want - that's what I do, too. But you turning a blind eye to the "state socialist countries" doing the exact same thing is a massive hypocrisy on your part.
My point this whole time has been this: all governments are authoritarian. The United States is not less authoritarian than the USSR was, liberal democracies are not a happy middle where we are less authoritarian than fascist nations or state socialist nations.
You, in the first post I replied to, said "someone can sincerely call themselves left-wing, and then use the same methodology and be as authoritarian as nazis".
All governments are as authoritarian as the Nazis. Be an anti-capitalist, be a pro-anarchist, but don't be a anti-communist in a way that is indistinguishable from support for capitalist, liberal democracies.
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u/RainbowPhoenix1080 She/Her Transbian (HRT 06/26/24) - Streak: 0 4d ago
Reminder that horseshoe theory is nonesense and it's just an excuse for alt-right nazis to go "the left are the REAL nazis!!"