Regardless of what you think about Marxist concepts themselves (or their feasibility) Marxism/Communism requires the "withering away of the state." So long as there is entrenched leadership, that society is not leftist in the same way the Nazis were not socialist, and Republicans are not "pro-life". And yes, that means the USSR was right wing, not left. At no point did the USSR meet the criteria or definition of communism. The definitions lead to the label, not the other way around.

I have disagreed with almost everything you have said, and am likely a member of the group you are railing against in this discussion. However, IMO you are spot on here.

[–] Veraxus@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thank you for that. Keep this in mind though: I'm just saying the same thing over and over in different ways each time.

"Auth-left" is just another kind of "both-siding". It's rightists claiming that other rightists are actually leftists so that the masses will be too afraid to consider actual leftist proposals seriously.

Leftist/egalitarian systems tend to be inherently unstable because of the existence of human greed. Greed will always lead to certain people trying, and succeeding, to hoard wealth and power for themselves. I refer to this as "rightward pressure". The trick is pushing the dial as far left as possible while ensuring it remains stable and preventing rightward drift.

Lenin and other revolutionaries recognized this catch a long time ago, and so tried to justify "temporary tyranny" as a means to establish a leftist ends. Lenin didn't have a lot of success with that in life; then upon Lenin's death, Stalin seized power and never let it go... meaning that for all the suffering and bloodshed, Lenin and his Bolsheviks merely traded one right wing dictator/Tzar for another. Same story in China... And North Korea... And Cuba...

On the flip-side you have liberalism; which are leftist means that deliberately ignores "rightward pressure", eventually resulting in rightist ends... as wealth and power accumulate and snowball for a few at the expense of the many (e.g. "late stage capitalism").

So the question is: given that people are selfish and greedy, and any rightward movement cannot be safely considered temporary; how do we reach leftist ends while using only leftist means?

My personal stance? Democracy. We use Democracy to bolster Democracy a bit at a time... and the first thing we need to do to make that possible in implement a very aggressive progressive taxation system that caps how much wealth (and therefore power) any one individual or entity can control. Until we can fix that one thing, the politicians will continue to control the public instead of the other way around. That is the essence of leftism.

[–] be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I consider myself a leftist, not a liberal, but looking at the totality of your comments, I'm doubtful you consider me one.

However, I'm also in the camp of "I have one party I can vote for who leans more to the right than I wish they did, and another who is literally courting fascism in the short term. So why are you busting my balls?" 😁