for context: i support a cross between market socialism, welfarism and georgism under a party-union/minarchist government (a small-enough government where the political parties work with the unions). i think that minarchism is a required step in a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.
my socialist views are therefore a fusion of libertarian market socialism and de leonism and such.
waiter may I see the ideology menu?
Read Marx for the love of God
excellent bit
i’m being serious - why did you call it a ‘bit’?
Marxism and whatever this is are at odds with each other
what does “support” mean in your case?
i condone a fusion of libertarian socialist forms and de leonism. seriously!
Yes but what does that mean materially? Are you a part of a de leonist organisation? Do you promote de leonism in a broad socialist organisation and fight other tendencies?
i find the party-union (dual organization) part of de leonism to be pretty interesting - a bit less centralized than party-state. seriously!
I think you misunderstood my question. I asked what does supporting mean to you as an action. For example, I support communism by being in a communist party. By asking this question I want to call to attention the fact that there are no mass de leonist (or other fringe socialist tendencies) organisations. Which to me makes “support” not very meaningful.
NO mass de leonist organizations? you HAVEN’T heard of the socialist labor party (which by the way is still around)?
77 members in 2006 is a mass organization to you? Also I don’t think they are active since 2006
they had a national convention in 2007 apparently, the last one that is recorded
there’s also the Industrial Workers of the World which has ties to De Leonism (but is NOT a political party, but close enough)
it has fewer members than the us house of representatives
All of them. All of the posters here are liberal except me.
i also love to smell my own farts
i’m being serious - do you think de leonists, leftcoms and libertarian socialists smell their own farts?
Another word for council is “soviet,” so in some respect you have many council communists here.
“Minarchism” and its relatives are just some of the countless attempts to depoliticize the question of governance.* It’s an ideological dead end. The only democratic dictatorship of the proletariat is one that is uncompromising about the authority of the democratic will.
*Yes, I know that Marx and co. talked about the “depoliticization” of the government with the dissolution of the state, but I think this needs to be looked at as some combination of politics transforming such that many old modes of politics aren’t relevant but there are new modes where politics continues (an idea Marx endorsed, saying the end of class society would not be the end of history), and to the extent that it isn’t this, Marx and co. were wrong. More generously, he had some basis for supporting the idea that there would be greater unity in the popular will without classes, but critically did not say that we should cast off questions of how to govern but instead believed it would simply be easier to find agreement on the basis of common interest in the future.
Why is minarchism a required step in a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat? The state is the mechanism of enforcing and preserving class society, it is inherently authoritarian. You can’t have a minarchic dictatorship of the proletariat or of the current ruling bourgeoisie.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is also the most democratic form of state by its nature: it is the rule of the proletariat, the majority, as opposed to the rule of the bourgeoisie, the minority. And democracy is not our end goal, democracy is a formal institution, a state. We seek to abolish the state, communism will be a stateless, moneyless, classless society; from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. For example: there was no “democracy” in pre-state formations, in primitive communism, even though there was collective and communal decision making as democracy presupposes the existence of a state.
As the dictatorship of the proletariat has eradicated class distinctions; once the tasks of the state are relegated to bookkeeping and its political character is lost, when it has transformed into a purely administrative body. A body in which every person is an active participant in, a sort of muscle memory, a habit, develops. As the people, everyone (as counter posed to the proletariat; class is no longer a factor, everyone means everyone), now complete the hitherto existing functions of the state, the state loses its reason for existence; democracy will wither away together with the state.
I would like to add a snippet of The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin to clear up any confusion about the subject, bare in mind this is only tangentially related. Even the one paragraph I am including here will be of great help to you in understanding how the state functions and the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat (and of the bourgeoisie).
“Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state.”
- Engels, translated by Lenin.
“…the state is a “special coercive force". Engels gives this splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost lucidity. And from it follows that the “special coercive force” for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced by a “special coercive force” for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). This is precisely what is meant by “abolition of the state as state". This is precisely the “act” of taking possession of the means of production in the name of society. And it is self-evident that such a replacement of one (bourgeois) “special force” by another (proletarian) “special force” cannot possibly take place in the form of “withering away".”
- Lenin, State and Revolution.
I would also like to hear you clarify the concept of the “party-unipn” government, I don’t really understand what you mean by it. Is this a syndicalist formation? If you don’t mind me asking, could you please share some of your reading materiel on it? I haven’t heard of it before.
the “party-union” part came from de leonism - in de leonism, dual organization is an essential part, but it’s a bit different - in leninism, there’s ‘party-state’ in which the vanguard party leads the state - in de leonism, the vanguard party (or parties) and the union work together. i think that minarchism is important to socialism, as it would provide a non-coercive state for just enforcing laws and administrating - there’d still be a government under this minimal state, but the state should NOT be the most important thing about the government - that would be the parties and the union.
my socialist views are a fusion of left-libertarianism, democratic socialism, market socialism and de leonism. seriously!
My last comment was mean, but in this one I sincerely would like to try to help you. If you believe that my attempting to be helpful first requires making amends for the previous comment, then let me know.
So I ended up looking through your comment history after the last exchange because I was trying to figure out what I was missing. I don’t understand still, but I can identify a patter:
The one you probably would care the most about is that, aside from “georgism” being a bit of a meme, the reason people think you come across as a bit account is that you communicate in an extremely one-directional way. What I mean by this is that you don’t come across as listening to anyone (not even to contradict them), you just sort of say your thing and move on, even if you pose yourself as seeking conversation. This is exemplified by how you constantly say the same things unprompted over and over even when not a single person has responded positively to some of it, and there’s no apparent effort to change what you’re saying to even account for that, even if it’s just presenting an argument differently (though normally you don’t even really argue, you just declare). I can go back to posts from ~3 weeks ago where you were rattling off just the same talking points, for which you have received over a dozen refutations between then and now, and it’s one thing to still believe those things, it’s another to just keep saying the same talking points just like you said them before without acknowledging the problems people have with them. Does that make sense?
This all is not helped by the fact most of the talking points just aren’t very effective. I picked this comment because it had the example that I thought was the easiest to explain:
a non-coercive state for just enforcing laws and administrating
What do you think enforcing laws is if not coercion? Granted, there are definitely states that do a lot of coercion outside of the law, but in almost all states, most coercion is either via law enforcement directly or indirectly (via property relations, which I can explain more if you need me to). The idea of a “non-coercive state” that is “just enforcing laws” doesn’t make any sense and comes across like a joke because it’s a direct contradiction in terms.
And then you go making grand declarations on these ideas, ignoring what others have to say about them, going as far as seemingly endorsing war on Venezuela in order to write political fan-fiction. If you want to write fan-fiction, may I suggest writing about like an anime or something instead of real people being murdered?
- i am being serious, i’m just learning
- i do NOT endorse war on venezula, as i prefer peaceful ways to settle this - if my comment seemed like me supporting such, i apologize.
- minarchism is the idea of minimizing or devolving the state for purposes such as police, millitary and courts - from a left-libertarian perspective, i think the state would be devolved to simply administration and welfare services.
i am being serious, i’m just learning
Are you learning? What have you learned here? As I said, it seems like you’re mostly just repeating yourself for weeks straight.
i do NOT endorse war on venezula, as i prefer peaceful ways to settle this - if my comment seemed like me supporting such, i apologize.
With respect to Venezuela, the main thing to emphasize is that there should be no war and the people agitating against Venezuela are tools of imperialism. We can talk about the direction Venezuela should be taking when it is on ground where it is even capable of changing course rather than clinging to survival as others try to dictate its course.
minarchism is the idea of minimizing or devolving the state for purposes such as police, millitary and courts - from a left-libertarian perspective, i think the state would be devolved to simply administration and welfare services.
While some of this makes me think that you’d like to read Engels (I already linked you Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in another comment), you are now just talking around the problem, because law enforcement is still coercion.
But as I also told you in another comment that you never replied to, as did others, this is an attempt to depoliticize the state, and it’s fundamentally misguided. There cannot be a depoliticized state. You cannot just avoid questions of what should be done and hope that things work out, and all this stuff about “shrinking” the government fundamentally isn’t serious political theory. Here is why:
Either the government is enforcing property relations, or the property claimants are enforcing property relations. The tendency of the latter is inevitably to trend toward warlordism, which you might note is functionally also a form of governance.
The Republicans who talk about “small government” (because let’s face it, those are most of the people who say that) either don’t know the meaning of their assertions, or they are lying to you. The reason is that, insofar as you can trace discussions of the “size” of government to anything in reality at all, it usually relates to regulations. Regulations do not represent a spectrum from freedom to oppression, they represent the extent to which decisions are made by the government versus by the rich. The rich cannot be reformed to make pro-social decisions consistently, there are clear structural reasons that it is impossible because doing so will cause them to lose out to more ruthless capitalists. Only a democratic government, a so-called “tyranny of the majority,” has the capability of consistently making choices that benefit most people.
“minarchism is the idea of minimizing or devolving the state for purposes such as police, millitary and courts”
Why would you do that, you would immediately be threatened, if not outright invaded, by the Capitalists. You’re thinking in a vacuum only, without considering the material reality that would surround any nation with this ‘ideology’.
“i think the state would be devolved to simply administration and welfare services.”
That’s not what the ‘State’ means, that’s just governance in general. Not to mention that you would be unable to coerce any of the Bourgeoisie to the will of the Proletariat in any form. You wouldn’t be able to seize the means of production at all; nationalization without State force is impossible, among other numerous issues. Without the oppression of the Bourgeoisie, through the use of the State, the Proletariat are at risk of oppression again by the Bourgeoisie.
We know what you’re talking about, yet you keep reiterating as if we do not. My comrades here are trying to tell you that this is an ideological dead end, and instead redirect you to actually read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, etc. Not Wikipedia articles. Atleast read the Communist Manifesto, it is not that long and is possible to read- even with ADHD, which I suffer from heavily. It will atleast give you the bare basics.
Do you have any theory books for the worldview you hold ? This sounds very specific
georgism
That’s part of it. For sure I agree the land must be collectively owned and we must tax the land-derived economic rent, but we’re kinda gonna be missing out on the other capitalists: industrialists and bankers, or more accurately banker-led rentier economy, with the assistance of industrial capital, that is finance capitalism.
We do have to crush the capitalists, especially in the international political economy of imperialism, which finance leads.
market socialism
Like how Yugoslavia or like how China under Deng underwent the market socialist economy?
a party-union/minarchist government (a small-enough government where the political parties work with the unions). i think that minarchism is a required step in a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.
Idk. I don’t know much countries that done that sort of thing to minimize yet maintain a state like that, at least when there’s many functions beyond politics, such as economy [helping build productive forces] and military [defense against any local bourgeois resistance and likewise reactionary resistance], and to have to face off with imperialist threats, such as NATO and the World Bank.
I’d suppose only a withering of the state will only start to be seen when the whole world is under a dictaprole (dictatorship of the proletariat) and the ruling classes are mostly, if not totally gone
Generally speaking, my only benchmark for a good socialist ideology like yours is that if it was net-positive and if it had a major material effect on a contemporary nation-state [USSR] or even a small one [Paris Commune]
- i DON’T have any theory books, sorry.
- i think the industrialists are a part of the working class
- like yugoslavia - china runs on a state capitalist economy
- i think a government shall NOT too big but also NOT too small - small enough to handle the economy and military, as well as the enforcing and administrating stuff. there can be governments without a state (ie: indigenous confederation, stateless nations, government-in-exiles and even libertarian socialist assemblies). seriously!
i DON’T have any theory books, sorry.
the vast majority of them are available for free on the internet in both text and audio formats. some are even illustrated.
there are
novery few excusesgood thing i DIDN’T buy them - i can just download a .pdf or an audiobook of it (for free!) on the Internet
- How are capitalists part of the working class?
- What is your arbitrary limit on bigness? How is it measured?
- i DON’T mean capitalists; when i say ‘industrialists’, i was thinking industrial workers (like factory workers, for example).
- a true government should be limited enough for enforcing and administrating, but also big enough to handle the economy and military - in other words, a small-to-medium government.
- industrialists means capitalists, owners of industry / factories. this is the accepted english definition.
- i understand, you have said that before. but you have not explained why this limit exists or what “small” or “medium” government size mean. how they are measured. by amount of public servants? budget? paperwork? no matter what limit you put, it would be nonsensical in any scenario.
i think the state should be downsized to enforcing and administrating - small enough to handle all that, but the state should NOT be the most important thing in a government - that would be the parties working with the union. seriously!
i am not going to continue with this conversation because you have not actually engaged with anyone’s good faith comments. you have only been reiterating over and over again your positions. me and other commenters have asked you questions not because we don’t understand what de leonism is, but because we want you to question your beliefs.
to come back to the original question of your post, the reason why nobody on this website is de leonist is because it is not a practical ideology and does not have relation to real life organising. All actually existing socialists states come from the marxist-leninist tradition. I will also give credit to anarchists who have been able to organise on a local/regional level, even though I disagree with the potential scalability.
This is why one of the first things I ever replied to you was to join any socialist (or even better, communist) organisation if you want to improve your understanding of socialist practice, and then you can form an opinion based on that. not based on a random collection of wikipedia articles.
i hope i have been clear enough
i would join a socialist organization, but i CAN’T go outside without permission, and i CAN’T find any socialist organization that’s entirely online-only - the closest i’ve gotten is signing up for newsletters, sorry.
instead, i’m looking for any socialist books from any perspective (marx, lenin, stalin, trotsky, de leon, bernstein, luxembourg, anyone!). if you have any recs, please let me know. seriously!
