It’s entirely possible for a state to enforce laws without it being capitalist, however what I thought was a weird inconsistency was to posture as ‘opposed to capitalism’ but pro cops/military having guns without anybody else having them.
I don’t relish the idea of people having to take up arms against the government, but I certainly don’t want militarized police to be the only ones with them either.
If all the citizens are trained in the defense of the nation, then both things can be true. There’s only so many fighters jets, tanks, and nuclear bombs to go around, so the stewardship of those assets is going to fall to a trusted committee anyway (an organized military), but that’s logistics, not politics.
What does such a society do with conscientious objectors and Pacificsts? Hopefully value their option as a source of diversity and honor their choices.
Sometimes laws are bad and should be broken, if you’re going to advocate taking guns away from normal people at least take them away from the pigs too.
Having armed police showing up to evict people (possibly leaving them homeless) because the banks not getting its payments is a pretty severe power assymetry.
In some developed nations, even the beat cops are disarmed and only their equivalent of SWAT response teams are.
Law enforcement are seen as community emmisaries, you can walk up to a British cop in a corner with no fear of them shooting you over a misunderstanding.
This actually helps those police to be seen in a positive light by society.
I see this as an appropriate compromise. Mitigates the potential for casual police shootings with only 1-2 law enforcement witnesses.
But American police, while paid a lot for very little education, don’t want to take ANY risks despite explicitly being paid to. They aren’t even in the top 20 most dangerous professions in the US.
They use their militarized equipment to shoot until everyone’s dead, then ask the corpses questions, instead of doing their jobs and protecting citizens with their lives if necessary. That’s why you get paid booku bucks with a high school diploma, at least in theory.
Where has this shown progress towards undermining the Capitalist system, and then not been curtailed by said Capitalist system? It sounds nice on paper but I doubt it’s possible.
The problem is people. Greed is a human trait. You could wave a magic wand tomorrow and delete capitalism and greed would resurrect it before the wand cooled off.
You need a system that subverts greed, harnessing the human potential for selfishness to drive common social selflessness. The best answer humans have found is highly regulated capitalism and graduated taxes. This answer (and others) never last because capitalism either breaks out of jail when capitalists gain control of government, or another capitalist society physically (or politically, or economically) destroys or undermines the non-capitalistic one.
It’s kind of the same reason cancer kills: It’s really good at spreading, and really bad at stopping.
This is idealism, and has no basis in reality. You are projecting the functions and systems of Capitalism as a human problem based on individual moral failings and not on the self-propelling nature of Capitalist accumulation. The best answer is not regulated Capitalism, but Socialism, because that is when humans gain supremacy over Capital, rather than the inverse.
Well, you kind of mean Ideal Socialism. I’m saying none of the solutions humans have implemented have worked, as evidenced by the fact that the planet is not a socialist utopia. The closest we have to that nowadays are the countries that have harnessed capitalism with the yoke of socialism, and even they’re constantly fighting their own right wings that are trying to call more back for fewer.
Capitalism isn’t a thing, it’s a label for a specific human behavior.
I’m talking about Socialism as it actually exists, not some ideal version that only exists in the minds of dreamers. You really need to read some more theory, none of what you say makes any sense, like claiming Capitalism isn’t a “thing.” Economic systems are real, material relations of production.
I’m not arguing with you! I agree that socialism exists! It does not, however, exist in a vacuum completely free of the influence of capitalism. Every implementation of socialism on the planet has had to work with, or work around, the human propensity towards selfishness to continue existing. The ones that worked against capitalism failed, or were subverted into adopting capitalism in some form. Maybe Cuba got the closest. Even non-contacted tribes that exist outside the sphere of influence only continue to exist because the capitalists haven’t decided to try and extract value from them or their land.
In that manner, are you actually a Leftist? Morally you support the ideas of Leftism, but oppose the only actual methods of bringing them about. It’s similar to supporting the idea of everyone becoming a millionaire overnight, if such a solution does not exist it ceases to be something to support and becomes a nice dream.
The country I was born in was born itself from genocide. The first people to arrive had worked to erase a whole people, culture and knowledge because there was land and resources to be stolen.
Women were raped, children were stolen, men were killed. Even to this day, you can’t go a year without multiple stories of disgusting abuse from the federal police against indigenous people.
The same country who stuck as many of the surviving genocided people into reservations. The same country that federally determined that those same people do not deserve clean drinking water in the reservations they were forced into. My tax dollars are funding a genocide today.
And what does Canada do? Point to China, accuse them of genocide against the Uyghur people. Hypocrisy. Absolute hypocrisy.
I refuse to fight for this country. I don’t feel free. I don’t see people feeling free. I think I must fight for the people whose land has been stolen over some imaginary borders that denies me the freedom to connect with people.
I get it, and i agree. But I’m not going to let the US or Russia roll tanks into Canada and make their way to those reserves, as they are the first Canadians and deserve everything for a better life. I will add though that some band chiefs do not make matters better when money given to them doesn’t make it to those who need it. They are as much to blame in modern times as much as the federal government.
While on the topic, one thing that struck me as odd, was that people are shocked pikachu face about residential schools. I learned about this shit in the 90’s. How is it that nobody knew about this other than the survivors? I blame ignorance.
That doesn’t really matter to me. If it did i see your point. But i am proud to be Canadian and will defend the country with my life. I was born here and this is my home, i wouldn’t let any other country change it at all, our politics will be decided by the peoples of our country, not other countries to roll in with tanks and soldiers.
naw, im 34, seen and read too much crap. nothing makes sense and its all lies or empty promises. like i said, i guess im not a leftist because i don’t believe that citizens should legally be allowed to own firearms.
i don’t see a necessity in the present. I am happy with the gun laws in my country although not ideal, at least people don’t have guns laying around their house or people walking around with pistols holstered on their waist other than the police who require weapons for their jobs.
It might not be strictly Marxist, but it’s an internally-consistent and relatively common viewpoint that people within a liberal democracy could be persuaded to vote so that it becomes a social democracy, then democratic socialism, and then keeps going all the way until it’s communism. I saw it on reddit, so there’s room for doubt, but I’ve read that Marx didn’t think this approach was impossible, just that the starting conditions were less common, and in the era he lived in, autocratic monarchies were the default, and no major countries (based on whatever definition Wikipedia uses) had universal suffrage (if you count women as people) until ten years after he was dead.
It isn’t necessarily internally consistent viewpoint. It is common, you’re correct, but such a theory requires at some point wresting political power from the Bourgeoisie, which to this point requires revolution. This is only affirmed by the experiences of comrade Allende in Chile, may he rest in peace. The fact that it is a common viewpoint among liberals and Social Democrats does not mean it is internally consistent, nor does it stand up to scrutiny. Time and time again has proven the fruitlessness of reformism, Rosa Luxemburg has been proven correct time and time again with respect to Reform or Revolution.
As for Marx, the concept of a theoretical transition along peaceful means wasn’t impossible, merely extremely difficult and might as well be, in the context of his time. Now that Capitalism has transformed into Imperialism globally, this is only further affirmed to be true as the State and Imperialist Capitalists are further and further bedfellows.
Historically, plenty of people have gained more rights through actions that were far short of an actual revolution. For example, it would be naive to say that the suffragette bombing campaign didn’t at the minimum accelerate when British women got the vote, but killing four people and wounding twenty-four isn’t a revolution, and women getting the vote moved political power to a group that previously had effectively none. Initially, the only women who had the right to vote were property owners or the wives of property owners, but the same act of parliament gave non-land-owning men the right to vote, so it was specifically transferring power from the Bourgeoisie to workers, too. Clearly, power can be transferred from the Bourgeoisie to workers through reform.
There’s a perfectly legitimate argument that there may or may not be a limit to how far this could go, e.g. whether there’s a threshold minimum amount of power the owning class can tolerate before further reform becomes impossible, or whether if it’s done in palatable increments, reform could continue indefinitely. It’s an unfalsifiable argument, so whether or not it’s true, the only way to know is if it’s done successfully, and until then, there’s a first time for everything might apply (although you could try and fail a whole bunch of times and end up with an upper bound on how easy it might be).
Personally, I think it’s a decent rule of thumb that if you’ve got enough people who agree on the same position to make a revolution successful, you’ve got enough people to get an equivalent government elected if you’re in a vaguely functional democracy. Taking over an existing party or forming a third party that dwarfs all the others should need about the same amount of the population as battling against an incumbent government and any other factions that want to be the last ones standing after a revolution. If you’re not in a democracy at all, then obviously a revolution is necessary, and sometimes a self-described democracy isn’t one or isn’t working properly, so needs some kind of push in the right direction, but if you’re already in a democracy, and not winning elections, a revolution’s likely to backfire, especially as the type of person most keen on using weapons against humans is the same type of person who’ll always put their own needs above the needs of others. Getting loads of people to agree with you is the biggest hurdle both for successful reform and successful revolution.
You’re confusing concessions with outright shifting the balance of power to the hands of the Workers. Giving women the right to vote is fantastic, but in the context of allowing the Proletariat to end Private Property, the scale of power transfer is on another scale entirely. That’s why I said at some point said scale must be tipped, and historically that has never happened without revolution.
The question of whether or not it’s even technically possible largely don’t matter at this point, we know revolution works and we know reform has never worked despite being tried far more for far longer.
Personally, I think it’s a decent rule of thumb that if you’ve got enough people who agree on the same position to make a revolution successful, you’ve got enough people to get an equivalent government elected if you’re in a vaguely functional democracy.
Why is this a rule of thumb if it’s never happened? Revolution has been the only way the scales have been tipped, because bourgeois democracy places firm limits on what is acceptable to be voted on. You’re correct that revolutions require mass popular support, but wrong that existing Bourgeois frameworks would allow it to begin with. Read the Luxemburg book.
To my knowledge (which has gaps), there’s never been a leftist revolution over a functioning democracy that left the situation better than it started, so I’m under the impression that we’re in never happened territory whether advocating for reform or revolution. Plenty of right-wing groups have overthrown democracies, though, and plenty of right-wing groups have taken over in the aftermath of non-right-wing revolutions, so there’s a need to make sure there are still enough leftists left alive to still be the majority.
Even if reform is a doomed goal, it’s a more achievable to get the population of a democracy to a point where they could try voting in a leftist government than to throw out everything (and potentially die in the process) and start again. If they lose the vote, then it’s a strong indication that a majority of people participating would be fighting against them in a revolution, and more people need bringing on board. If they win the vote, and still don’t gain power, then it’s a great time to start a revolution, as this is exactly the kind of thing that whips up revolutionary fervour in people who normally would advocate solely for reform. The situation where reform could theoretically happen is a great environment for a revolution if it turns out that reform can’t happen, so it’s easy to pivot if it doesn’t work. It might turn out not to be a doomed goal, though, and they might just end up in power immediately, with state institutions composed of voters who want to believe their votes counted potentially taking the new government’s side if the outgoing government or their supporters didn’t concede.
Either way, the main tool used to keep power in a democracy is to sway public opinion so voters vote against their own interests, and swaying public opinion also works to make people revolt against their own interests or fight against a revolt that’s in their own interests. The debate is moot if half of people read The Daily Mail or watch Fox News, and if there’s a tool that can stop that happening and take away bourgeois power that way, it can probably take it away in other ways.
I’m entirely unsure of what you’re referring to in your first paragraph, it’s so vague it doesn’t say anything at all IMO. Moreover, you’ve casually brushed aside the idea that bourgeois electoralism allows voting on leftist groups, you’ve witnessed the progressive pushback against leftists voting third party in the US election despite claiming to support the third parties more ideologically. Electoralism is a fixed game. I’m really not sure what you’re trying to say with this comment, it seems utterly vibes based.
whats a leftist who doesn’t want guns to be legal for citizens and only for military and police? I don’t like capitalism.
I think that makes you inconsistent
I presume in his ideal country there is no capitalism, and as such state enforcers don’t enforce capitalism, but enforce whatever he is thinking of
I don’t see how law enforcement and profit driven market are inseparable concepts.
It’s entirely possible for a state to enforce laws without it being capitalist, however what I thought was a weird inconsistency was to posture as ‘opposed to capitalism’ but pro cops/military having guns without anybody else having them.
I don’t relish the idea of people having to take up arms against the government, but I certainly don’t want militarized police to be the only ones with them either.
If all the citizens are trained in the defense of the nation, then both things can be true. There’s only so many fighters jets, tanks, and nuclear bombs to go around, so the stewardship of those assets is going to fall to a trusted committee anyway (an organized military), but that’s logistics, not politics.
What does such a society do with conscientious objectors and Pacificsts? Hopefully value their option as a source of diversity and honor their choices.
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Sometimes laws are bad and should be broken, if you’re going to advocate taking guns away from normal people at least take them away from the pigs too.
Having armed police showing up to evict people (possibly leaving them homeless) because the banks not getting its payments is a pretty severe power assymetry.
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With which part?
You’re talking to a Zionist and genocide denier, they support the police.
Many such cases, also lol that they already got removed
Lol nice
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In some developed nations, even the beat cops are disarmed and only their equivalent of SWAT response teams are.
Law enforcement are seen as community emmisaries, you can walk up to a British cop in a corner with no fear of them shooting you over a misunderstanding.
This actually helps those police to be seen in a positive light by society.
I see this as an appropriate compromise. Mitigates the potential for casual police shootings with only 1-2 law enforcement witnesses.
But American police, while paid a lot for very little education, don’t want to take ANY risks despite explicitly being paid to. They aren’t even in the top 20 most dangerous professions in the US.
https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states
They use their militarized equipment to shoot until everyone’s dead, then ask the corpses questions, instead of doing their jobs and protecting citizens with their lives if necessary. That’s why you get paid booku bucks with a high school diploma, at least in theory.
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Clearly they believe so, since they see their job as shooting minorities for existing, even in their own homes.
And if they didn’t want to be seen as such, they’d police each other.
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Yes, the US does have a lot of problems like this.
Be glad you’re not from here.
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How do you plan on ending Capitalism without revolution?
Purchase goods from employee owned entities. Support financial transitions away from shareholder owned entities to employee owned entities.
Where has this shown progress towards undermining the Capitalist system, and then not been curtailed by said Capitalist system? It sounds nice on paper but I doubt it’s possible.
The problem is people. Greed is a human trait. You could wave a magic wand tomorrow and delete capitalism and greed would resurrect it before the wand cooled off.
You need a system that subverts greed, harnessing the human potential for selfishness to drive common social selflessness. The best answer humans have found is highly regulated capitalism and graduated taxes. This answer (and others) never last because capitalism either breaks out of jail when capitalists gain control of government, or another capitalist society physically (or politically, or economically) destroys or undermines the non-capitalistic one.
It’s kind of the same reason cancer kills: It’s really good at spreading, and really bad at stopping.
This is idealism, and has no basis in reality. You are projecting the functions and systems of Capitalism as a human problem based on individual moral failings and not on the self-propelling nature of Capitalist accumulation. The best answer is not regulated Capitalism, but Socialism, because that is when humans gain supremacy over Capital, rather than the inverse.
Well, you kind of mean Ideal Socialism. I’m saying none of the solutions humans have implemented have worked, as evidenced by the fact that the planet is not a socialist utopia. The closest we have to that nowadays are the countries that have harnessed capitalism with the yoke of socialism, and even they’re constantly fighting their own right wings that are trying to call more back for fewer.
Capitalism isn’t a thing, it’s a label for a specific human behavior.
I’m talking about Socialism as it actually exists, not some ideal version that only exists in the minds of dreamers. You really need to read some more theory, none of what you say makes any sense, like claiming Capitalism isn’t a “thing.” Economic systems are real, material relations of production.
I’m not arguing with you! I agree that socialism exists! It does not, however, exist in a vacuum completely free of the influence of capitalism. Every implementation of socialism on the planet has had to work with, or work around, the human propensity towards selfishness to continue existing. The ones that worked against capitalism failed, or were subverted into adopting capitalism in some form. Maybe Cuba got the closest. Even non-contacted tribes that exist outside the sphere of influence only continue to exist because the capitalists haven’t decided to try and extract value from them or their land.
no clue, but i am a pacifist. I’d only go to war if my country was being invaded.
In that manner, are you actually a Leftist? Morally you support the ideas of Leftism, but oppose the only actual methods of bringing them about. It’s similar to supporting the idea of everyone becoming a millionaire overnight, if such a solution does not exist it ceases to be something to support and becomes a nice dream.
i guess so. i don’t really have a political affiliation anyways
A “pacifist” who goes to war for their country is affiliated with a political ideology called nationalism
would you not defend your country if you were invaded? i’d assume most normal people would
The country I was born in was born itself from genocide. The first people to arrive had worked to erase a whole people, culture and knowledge because there was land and resources to be stolen.
Women were raped, children were stolen, men were killed. Even to this day, you can’t go a year without multiple stories of disgusting abuse from the federal police against indigenous people.
The same country who stuck as many of the surviving genocided people into reservations. The same country that federally determined that those same people do not deserve clean drinking water in the reservations they were forced into. My tax dollars are funding a genocide today.
And what does Canada do? Point to China, accuse them of genocide against the Uyghur people. Hypocrisy. Absolute hypocrisy.
I refuse to fight for this country. I don’t feel free. I don’t see people feeling free. I think I must fight for the people whose land has been stolen over some imaginary borders that denies me the freedom to connect with people.
I get it, and i agree. But I’m not going to let the US or Russia roll tanks into Canada and make their way to those reserves, as they are the first Canadians and deserve everything for a better life. I will add though that some band chiefs do not make matters better when money given to them doesn’t make it to those who need it. They are as much to blame in modern times as much as the federal government.
While on the topic, one thing that struck me as odd, was that people are shocked pikachu face about residential schools. I learned about this shit in the 90’s. How is it that nobody knew about this other than the survivors? I blame ignorance.
Does the invading country have universal health care?
That doesn’t really matter to me. If it did i see your point. But i am proud to be Canadian and will defend the country with my life. I was born here and this is my home, i wouldn’t let any other country change it at all, our politics will be decided by the peoples of our country, not other countries to roll in with tanks and soldiers.
You might want to get on that!
naw, im 34, seen and read too much crap. nothing makes sense and its all lies or empty promises. like i said, i guess im not a leftist because i don’t believe that citizens should legally be allowed to own firearms.
You can be a Leftist that opposes gun ownership in a post-revolutionary status, while recognizing its necessity in current conditions.
i don’t see a necessity in the present. I am happy with the gun laws in my country although not ideal, at least people don’t have guns laying around their house or people walking around with pistols holstered on their waist other than the police who require weapons for their jobs.
The invasion is coming from inside the house.
I don’t agree with that. While it may be true in other countries, i have never felt not safe in my country.
I wasn’t talking about your personal feelings.
well sorry it’s shit for you friend.
Impotent. You reject economic and lethal power, and what you you have left to defend your rights? Hopes and dreams don’t have any teeth.
naw it works thanks for checking though!
Someone who only likes to lick left boots?
a leftist with LRC
Starts with “T” and rimes with hankie.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.”
-Karl Marx
Where are these anti-gun Marxists?
It might not be strictly Marxist, but it’s an internally-consistent and relatively common viewpoint that people within a liberal democracy could be persuaded to vote so that it becomes a social democracy, then democratic socialism, and then keeps going all the way until it’s communism. I saw it on reddit, so there’s room for doubt, but I’ve read that Marx didn’t think this approach was impossible, just that the starting conditions were less common, and in the era he lived in, autocratic monarchies were the default, and no major countries (based on whatever definition Wikipedia uses) had universal suffrage (if you count women as people) until ten years after he was dead.
It isn’t necessarily internally consistent viewpoint. It is common, you’re correct, but such a theory requires at some point wresting political power from the Bourgeoisie, which to this point requires revolution. This is only affirmed by the experiences of comrade Allende in Chile, may he rest in peace. The fact that it is a common viewpoint among liberals and Social Democrats does not mean it is internally consistent, nor does it stand up to scrutiny. Time and time again has proven the fruitlessness of reformism, Rosa Luxemburg has been proven correct time and time again with respect to Reform or Revolution.
As for Marx, the concept of a theoretical transition along peaceful means wasn’t impossible, merely extremely difficult and might as well be, in the context of his time. Now that Capitalism has transformed into Imperialism globally, this is only further affirmed to be true as the State and Imperialist Capitalists are further and further bedfellows.
Historically, plenty of people have gained more rights through actions that were far short of an actual revolution. For example, it would be naive to say that the suffragette bombing campaign didn’t at the minimum accelerate when British women got the vote, but killing four people and wounding twenty-four isn’t a revolution, and women getting the vote moved political power to a group that previously had effectively none. Initially, the only women who had the right to vote were property owners or the wives of property owners, but the same act of parliament gave non-land-owning men the right to vote, so it was specifically transferring power from the Bourgeoisie to workers, too. Clearly, power can be transferred from the Bourgeoisie to workers through reform.
There’s a perfectly legitimate argument that there may or may not be a limit to how far this could go, e.g. whether there’s a threshold minimum amount of power the owning class can tolerate before further reform becomes impossible, or whether if it’s done in palatable increments, reform could continue indefinitely. It’s an unfalsifiable argument, so whether or not it’s true, the only way to know is if it’s done successfully, and until then, there’s a first time for everything might apply (although you could try and fail a whole bunch of times and end up with an upper bound on how easy it might be).
Personally, I think it’s a decent rule of thumb that if you’ve got enough people who agree on the same position to make a revolution successful, you’ve got enough people to get an equivalent government elected if you’re in a vaguely functional democracy. Taking over an existing party or forming a third party that dwarfs all the others should need about the same amount of the population as battling against an incumbent government and any other factions that want to be the last ones standing after a revolution. If you’re not in a democracy at all, then obviously a revolution is necessary, and sometimes a self-described democracy isn’t one or isn’t working properly, so needs some kind of push in the right direction, but if you’re already in a democracy, and not winning elections, a revolution’s likely to backfire, especially as the type of person most keen on using weapons against humans is the same type of person who’ll always put their own needs above the needs of others. Getting loads of people to agree with you is the biggest hurdle both for successful reform and successful revolution.
You’re confusing concessions with outright shifting the balance of power to the hands of the Workers. Giving women the right to vote is fantastic, but in the context of allowing the Proletariat to end Private Property, the scale of power transfer is on another scale entirely. That’s why I said at some point said scale must be tipped, and historically that has never happened without revolution.
The question of whether or not it’s even technically possible largely don’t matter at this point, we know revolution works and we know reform has never worked despite being tried far more for far longer.
Why is this a rule of thumb if it’s never happened? Revolution has been the only way the scales have been tipped, because bourgeois democracy places firm limits on what is acceptable to be voted on. You’re correct that revolutions require mass popular support, but wrong that existing Bourgeois frameworks would allow it to begin with. Read the Luxemburg book.
To my knowledge (which has gaps), there’s never been a leftist revolution over a functioning democracy that left the situation better than it started, so I’m under the impression that we’re in never happened territory whether advocating for reform or revolution. Plenty of right-wing groups have overthrown democracies, though, and plenty of right-wing groups have taken over in the aftermath of non-right-wing revolutions, so there’s a need to make sure there are still enough leftists left alive to still be the majority.
Even if reform is a doomed goal, it’s a more achievable to get the population of a democracy to a point where they could try voting in a leftist government than to throw out everything (and potentially die in the process) and start again. If they lose the vote, then it’s a strong indication that a majority of people participating would be fighting against them in a revolution, and more people need bringing on board. If they win the vote, and still don’t gain power, then it’s a great time to start a revolution, as this is exactly the kind of thing that whips up revolutionary fervour in people who normally would advocate solely for reform. The situation where reform could theoretically happen is a great environment for a revolution if it turns out that reform can’t happen, so it’s easy to pivot if it doesn’t work. It might turn out not to be a doomed goal, though, and they might just end up in power immediately, with state institutions composed of voters who want to believe their votes counted potentially taking the new government’s side if the outgoing government or their supporters didn’t concede.
Either way, the main tool used to keep power in a democracy is to sway public opinion so voters vote against their own interests, and swaying public opinion also works to make people revolt against their own interests or fight against a revolt that’s in their own interests. The debate is moot if half of people read The Daily Mail or watch Fox News, and if there’s a tool that can stop that happening and take away bourgeois power that way, it can probably take it away in other ways.
I’m entirely unsure of what you’re referring to in your first paragraph, it’s so vague it doesn’t say anything at all IMO. Moreover, you’ve casually brushed aside the idea that bourgeois electoralism allows voting on leftist groups, you’ve witnessed the progressive pushback against leftists voting third party in the US election despite claiming to support the third parties more ideologically. Electoralism is a fixed game. I’m really not sure what you’re trying to say with this comment, it seems utterly vibes based.
yeah i don’t think im a tankie