1w ago

Human Shield

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- I speak only for myself, and I happen to believe being a sociopathic robber baron isn't genetic.
  
  From latestage capitalism, whete you successfully got me banned, for not being a tankie I guess:
  Better to look forward, as the Scandinavians, than dwell in old ideas that doesn't work and/or become murderous dictatorships. What a success, only 20 million starved to death because of Stalin & co.
  
  I got you banned? Take some responsibility for yourself, you were being insufferable in that thread. Obviously people are going to be speaking sympathetically about socialism in latestagecapitalism, you chose to antagonize everyone by making reductive arguments and moral grandstanding over historical events you know little about, like you're doing now.
  I'm an anarchist btw, I'm not the biggest fan of the USSR or the PRC either, but you are simply refusing to engage with the topic in good faith.
  
  Lol I just pointed out that socialism never works, I am actually very left leaning and I'm looking for an alternative to communism/soc/anarchism that can actually work. But those people just stay on to the old "it's the fault of the USA!!" rant. To each their own, but trying the same thing again and again believing the outcome will change this time is IMO utter madness.
  There was IMO also not much of a topic other than socialism, except if you just have to dunk on capitalism which is just stupid, again IMO, capitalism brings suffering, but it also brings good things. I know that's not what people want to hear.
  Sorry if I came off as an asshole, but I'm so tired of the dreamers, what are you going to do when the capitalists come to your cozy village, how will you deal with egomaniacs and power hunger in your anarchy group, etc. are the questions to discuss, IMO, not if stalin did or did not kill more or less people (he was a brutal dictator, we don't want that).
  Maybe I'm the dreamer.
  Sorry for polluting your thread!
  
  socialism never works
  This is the main reason people are on your case. It's an extremely reductive statement that's been repeated ad infinitum by Procapitalist propagandists in defense of the status quo. Socialism is an incredibly broad and diverse philosophical and political tradition that has led to an enormous amount of positive change, even if a "perfect" socialist state has not yet been established.
  I'm looking for an alternative to communism/soc/anarchism that can actually work.
  That's great! You can start by actually discussing communism/socialism/anarchism with other leftists in a nuanced manner, without repeating the same old tired tropes designed to keep us from even thinking about alternatives to capitalism. Front-loading every conversation with the presumption that every alternative to capitalism that has ever been conceived of simply "doesn't work" and "could never work" is, again, reductive.
  Sorry if I came off as an asshole, but I'm so tired of the dreamers, what are you going to do when the capitalists come to your cozy village, how will you deal with egomaniacs and power hunger in your anarchy group, etc. are the questions to discuss, IMO, not if stalin did or did not kill more or less people (he was a brutal dictator, we don't want that).
  It might surprise you to hear that anarchists do discuss how to deal with egomaniacs and power hunger quite often, but you wouldn't know that because you are the one coming in and obnoxiously debating over how many people Stalin has killed. I must ask you again to please take responsibility for yourself instead of blaming others for the lack of productive discourse.
  
  Sorry can't respond to your answer, too deep for Connect it seems.
  I'll check out your recommendation, and just to show you: SENS is the scientific communitys work on staving of aging, and thus death ;-)
  
  Please direct me to any discussion where anarchists discuss how to deal with powerhungry people and(or) egonaniacs, or a book or a blog post.
  And about my statement being reductive, yes it is, and no it is not because I don't know my history it's because of it. It's easy to discuss how to manage a socialist country if you just conveniently forget why it never materialises. Or so I think, and that is for me the biggest hurdle and thus my biggest concern to how to implement socialism, or anarchism. I actually grew up in the only real soc/com country ever (some people argue at least), sweden back in the day, and it had a whole lot of problems too, but it stopped being soc all by itself.
  So no I'm not attacking anyone, I'm just expressing my concerns.
  
  I find this video by Andrewism to be a good introduction to how anarchy can be organized.
  This article focuses more on defending an anarchist society from an external military threat, but has relevant discussion of how to defend the social structures more specifically as well.
  The question of how to deal with power hungry people is fundamentally the same question as how do you prevent the establishment of hierarchy in the first place. That is essentially the foundational question of anarchist political theory, so any writing on anarchism is relevant to this.
  
  Okay so nice video, but again I failed to find any info about how to handle egomaniacs & power hungry people.
  But it made me think, I might have a better way to make you see what I mean. How would you integrate someone like me? Force me? Ban me (like that communist sub)? "Make me" understand?
  That's IMO the biggest problem with those types of ah ways to live.
  So thanks again but still absolutely not convinced it's viable. I will continue looking, because capitalism isn't the future we want and democracy can be better.
  
  You are asking me to give you a simple answer to a question that does not have one. As I said before, that problem is foundational to anarchist theory, and the entirety of anarchist discourse is dedicated to solving it. Directing you to writings by anarchists discussing how to organize and defend an anarchic form of society is the best I can do. David Graeber is a prominent anarchist writer and anthropologist that I highly recommend checking out.
  You may as well be asking me to solve death. Death is a fact, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything possible to fend it off for as long as possible.

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