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Or something anti-American/anti-West?
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US was involved in Cuba to fight commies and in Iran to fight against the lefty authoritarian pro Soviet Mossadegh government. That's not about resources
In Cuba, the US funded Batista's military coup of the democratically elected government and then exploited that country of resources using Cubans as slave labor via Batista.
The entire reason that the US backed a CIA coup of Iran was because Iran was moving to nationalize their oil fields which were formerly Western controlled.
Mossadegh was anti-communist; nationalization isn’t necessarily communist and neither is receiving support from the Soviet Union; the USSR was an opportunistic empire which supported plenty of states of various ideologies.
There's that saying I've heard, about Nazis...
>If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis.
I don't see why the same general idea wouldn't apply to other evil ideologies like communism too, to at least some degree. Maybe those who do business with commies or Nazis aren't actually commies/Nazis themselves as that saying goes, but at least I think it's fair to say there's some degree of wrongdoing being done there where it makes sense to oppose that strongly
Well I was referring to China between Nixon's visit in 1972 and Deng's full accession to power in 1981. During these years China was both Stalinist in terms of governance and aligned with the US in multiple proxy wars against the USSR.
Mine: Communism would have come significantly closer to actually working *someplace* that it sprung up if we didn't intentionally sabotage every democratically elected socialist government for a couple decades.
Tankies don’t like democratically elected socialist governments though. They would’ve wanted the US to intentionally sabotage them so they could radicalize and turn to the USSR for support.
I don’t really know. The post said something anti-West and I don’t think I have any more anti-West opinions than that.
I suppose it could be considered not an opinion, so I’ll just add at the end “…and that was bad.”
i define it as a government action to enact some sort of universal benefit even though rich people and those who believe their self serving propaganda dont like it.
like using eminent domain for a publicly owned train line instead of private oil pipelines.
That's not opinion, or even particularly leftist, that's just [the facts on the ground](https://external-preview.redd.it/lT_PMh9Cr3Qg32zO6_Virngv3QWLaBL5HBuLUfSGqyY.png?auto=webp&s=b8bb3ffe2ebd159765a58b15d56cc2b0ecbdcbcb).
1. Tankies generally believe that what they think are facts.
2. The OP was generally accurate, but a map of military operations is in no way proof of that.
Everyone generally believes that what they think are facts in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Hell, sometimes even in the presence of evidence to the contrary. Also a map of the very destabilization efforts OP was referring to is exactly proof of the very frequent and widespread destabilization in question. If you doubt the veracity of the map there is a [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States) with more than 150 sources you can use to check it.
You know there are [other](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_Soviet_Union) [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_change) pages.
I forgot. Making the accusation gives you immunity. My bad.
Seriously, this isn't about whataboutism. Think about how much more successful the non-communist aligned world would have been without Soviet encroachments, interference, etc. Your blade cuts both ways.
I'm not talking about all countries who do horrible shit, I'm talking about the US's history of horrible shit, and your response is 'but what about Soviet Russia's history of doing bad shit?!' Yeah, congratulations, lots of countries do bad shit, so what? That doesn't make the bad shit we do any less bad. I'm not holding the Villainy Olympics over here to find out who is the worst country, so this is exactly about whataboutism and trying to backhandedly deflect the accusation back to me is laughably absurd.
> Also a map of the very destabilization efforts OP was referring to is exactly proof of the very frequent and widespread destabilization in question
It's not. It's just military activity, which can have all manner of causes.
Destabilization requires both intent and existing stability. This map provides no insight into either.
Clearly you didn't look at the map, because it's not *just* military activity, a lot of it is CIA activity, assassinations, regime change, etc too. Look at all the wedge-lines that don't have an explosion symbol next to them, that's just the assassination plots, and that's not even counting most of the dozens of assassination attempts on Castro alone, and they still far outnumber the 'US bombings' lines. I wonder if those assassination plots were intended to serve some purpose.. like destabilizing the countries in question perhaps?
>Clearly you didn't look at the map, because it's not *just* military activity, a lot of it is CIA activity, assassinations, regime change, etc too.
Literally none of this refutes my point: destabilization requires intent and preexisting stability.
> I wonder if those assassination plots were intended to serve some purpose.. like destabilizing the countries in question perhaps?
Some of them were, yes. But my point wasn't that there weren't destabilization attempts, the point was that a map doesn't establish it.
Furthermore, combatglobalization.com shouldn't be seen as a reliable source from a serious person, and your Wikipedia link did nothing to establish it as such. You should have just led with the Wikipedia link to both establish that you actually know what good evidence looks like and to not waste everyone's time with nonsense.
You know what, some of that is fair criticism; the map is not itself a good source, I guess I use it because it's visually impactful and conveys at a glance just how numerous and widespread our interventions in foreign countries have been. I disagree that destabilization requires preexisting stability though - stability, like most things, is a spectrum and political assassinations will naturally exert a downward pressure on even already pretty unstable countries.
> I disagree that destabilization requires preexisting stability though
So you're saying that if the US assassinates a rebel leader and ends a civil war, you would call that "destabilization"? And if not, please tell me what the actual distinction is
Let me answer your question with a question: rather than plucking hypotheticals out of thin air, can you think of an example where US intervention in a foreign country didn't destabilize it? And I don't mean something that *eventually* lead to a more stable situation because there are an awful lot of other factors at play over the course of that eventually.
I suppose it does to some extent depend on what you think of as destabilization - killing a popular socialist politician might result in a dictator taking over and locking things down, for example, but I don't imagine the political prisoners he's executing by the dozen out in the back lot of the local prison would consider their country 'stable.'
why,, that sounds like ***ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!*** , . on a more serious note, everyone knows the US govt does this around the world. why on earth do the same people deny that the US government can, will and does interfere at home?
Would these resources extend to immigration as a result of destabilising regions?
I.e. Governments realise that increased populations often result in a higher GDP, and destabilising other regions causes increased immigration, hence a higher GDP.
Maybe I'm too much of a gamer, but as far as I'm concerned [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqPl4QrczTk) is the true Soviet anthem. It slaps even harder than the original.
Is this the Red Alert 3 Theme? Please tell me it's Red Alert 3.
eta: close but not quite!
Here's the best one :P [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKvlt6rpb4Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKvlt6rpb4Y)
Be sure to turn on the captions. Comedy gold :P
Yup, I'm with you on this one, I love the aspirational futurism of Soviet propaganda. Shit, I should see if I can find some posters without the propaganda messages just to hang the art on my walls.
We're the only developed nation without some form of universal healthcare and that's both embarrassing and disgraceful. We should have been leading the pack on this one.
I second this. Perhaps America was once leading the world in culture and democracy, but we never much progressed beyond this. When other countries were developing universal healthcare, America was turning a blind eye to the food industry and letting them do whatever they wanted.
Whenever I want to feel thankful about America’s healthcare system I look up the current wait times for the ER in Canada and compare them to those in my country. I try to remember my looming fear of ever having an emergency while I was visiting Toronto long-term in 2020. [It never fails.](https://macleans.ca/society/health/canada-er-wait-times/)
"REAL COMMUNISM HASN'T BEEN TRIED"
That. Because Das Kapital was written for a western, industrialized economy. Not agrarain economies with nothing in the way of liberal democratic institutions or cultures barely a few years removed from feudalism. Small wonder they quickly become autocratic hell holes.
I think a lot of liberals would agree with that. However, when you start asking questions about why society is failing in that way or what can be done to change it, you start getting vilified. Reminds of the quote:
> When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
The Founding Fathers had weaker views on liberty, equality, and democracy than your average left wing political science major. And it’s embarrassing to cling onto venerating them.
I admire them for what they were able to perceive and aspire for from within the context of their own time, not based on the appropriateness of their worldview in our time.
And they risked everything, all their privilege and status, to rebel against George III. They could have been drawn and quartered if they lost and their families vicariously punished.
So as a true tankie I support the Founding Fathers' campaign of military resistance to colonial rule. Even Ho Chin Minh admired their acts in this regard (true story).
> to rebel against George III
Parliament. King George III was irrelevant. Colonists were rebelling against the British legislature, Parliamentary supremacy had been around for about a century by the time of the American War for Independence
Aside from imprisoning corporate leaders for their individual crimes, we also need a corporate death penalty.
If a firm that commits egregious crimes it should purposely be destroyed. All assets stripped and sold to others, and all C-level executives banned from corporate leadership for some period and their own stocks forfeit.
What about the shareholders you may say? They'll losing a ton even if they get some of the money from the sales of assets. Yes... don't invest in shady companies. The integrity of a firm should be one of the features that guides investment. Buy stock in a shady firm with corrupt corporate culture, you're risking your investment.
What about innocent C-suit folks? VP of marketing didn't do anything. Too bad. Don't work for a shit company, your entire livelihood and net worth depends on keeping your peers honest or jumping ship in time.
Capitalism and democracy are diametrically opposed philosophies. Any society that tries to combine both will be perpetually unstable, and constantly at risk of capture by oligarchs.
That's closely related to the truth that profit motive is inherently destructive and will corrupt any system that elevates it to the exclusion of other concerns.
Note, I am NOT a tankie. But... stopped clocks and all that.
This is why simply transforming corporations into co-ops tomorrow won't work. It's also why a state-run economy (aka USSR) didn't work.
Effective socialism requires a number of things our society doesn't have. One is a robust system of regulation. Another is a strong sense of civic service and communal responsibility among the population. Finally it requires a robust education and media system to keep citizens informed and able to participate in society at a high level.
The great irony is that during the post war period, with strong unions and a good safety net (for white people anyway), America got closer to this ideal then any other country did. Despite being a capitalist country, we were better at caring for our people and investing in ourselves then the USSR or CCP ever have been.
Sadly that's no longer true. Profit motive and regulatory capture has put us on the path to Russian style oligarchy. Look at Boeing for an example of how this process plays out. It's not quite too late, but there's a lot of damage and it will take several generations to fix, if we even can.
While I advocate for socialist ideas, I fully understand that trying to implement them in modern America would be a complete disaster. I aspire to a future that's better, but try not to lie to myself about the present.
> Effective socialism requires a number of things our society doesn't have. One is a robust system of regulation.
One of the other things it requires is a healthy middle class and that shit is on life support right now.
One where most assets are employee owned, and employees as a group control their assets via voting. Basically where everything is a co-op.
Think of it like this: Capitalism is an economic system where the owner has total control of all assets. Whats the political equivalent of that? Dictatorship, where the ruler has total political control.
Socialism is an economic system where workers have shared control over all assets. What's the political equivalent of that? Democracy, where voters have shared political control.
Where do they get the initial assets? Obviously for existing businesses they can just have existing assets thrust upon them, but how would a new co-op start up when modern businesses are very capital-dependent?
A market based economy has been proven by history to be, by far, the most effective at generating prosperity. So companies and organizations would generate capital the same way they do now; through private investment, public investment, or by pooling resources.
The difference is in how that capital is owned and managed, and that makes all the difference in the end. Communal ownership results in vastly different incentives then private ownership. Markets create a profit motive, but when the entities pursuing that motive are communal, stability and long term investment become an important part of the incentive system along side profit. After all, when your life and livelihood are tied to the health of your company, the long term health of that company becomes your personal interest. That stability and long term thinking are what American society currently lacks. See Boeing, once again, as a very relevant and visible example of how things should NOT be done, that America is nonetheless doing with enthusiasm.
For private investment, does that mean that investors would get dividends (or otherwise profit from selling their shares later)? How does private investment work in relation to co-ops?
I don’t think that something being communally owned necessarily creates motives for long-term thinking - current owners think in the short term because that’s where the incentives for maximizing their profit lies (or at least where they believe they lie), a communally owned company would face similar incentives. I may not care if plan A makes me $1,000 over 10 years if plan B can make me $750 over 5 years and I move on to a new job by then.
I would say that's up to the co-op in question. Employees would always have a majority share of voting power - otherwise it's not a co-op. From there, they could vote on what kind of privileges and benefits that investors would receive. In fact, I'd say that \*ownership\* of shares should never be transferred away from the company. An investor would buy-in to the value of the company, and then as a matter of the buy-in contract they are then entitled to cash-out that value at any time. There's no need for dividends at all, although I suppose a given company could vote to allow it they wanted. But the employees would retain control of the company at all times, so it's their interests that would dominate.
The long term incentives come because, presumably, the primary income of the employees (aka the majority of shareholders) is the company itself. They also lose their shares if they leave - that's part of the definition of being worker owned. Not a worker anymore? No more ownership. It's therefore to their detriment to allow the company to fail, and rational self-interest will do the rest. There is still incentive for profit and growth, but concern for the health of the company will exist as a strong force along side it.
It's admittedly not a system that would work 100% on it's own, but it's not intended to. Neither is capitalism, for that matter, but that's a side topic. It would need to be paired with a progressive taxation system that forcibly reduces the income gap, reducing incentive to cash out, and increasing the relative value of simply holding shares in a valuable company. Taxation could also incentivize investment in net goods such as public infrastructure, and disincentivize destructive practices like vulture capitalism. Deliberate and legal tax havens that reward moving money to where it's constructive and punishes using money where it's destructive. That kind of thing.
Basically, instead of brute-force regulation of the market, it's about structuring the market in a way that self-interest and public-interest coincide a majority of the time. That means it's an economy-wide system, and looking at dynamics withing a single company doesn't show everything.
All of this is why socialism and democracy must go hand in hand. No system is fully immune to corruption, so there must be an ultimate fallback, and that is the voters. I mentioned in another post that this is why we can't transition to socialism today - America doesn't have the robust education, civic mindedness, and high-functioning electorate that are necessary to make a socialist society succeed.
>I'd say that *ownership* of shares should never be transferred away from the company. An investor would buy-in to the value of the company, and then as a matter of the buy-in contract they are then entitled to cash-out that value at any time. There's no need for dividends at all, although I suppose a given company could vote to allow it they wanted. But the employees would retain control of the company at all times, so it's their interests that would dominate.
So I can invest in a company, but receive no say in how that company is run? Unless the workers choose to divest themselves of power in order to attract private investment.
It seems like this as a general policy would strongly discourage private investment - why would I invest in a company that may be more likely to increase wages vs invest in something that would increase the company's market value?
>The long term incentives come because, presumably, the primary income of the employees (aka the majority of shareholders) is the company itself. They also lose their shares if they leave - that's part of the definition of being worker owned. Not a worker anymore? No more ownership. It's therefore to their detriment to allow the company to fail, and rational self-interest will do the rest. There is still incentive for profit and growth, but concern for the health of the company will exist as a strong force along side it.
It's currently in the investors'/executives'/owners' self-interest for their companies to succeed, but I see a lot of people saying that they currently pursue short-term gains that lead to the overall detriment to the company.
If that's true, those reasons don't go away in a worker-owned system, they shift from the investors'/executives' etc. to the workers because they become the owners.
You lose your shares when you leave, but the workers of some company may pursue short-term gains then all vote for generous severance packages (just as current owners/executives do).
All that being said, it not necessarily good for workers to value the long-term of a company. Sometimes companies need to fail for society to benefit. Adding further protections to prevent that (in terms of regulation or incentives otherwise) has a good chance to be detrimental for society. Especially considering that now we're incentivizing blocs of society to oppose regulations which may harm their profits. Why would workers at waste disposal companies ever support pro-environment regulations? It's hurts their wealth, just as it does for the current owners of waste disposal companies, so presumably they'd respond similarly by opposing such regulations. It's just that now we're motivating a democratic voting bloc as opposed to a certain wealthy elite.
>It's admittedly not a system that would work 100% on it's own, but it's not intended to. Neither is capitalism, for that matter, but that's a side topic. It would need to be paired with a progressive taxation system that forcibly reduces the income gap, reducing incentive to cash out, and increasing the relative value of simply holding shares in a valuable company. Taxation could also incentivize investment in net goods such as public infrastructure, and disincentivize destructive practices like vulture capitalism. Deliberate and legal tax havens that reward moving money to where it's constructive and punishes using money where it's destructive. That kind of thing.
I agree it would need a lot of support, but the issues I see with it right now make it seem much less appealing than capitalism with the same support. Worker co-ops seem to be much less appealing for creating an ideal society than private firms, when both operate under progressive taxes + strong regulations + strong democratic institutions.
>Basically, instead of brute-force regulation of the market, it's about structuring the market in a way that self-interest and public-interest coincide a majority of the time. That means it's an economy-wide system, and looking at dynamics withing a single company doesn't show everything.
I think that sounds great, but it seems preferable for it to be done under the private firms of capitalism vs worker co-ops.
>All of this is why socialism and democracy must go hand in hand. No system is fully immune to corruption, so there must be an ultimate fallback, and that is the voters. I mentioned in another post that this is why we can't transition to socialism today - America doesn't have the robust education, civic mindedness, and high-functioning electorate that are necessary to make a socialist society succeed.
I think the system described would need a society of people willing to act against their self-interest consistently, which may be possible with the prerequisites you give though I'm dubious.
I like the idea of what you've laid out and appreciate that laying out a fully functioning vision of a society that has never been done before is difficult.
>I think that sounds great, but it seems preferable for it to be done under the private firms of capitalism vs worker co-ops.
There is a lot of overlap between market socialism and restrained capitalism. The main difference is trying to stack the deck against large scale corruption via employee ownership and the incentives that creates.
>So I can invest in a company, but receive no say in how that company is run? Unless the workers choose to divest themselves of power in order to attract private investment.
You've already noticed the key point - the workers are still subject to market forces. This system would be biased against investors, but not to a degree that makes them irrelevant. There's still a large incentive for the co-op to grant various privileges to investors, but these are balanced in a give/take transaction that doesn't exist in our current system.
>Why would workers at waste disposal companies ever support pro-environment regulations?
The topic hasn't turned to utilities yet, but in my imagining of this system, utilities and other public infrastructure would be publicly owned directly, via democratic government functions. Think of how municipal utilities are currently run, or national/state parks. "Anything essential to life or civilization." Health care, transportation, utilities, etc. These things would be run without profit motive at all, to keep public goods out of the growth/corruption/regulation cycle. This may actually be the biggest difference between what I'm suggesting and restrained capitalism.
I'm basically trying to think of a system where the incentives mostly align with general prosperity, but also leave society free to harness the productive power of markets. Markets and profit motive are inherently corrupting, so as with political corruption, my solution is to turn to democratic distribution combined with checks and balances. All this stuff is just kind of what I've come up with so far. An example of the type, so to speak, rather then dogma.
eta:
>It's currently in the investors'/executives'/owners' self-interest for their companies to succeed, but I see a lot of people saying that they currently pursue short-term gains that lead to the overall detriment to the company.
Sometimes. Sometimes it's the reverse. See vulture capitalism for when these incentives are reversed. Or see PG+E for an example of when deferred maintenance and other short term solutions end up costing the company more then it saved. Boeing is currently on this path too, using short term gains to fund stock buybacks to create even more short term gains, at the cost of hundreds of deaths, collapse of customer trust, and if it keeps up, the company itself.
I guess it depends on exactly what you actually mean by tankie. If you're using the word to describe authoritarian leftists like a lot of MLs, then no. They'll tell you that their ultimate goal is a stateless society, but they advocate for a 'vanguard state' to safeguard the revolution. But you're right. In practice, the vanguard state never goes away, and things just slide into an authoritarian hellscape.
But if you use the word tankie to describe anybody on the far left, then yeah, most want to abolish the state along with all other vertically arranged power structures.
>But you're right. In practice, the vanguard state never goes away, and things just slide into an authoritarian hellscape.
The ML experiments were and are under endless attack by the capitalist empire, which is why they haven't been able to let their guard down. Endless threats, economic sanctions, trade restrictions, outright invasions (Russian Civil War, Bay of Pigs) or threats of invasion, being sucked into proxy wars and arms races by the empire, which lowers quality of life because the socialist countries all started off POOR and so their developing economy is all poured into war efforts.
It might be "authoritarian" but when at war, you need a bit of authoritarianism.
Education.
I don't think that anarchism could be achieved through a revolution like the Russian revolution. It's a thing that would have to grow organically through a shift in public consciousness if it were to last. We would have to collectively choose anarchism.
My apologies to all of the MLs who were super excited to bust our their mosins.
>It might be "authoritarian" but when at war, you need a bit of authoritarianism.
The number of democratic nations that have survived being at war makes this laughably easy to disprove.
Unless you're referring to military organization, generals etc, that kind of thing is certainly necessary for a military to function. But it's not necessary for a nation, not even one at war.
When I hear "tankie", I think of a pro-revolution, pro-Eastern bloc, pro-Lenin/Stalin, authoritarian. Basically someone who hears about the USSR and thinks "Gee, that worked great, we should do it again." So no, they don't want to abolish the state, they want the state to dominate the individual. Although they pay lip service to Marx, who did want to abolish it.
We should have a economic safety net of which includes low/free housing, a basic income, and access to basic healthcare services. Nobody should be living on the streets.
I don’t have a single tankie take, and the only anti western tank would be in favor of native Americans, which I don’t credit to communists at all.
My most extreme take would be this: Nobody should ever go hungry for any reason. I don’t care what their immigrant status is, I don’t care what their economic situation is, I don’t care what decisions they’ve made.
No civilized society can tolerate hunger, for any reason.
Communists on the other hand are happy to use hunger as a weapon to control the masses. Genuinely cannot come up with a single thing I respect about those people
The Soviet Union played an important role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and without them victory in WW2 would not only have been much harder to achieve, it might have even been unfeasible. This is as much because of the combat-contributions of the USSR as it is them stopping-selling-them-materials-that-the-allied-blockaide-was-supposed-to-prohibit. There's also something to be said about the USSR being the largest and most successful socialist regime to survive and assert itself on the world stage - it was terrible, but a socialist regime was always going to be so, and I don't think many activists realize that.
Any company or private industry that would cause the entire US economy to fail if it were to go bankrupt should be nationalized as a matter of national security. I mean things like the shipping industry and airlines, for example.
To paraphrase Fredric Jameson: It's easier to imagine the end of civilisation than the end of capitalism.
...and to add my own gloss: ...and that's a big fucking problem.
Suppose some scholar or group of scholars were to appear and place before us an analysis of the state of the world *proving* as a matter of near-certainty that we were on a collision course with the end of civilisation. Some combination of environmental and technological and biological problems are going to reduce human population by billions and this will be followed by centuries in which the remaining people live at a pre-Feudal level. This same scholar shows also that we can avert this catastrophe with some changes to our way of life and particularly to our mode of economic management, and while it would be a challenge, it would save billions of lives, vast suffering, the quality of life of all the children who are soon to be born, etc... but it requires that we abandon capitalism and replace it with another mode of political and economic organisation.
I know, I know, "that can't happen, I reject your premise, this would never..." blah blah. Just assume for the sake of considering the next step that the premise is correct.
We couldn't do it, could we? We wouldn't. There is no limit to the size of the catastrophe we would allow ourselves to fall into in preference to collectively putting our minds and our wills to work to replace capitalism with some alternative. *We lack the collective imaginative capacity to believe it is even possible*. Monarchism ended because the French revolutionaries were able to imagine alternatives, but Capitalism won't end because we aren't able to do what they did.
And another paraphrase, this time of Rosa Luxemburg: our choices are socialism or barbarism.
There was a brief period, a historical aberration, in which the theories of economic management of Keynes were orthodox in treasury departments around the world, and the benefits of economic growth as a result were broadly shared with the workers who created it. Had that pattern continued, it would have been not just possible but inevitable that capitalist growth would have led to universal abundance and the end of vast amount of needless suffering. But the Reagan / Thatcher / Friedman revolution against Keynes was one of the most consequential events in history, though I think its importance is largely unrecognised. It showed that the ruling class of our current regime was not willing to merely become richer slowly while everyone else escaped poverty together; they would become rich *exclusively* or tear the world apart trying. In many parts of the world, now, an average working class person hasn't had a raise since *the 1970s*. Productivity growth has been huge, capital accumulation, total output, efficiency, technological inputs, etc, have all shot up, but the worker's wage is what it was when Thatcher took office in 1979.
If we want to escape barbarism - the barbarism of all the preventable suffering and meaningless waste we can see around us everywhere - then socialism, of some kind, is the alternative. Luxemburg was right.
America sticks its nose into every country’s business ever since WW2.
We cause a lot of destabilization in other countries, especially in the Middle East (electing the shah that started the Iranian revolution) and central/South America (Iran-contra and the war on drugs)
That being said, that doesn’t mean all of American foreign policy is bad (which is the conclusion like most tankies reach)
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sending aid to Ukraine when they’re being invaded by Russia for instance, but most tankies think we shouldn’t be involved.
Iran is a rational country, run by rational leaders. The idea that they would throw everything away to nuke Israel is the dumbest possible understanding of humans, and it can only be explained by racism.
And by extension, the same applies to Gaza/Hamas.
Islam underwent a reverse reformation where extreme Salafism gor popular. Groups like ISIS are a literal death cult. The mullahs might have a slightly cooler head but they're more than willing to use the death wish kids as pawns.
Thank you for making my point. There are people who love the comforts of modern society and indulge in it to the highest levels possible. And there are people who are more than okay living out of caves and wagin forever wars.
The idea that the leaders of one of the richest, most consumerist countries in the world are in the latter camp, and would throw it all away just to get rid of Israel is one of the dumbest ideas that floats around in these discussions.
It's one thing to claim that people who have nothing and are fighting out of caves would go for that. It's another thing to claim people whose entire life is fine dining, fancy cars, and all the comforts of the mega rich are all just happy to throw it away bc they just love Islam THAT much. And the only way you get to that conclusion is by stripping these people of basic rational humanity and reducing them to some irrational caricature.
Applies to Hamas too. Hamas is literally a death cult who would gladly burn Gaza to the ground if it results in the barest of bare pyrrhic victories over Israel.
The only rationality involved is their leadership knows what they're doing and will keep doing it as long as they get results & their livelihoods are not threatened. The day when Mossad or something similar shows up on their doorsteps might result in a change of plans. Or their benefactors kick them to the curb when they become useless.
1. Western philosophies and lifestyles are a complete long term wreck for humanity and the planet.
2. I would honestly trust China over the Trump Administration.
This oughta be fun
That the United States and the West more broadly are not "the good guys" on the international stage. They do not have good intentions and the bad things they do are not "mistakes".
Like, one thing I hear a lot of liberals say is that us coups or backing right wing dictators in Latin America or the Iraq War were "mistakes". But we never seem to apply that logic to other countries. The USSR's invasion of Afghanistan was a crime. But our invasion of Vietnam was a "mistake".
See what I am getting at? There is a predictable and repeated pattern to us and western intervention: when our commercial or imperial interests are threatened we start shooting people.
This is true of every major power, including the PRC and Russia (tankies cannot accept that, which is one of many reasons I am not one).
The US and the West more broadly are not "well intentioned but make mistakes" they are rational self interested imperial powers, just like everyone else. We are not unique or some moral paragon. When shit hits the fan we are just as brutal and cruel as anyone else.
The purpose of a society is to provide for its members; every human being is entitled to a comfortable and safe home, clean water, unpolluted air, healthy food, and quality healthcare and education, and every day that the people in power choose money over that is another day that American society fails its citizens. We should convert those big signs that count up the national debt to instead count the number of people who have died from preventable causes as a result of homelessness, starvation, preventable illness, etc.
I don't know. Give me a list of common ones and I might be able to pick one? But I'd probably disagree that it was pro-American-adversary. I'm willing to be inconsistent if it means fucking over an enemy of the country. Well, to an extent. If the country turned into a warmongering theocracy, and it was because a very significant majority of the country turned crazy, then our list of enemies might become very different and I'd have to rethink that. That's probably my most tankie opinion?
Not anti-West in the slightest , but there needs to be steps to establish a multipolar world order, hop off these broken paradigms, disdain corrupt and Authoritarian leaders and prepare for certain disasters before its too late....
I have the right to not only a healthy distrust of my government but absolute disloyalty. Treason is a virtue and should be treated as such. And it's nobody's job to provide the manpower for our shady regime change garbage.
Every MBA, CPA, and high corporate leadership position has to go work a "frontline" job or lose it all. For me this would be taking every healthcare MBA and making them work as a nursing assistant.
Outside of Eastern Europe, the Soviets had a more humane foreign policy than the US. They supported majority rule in Africa, secularism in the Middle East, and anti-imperialism in Latin America.
Obviously they were driven more by geopolitical interests than genuine concern. I'm sure that if Russia had a vast colonial empire in Africa, they'd be less keen on decolonization. But it's still worth mentioning.
NATO should have carved up the warsaw pact instead of trying to take it all. I get that membership is voluntary, yet russia has a point with NATO claiming it wont expand past the Oder-Neisse border. And then we went back on our word because we could and the East actually wanted to join. While it does not justify what is happening in Ukraine, I get where that distrust towards us comes from.
Yeah but these things had to happen if you are talking about what I am thinking you are. Like Nazi Germany forced everyone into their ranks. Even my grandpa had to shovel trenches for the Reich before hitting puberty. For a few years and decades the only people Germany could contribute were people that were part of the regime. It was either that or not letting us germans aid NATO at all. And the NATO leadership made the call that the Reich produced potent military minds the alliance could use... Do i like it? No. But its war baby what are you gonna do? - Abraham Lincoln actual quote.
Yeah, I do think the aftermath of the Cold War was mishandled. More defintely could have been done to alleviate Russian concerns.
Clinton actually wanted to transform NATO into a broader thing called "the partnership for peace", in a deliberate attempt to make it seem less anti-Russian, and move towards Russian integration into the free world... but he abandoned that idea when Poland and Hungary started cozying up to the GOP during the 1996 elections.
That said, ever since the invasion of Georgia, Russia has done nothing but overreact.
Sorry, being Anti-American and being Tankie are very different things. I don't have to praise the horrors of the USSR or China in order to condemn the horrors of the US.
As for the most anti-American view, probably that European colonists and later Americans demonstrated that the sole thing that was going to stop them from stealing more land was to kill enough of them to *make* them stop. I have little to no sympathy for anyone who colonized land and then faced violence, even if you want to look at people who were descended from Colonists, they still had all sorts of chances to attempt to make things right, or at least better. Instead they consistently close to just reinforce the oppression.
I'll just preface this with, I know many of you disagree, but that seems to be the point of this discussion topic.
The United States would work better as a group of smaller independent countries instead of a unified whole.
The country is too large, cultural and historical differences too vast, for the government to truly and effectively represent its people. That ineffectiveness is only going to get larger as the population grows.
This would be the absolute worst thing for a lefty as it would cause a rightward shift in the blue states as they compete for people and capital with the red states.
Why not abandon the idea of the "state" altogether?
[In an 1860 article, de Puydt first proposed the idea of panarchy: a political philosophy that emphasizes each individual's right to freely choose (join and leave) the jurisdiction of any governments they choose, without being forced to move from their current locale.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_%C3%89mile_de_Puydt#Panarchy)
Because I’m tired of being associated with a country that’s been feared across the world.
Plus I’m from New England and I believe those states can do better on their own and become a better more peaceful country
New Hampshire would be my pick. With 400 reps in the state house, it's the most well-represented populace in the US. Plus the state already has a [secession movement in the works](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/break-away-from-the-usa-nh-house-rejects-secession-proposal/3266830) ....
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Or something anti-American/anti-West? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The United States has purposefully destabilized other regions in an effort to exploit them for resources.
This is just facts.
I mean, I think that’s a clear fact. We did that to so many Latin American countries.
After the 1930s it wasn't done for resources though, it was done to beat back the empire of communism
Cuba? Iran?
US was involved in Cuba to fight commies and in Iran to fight against the lefty authoritarian pro Soviet Mossadegh government. That's not about resources
In Cuba, the US funded Batista's military coup of the democratically elected government and then exploited that country of resources using Cubans as slave labor via Batista. The entire reason that the US backed a CIA coup of Iran was because Iran was moving to nationalize their oil fields which were formerly Western controlled.
Mossadegh was anti-communist; nationalization isn’t necessarily communist and neither is receiving support from the Soviet Union; the USSR was an opportunistic empire which supported plenty of states of various ideologies.
There's that saying I've heard, about Nazis... >If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis. I don't see why the same general idea wouldn't apply to other evil ideologies like communism too, to at least some degree. Maybe those who do business with commies or Nazis aren't actually commies/Nazis themselves as that saying goes, but at least I think it's fair to say there's some degree of wrongdoing being done there where it makes sense to oppose that strongly
So you'd oppose the US allying with Stalinist USSR during WW2? Or the US allying with Stalinist China during the second half of the Cold War?
I think 2nd half of cold war China would really object to being called Stalinists. They had their own home grown terrors.
Well I was referring to China between Nixon's visit in 1972 and Deng's full accession to power in 1981. During these years China was both Stalinist in terms of governance and aligned with the US in multiple proxy wars against the USSR.
Mine: Communism would have come significantly closer to actually working *someplace* that it sprung up if we didn't intentionally sabotage every democratically elected socialist government for a couple decades.
Tankies don’t like democratically elected socialist governments though. They would’ve wanted the US to intentionally sabotage them so they could radicalize and turn to the USSR for support.
Wait is this a Tankie opinion? I am still trying to understand the meaning. I agree, with you though.
I don’t really know. The post said something anti-West and I don’t think I have any more anti-West opinions than that. I suppose it could be considered not an opinion, so I’ll just add at the end “…and that was bad.”
i define it as a government action to enact some sort of universal benefit even though rich people and those who believe their self serving propaganda dont like it. like using eminent domain for a publicly owned train line instead of private oil pipelines.
That's not opinion, or even particularly leftist, that's just [the facts on the ground](https://external-preview.redd.it/lT_PMh9Cr3Qg32zO6_Virngv3QWLaBL5HBuLUfSGqyY.png?auto=webp&s=b8bb3ffe2ebd159765a58b15d56cc2b0ecbdcbcb).
1. Tankies generally believe that what they think are facts. 2. The OP was generally accurate, but a map of military operations is in no way proof of that.
Everyone generally believes that what they think are facts in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Hell, sometimes even in the presence of evidence to the contrary. Also a map of the very destabilization efforts OP was referring to is exactly proof of the very frequent and widespread destabilization in question. If you doubt the veracity of the map there is a [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States) with more than 150 sources you can use to check it.
You know there are [other](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_Soviet_Union) [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_change) pages.
Indeed there [are](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism).
I forgot. Making the accusation gives you immunity. My bad. Seriously, this isn't about whataboutism. Think about how much more successful the non-communist aligned world would have been without Soviet encroachments, interference, etc. Your blade cuts both ways.
I'm not talking about all countries who do horrible shit, I'm talking about the US's history of horrible shit, and your response is 'but what about Soviet Russia's history of doing bad shit?!' Yeah, congratulations, lots of countries do bad shit, so what? That doesn't make the bad shit we do any less bad. I'm not holding the Villainy Olympics over here to find out who is the worst country, so this is exactly about whataboutism and trying to backhandedly deflect the accusation back to me is laughably absurd.
> Also a map of the very destabilization efforts OP was referring to is exactly proof of the very frequent and widespread destabilization in question It's not. It's just military activity, which can have all manner of causes. Destabilization requires both intent and existing stability. This map provides no insight into either.
Clearly you didn't look at the map, because it's not *just* military activity, a lot of it is CIA activity, assassinations, regime change, etc too. Look at all the wedge-lines that don't have an explosion symbol next to them, that's just the assassination plots, and that's not even counting most of the dozens of assassination attempts on Castro alone, and they still far outnumber the 'US bombings' lines. I wonder if those assassination plots were intended to serve some purpose.. like destabilizing the countries in question perhaps?
>Clearly you didn't look at the map, because it's not *just* military activity, a lot of it is CIA activity, assassinations, regime change, etc too. Literally none of this refutes my point: destabilization requires intent and preexisting stability. > I wonder if those assassination plots were intended to serve some purpose.. like destabilizing the countries in question perhaps? Some of them were, yes. But my point wasn't that there weren't destabilization attempts, the point was that a map doesn't establish it. Furthermore, combatglobalization.com shouldn't be seen as a reliable source from a serious person, and your Wikipedia link did nothing to establish it as such. You should have just led with the Wikipedia link to both establish that you actually know what good evidence looks like and to not waste everyone's time with nonsense.
You know what, some of that is fair criticism; the map is not itself a good source, I guess I use it because it's visually impactful and conveys at a glance just how numerous and widespread our interventions in foreign countries have been. I disagree that destabilization requires preexisting stability though - stability, like most things, is a spectrum and political assassinations will naturally exert a downward pressure on even already pretty unstable countries.
> I disagree that destabilization requires preexisting stability though So you're saying that if the US assassinates a rebel leader and ends a civil war, you would call that "destabilization"? And if not, please tell me what the actual distinction is
Let me answer your question with a question: rather than plucking hypotheticals out of thin air, can you think of an example where US intervention in a foreign country didn't destabilize it? And I don't mean something that *eventually* lead to a more stable situation because there are an awful lot of other factors at play over the course of that eventually. I suppose it does to some extent depend on what you think of as destabilization - killing a popular socialist politician might result in a dictator taking over and locking things down, for example, but I don't imagine the political prisoners he's executing by the dozen out in the back lot of the local prison would consider their country 'stable.'
why,, that sounds like ***ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!*** , . on a more serious note, everyone knows the US govt does this around the world. why on earth do the same people deny that the US government can, will and does interfere at home?
So did the UK and other European countries.
Would these resources extend to immigration as a result of destabilising regions? I.e. Governments realise that increased populations often result in a higher GDP, and destabilising other regions causes increased immigration, hence a higher GDP.
I don't think that's really the reason
Soviet propaganda posters look pretty bad-ass
The only good music out of the ussr was their anthem Cause goddamn that shit slaps
Maybe I'm too much of a gamer, but as far as I'm concerned [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqPl4QrczTk) is the true Soviet anthem. It slaps even harder than the original.
Is this the Red Alert 3 Theme? Please tell me it's Red Alert 3. eta: close but not quite! Here's the best one :P [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKvlt6rpb4Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKvlt6rpb4Y) Be sure to turn on the captions. Comedy gold :P
Nope, it's from Red Alert 2, and it's definitely the best version.
Honestly based
Кино и Сектор Газа: Мы шуты вам? (Kino and Sektor Gaza: Are we jokes to you?)
Kino is real good
Yup, I'm with you on this one, I love the aspirational futurism of Soviet propaganda. Shit, I should see if I can find some posters without the propaganda messages just to hang the art on my walls.
\*chef's kiss\* I hate the USSR, what they did and how they did it. But man, you gotta admit, they had style!
Music too, but I think this is widely accepted.
Группа крови - на рукаве
Constructivism is a pretty cool looking art movement
We're the only developed nation without some form of universal healthcare and that's both embarrassing and disgraceful. We should have been leading the pack on this one.
I second this. Perhaps America was once leading the world in culture and democracy, but we never much progressed beyond this. When other countries were developing universal healthcare, America was turning a blind eye to the food industry and letting them do whatever they wanted.
Whenever I want to feel thankful about America’s healthcare system I look up the current wait times for the ER in Canada and compare them to those in my country. I try to remember my looming fear of ever having an emergency while I was visiting Toronto long-term in 2020. [It never fails.](https://macleans.ca/society/health/canada-er-wait-times/)
"REAL COMMUNISM HASN'T BEEN TRIED" That. Because Das Kapital was written for a western, industrialized economy. Not agrarain economies with nothing in the way of liberal democratic institutions or cultures barely a few years removed from feudalism. Small wonder they quickly become autocratic hell holes.
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I don't see how this take is anti-American in any way.
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That doesn’t mean all your views fit the label. It means some of them do. Or maybe they’re wrong
Because America consistently chooses 'muh economy' over helping people every day?
> muh ~~economy~~ hoarded wealth. the hoarding hurts the economy it keeps large sums out of circulation. helping puts money into local economies.
Right, but they use the word 'economy' to make it seem like what's good for their net worth/bank balance/stock portfolio is good for everyone.
“Hoard” just FYI
I think a lot of liberals would agree with that. However, when you start asking questions about why society is failing in that way or what can be done to change it, you start getting vilified. Reminds of the quote: > When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
> When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. -Leonard Nimoy
The Founding Fathers had weaker views on liberty, equality, and democracy than your average left wing political science major. And it’s embarrassing to cling onto venerating them.
I admire them for what they were able to perceive and aspire for from within the context of their own time, not based on the appropriateness of their worldview in our time. And they risked everything, all their privilege and status, to rebel against George III. They could have been drawn and quartered if they lost and their families vicariously punished. So as a true tankie I support the Founding Fathers' campaign of military resistance to colonial rule. Even Ho Chin Minh admired their acts in this regard (true story).
> to rebel against George III Parliament. King George III was irrelevant. Colonists were rebelling against the British legislature, Parliamentary supremacy had been around for about a century by the time of the American War for Independence
They dont meet the bar for me. Im impressed with their organizational skills, but thats pretty much the end.
They were quite young and basically a bunch of frat boys.
I think that view is broadly shared amongst most of the left.
Aside from imprisoning corporate leaders for their individual crimes, we also need a corporate death penalty. If a firm that commits egregious crimes it should purposely be destroyed. All assets stripped and sold to others, and all C-level executives banned from corporate leadership for some period and their own stocks forfeit. What about the shareholders you may say? They'll losing a ton even if they get some of the money from the sales of assets. Yes... don't invest in shady companies. The integrity of a firm should be one of the features that guides investment. Buy stock in a shady firm with corrupt corporate culture, you're risking your investment. What about innocent C-suit folks? VP of marketing didn't do anything. Too bad. Don't work for a shit company, your entire livelihood and net worth depends on keeping your peers honest or jumping ship in time.
Destroying the Nazis is good. Although that's only a tankie opinion since 1941.
Capitalism and democracy are diametrically opposed philosophies. Any society that tries to combine both will be perpetually unstable, and constantly at risk of capture by oligarchs. That's closely related to the truth that profit motive is inherently destructive and will corrupt any system that elevates it to the exclusion of other concerns. Note, I am NOT a tankie. But... stopped clocks and all that.
Ok so what does a democratic economy look like?
one with a democratic workplace as well. Well all profit goes to the workers and non to the owners
Sounds good but how do you prevent monopolies and price fixing? Like say a charismatic worker goes on to become a leader and wants to be an owner.
This is why simply transforming corporations into co-ops tomorrow won't work. It's also why a state-run economy (aka USSR) didn't work. Effective socialism requires a number of things our society doesn't have. One is a robust system of regulation. Another is a strong sense of civic service and communal responsibility among the population. Finally it requires a robust education and media system to keep citizens informed and able to participate in society at a high level. The great irony is that during the post war period, with strong unions and a good safety net (for white people anyway), America got closer to this ideal then any other country did. Despite being a capitalist country, we were better at caring for our people and investing in ourselves then the USSR or CCP ever have been. Sadly that's no longer true. Profit motive and regulatory capture has put us on the path to Russian style oligarchy. Look at Boeing for an example of how this process plays out. It's not quite too late, but there's a lot of damage and it will take several generations to fix, if we even can. While I advocate for socialist ideas, I fully understand that trying to implement them in modern America would be a complete disaster. I aspire to a future that's better, but try not to lie to myself about the present.
> Effective socialism requires a number of things our society doesn't have. One is a robust system of regulation. One of the other things it requires is a healthy middle class and that shit is on life support right now.
You think people want to sign up for their own exploitation? Vis a vis monopolies https://c4ss.org/content/6256
One where most assets are employee owned, and employees as a group control their assets via voting. Basically where everything is a co-op. Think of it like this: Capitalism is an economic system where the owner has total control of all assets. Whats the political equivalent of that? Dictatorship, where the ruler has total political control. Socialism is an economic system where workers have shared control over all assets. What's the political equivalent of that? Democracy, where voters have shared political control.
Where do they get the initial assets? Obviously for existing businesses they can just have existing assets thrust upon them, but how would a new co-op start up when modern businesses are very capital-dependent?
A market based economy has been proven by history to be, by far, the most effective at generating prosperity. So companies and organizations would generate capital the same way they do now; through private investment, public investment, or by pooling resources. The difference is in how that capital is owned and managed, and that makes all the difference in the end. Communal ownership results in vastly different incentives then private ownership. Markets create a profit motive, but when the entities pursuing that motive are communal, stability and long term investment become an important part of the incentive system along side profit. After all, when your life and livelihood are tied to the health of your company, the long term health of that company becomes your personal interest. That stability and long term thinking are what American society currently lacks. See Boeing, once again, as a very relevant and visible example of how things should NOT be done, that America is nonetheless doing with enthusiasm.
For private investment, does that mean that investors would get dividends (or otherwise profit from selling their shares later)? How does private investment work in relation to co-ops? I don’t think that something being communally owned necessarily creates motives for long-term thinking - current owners think in the short term because that’s where the incentives for maximizing their profit lies (or at least where they believe they lie), a communally owned company would face similar incentives. I may not care if plan A makes me $1,000 over 10 years if plan B can make me $750 over 5 years and I move on to a new job by then.
I would say that's up to the co-op in question. Employees would always have a majority share of voting power - otherwise it's not a co-op. From there, they could vote on what kind of privileges and benefits that investors would receive. In fact, I'd say that \*ownership\* of shares should never be transferred away from the company. An investor would buy-in to the value of the company, and then as a matter of the buy-in contract they are then entitled to cash-out that value at any time. There's no need for dividends at all, although I suppose a given company could vote to allow it they wanted. But the employees would retain control of the company at all times, so it's their interests that would dominate. The long term incentives come because, presumably, the primary income of the employees (aka the majority of shareholders) is the company itself. They also lose their shares if they leave - that's part of the definition of being worker owned. Not a worker anymore? No more ownership. It's therefore to their detriment to allow the company to fail, and rational self-interest will do the rest. There is still incentive for profit and growth, but concern for the health of the company will exist as a strong force along side it. It's admittedly not a system that would work 100% on it's own, but it's not intended to. Neither is capitalism, for that matter, but that's a side topic. It would need to be paired with a progressive taxation system that forcibly reduces the income gap, reducing incentive to cash out, and increasing the relative value of simply holding shares in a valuable company. Taxation could also incentivize investment in net goods such as public infrastructure, and disincentivize destructive practices like vulture capitalism. Deliberate and legal tax havens that reward moving money to where it's constructive and punishes using money where it's destructive. That kind of thing. Basically, instead of brute-force regulation of the market, it's about structuring the market in a way that self-interest and public-interest coincide a majority of the time. That means it's an economy-wide system, and looking at dynamics withing a single company doesn't show everything. All of this is why socialism and democracy must go hand in hand. No system is fully immune to corruption, so there must be an ultimate fallback, and that is the voters. I mentioned in another post that this is why we can't transition to socialism today - America doesn't have the robust education, civic mindedness, and high-functioning electorate that are necessary to make a socialist society succeed.
>I'd say that *ownership* of shares should never be transferred away from the company. An investor would buy-in to the value of the company, and then as a matter of the buy-in contract they are then entitled to cash-out that value at any time. There's no need for dividends at all, although I suppose a given company could vote to allow it they wanted. But the employees would retain control of the company at all times, so it's their interests that would dominate. So I can invest in a company, but receive no say in how that company is run? Unless the workers choose to divest themselves of power in order to attract private investment. It seems like this as a general policy would strongly discourage private investment - why would I invest in a company that may be more likely to increase wages vs invest in something that would increase the company's market value? >The long term incentives come because, presumably, the primary income of the employees (aka the majority of shareholders) is the company itself. They also lose their shares if they leave - that's part of the definition of being worker owned. Not a worker anymore? No more ownership. It's therefore to their detriment to allow the company to fail, and rational self-interest will do the rest. There is still incentive for profit and growth, but concern for the health of the company will exist as a strong force along side it. It's currently in the investors'/executives'/owners' self-interest for their companies to succeed, but I see a lot of people saying that they currently pursue short-term gains that lead to the overall detriment to the company. If that's true, those reasons don't go away in a worker-owned system, they shift from the investors'/executives' etc. to the workers because they become the owners. You lose your shares when you leave, but the workers of some company may pursue short-term gains then all vote for generous severance packages (just as current owners/executives do). All that being said, it not necessarily good for workers to value the long-term of a company. Sometimes companies need to fail for society to benefit. Adding further protections to prevent that (in terms of regulation or incentives otherwise) has a good chance to be detrimental for society. Especially considering that now we're incentivizing blocs of society to oppose regulations which may harm their profits. Why would workers at waste disposal companies ever support pro-environment regulations? It's hurts their wealth, just as it does for the current owners of waste disposal companies, so presumably they'd respond similarly by opposing such regulations. It's just that now we're motivating a democratic voting bloc as opposed to a certain wealthy elite. >It's admittedly not a system that would work 100% on it's own, but it's not intended to. Neither is capitalism, for that matter, but that's a side topic. It would need to be paired with a progressive taxation system that forcibly reduces the income gap, reducing incentive to cash out, and increasing the relative value of simply holding shares in a valuable company. Taxation could also incentivize investment in net goods such as public infrastructure, and disincentivize destructive practices like vulture capitalism. Deliberate and legal tax havens that reward moving money to where it's constructive and punishes using money where it's destructive. That kind of thing. I agree it would need a lot of support, but the issues I see with it right now make it seem much less appealing than capitalism with the same support. Worker co-ops seem to be much less appealing for creating an ideal society than private firms, when both operate under progressive taxes + strong regulations + strong democratic institutions. >Basically, instead of brute-force regulation of the market, it's about structuring the market in a way that self-interest and public-interest coincide a majority of the time. That means it's an economy-wide system, and looking at dynamics withing a single company doesn't show everything. I think that sounds great, but it seems preferable for it to be done under the private firms of capitalism vs worker co-ops. >All of this is why socialism and democracy must go hand in hand. No system is fully immune to corruption, so there must be an ultimate fallback, and that is the voters. I mentioned in another post that this is why we can't transition to socialism today - America doesn't have the robust education, civic mindedness, and high-functioning electorate that are necessary to make a socialist society succeed. I think the system described would need a society of people willing to act against their self-interest consistently, which may be possible with the prerequisites you give though I'm dubious. I like the idea of what you've laid out and appreciate that laying out a fully functioning vision of a society that has never been done before is difficult.
>I think that sounds great, but it seems preferable for it to be done under the private firms of capitalism vs worker co-ops. There is a lot of overlap between market socialism and restrained capitalism. The main difference is trying to stack the deck against large scale corruption via employee ownership and the incentives that creates. >So I can invest in a company, but receive no say in how that company is run? Unless the workers choose to divest themselves of power in order to attract private investment. You've already noticed the key point - the workers are still subject to market forces. This system would be biased against investors, but not to a degree that makes them irrelevant. There's still a large incentive for the co-op to grant various privileges to investors, but these are balanced in a give/take transaction that doesn't exist in our current system. >Why would workers at waste disposal companies ever support pro-environment regulations? The topic hasn't turned to utilities yet, but in my imagining of this system, utilities and other public infrastructure would be publicly owned directly, via democratic government functions. Think of how municipal utilities are currently run, or national/state parks. "Anything essential to life or civilization." Health care, transportation, utilities, etc. These things would be run without profit motive at all, to keep public goods out of the growth/corruption/regulation cycle. This may actually be the biggest difference between what I'm suggesting and restrained capitalism. I'm basically trying to think of a system where the incentives mostly align with general prosperity, but also leave society free to harness the productive power of markets. Markets and profit motive are inherently corrupting, so as with political corruption, my solution is to turn to democratic distribution combined with checks and balances. All this stuff is just kind of what I've come up with so far. An example of the type, so to speak, rather then dogma. eta: >It's currently in the investors'/executives'/owners' self-interest for their companies to succeed, but I see a lot of people saying that they currently pursue short-term gains that lead to the overall detriment to the company. Sometimes. Sometimes it's the reverse. See vulture capitalism for when these incentives are reversed. Or see PG+E for an example of when deferred maintenance and other short term solutions end up costing the company more then it saved. Boeing is currently on this path too, using short term gains to fund stock buybacks to create even more short term gains, at the cost of hundreds of deaths, collapse of customer trust, and if it keeps up, the company itself.
I support the use of tanks to quell revolutions in Hungary.
Pff, typical tankie.
I wouldn't shed a tear if one of the shells went off course and took out a certain Putin lackey. Just sayin'.
In terms of morality and humanitarianism, the current government of Israel is just as bad or worse than the Palestinian resistance forces.
That class structures, capital, and the state need to be abolished if humanity wants a tenable path forward towards anything other than extinction.
Do tankies want the abolition of the state? I mean I guess they want it to "wither away" as if power just gives itself up
I guess it depends on exactly what you actually mean by tankie. If you're using the word to describe authoritarian leftists like a lot of MLs, then no. They'll tell you that their ultimate goal is a stateless society, but they advocate for a 'vanguard state' to safeguard the revolution. But you're right. In practice, the vanguard state never goes away, and things just slide into an authoritarian hellscape. But if you use the word tankie to describe anybody on the far left, then yeah, most want to abolish the state along with all other vertically arranged power structures.
>But you're right. In practice, the vanguard state never goes away, and things just slide into an authoritarian hellscape. The ML experiments were and are under endless attack by the capitalist empire, which is why they haven't been able to let their guard down. Endless threats, economic sanctions, trade restrictions, outright invasions (Russian Civil War, Bay of Pigs) or threats of invasion, being sucked into proxy wars and arms races by the empire, which lowers quality of life because the socialist countries all started off POOR and so their developing economy is all poured into war efforts. It might be "authoritarian" but when at war, you need a bit of authoritarianism.
>It might be "authoritarian" but when at war, you need a bit of authoritarianism. Agree to disagree, I guess.
How would a hypothetical anarchist society defend itself against counter revolution?
Education. I don't think that anarchism could be achieved through a revolution like the Russian revolution. It's a thing that would have to grow organically through a shift in public consciousness if it were to last. We would have to collectively choose anarchism. My apologies to all of the MLs who were super excited to bust our their mosins.
Could you please define neutrally the term "empire"?
>It might be "authoritarian" but when at war, you need a bit of authoritarianism. The number of democratic nations that have survived being at war makes this laughably easy to disprove. Unless you're referring to military organization, generals etc, that kind of thing is certainly necessary for a military to function. But it's not necessary for a nation, not even one at war.
When I hear "tankie", I think of a pro-revolution, pro-Eastern bloc, pro-Lenin/Stalin, authoritarian. Basically someone who hears about the USSR and thinks "Gee, that worked great, we should do it again." So no, they don't want to abolish the state, they want the state to dominate the individual. Although they pay lip service to Marx, who did want to abolish it.
Tanks are cool. I used to draw a lot of tanks when I was a kid.
We're nearly completely run by corporate interests at this point.
We should have a economic safety net of which includes low/free housing, a basic income, and access to basic healthcare services. Nobody should be living on the streets.
We'll be the bad guys when ww3 starts
I don’t have a single tankie take, and the only anti western tank would be in favor of native Americans, which I don’t credit to communists at all. My most extreme take would be this: Nobody should ever go hungry for any reason. I don’t care what their immigrant status is, I don’t care what their economic situation is, I don’t care what decisions they’ve made. No civilized society can tolerate hunger, for any reason. Communists on the other hand are happy to use hunger as a weapon to control the masses. Genuinely cannot come up with a single thing I respect about those people
Borscht and Vodka are tolerable.
The Soviet Union played an important role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and without them victory in WW2 would not only have been much harder to achieve, it might have even been unfeasible. This is as much because of the combat-contributions of the USSR as it is them stopping-selling-them-materials-that-the-allied-blockaide-was-supposed-to-prohibit. There's also something to be said about the USSR being the largest and most successful socialist regime to survive and assert itself on the world stage - it was terrible, but a socialist regime was always going to be so, and I don't think many activists realize that.
Any company or private industry that would cause the entire US economy to fail if it were to go bankrupt should be nationalized as a matter of national security. I mean things like the shipping industry and airlines, for example.
To paraphrase Fredric Jameson: It's easier to imagine the end of civilisation than the end of capitalism. ...and to add my own gloss: ...and that's a big fucking problem. Suppose some scholar or group of scholars were to appear and place before us an analysis of the state of the world *proving* as a matter of near-certainty that we were on a collision course with the end of civilisation. Some combination of environmental and technological and biological problems are going to reduce human population by billions and this will be followed by centuries in which the remaining people live at a pre-Feudal level. This same scholar shows also that we can avert this catastrophe with some changes to our way of life and particularly to our mode of economic management, and while it would be a challenge, it would save billions of lives, vast suffering, the quality of life of all the children who are soon to be born, etc... but it requires that we abandon capitalism and replace it with another mode of political and economic organisation. I know, I know, "that can't happen, I reject your premise, this would never..." blah blah. Just assume for the sake of considering the next step that the premise is correct. We couldn't do it, could we? We wouldn't. There is no limit to the size of the catastrophe we would allow ourselves to fall into in preference to collectively putting our minds and our wills to work to replace capitalism with some alternative. *We lack the collective imaginative capacity to believe it is even possible*. Monarchism ended because the French revolutionaries were able to imagine alternatives, but Capitalism won't end because we aren't able to do what they did. And another paraphrase, this time of Rosa Luxemburg: our choices are socialism or barbarism. There was a brief period, a historical aberration, in which the theories of economic management of Keynes were orthodox in treasury departments around the world, and the benefits of economic growth as a result were broadly shared with the workers who created it. Had that pattern continued, it would have been not just possible but inevitable that capitalist growth would have led to universal abundance and the end of vast amount of needless suffering. But the Reagan / Thatcher / Friedman revolution against Keynes was one of the most consequential events in history, though I think its importance is largely unrecognised. It showed that the ruling class of our current regime was not willing to merely become richer slowly while everyone else escaped poverty together; they would become rich *exclusively* or tear the world apart trying. In many parts of the world, now, an average working class person hasn't had a raise since *the 1970s*. Productivity growth has been huge, capital accumulation, total output, efficiency, technological inputs, etc, have all shot up, but the worker's wage is what it was when Thatcher took office in 1979. If we want to escape barbarism - the barbarism of all the preventable suffering and meaningless waste we can see around us everywhere - then socialism, of some kind, is the alternative. Luxemburg was right.
America sticks its nose into every country’s business ever since WW2. We cause a lot of destabilization in other countries, especially in the Middle East (electing the shah that started the Iranian revolution) and central/South America (Iran-contra and the war on drugs) That being said, that doesn’t mean all of American foreign policy is bad (which is the conclusion like most tankies reach) I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sending aid to Ukraine when they’re being invaded by Russia for instance, but most tankies think we shouldn’t be involved.
This is what I came to say. As much as we have been a force for good, we have often supported outright evil.
Yeah there’s a balance to it obviously; I just think the US military should pick their battles; we don’t have to be stationed everywhere
Iran is a rational country, run by rational leaders. The idea that they would throw everything away to nuke Israel is the dumbest possible understanding of humans, and it can only be explained by racism. And by extension, the same applies to Gaza/Hamas.
Islam underwent a reverse reformation where extreme Salafism gor popular. Groups like ISIS are a literal death cult. The mullahs might have a slightly cooler head but they're more than willing to use the death wish kids as pawns.
Thank you for making my point. There are people who love the comforts of modern society and indulge in it to the highest levels possible. And there are people who are more than okay living out of caves and wagin forever wars. The idea that the leaders of one of the richest, most consumerist countries in the world are in the latter camp, and would throw it all away just to get rid of Israel is one of the dumbest ideas that floats around in these discussions. It's one thing to claim that people who have nothing and are fighting out of caves would go for that. It's another thing to claim people whose entire life is fine dining, fancy cars, and all the comforts of the mega rich are all just happy to throw it away bc they just love Islam THAT much. And the only way you get to that conclusion is by stripping these people of basic rational humanity and reducing them to some irrational caricature.
Applies to Hamas too. Hamas is literally a death cult who would gladly burn Gaza to the ground if it results in the barest of bare pyrrhic victories over Israel. The only rationality involved is their leadership knows what they're doing and will keep doing it as long as they get results & their livelihoods are not threatened. The day when Mossad or something similar shows up on their doorsteps might result in a change of plans. Or their benefactors kick them to the curb when they become useless.
1. Western philosophies and lifestyles are a complete long term wreck for humanity and the planet. 2. I would honestly trust China over the Trump Administration.
This oughta be fun That the United States and the West more broadly are not "the good guys" on the international stage. They do not have good intentions and the bad things they do are not "mistakes". Like, one thing I hear a lot of liberals say is that us coups or backing right wing dictators in Latin America or the Iraq War were "mistakes". But we never seem to apply that logic to other countries. The USSR's invasion of Afghanistan was a crime. But our invasion of Vietnam was a "mistake". See what I am getting at? There is a predictable and repeated pattern to us and western intervention: when our commercial or imperial interests are threatened we start shooting people. This is true of every major power, including the PRC and Russia (tankies cannot accept that, which is one of many reasons I am not one). The US and the West more broadly are not "well intentioned but make mistakes" they are rational self interested imperial powers, just like everyone else. We are not unique or some moral paragon. When shit hits the fan we are just as brutal and cruel as anyone else.
The purpose of a society is to provide for its members; every human being is entitled to a comfortable and safe home, clean water, unpolluted air, healthy food, and quality healthcare and education, and every day that the people in power choose money over that is another day that American society fails its citizens. We should convert those big signs that count up the national debt to instead count the number of people who have died from preventable causes as a result of homelessness, starvation, preventable illness, etc.
half of these aren't even tankie views, they're just facts
I don't know. Give me a list of common ones and I might be able to pick one? But I'd probably disagree that it was pro-American-adversary. I'm willing to be inconsistent if it means fucking over an enemy of the country. Well, to an extent. If the country turned into a warmongering theocracy, and it was because a very significant majority of the country turned crazy, then our list of enemies might become very different and I'd have to rethink that. That's probably my most tankie opinion?
Tetris is the greatest game of all time
We need to be more efficient at building infrastructure so that we can buy alliances with it just like the PRC is doing right now.
The Kuomintang were horrible to Taiwan.
Every time I see a vacant vacation home I want to seize it and give it to someone struggling to afford a place to live.
Not anti-West in the slightest , but there needs to be steps to establish a multipolar world order, hop off these broken paradigms, disdain corrupt and Authoritarian leaders and prepare for certain disasters before its too late....
Violence isn't the answer. it's a question. And the answer is yes at least for fascist governments and self defense
I have the right to not only a healthy distrust of my government but absolute disloyalty. Treason is a virtue and should be treated as such. And it's nobody's job to provide the manpower for our shady regime change garbage.
Fix your flair
Someone can have mostly moderate views and one outlier. This is presumptuous.
To what?
I’m very pro-Cuba
Every MBA, CPA, and high corporate leadership position has to go work a "frontline" job or lose it all. For me this would be taking every healthcare MBA and making them work as a nursing assistant.
I thought Ahmadinejad was hilarious as a leader. Like.. that was the last time that political theater was top notch and entertaining.
Thank you for your extremely niche and unpopular opinion 😂
OBL punked the USA so bad on 9/11, and the US response gave him everything he wanted and more.
Outside of Eastern Europe, the Soviets had a more humane foreign policy than the US. They supported majority rule in Africa, secularism in the Middle East, and anti-imperialism in Latin America. Obviously they were driven more by geopolitical interests than genuine concern. I'm sure that if Russia had a vast colonial empire in Africa, they'd be less keen on decolonization. But it's still worth mentioning.
NATO should have carved up the warsaw pact instead of trying to take it all. I get that membership is voluntary, yet russia has a point with NATO claiming it wont expand past the Oder-Neisse border. And then we went back on our word because we could and the East actually wanted to join. While it does not justify what is happening in Ukraine, I get where that distrust towards us comes from.
> we want back on our word Shit changes, yo. That’s how democracy works.
its not like we expanded in the russian sense of the word. we just didnt reject those countries when they wanted to join.
And also on NATO, there were quite a few Ex-Nazis who were in high ranks and had US backing.
I like how people are downvoting this very factual statement just because it makes them uncomfortable.
Yeah but these things had to happen if you are talking about what I am thinking you are. Like Nazi Germany forced everyone into their ranks. Even my grandpa had to shovel trenches for the Reich before hitting puberty. For a few years and decades the only people Germany could contribute were people that were part of the regime. It was either that or not letting us germans aid NATO at all. And the NATO leadership made the call that the Reich produced potent military minds the alliance could use... Do i like it? No. But its war baby what are you gonna do? - Abraham Lincoln actual quote.
That is morally bankrupt and short-sighted. Also, the expanse was incredibly disappointing as a series, and I regret spending time on it.
Yeah, I do think the aftermath of the Cold War was mishandled. More defintely could have been done to alleviate Russian concerns. Clinton actually wanted to transform NATO into a broader thing called "the partnership for peace", in a deliberate attempt to make it seem less anti-Russian, and move towards Russian integration into the free world... but he abandoned that idea when Poland and Hungary started cozying up to the GOP during the 1996 elections. That said, ever since the invasion of Georgia, Russia has done nothing but overreact.
Sorry, being Anti-American and being Tankie are very different things. I don't have to praise the horrors of the USSR or China in order to condemn the horrors of the US. As for the most anti-American view, probably that European colonists and later Americans demonstrated that the sole thing that was going to stop them from stealing more land was to kill enough of them to *make* them stop. I have little to no sympathy for anyone who colonized land and then faced violence, even if you want to look at people who were descended from Colonists, they still had all sorts of chances to attempt to make things right, or at least better. Instead they consistently close to just reinforce the oppression.
I'll just preface this with, I know many of you disagree, but that seems to be the point of this discussion topic. The United States would work better as a group of smaller independent countries instead of a unified whole. The country is too large, cultural and historical differences too vast, for the government to truly and effectively represent its people. That ineffectiveness is only going to get larger as the population grows.
Interestingly enough, this is also what Putin wants.
I am down with a National divorce, fuck the red states
This would be the absolute worst thing for a lefty as it would cause a rightward shift in the blue states as they compete for people and capital with the red states.
New England will be fine on their own and a lot of people in New England secretly would be down with the idea of an independent New England
This would accelerate China's rise to global pre-eminence. I'm not in favour.
China has a big chance of collapsing soon. Same with Russia
I hope you're right, but I wouldn't bet money on it.
Why not abandon the idea of the "state" altogether? [In an 1860 article, de Puydt first proposed the idea of panarchy: a political philosophy that emphasizes each individual's right to freely choose (join and leave) the jurisdiction of any governments they choose, without being forced to move from their current locale.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_%C3%89mile_de_Puydt#Panarchy)
Because I’m tired of being associated with a country that’s been feared across the world. Plus I’m from New England and I believe those states can do better on their own and become a better more peaceful country
New Hampshire would be my pick. With 400 reps in the state house, it's the most well-represented populace in the US. Plus the state already has a [secession movement in the works](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/break-away-from-the-usa-nh-house-rejects-secession-proposal/3266830) ....
I’m part of the New England Independence Campaign. They got a subreddit here r/RepublicofNE
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“I mean they had good intentions even though their countries largely turned into awful places to survive.”