It’s not just tankies. Almost the entirety of human history can be boiled town to various more or less effective movements for liberation getting co-opted by selfish assholes and becoming the thing they swore to destroy.
liberation getting co-opted by selfish assholes and becoming the thing they swore to destroy
Totally, like the USSR. They started out with a good idea of redistributing and communalizing the means of production, but ended up creating a new ruling class of politicians that exploited people just as much. Just look at modern evidence of income inequality in the USSR compared to Tsarism (pre-1917) and capitalism (post-1990):
See? By looking at factual evidence… wait… hold up… Income inequality actually maintained itself at the historical lowest in the region during communism’s entire existence… Well, time to disregard my comment because I’m a tankie and a Ruzzian bot, amirite?
The hierarchies present in the USSR didn’t take the form of income inequality. You’re taking a metric that is very useful for analyzing capitalist countries and using it in a context where it doesn’t make much sense.
Anyway, the comparison with the west isn’t really relevant to the comparison I would make in that case, which would be between the initial revolutionary movement and where it ended up.
The hierarchies present in the USSR didn’t take the form of income inequality
Wonderful, do you have any numeric data to present?
Non-income sources of access to goods and services perhaps? Such as the universal access to jobs, and universal access to housing mostly through the work union? Universal access to education to the highest level for free? Widely available, high quality, dense, affordable, high frequency public transit? High quantity of public sport facilities, art centres and so-called “culture houses”? Which of those was, numerically and with data, less egalitarian in the USSR?
the comparison I would make in that case, which would be between the initial revolutionary movement and where it ended up
The graph goes from pre-revolution, to Bolshevism, and to capitalism. You can see that income inequality remained somewhat stable during Socialism, and was much lower than before or after.
What somebody formally owns and gets in income isn’t the same as the wealth they actually control in authoritarian systems
Great, why don’t you provide us with some numerical metrics of that in the Soviet Union vs. modern Russia or USA? Or are you possibly just making it up without evidence?
wealth equality through being poor isn’t that brilliant
I agree. So did the soviets, and that’s why they took a backwards feudal nation in Europe with 85% of the population composed of exploited peasants with an average life expectancy of 28 years, and industrialized the country until it was the second world power, the majority of the population were city dwellers with modern lives and amenities, and rose life expectancy to 70+ years.
fascism is the status quo recognizing that the people are waking up to the status quo not working for them, and the coopting the symbology of liberation to maintain itself
Because of the current social political climate, I’m learning so much about things I never thought I would. This little comic just made it click why the Nazi Germany party was a national socialist party.
it’s also worth noting this pattern of ebb and flow, subjugation and liberation, is as old as civilization itself. political theorists didn’t invent any of this, they just wrote down what the dissidents of their age were doing. fascism wasn’t created in the 1920s, it was merely named. Karl Marx didn’t create communism, he just named what he saw people working towards. for as long as humans have lived in hierarchical societies, they have discussed and planned how to bring about an end to these hierarchies that they suffer under.
Mussolini was more honest about it (inasmuch as a fascist can be honest). Despite having practically invented the term, he admitted that fascism should really be called corporatism, as it was a merger of state and corporate power.
Of course he still called it fascism, though, because it was a (then) meaningless name with roots on the Roman empire which could be attractive to his supporters. If he’d called it by its proper name probably no one would have supported it, other than the oligarchs in charge.
That’s a pretty broad statement for the amount of nuance history has on liberation movements. From what I can tell it’s usually more along the lines of 8 steps forward and 6 steps back over time. Voting rights for women are very unlikely to be removed for example.
Right now it’s a period of democratic backsliding and fascism but this is nothing compared to the imperial era where European powers would just massacre Africans and take their resources.
To sum up my point, we swore to destroy a lot of things, then we destroyed a bunch of them, reintroduced some back and ended up making progress.
Maybe I didn’t explain it very well. I wasn’t saying progress was impossible. But the individual organizations, nations, leaders, etc. often end up getting caught up in this trajectory. Once this happens, there will usually be a new movement to try to fight against the new dominant hegemony. Sometimes the old power wins, sometimes the new one does, but inevitably, whoever wins will keep regressing. But there can still be a big change as the old guard is replaced (or sometimes bullied into submission).
So, it’s probably not universally true, but it’s a pattern that I’ve started noticing again and again as I study history.
That makes sense and I agree with you, I got a bit confused by the the way it’s phrased since I felt like it implied “Good kicks out bad, good becomes the bad” infinite loop. But general enshittification of most things is a very strong trend in history.
I’ve read about a bunch of “Power consolidation - > one man controls all - > successor is unqualified - > people get upset - > regime change”. Have an upvote for intention :)
it’s why us lefties focus more on systems than on people. a marxist approach to history reveals that this has been happening and likely continue happening until we muster some fundamental change in how we organize. it’s like there’s an 80 year cyclical race where the “revolution” (not the revolution) happens, people accept that it’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement, they fail to educate their children about the problems with the old regime and the current regime, until eventually a time comes when no one remembers the last cycle anymore and the whole process gets repeated.
fwiw, i thought what you were saying was pretty clear hence posting the fascism definition comic that just takes what you said and puts doodles to it. but for some reason you got downvoted to hell and i got hella upvotes. i even looked at lemvotes and saw several people downvoting you and upvoting me, which i find confusing. it seems like lemmy is going through a weird moment
Not really, they dont say that when you go far left enough you wrap around to the right, they say that selfish or malicious people have ruined movements for liberation historically by twisting them
It’s not just tankies. Almost the entirety of human history can be boiled town to various more or less effective movements for liberation getting co-opted by selfish assholes and becoming the thing they swore to destroy.
Totally, like the USSR. They started out with a good idea of redistributing and communalizing the means of production, but ended up creating a new ruling class of politicians that exploited people just as much. Just look at modern evidence of income inequality in the USSR compared to Tsarism (pre-1917) and capitalism (post-1990):
See? By looking at factual evidence… wait… hold up… Income inequality actually maintained itself at the historical lowest in the region during communism’s entire existence… Well, time to disregard my comment because I’m a tankie and a Ruzzian bot, amirite?
The hierarchies present in the USSR didn’t take the form of income inequality. You’re taking a metric that is very useful for analyzing capitalist countries and using it in a context where it doesn’t make much sense.
Anyway, the comparison with the west isn’t really relevant to the comparison I would make in that case, which would be between the initial revolutionary movement and where it ended up.
Wonderful, do you have any numeric data to present?
Non-income sources of access to goods and services perhaps? Such as the universal access to jobs, and universal access to housing mostly through the work union? Universal access to education to the highest level for free? Widely available, high quality, dense, affordable, high frequency public transit? High quantity of public sport facilities, art centres and so-called “culture houses”? Which of those was, numerically and with data, less egalitarian in the USSR?
The graph goes from pre-revolution, to Bolshevism, and to capitalism. You can see that income inequality remained somewhat stable during Socialism, and was much lower than before or after.
What somebody formally owns and gets in income isn’t the same as the wealth they actually control in authoritarian systems.
Also, wealth equality through being poor isn’t that brilliant
Great, why don’t you provide us with some numerical metrics of that in the Soviet Union vs. modern Russia or USA? Or are you possibly just making it up without evidence?
I agree. So did the soviets, and that’s why they took a backwards feudal nation in Europe with 85% of the population composed of exploited peasants with an average life expectancy of 28 years, and industrialized the country until it was the second world power, the majority of the population were city dwellers with modern lives and amenities, and rose life expectancy to 70+ years.
Just wanted to say: keep up the goated work, like in this thread in general
Thanks comrade
fascism is the status quo recognizing that the people are waking up to the status quo not working for them, and the coopting the symbology of liberation to maintain itself
Trump’s hands are drawn way too big. Other than that, yeah, that’s about it.
Because of the current social political climate, I’m learning so much about things I never thought I would. This little comic just made it click why the Nazi Germany party was a national socialist party.
it’s also worth noting this pattern of ebb and flow, subjugation and liberation, is as old as civilization itself. political theorists didn’t invent any of this, they just wrote down what the dissidents of their age were doing. fascism wasn’t created in the 1920s, it was merely named. Karl Marx didn’t create communism, he just named what he saw people working towards. for as long as humans have lived in hierarchical societies, they have discussed and planned how to bring about an end to these hierarchies that they suffer under.
Mussolini was more honest about it (inasmuch as a fascist can be honest). Despite having practically invented the term, he admitted that fascism should really be called corporatism, as it was a merger of state and corporate power.
Of course he still called it fascism, though, because it was a (then) meaningless name with roots on the Roman empire which could be attractive to his supporters. If he’d called it by its proper name probably no one would have supported it, other than the oligarchs in charge.
worth noting: he named his party the catholic socialist party.
That’s a pretty broad statement for the amount of nuance history has on liberation movements. From what I can tell it’s usually more along the lines of 8 steps forward and 6 steps back over time. Voting rights for women are very unlikely to be removed for example.
Right now it’s a period of democratic backsliding and fascism but this is nothing compared to the imperial era where European powers would just massacre Africans and take their resources.
To sum up my point, we swore to destroy a lot of things, then we destroyed a bunch of them, reintroduced some back and ended up making progress.
Maybe I didn’t explain it very well. I wasn’t saying progress was impossible. But the individual organizations, nations, leaders, etc. often end up getting caught up in this trajectory. Once this happens, there will usually be a new movement to try to fight against the new dominant hegemony. Sometimes the old power wins, sometimes the new one does, but inevitably, whoever wins will keep regressing. But there can still be a big change as the old guard is replaced (or sometimes bullied into submission).
So, it’s probably not universally true, but it’s a pattern that I’ve started noticing again and again as I study history.
That makes sense and I agree with you, I got a bit confused by the the way it’s phrased since I felt like it implied “Good kicks out bad, good becomes the bad” infinite loop. But general enshittification of most things is a very strong trend in history.
I’ve read about a bunch of “Power consolidation - > one man controls all - > successor is unqualified - > people get upset - > regime change”. Have an upvote for intention :)
it’s why us lefties focus more on systems than on people. a marxist approach to history reveals that this has been happening and likely continue happening until we muster some fundamental change in how we organize. it’s like there’s an 80 year cyclical race where the “revolution” (not the revolution) happens, people accept that it’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement, they fail to educate their children about the problems with the old regime and the current regime, until eventually a time comes when no one remembers the last cycle anymore and the whole process gets repeated.
fwiw, i thought what you were saying was pretty clear hence posting the fascism definition comic that just takes what you said and puts doodles to it. but for some reason you got downvoted to hell and i got hella upvotes. i even looked at lemvotes and saw several people downvoting you and upvoting me, which i find confusing. it seems like lemmy is going through a weird moment
deleted by creator
I think you’re describing the horeseshoe theory:
Not really, they dont say that when you go far left enough you wrap around to the right, they say that selfish or malicious people have ruined movements for liberation historically by twisting them