b3nsn0w

you mean fork him under a new maintainer?

pretty sure there’s lots of linux running there

hi rms

If you’re not interested in debating this, fine. Neither am I, tbh.

I’m just generally aggravated by this pattern where people posit that anyone who criticizes communism/socialism/any adjacent ideology just doesn’t understand what they’re talking about, and then when you actually make an attempt to figure out what the hell everyone supposedly doesn’t understand you get this mess of conflicting definitions expressed very confidently, where the only real pattern is that if you agree with communism/socialism/whatever that’s good, if you don’t that’s bad, now go figure out why. It kind of feels like talking to christians, actually.

i have no problem with socialist economic policies but i do have a problem with using authoritarianism and the facade of a “benevolent dictatorship” to achieve them.

the misunderstanding stems from the constant twisting of terms. like is communism what happened in the soviet bloc, or is it an as yet unachieved (and still probably technologically unachievable) dreamland that has never been tried? is socialism what the soviets had? or is that just a specific set of economic policies that the soviets did in fact have but completely divorced from its oppressive system? what did the soviets and its colonized countries actually have?

there is a certain system that the soviets have tried and it failed miserably. i would never support that system after seeing what it does to a country. but the way it comes off to me through this discussion is that socialism both is and isn’t that system, until observed, where the waveform collapses to whatever is more beneficial for the socialist’s argument here.

and yeah, i do think the political compass is also extremely reductive, but at some point we gotta figure out how to communicate whatever the hell we’re talking about.

i don’t see anything contradictory in there, i’m just not an extremist. not a centrist either, but the world doesn’t just consist of commies and fascists and people who haven’t picked a side yet. in fact, those aren’t even the two ends of the spectrum, and it’s actually rather insulting to most people to suggest so.

fascists can burn in hell as far as i’m concerned, but so can most of the authleft part of the spectrum. in general, it’s authies i’m the most opposed to. the economic right is stupid but a failing libright system tends to suck less than a failing authleft one. although neither suck as much as a failing authright one, that one i do agree with

(and imo even the two-axis political compass is super reductive but at least it gets the point across that i stand with neither fascists not communists)

assuming you’re being honest here, you’re welcome. but if that is indeed the passive-aggressive mockery it sounds like then that might explain why people can’t take you seriously outside of echo chambers.

well, i can actually support democratic socialist governments, and i actually have voted for a party trying to build that out on every single occasion so far while i had a vote. i’m also all for integrating socialist principles into a capitalist society – i do actually believe capitalism is a great tool for the luxuries in life, but the necessities must be provided to all for it to actually work. like supply and demand both need to be variable for it to work, if everyone needs a home you can’t have the market “just figure it out” on the pricing of hosing, it’s going to result in rampant exploitation, but a market for upgraded housing compared to a baseline would very much work.

mostly i was just directly responding to the notion communicated to me in this conversation, which is that the path to communism is a state that takes power away from people for their own good, builds a society for them, and then gives back that power, or at the very least allows the people to take back that power with force. that promise is bogus and has been the previous 40 times a nation has been sold on it. as someone who has to live in the aftermath of one of those attempts, i’m not going to not blame it for its lies and its oppression. especially when the system it’s trying to reach, as described in this very thread, has been technologically impossible to reach on the scale of even just hungary, let alone the whole soviet bloc

not everyone is on an instance ran by tankies though, like you are. so yeah, that’s probably a good idea. just know your audience.

no, i’m trying to create an equivalence between fascism and socialism, or whatever you call that transitional dictatorship that’s hopefully benevolent. because that’s the notion by which fascism works too, it just doesn’t make an impossible promise about a system it will transform into.

your hilarious “if you are not with me you are my enemy (and also a nazi)” bullshit probably works on someone who also drunk the kool-aid on “this system will totally lead us to communism, we know that was a lie the previous 40 times but we totally fixed it now, trust me bro”, but the errors in it and the sweaty attacks on character to mask them should be obvious to anyone not already indoctrinated into your particular idea of a “good” dictator.

idk what you’re gonna do with me being on record on preferring a somewhat less authoritarian system to your more authoritarian system that comes with a promise of snake oil but go off i guess. (while, mind you, i already dislike the less authoritarian system enough to actively work on leaving the country)

it’s amazing how much you hate fascists despite openly advocating for a system that’s exactly like it in all but an but a lie about what it will eventually, hopefully, pinky promise transform into, exactly as it always did when it was attempted. like are you naive enough to believe that this time it will work, still completely ignoring how the general idea of keys to power functions, or are you just waving the opposing flag and larping that your ideas are good because they’re bad and you oppose them so it must be so?

i voted against it every single time and i’ll gtfo as soon as i can because i lost hope that we can turn this ship back to democracy. but yes, i’d gladly take this over the soviet system that prevented us from leaving. the crazy attempts to cross the border to austria is a massive part of our culture thanks to the occupation in those 45 years of a “transitional period”

nice copium, but over here in hungary, one of the countries your glorious ussr managed to colonize that’s not really the picture we got. the ten years following the collapse of the soviet system were by far the best ten years of this country in living memory, until the dust settled and an amalgamation of the old elite and the supposed revolutionaries took back control and re-instituted the same oligopoly, albeit with somewhat less oppression this time.

the whole point of having a transitional period between market capitalism and true communism is to reach that communism. that never happened. instead, the people were robbed of everything of value by an elite who claimed to represent the proletariat but was anything but that, and then it was re-privatized at the end of this period into the hands of a new elite. to give credit where it’s due, this is in fact a redistribution of wealth, it just goes the other way than what’s often heralded, and only made the rich richer and the average person more powerless.

and how do you wish to avoid that the leaders of said transitional socialist period just cling to power?

as someone who has to live in the aftermath of one of those “transitional socialist periods” that predictably went nowhere and just broke the country’s spirit completely, i’m really damn curious. we are not talking about hypotheticals here.

oh, i see, makes sense then why it was never tried. how are we going to have a society without a state to govern it? (i mean not to concern troll here, if a solution can be created for this that would be genuinely interesting, but for example that council the soviets created a century ago was clearly a state)

And what would be those conditions?

They did lead our last good government. And yes, I’d like that too, I voted for the coalition they were in in every election since I had the right to vote. I’m just saying that things being better is not the same as reinstating the same regime we had under the soviets, that would be pretty universally things going worse.

We’re in a failing capitalist system, but it still manages to be less oppressive than the failing socialist/communist/call it whatever you want system we had before.

Hungarian here. We had ten good years, then the same ruling class started to do the same shit they did back then but under a different name. But at least nowadays you can leave the country, which many do since – the frequent attempts to do so were an important cultural touchstone here in the 45 years of soviet occupation.

Trust me, no one wants the same shit back, that’s just a political talking point propping up Orbán’s pro-russian bullshit.

no one can, not even those who advocate for it. (aside from “not that thing that was repeatedly tried and failed”)

that’s a question for the scientists to answer, we just have to watch their incentive structures and verify that they’re doing their peer review