I’ll affirm that the people here are serious, they just like jokes, but wanted to particularly respond to this:
Users on other instances say you guys are “tankies”, and from what I understand, that’s essentially the authoritarian version of the left; instead of being the more moderate-ish(?) leftists/communists. Which one do you guys identify under?
I’m a Marxist-Leninist (ML for short) and most people here are either MLs or anarchists, but I’m making the comment because I wanted to share this video that is relevant to the question:
Without even looking, I have to imagine someone else hit you with “On Authority” by Engels, which is correct but I think used as a bludgeon too often. Short version of its relevance is that when capitalists own the state, diffusing “authority” into private interests who have state violence backing them up is no less “authoritarian.” That’s not actually what he says in the text – he was mostly writing contra-anarchist-critics – but that’s why I think people trot it out too much when they are usually just responding to neoliberals who don’t share the correct assumptions that Engels agrees anarchists do and then predicates his argument on.
Thank you for linking this video. A lot of the political compass stuff never really made sense to me but this articulates the feelings I had about it really well, and I learned a lot (esp. the comments about gun control, and how gun freedom serves the ruling class by creating terror in most cases)
That video is great! To add a small caveat to the gun control point, you’ll find a few users here who are into guns, own their own and/or attend a range with some regularity, and it’s not inconsistent with their socialist/communist principles.
While it is true that gun freedom, as it is spoused by most people who support it in the US mostly serves the ruling class, many leftist organizations or leaders have understood the power that having the means to defend oneself from the orchestrated violence of the state, or other actors who will not hesitate at using violence against leftists/racialized or LGBTQIA+ people has, and how it is sometimes necessary when trying to build power structures that attend to those same peoples’ needs outside of a capitalist system.
A key difference between a right-wing and a left-wing gun owner is that the left-wing one, given the conditions for it, will prefer those guns to be in collective control and ownership, and not at the service of an individual and their needs. Well, that, and that the left-wing one will be anticapitalist.
I just wanted to preemptively introduce this concept before you saw one of our gun fans in the wild and were confused by it.
I’ll affirm that the people here are serious, they just like jokes, but wanted to particularly respond to this:
I’m a Marxist-Leninist (ML for short) and most people here are either MLs or anarchists, but I’m making the comment because I wanted to share this video that is relevant to the question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nPVkpWMH9k
Without even looking, I have to imagine someone else hit you with “On Authority” by Engels, which is correct but I think used as a bludgeon too often. Short version of its relevance is that when capitalists own the state, diffusing “authority” into private interests who have state violence backing them up is no less “authoritarian.” That’s not actually what he says in the text – he was mostly writing contra-anarchist-critics – but that’s why I think people trot it out too much when they are usually just responding to neoliberals who don’t share the correct assumptions that Engels agrees anarchists do and then predicates his argument on.
Thank you for linking this video. A lot of the political compass stuff never really made sense to me but this articulates the feelings I had about it really well, and I learned a lot (esp. the comments about gun control, and how gun freedom serves the ruling class by creating terror in most cases)
That video is great! To add a small caveat to the gun control point, you’ll find a few users here who are into guns, own their own and/or attend a range with some regularity, and it’s not inconsistent with their socialist/communist principles.
While it is true that gun freedom, as it is spoused by most people who support it in the US mostly serves the ruling class, many leftist organizations or leaders have understood the power that having the means to defend oneself from the orchestrated violence of the state, or other actors who will not hesitate at using violence against leftists/racialized or LGBTQIA+ people has, and how it is sometimes necessary when trying to build power structures that attend to those same peoples’ needs outside of a capitalist system.
A key difference between a right-wing and a left-wing gun owner is that the left-wing one, given the conditions for it, will prefer those guns to be in collective control and ownership, and not at the service of an individual and their needs. Well, that, and that the left-wing one will be anticapitalist.
I just wanted to preemptively introduce this concept before you saw one of our gun fans in the wild and were confused by it.
Cheers!
Thanks for the response. I’m only scratching the surface on these ideas, and I’ll give your response some thought. I appreciate it.
no problem! We’re pretty eager to share whatever little we know, so it can be a lot at once… just take it easy and ask all the questions you need