Freedom of Speech vs. Ideological Unity
The Liberal View: Truth is discovered through the “clash of ideas.” Even speech that is wrong or unpopular must be protected to prevent the government from becoming a thought-police.
The Marxist/Communist View: Speech is a tool of power. In a revolutionary state, speech that criticizes the party or promotes “capitalist values” is seen as a direct threat to the safety and progress of the working class. Therefore, the state must control media and education to ensure ideological unity.
The Conflict: You cannot have a state-directed “common good” if individuals are free to publicly argue against it.
Trial by Jury vs. Revolutionary Justice
The Liberal View: Justice is procedural. The state must prove a specific crime to a group of disinterested peers (the jury). It is better for a guilty man to go free than for an innocent man to be imprisoned.
The Marxist/Communist View: Justice is substantive or “Class Justice.” In many communist applications, the legal system exists to protect the revolution. If an individual is deemed a “class enemy” or “counter-revolutionary,” a trial by jury is seen as a dangerous hurdle.
The Conflict: A jury puts the power of judgment in the hands of random citizens rather than the Party. In Marxism, the Party is the vanguard of the people; allowing a jury to disagree with the Party’s accusation is a loss of control.
Individual Freedom vs. Collective Necessity
The Liberal View: You have the right to pursue your own happiness, even if it doesn’t benefit society. You can choose your job, where you live, and how you spend your time.
The Marxist/Communist View: The needs of the collective (the “Common Good”) outweigh the desires of the individual. Because the goal is to eliminate class struggle and ensure equal distribution, the state often must direct labor and resources where they are needed most.
The Conflict: If you are free to choose a path that doesn’t serve the collective plan, the plan fails. True individual freedom creates “anarchy of production,” which Marxism specifically aims to replace with central planning.
The Origin of Rights
Liberalism: Believes rights are inherent (you are born with them) and the government’s only job is to protect them.
Marxism: Believes rights are socially constructed. Since the state creates the conditions for life, the state can grant or revoke “rights” based on what serves the progress of history.
Wikipedia is based on actual sources that you can read for yourself at the bottom of the page. It’s also written by actual people and not a text generator that can’t understand what it is writing and has no idea whether it’s accurate or not because it’s not alive.
That is correct but he didn’t mention Lenin at all, and tried to conflate Lenin with both Marx and Communism as a whole. Personally I blame Lenin for the failure of the executive branch to properly set up the soviets as democratically elected councils, rather than a supreme dictator. I also blame Lenin for Stalin.
tried to conflate Lenin with both Marx and Communism
Leninists do that already by calling themselves “Marxist-leninists.” And Lenin himself conflated his personal ideology with communism as a whole when he killed all the communists who weren’t on board with him.
Marx shouldn’t even be a taboo subject, but he is, purely because of how Lenin commandeered and corrupted the entire evolution of the ideas Marx first laid out. Plenty of countries had communist parties before the bolshevik revolution; afterwards, the entire west looked and said “those people are fucking crazy, I don’t want them doing that here.”
I’d love to be able to sit down and have an intellectual discussion on the virtues of Marx’s theories, but if I bring it up anywhere I’ll get one of two reactions: either I’ll be labeled as a communist, get put on a watch list, and get chased out of town, or I’ll wind up listening to a tankie rant for hours about how I’m not radical enough and that if I don’t support the bolsheviks that I must be a fascist.
There’s no fucking middle-ground, no room for nuance, and Marxism itself is barely more than a historical artifact. An interest piece on an ideal that never came to be, and now is far more widely known for being something else which didn’t come until decades later.
Far better to just talk about Merleau-Ponty. At least then anyone who’s heard of him is at least somewhat educated…
I checked out at the obviously-AI copy-paste job with the numbered lists and shit.
I’m not opposed to communism as an idea, but it’s as realistic as the star trek universe it lives in right now. We need to push the needle left from “putting people in camps” way before we try to push the needle towards collective ownership.
if you care about communicating ideas, put effort into trying, win or lose you’re actively learning human communication skills.
If you don’t care, well you get ignored or blocked and slowly shut out of more and more opportunity to either share your ideas or learn how to change your ideas based on more things you learn along the way.
If I wanted to read what an AI had to say, I would ask a fucking AI.
Never believe that anti‐ Semites fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites fascists have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
I wasn’t going to, I was still engaging in misplaced good faith that you give a fuck about being here, but I can see you obviously don’t.
When you grow up, maybe try again to dip your toes in this whole “sharing a world with other people’s perspectives and ideas” thing and see if you can learn something. The alternative is kinda bad so make good choices kiddo.
The Marxist/Communist View: Speech is a tool of power. In a revolutionary state, speech that criticizes the party or promotes “capitalist values” is seen as a direct threat to the safety and progress of the working class. Therefore, the state must control media and education to ensure ideological unity.
The Conflict: You cannot have a state-directed “common good” if individuals are free to publicly argue against it.
The Marxist/Communist View: Justice is substantive or “Class Justice.” In many communist applications, the legal system exists to protect the revolution. If an individual is deemed a “class enemy” or “counter-revolutionary,” a trial by jury is seen as a dangerous hurdle.
The Conflict: A jury puts the power of judgment in the hands of random citizens rather than the Party. In Marxism, the Party is the vanguard of the people; allowing a jury to disagree with the Party’s accusation is a loss of control.
The Marxist/Communist View: The needs of the collective (the “Common Good”) outweigh the desires of the individual. Because the goal is to eliminate class struggle and ensure equal distribution, the state often must direct labor and resources where they are needed most.
The Conflict: If you are free to choose a path that doesn’t serve the collective plan, the plan fails. True individual freedom creates “anarchy of production,” which Marxism specifically aims to replace with central planning.
Marxism: Believes rights are socially constructed. Since the state creates the conditions for life, the state can grant or revoke “rights” based on what serves the progress of history.
This is just nonsense. Did an AI write it for you?
The USSR, and all the weird parallels to it that your AI write up has included, was not communism.
Maybe you shouldn’t mock people’s understanding of things when you yourself clearly don’t understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
omg its AI links wikipedia articles
Wikipedia is based on actual sources that you can read for yourself at the bottom of the page. It’s also written by actual people and not a text generator that can’t understand what it is writing and has no idea whether it’s accurate or not because it’s not alive.
That’s a whole lot of bullshit to tell me you’ve never read Marx.
It’s not marxist, but it describes leninism to a T. And most tankies tend to be ML, not marxist.
That is correct but he didn’t mention Lenin at all, and tried to conflate Lenin with both Marx and Communism as a whole. Personally I blame Lenin for the failure of the executive branch to properly set up the soviets as democratically elected councils, rather than a supreme dictator. I also blame Lenin for Stalin.
Leninists do that already by calling themselves “Marxist-leninists.” And Lenin himself conflated his personal ideology with communism as a whole when he killed all the communists who weren’t on board with him.
Marx shouldn’t even be a taboo subject, but he is, purely because of how Lenin commandeered and corrupted the entire evolution of the ideas Marx first laid out. Plenty of countries had communist parties before the bolshevik revolution; afterwards, the entire west looked and said “those people are fucking crazy, I don’t want them doing that here.”
I’d love to be able to sit down and have an intellectual discussion on the virtues of Marx’s theories, but if I bring it up anywhere I’ll get one of two reactions: either I’ll be labeled as a communist, get put on a watch list, and get chased out of town, or I’ll wind up listening to a tankie rant for hours about how I’m not radical enough and that if I don’t support the bolsheviks that I must be a fascist.
There’s no fucking middle-ground, no room for nuance, and Marxism itself is barely more than a historical artifact. An interest piece on an ideal that never came to be, and now is far more widely known for being something else which didn’t come until decades later.
Far better to just talk about Merleau-Ponty. At least then anyone who’s heard of him is at least somewhat educated…
I checked out at the obviously-AI copy-paste job with the numbered lists and shit.
I’m not opposed to communism as an idea, but it’s as realistic as the star trek universe it lives in right now. We need to push the needle left from “putting people in camps” way before we try to push the needle towards collective ownership.
Of course it’s AI (it should be obvious)… why would i spend time and effort trying to explain on a heavily marxist internet forum?
if you care about communicating ideas, put effort into trying, win or lose you’re actively learning human communication skills.
If you don’t care, well you get ignored or blocked and slowly shut out of more and more opportunity to either share your ideas or learn how to change your ideas based on more things you learn along the way.
If I wanted to read what an AI had to say, I would ask a fucking AI.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre
oh no dont ignore or block me :( lol
I wasn’t going to, I was still engaging in misplaced good faith that you give a fuck about being here, but I can see you obviously don’t.
When you grow up, maybe try again to dip your toes in this whole “sharing a world with other people’s perspectives and ideas” thing and see if you can learn something. The alternative is kinda bad so make good choices kiddo.
you sure yap a lot
You waste the oxygen you metabolize. Consider stopping.
Maybe try understanding the thing yourself first. It’s actually pretty interesting, and you might actually learn some things.
deleted by creator
I like how you provided an educated and accurate take, and everyone downvotes you because they don’t want to say they agree with the “communist view.”
I will say, however, that it’s not exactly Marxism, but rather Leninism (often called Marxist-Leninism) that you describe.
So people do somewhat have a point, if somewhat pedantic and merely semantic.
ML right now