Source: https://lemmy.world/post/29479317/16990977
Modlog: https://photon.lemmy.world/modlog?user=7919430
Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance!
Source: https://lemmy.world/post/29479317/16990977
Modlog: https://photon.lemmy.world/modlog?user=7919430
Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance!
Replace communism in your statement with leninism / maoism. And I am 100% on board. Actual communism, classless stateless communism. Which is not what any of these countries are were or ever will be. Isn’t the problem. Even if it’s likely unobtainable. I’d still say we’d be better off trying.
I have such mixed feelings. Anarchism and stateless communism can, and does, work pretty well in relatively small communities. But it’s hard to scale effectively. Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism/etc. is a form of communism (-ish) that solves the scaling issue, but at the cost of a deep repression of individual rights. Without some form of a state, it’s incredibly hard to get a society moving in the same direction.
Both a state, and statelessness, have pitfalls.
The downsides of a state tend to outweigh its benefits though. The loss of consent etc. Many of the benefits of the state could be gained through minimal and temporary measures. Without establishing a full-on permanent growing state. But as you said there are definitely pros and cons to both
I don’t think that’s really correct. I think that a huge risk you take with an anarchist country is that other countries will take the lack of a standing military as an invitation to invade and take your land. Then instead of losing a degree of consent to a state, you lose all consent. (Could militias play a role in defense? Sure! But mobilizing and funding a military on an ad hoc basis would be very, very challenging, particularly when you’re in a crisis.) Individuals certainly would not have power to e.g. negotiate on equal terms with a corporate entity that was organized in a different country, particularly if you didn’t have some form of a state enforcing fair labor standards. But yeah, balancing the individual’s autonomy versus the needs of all of the people is a tough thing. I don’t have simple answers, because I don’t think that there are any. A lot of theory is just that: theory. And taht goes for both capitalism and communism/socialism. The real world gets messy, politics interferes with economics, and people are rarely rational actors.
It’s possible. But still better than the alternative. The thing with standing armies is they are no ultimate determinator themselves. Both Russia and the United States ended up getting their ass handed to them in the end. By rural Warlords in afghanistan. Even England and Spain lost control of their colonies because of this simple fact. At the end of the day the people who live here will always be here. Those who invading only generally want to be there as long as they have to be.
Heck it doesn’t always hold up locally either. The Czar lost to the Bolsheviks. The Chinese emperor to the peasants. You won’t find more committed fighters than those defending their lives and livelihoods.
The thing with balancing autonomy and consent is that it gets exponentially harder for every person you add to a group. At city levels it starts becoming outright impossible. Hamlets, villages and Commonwealth’s can still cooperate and band together where it makes sense. The point is to keep the structures small and answerable to those they represent.