cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/[email protected]/p/426876/the-downsides-of-running-a-fediverse-platform
S17E3 “Mac and Dennis Become EMTs”
cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/[email protected]/p/426876/the-downsides-of-running-a-fediverse-platform
S17E3 “Mac and Dennis Become EMTs”
debatable, it’s just horseshoe theory, but with a trademarked pick-me spur of leftists
I did update my plot though, it needed more text
I really don’t see how it does that, the original doesn’t even have authoritarianism indicated, it’s vibes based
Tankies and rightists are both authoritarian, whereas leftism is anti-authoritarian.
Horseshoe theory inaccurately conflates authoritarian leftism with generally all leftism.
“Authoritarian” as is commonly used often conflates people trying to abolish class domination with those working to uphold it. It flattens very different forms of power by treating coercion that arises in a revolutionary context, where entrenched elites are unlikely to give up their position voluntarily, as equivalent to the everyday normalized coercion that sustains capitalist rule.
Liberal democracies enforce property relations through police, courts, and prisons, yet this use of authority is typically treated as neutral or simply how society works. Challenges to that order are then singled out as specifically authoritarian.
Framing politics around “authoritarian versus anti-authoritarian” also allows capitalist domination in general to pass as freedom while collapsing the entire radical left into a caricature, for example by dismissing it all as “tankie.”
As an anarchist, I want to see class society abolished altogether, not endlessly managed or reformed. Every social order exercises authority, the real question is whose interests are being served by that authority.
We break capitalist domination by expanding consciousness that both liberal capitalism and state capitalism are authoritarian systems that rob the working class.
Every state generates a class antagonism. Every state protects its oppression by a narrative about the ruling class serving the interests of the working class.
A distinction may be found between those whose power is justified by an intention to abolish class versus those relying on other justifications of power, but all are incapable of delivering liberation. A people may be liberated only by rejecting the narrative. The distinction ultimately is superficial. Once authoritarian communists consolidate power, they dismantle every current in society that is authentically liberatory, because they cannot endure the challenge.
I agree that all states reproduce domination and justify it through ideology, but framing liberation primarily as a matter of expanding consciousness is overly deterministic in its own way.
Capitalist domination is enforced through material institutions that constrain people regardless of what they believe. Rejecting the narrative is necessary I don’t think it’s sufficient to actually end the system.
Treating all authority as equivalent, or differences as superficial, flattens real differences in how power is exercised and contested. It does so without meaningfully explaining how domination is actually dismantled.
Communist governments will often suppress liberatory currents, that outcome follows from centralized power reproducing itself. However, that is also contextualized by capitalist governments attempting to undermine them. There’s not some inevitable law that makes all revolutionary struggle collapse into the same form, which is what the’authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian’ lens implies.
Overemphasizing the distinction among different justifications of power plays into the myth that certain consolidations of power are a path toward liberation. We should critically examine the differences while also remaining aware of the commonalities.
Ultimately, rejection of all authority is essential, even if not sufficient, for emancipation. Thus, it is constructive to propagate the understanding that authoritarian leftism is in many ways quite similar to rightism.
Saying authoritarian leftism is ‘quite similar’ to rightism collapses historically and materially different projects into a moral equivalence that explains very little about how power is produced, resisted or dismantled.
Rejecting all authority is an essential commitment that we do agree on. However, if that rejection erases distinctions in context, structure and antagonism then it becomes less a tool for emancipation and more a shorthand that discourages serious analysis of how domination actually operates and how it might be undone.
Everyone cannot read a treatise on every subject.
We need simple devices to break through entrenched misconceptions.
Such devices complement, not replace, properly nuanced discourse.
We seem to agree generally on the concepts, but for some reason you seem to be objecting, through the use of quote mining.
I quoted the last sentence of your last response because I disagreed with it, and gave the reasons for why in my response. I don’t think simplifying things in the way that you are is either constructive or complementing nuanced discourse.
I don’t see how that’s quote mining.
Bedtimes are authoritarian, your parents are dictators
Thanks for the pro tip.