Polyphase Avatron wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:09 pmSeems you have your own peculiar definition of communism and ignore all of the other ways it's been conceived of and implemented throughout history. I see no evidence that a completely stateless, anarchist society would ever work on a large scale either.
This is less about this specific piece of the pages-long back and forth between yourself and Shaddy so much as the broader nature of the debate itself within the context from which it originally sprung from throughout this thread:
For all practical purposes, there's literally almost ZERO consequential constituency in the U.S. (apart from your usual smattering handful of fringe figures) for actual, full blown, full bore communism. Furthermore there is no one who is even the LEAST bit anywhere within a billion lightyears of being anything that's even approaching full blown communism within any corner of elected office, or who is even within remote striking distance of being elected to higher office of almost any sort. Nor will there likely be anytime in the remotely foreseeable future. So any worry or concern regarding actual communism overtaking the U.S. political arena is... WILDLY, hysterically batshit nuts, to put it mildly.
Lets set all the Fox News, Qanon, and American Conservative hyperbole and psychotic hysterics aside here: the furthest-furthest Left electoral coalition we have in American politics (AOC, Sanders, the Squad, etc) are generally considered fairly lukewarm moderates on the broader international stage. Because the American political axis/overton window is ludicrously, dementedly, lunatic-level skewed and tilted to the right relative to much of the rest of the first world. And that dynamic has unfortunately been VERY normalized for way, way too many Americans.
When one of my posts a whole bunch of pages back set off this whole back and forth between you and Shaddy: this was in large part what I was originally referring to. The political axis of the United States is SO absurdly thrown off to the far right, that what is "moderate" for us is actually still fairly far to the right of most other developed nations. And our "far, far Left" are actually moderates (center-left at most) on the international stage. An ACTUAL mainstream, normal Left politician from almost any European nation for example, would be seen as the reincarnation of Che Guevara or Lenin in the U.S.
(Though this is currently in flux as the political axis of plenty of other European and otherwise non-U.S. nations are likewise being dragged to the right, and for relatively similar-ish reasons overall as the U.S. - but even then a lot of these countries are a bit further behind that process from where we are currently)
So when I say "our current political situation requires a SHARP leftward turn" this is largely what I'm referring to: everything in politics regarding gauging what is "Left" vs "Right" is INCREDIBLY contingent upon the broader context of a given political landscape (especially when its in relation to and being compared against the broader political landscapes of other regions).
I mean... this isn't THAT hard to understand ultimately. This is basically the current political dynamic here in the U.S.
When I drag Centrism and contest that its barely much better than the far right in the current climate (and in a great, great many cases Centrism within the current dynamic even flat out HELPS the far right in the long run): this is why. And its also why, when this is more or less representative of the current axis of political thought and debate, why I maintain that WITHIN THAT CONTEXT, WITHIN THAT FRAMEWORK, going sharply Leftward is the obvious and clear answer that isn't sociopathic and homicidal/suicidal.
As the axis changes, as the overton window moves further and further back leftward away from the extreme right in which it currently sits, THEN that actually opens up the debate back to something that halfway resembles sanity and normalcy once again, and we can adjust ourselves accordingly.
Here, I'll let another, much smarter person than myself round this out with what I think is a very solid explanation of how the political spectrum is much better viewed:
I want to address one very common point made, which is "we don't need Republicans, but we need a strong small-c conservative party."
We don't. Not right now. We need a VERY weak conservative party.
Setting aside the largely correct corollary that the Democratic Party IS that conservative party (which at least some faction of it is.) I think the idea of necessary conservative reveals dominant misapprehension about the nature of conservatism and progressivism. Conservatism and progressivism are often treated as naturally occurring identities—as if some are just conservative, and others just progressive.
And they're treated like two wings on the same bird, both necessary for flight.
I think they're strategies—*situational* strategies.
Conservatism and progressivism exist on a spectrum, but to reduce them to a binary for simplicity’s sake, let's say they are two ways of interacting with an existing order. Specifically, with whatever one currently exists.
(And here I mean "conservatism" in the way the commenters meant, as the small-c conservatism that we allegedly need to be strong in this moment, rather than the white supremacist, nationalist, fascist, authoritarian, kleptocratic thing the term presently signifies.)
Conservatism" is, in its essence, an ideology that desires to keep things as they are, and to make slow and calculated adjustment, or no adjustments, to that underlying order. Conservatism sits at the center of the spectrum. It is only as good as the order upon which it sits.
"Progressivism" is, in its essence, an ideology that desires to leave the existing order, in favor of an order that its practitioners see as better, even necessary. Progressivism pushes away from the center of the spectrum. It is only as good as its proposed destination.
For us to know whether we ‘need’ a strong conservatism at the present moment requires a judgment about the existing order—which requires some underlying value against which to judge it. For us to know whether we ‘need’ a strong progressivism also requires that judgment, and a judgment about the direction of any needed progress—which, again, requires some underlying value against which to compare.
This is why it is useless for us to say we ‘need’ both conservatives and progressives.
Conservatives conserving … what?
Progressives progressing toward … what?
If we are in a time where great change is desperately necessary for survival, then we would hope for a very strong progressive party with a beneficial direction, and a very weak conservative party. If we are in a time when everything is working great, we would want the opposite.
Right now we have looming climate disaster, and we have massive wealth inequality, and we have a global pandemic, and we have the very tenets of democracy under attack. And, as they say, so on.
I would argue that we need a VERY weak conservative party.
Our argument is not taking place on an axis of conservatism and progressivism at all. It’s taking place on axis of moral value. We’re contending over which value-set will undergird our moral order. I’ll name the struggle.
I’d say it’s a struggle between an axis of universal justice versus an axis of specific dominance. The distinction matters; it prevents us from seeing the real struggle. The people calling themselves "conservative" aren’t conservative at all. They’re progressives, of a kind. They have a direction. Not forward, but backward. Into mutually assured destruction. Regressives.
They yearn for a time when their way of being—in matters of religion, skin tone, gender, identity, sexuality, wealth—dominated all others. A time when there was a normal, and that was them. And there was an abnormal, and those kept quiet if they knew what was good for them. They call themselves ‘conservative,’ these regressives, because there was a time when their way of seeing things WAS the moral order. It was the axis. And in that old time, believing as you did, you WOULD be conservative.
But we’ve moved since. And we don't need them strong.
Today’s conservatives—the small-c conservatives—are those who keep us here, frozen, or moving too slowly for the danger. We don't need them strong, either. We need them very weak. Our current order balances too precariously. Too many people are in danger. All, really.
In some future day, when we have made a sustainable universal justice our axis, and we have moved our position as close to its center as we can, I would hope to be a conservative.
We’re not there now. Until we are, I will not be conservative.
We aren’t two wings, a right and a left. We’re a compass, deciding which direction to point. We're a navigator, deciding whether or not to journey. A compass can’t point in two directions. We can’t decide both to move AND to not move. We don't need both impulses to be strong. What we need is to minimize and destroy any influence held by a regressivism that would move us toward mutually assured destruction, in order to satisfy its own greed or ego.
And we need to make our conservative impulses as weak as possible, until they are appropriate again.
She/Her 
