Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

cops in capitalism are bastards because they first and foremost exist to protect the capitalist state and property rights.

cops in a socialist society are fine unless youre a dummy anarchist

tino posted:

I mean you probably can get it to work if you keep shutting the door in a smallish society. But as soon as you trade with the rest of the world your socialist order will break down.

Aeolius posted:

possibly one of the reasons you gave. possibly the existence of the thing i mention above, assuming the international context is still imperialism. possibly to respond to other difficulties that arise in the context of shedding the cultural trappings of bourgeois society (itself in a form that will no doubt be in flux in line with the conditions in question). or possibly even nothing more than the existence of path dependence in human affairs; change, even revolutionary change, doesn't occur overnight. it's a deceptively complex question (e: to say nothing of the difficulties of defining exactly how "weak" or "marginal" we mean exactly, when we're still discussing an intrinsically pathological set of social relations)

Lightning Knight posted:

I am willing to concede that cops may be a situational necessary evil for communists, but that doesn’t make cops not an evil.

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

this isnt cuba its china and HK, capitalist states

uncop posted:

Grapplejack posted:

I'm honestly kind of baffled how once pevin got banned this thread turned into a beehive

Aeolius posted:

uncop posted:

Frijolero posted:

Liberal leftists tend to agree with fascists and libertarians. AGC

Grapplejack posted:

I'm honestly kind of baffled how once pevin got banned this thread turned into a beehive

Zane posted:

here's a helpful first principle to build your grandiose world historical theory upon: the state shouldn't brutalize people who peacefully assemble to talk about how they should organize their society.

quote:

Mass demonstrations should be distinguished from riots or revolutionary uprisings although, under certain (now rare) circumstances, they may develop into either of the latter. The aims of a riot are usually immediate (the immediacy matching the desperation they express): the seizing of food, the release of prisoners, the destruction of property. The aims of a revolutionary uprising are long-term and comprehensive: they culminate in the taking over of State power. The aims of a demonstration, however, are symbolic: it demonstrates a force that is scarcely used.

...

It would seem that the true function of demonstrations is not to convince the existing State authority to any significant degree. Such an aim is only a convenient rationalisation.

The truth is that mass demonstrations are rehearsals for revolution: not strategic or even tactical ones, but rehearsals of revolutionary awareness. The delay between the rehearsals and the real performance may be very long: their quality – the intensity of rehearsed awareness – may, on different occasions, vary considerably: but any demonstration which lacks this element of rehearsal is better described as an officially encouraged public spectacle.

A demonstration, however much spontaneity it may contain, is a created event which arbitrarily separates itself from ordinary life. Its value is the result of its artificiality, for therein lies its prophetic, rehearsing possibilities.

A mass demonstration distinguishes itself from other mass crowds because it congregates in public to create its function, instead of forming in response to one: in this, it differs from any assembly of workers within their place of work – even when strike action is involved – or from any crowd of spectators. It is an assembly which challenges what is given by the mere fact of its coming together.

...

Finally, there is another way in which revolutionary awareness is rehearsed. The demonstrators present themselves as a target to the so-called forces of law and order. Yet the larger the target they present, the stronger they feel. This cannot be explained by the banal principle of ‘strength in numbers,’ any more than by vulgar theories of crowd psychology. The contradiction between their actual vulnerability and their sense of invincibility corresponds to the dilemma which they force upon the State authority.

Either authority must abdicate and allow the crowd to do as it wishes: in which case the symbolic suddenly becomes real, and, even if the crowd’s lack of organisation and preparedness prevents it from consolidating its victory, the event demonstrates the weakness of authority. Or else authority must constrain and disperse the crowd with violence: in which case the undemocratic character of such authority is publicly displayed. The imposed dilemma is between displayed weakness and displayed authoritarianism. (The officially approved and controlled demonstration does not impose the same dilemma: its symbolism is censored: which is why I term it a mere public spectacle.) Almost invariably, authority chooses to use force. The extent of its violence depends upon many factors, but scarcely ever upon the scale of the physical threat offered by the demonstrators. This threat is essentially symbolic. But by attacking the demonstration authority ensures that the symbolic event becomes an historical one: an event to be remembered, to be learnt from, to be avenged.

It is in the nature of a demonstration to provoke violence upon itself. Its provocation may also be violent. But in the end it is bound to suffer more than it inflicts. This is a tactical truth and an historical one. The historical role of demonstrations is to show the injustice, cruelty, irrationality of the existing State authority. Demonstrations are protests of innocence.

But the innocence is of two kinds, which can only be treated as though they were one at a symbolic level. For the purposes of political analysis and the planning of revolutionary action, they must be separated. There is an innocence to be defended and an innocence which must finally be lost: an innocence which derives from justice, and an innocence which is the consequence of a lack of experience.

get that OUT of my face posted:

cuba legalized private property this year. they had a good run but they opened the door

get that OUT of my face posted:

cuba legalized private property this year. they had a good run but they opened the door

R. Guyovich posted:

they also assert the primacy of socialist public property in the same document. i encourage you to investigate before speaking, as some guy suggested

tino posted:

Can you buy apartment in Cuba now or you have to wait for the government to assign you one like the good old 80s China?

Grapplejack posted:

Leasing / mortgages are still banned so

Lightning Knight posted:

I sort of assume Hong Kong will be under water come 2047 if climate change continues as it is.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

hong kong is surprisingly hilly and 2047 is quite soon

Lightning Knight posted:

I sort of assume Hong Kong will be under water come 2047 if climate change continues as it is.

Frijolero posted:

Also, anyone who concern-trolls about how Cuba should run their economy is not a serious leftist, sorry.

You literally cannot out-woke Cuban revolutionaries in running their country.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I've said this before, but there's an obvious double standard going on when people make all sorts of excuses for ostensibly left-wing politicians in the imperial core making compromises with capital

and then turning around and confidently saying that they know better than actual socialist countries that they're doing it wrong

uncop posted:

Well, firstly we are talking about countries that revolted against imperialism indicating an initial firm popular denial of bourgeois ideology and a desire to wage a popular struggle against individuals who subscribed to it. Imperialism could hardly fool meaningfully large sections of workers into assuming an antagonistically intense bourgeois ideology without the material experience that seemingly validates it when these states had tight control over the flow of information and so on. So the more likely answer is that it wasn't lack of change but the opposite that produced the ideology being fought: for developmental purposes, the state had to act as a pseudo-capitalist, merely collectivizing the intrinsically pathological relations originally developed by capitalism as the first step toward escape from them, squeezing the consumption of workers to be left with more to reinvest into having good things in the future. So the managers of that process developed a bourgeois-like ideology peculiar to that system which was always evident in their political demands and proclamations, including the identification of the development of socialism with the development of productive forces, obscuring the class contradiction that relentless development presumes. The leftover regular citizens with bourgeois class backgrounds were soon rendered weak enough to be inconsequential compared to their dedicated non-cop opponents, and again, cops are only needed against antagonistic internal threats, the kinds of cops that regular people have to deal with are really bad at chasing covert imperialist agents and the like.

Zane posted:

here's a helpful first principle to build your grandiose world historical theory upon: the state shouldn't brutalize people who peacefully assemble to talk about how they should organize their society.

Its Coke posted:

you can't fool me. this is made entirely of your phone's predictive text

uncop posted:

Genius, let's build a theory of history from a premise that's the exact opposite of what's historically true.