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for context: i support a cross between market socialism, welfarism and georgism under a party-union/minarchist government (a small-enough government where the political parties work with the unions). i think that minarchism is a required step in a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.

my socialist views are therefore a fusion of libertarian market socialism and de leonism and such.

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[–] Lisitsyn@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Why is minarchism a required step in a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat? The state is the mechanism of enforcing and preserving class society, it is inherently authoritarian. You can't have a minarchic dictatorship of the proletariat or of the current ruling bourgeoisie.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is also the most democratic form of state by its nature: it is the rule of the proletariat, the majority, as opposed to the rule of the bourgeoisie, the minority. And democracy is not our end goal, democracy is a formal institution, a state. We seek to abolish the state, communism will be a stateless, moneyless, classless society; from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. For example: there was no "democracy" in pre-state formations, in primitive communism, even though there was collective and communal decision making as democracy presupposes the existence of a state.

As the dictatorship of the proletariat has eradicated class distinctions; once the tasks of the state are relegated to bookkeeping and its political character is lost, when it has transformed into a purely administrative body. A body in which every person is an active participant in, a sort of muscle memory, a habit, develops. As the people, everyone (as counter posed to the proletariat; class is no longer a factor, everyone means everyone), now complete the hitherto existing functions of the state, the state loses its reason for existence; democracy will wither away together with the state.

I would like to add a snippet of The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin to clear up any confusion about the subject, bare in mind this is only tangentially related. Even the one paragraph I am including here will be of great help to you in understanding how the state functions and the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat (and of the bourgeoisie).


“Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state.”

  • Engels, translated by Lenin.

“...the state is a “special coercive force". Engels gives this splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost lucidity. And from it follows that the “special coercive force” for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced by a “special coercive force” for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). This is precisely what is meant by “abolition of the state as state". This is precisely the “act” of taking possession of the means of production in the name of society. And it is self-evident that such a replacement of one (bourgeois) “special force” by another (proletarian) “special force” cannot possibly take place in the form of “withering away".”

  • Lenin, State and Revolution.

I would also like to hear you clarify the concept of the "party-unipn" government, I don't really understand what you mean by it. Is this a syndicalist formation? If you don't mind me asking, could you please share some of your reading materiel on it? I haven't heard of it before.

[–] DylanMc6@hexbear.net 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

the "party-union" part came from de leonism - in de leonism, dual organization is an essential part, but it's a bit different - in leninism, there's 'party-state' in which the vanguard party leads the state - in de leonism, the vanguard party (or parties) and the union work together. i think that minarchism is important to socialism, as it would provide a non-coercive state for just enforcing laws and administrating - there'd still be a government under this minimal state, but the state should NOT be the most important thing about the government - that would be the parties and the union.

my socialist views are a fusion of left-libertarianism, democratic socialism, market socialism and de leonism. seriously!

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

My last comment was mean, but in this one I sincerely would like to try to help you. If you believe that my attempting to be helpful first requires making amends for the previous comment, then let me know.

So I ended up looking through your comment history after the last exchange because I was trying to figure out what I was missing. I don't understand still, but I can identify a patter:

The one you probably would care the most about is that, aside from "georgism" being a bit of a meme, the reason people think you come across as a bit account is that you communicate in an extremely one-directional way. What I mean by this is that you don't come across as listening to anyone (not even to contradict them), you just sort of say your thing and move on, even if you pose yourself as seeking conversation. This is exemplified by how you constantly say the same things unprompted over and over even when not a single person has responded positively to some of it, and there's no apparent effort to change what you're saying to even account for that, even if it's just presenting an argument differently (though normally you don't even really argue, you just declare). I can go back to posts from ~3 weeks ago where you were rattling off just the same talking points, for which you have received over a dozen refutations between then and now, and it's one thing to still believe those things, it's another to just keep saying the same talking points just like you said them before without acknowledging the problems people have with them. Does that make sense?

This all is not helped by the fact most of the talking points just aren't very effective. I picked this comment because it had the example that I thought was the easiest to explain:

a non-coercive state for just enforcing laws and administrating

What do you think enforcing laws is if not coercion? Granted, there are definitely states that do a lot of coercion outside of the law, but in almost all states, most coercion is either via law enforcement directly or indirectly (via property relations, which I can explain more if you need me to). The idea of a "non-coercive state" that is "just enforcing laws" doesn't make any sense and comes across like a joke because it's a direct contradiction in terms.

And then you go making grand declarations on these ideas, ignoring what others have to say about them, going as far as seemingly endorsing war on Venezuela in order to write political fan-fiction. If you want to write fan-fiction, may I suggest writing about like an anime or something instead of real people being murdered?

[–] DylanMc6@hexbear.net 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
  1. i am being serious, i'm just learning
  2. i do NOT endorse war on venezula, as i prefer peaceful ways to settle this - if my comment seemed like me supporting such, i apologize.
  3. minarchism is the idea of minimizing or devolving the state for purposes such as police, millitary and courts - from a left-libertarian perspective, i think the state would be devolved to simply administration and welfare services.
[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 3 points 3 weeks ago

i am being serious, i'm just learning

Are you learning? What have you learned here? As I said, it seems like you're mostly just repeating yourself for weeks straight.

i do NOT endorse war on venezula, as i prefer peaceful ways to settle this - if my comment seemed like me supporting such, i apologize.

With respect to Venezuela, the main thing to emphasize is that there should be no war and the people agitating against Venezuela are tools of imperialism. We can talk about the direction Venezuela should be taking when it is on ground where it is even capable of changing course rather than clinging to survival as others try to dictate its course.

minarchism is the idea of minimizing or devolving the state for purposes such as police, millitary and courts - from a left-libertarian perspective, i think the state would be devolved to simply administration and welfare services.

While some of this makes me think that you'd like to read Engels (I already linked you Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in another comment), you are now just talking around the problem, because law enforcement is still coercion.

But as I also told you in another comment that you never replied to, as did others, this is an attempt to depoliticize the state, and it's fundamentally misguided. There cannot be a depoliticized state. You cannot just avoid questions of what should be done and hope that things work out, and all this stuff about "shrinking" the government fundamentally isn't serious political theory. Here is why:

Either the government is enforcing property relations, or the property claimants are enforcing property relations. The tendency of the latter is inevitably to trend toward warlordism, which you might note is functionally also a form of governance.

The Republicans who talk about "small government" (because let's face it, those are most of the people who say that) either don't know the meaning of their assertions, or they are lying to you. The reason is that, insofar as you can trace discussions of the "size" of government to anything in reality at all, it usually relates to regulations. Regulations do not represent a spectrum from freedom to oppression, they represent the extent to which decisions are made by the government versus by the rich. The rich cannot be reformed to make pro-social decisions consistently, there are clear structural reasons that it is impossible because doing so will cause them to lose out to more ruthless capitalists. Only a democratic government, a so-called "tyranny of the majority," has the capability of consistently making choices that benefit most people.

[–] SNAFU@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago

"minarchism is the idea of minimizing or devolving the state for purposes such as police, millitary and courts"

Why would you do that, you would immediately be threatened, if not outright invaded, by the Capitalists. You're thinking in a vacuum only, without considering the material reality that would surround any nation with this 'ideology'.

"i think the state would be devolved to simply administration and welfare services."

That's not what the 'State' means, that's just governance in general. Not to mention that you would be unable to coerce any of the Bourgeoisie to the will of the Proletariat in any form. You wouldn't be able to seize the means of production at all; nationalization without State force is impossible, among other numerous issues. Without the oppression of the Bourgeoisie, through the use of the State, the Proletariat are at risk of oppression again by the Bourgeoisie.

We know what you're talking about, yet you keep reiterating as if we do not. My comrades here are trying to tell you that this is an ideological dead end, and instead redirect you to actually read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, etc. Not Wikipedia articles. Atleast read the Communist Manifesto, it is not that long and is possible to read- even with ADHD, which I suffer from heavily. It will atleast give you the bare basics.