alyaza [they/she]

internet gryphon. admin of Beehaw, mostly publicly interacting with people. nonbinary. they/she

  • 1.21K Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: January 28th, 2022
  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMtoSocialism@beehaw.org•Is Authoritarian Communism Really communism?
    3·
    3 days ago

    on Chiapas:

    • Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government Through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language (Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater)
    • Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity (Ramor Ryan)
    • Developing Zapatista autonomy : conflict and NGO involvement in rebel Chiapas (Niels Barmeyer)

    on Rojava:

    • Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan (TATORT Kurdistan)
    • Revolution and Cooperatives: Thoughts about my time with the economic committee in Rojava (anonymous)
    • Make Rojava Green Again (Internationalist Commune of Rojava)

    on Revolutionary Catalonia and various aspects of the anarchism there:

    • Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (Gaston Leval)
    • The Anarchist Collectives (ed. Sam Dolgoff)
    • The CNT in the Spanish Revolution (José Peirats Valls)
    • Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution (José Peirats Valls)
    • To Remember Spain (Murray Bookchin)
    • Ready for Revolution (Agustín Guillamón)

    most of these should be findable on Anna’s Archive, or by just googling the title. if not, i can track copies down.

  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMtoSocialism@beehaw.org•Is Authoritarian Communism Really communism?
    14·
    4 days ago

    communism is about works collectively owning the means of production.

    to be clear: you’re kind of mixing terms up a bit here and this needs to untangled, because otherwise it will cause problems in answering what you’re asking. the correct word for “worker ownership of the means of production” is technically just socialism. communism, at this point in leftist history, consistently refers to a more specific thing: an ideological system that seeks to create a stateless, classless, moneyless society in addition to achieving common ownership of the means of production.[1]

    this might sound very pedantic–and, to be clear, it is likely the vast majority of socialists are also communists–but conflating these terms can be genuinely problematic when asking a question like this for the simple reason that they are understood to be two different things in practice. you can have socialism but not communism, in short. (indeed, “socialism but not communism” is the rule among states that have arguably been socialist. even if you play fast and loose with the defining characteristics of communism and think there have been existing socialist states, i’ve never met a person who believes those socialist states achieved anything resembling communism.)

    in terms of the actual question you’re asking: most people would probably agree that no, the properties of socialism and communism make “authoritarianism” or a “dictatorial” figure antithetical to either–at least without that desire for “authoritarianism” being shared across the entire working class somehow. this is the reason many leftists consider most or all existing (and former) states that called themselves socialist–your Soviet Unions, your Chinas, etc.–to not be socialist or to have degraded back into capitalism.

    leftists adhering to variants of socialism typically characterized as “authoritarian” and “dictatorial” would obviously disagree with this, however. to generalize a bit: they tend to believe that it is an acceptable tradeoff for a vanguard (the most revolutionary and ideologically advanced section of the working class) to steward and speak for the rest of the working class through the revolution, to the establishment of socialism, and toward the creation of a communist state. separately, they tend to consider the political structures of these countries as facilitating worker ownership of the economy, even if it is not direct. many of them had central planning of the economy, and most of them had highly delegated (for example village bodies which elect city bodies which elect country bodies, etc.) or sectoral (for example X, Y, and Z interest groups must obligatorily be represented in decision-making) political systems that meant workers were represented at every level of government and decision-making.

    unfortunately, whether this is “really socialism” or “really communism” is not a falsifiable belief–and while there are better arguments for the view that “authoritarianism” is incompatible with either in my mind, it’s not as if there are no arguments for the contrary view. so you’re never going to get a definitive agreement on this.

    1. yes, i know these have been used synonymously at many points by many communists, and that even the distinction between socialism and communism has varied historically. but most people in my experience in leftist spaces do not use socialism and communism to mean the same thing at this point, nor do i. ↩︎

  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMtoSocialism@beehaw.org•Is Authoritarian Communism Really communism?
    9·
    4 days ago

    However, when we talk about modern nation state, I believe we have not seen successful implementation of anarchism yet.

    well, anarchism is completely antithetical to modern nation states, so if you’re using that as the basis for evaluation you’re obviously going to be misled. it also begs the question of what a “successful implementation” of anarchism–or any form of leftist ideology in governing–actually is, because ask five leftists and they’ll give you six answers to that. nonetheless, and as far as i’m aware, in spite of their massive difficulties (and despite a non-anarchist self-identification in the first case) both EZLN-held Chipas and Rojava are widely held as successful, practically applied examples of anarchist theories of practice and production. likewise, so is Revolutionary Catalonia.

    One problem is that even if it works internally, what would happen when a colonial power tries to conquer it?

    i would encourage you to look to the Spanish Civil War or the EZLN occupation of Chiapas as examples, because this was simply not a problem for either of them. particularly in the former case, the Spanish anarchists acted very similarly to a “centralized” power in fighting the Francoists (until they were organized into the broader Republican military).[1]

    1. and it should be noted, as an aside: what eventually undermined them and destroyed their power were not the Francoists but purges and aggression conducted by other leftists in the Spanish Popular Front against them. anarchists are, quite legitimately in my opinion, pretty aggrieved at their historical treatment by other leftist ideologies! ↩︎

  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgOPMtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Nigerians are building affordable alternatives to AWS and Google Cloud
    3·
    21 days ago

    Isnt nigeria basically the only african country right now that isnt a shithole right now?

    Nigeria probably has the most theoretical wealth available to it of any African country because it’s super rich in oil, but there are definitely other countries that have it better than Nigeria (South Africa, Cape Verde, maybe Namibia or Kenya if you want some deeper cuts). Nigeria also has a metric fuck ton of problems (religious tension and sectarianism, terrorism, an openly corrupt political system which likely stole the last presidential election, and constant economic turmoil) that severely rob its capability to exploit its riches. and yes colonialism is a big part of that, it has fairly bad deals with major corporations to exploit that oil

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