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But "socialism" is a scary word
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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Sorry I edited my response
I edited mine as well, I'll copy and paste it here for coherence:
I think you are confusing power with classes, and hierarchy with classes. A class is defined by its social relation to the Means of Production, a CEO can technically be proletarian if they are merely employed by the board and have no ownership. There is hierarchy, and unequal power, but the relation to Capital is fundamentally different as the M-C-M' circuit does not directly funnel into their pockets like it would with Capitalists.
I guess my previous response about not supporting superpowers still holds but yes was a bit silly to say class.
Gotcha! I admit, I was being nitpicky, but it's a very important nuance when understanding how Socialism is built and how Class Antagonisms are reconciled. Beaurocratization is absolutely something to be avoided where possible, but administrative positions and managerial positions will always be present unless humanity can build a fully automated system it can fully trust, and that is technology for the far-future anyways if it ever does come into existence.
We need a system to measure ego before allowing so much power which isn't possible. The more I think about the vanguard and the dissolution of that apparatus the less plausible I find it. Then again I'm a trot and the forever revolution kind of takes care of that.. I hope.
The Vanguard will always exist until Communism, even if you don't formalize it. The Vanguard is simply the most politically advanced of the revolutionary class, in nearly all cases now the Proletariat. The Vanguard isn't supposed to "dissolve" so much as "wither away," ie as class antagonisms are worked out the "general" and "backwards" sections of the mass population increase in political awareness through the process of building Communism. The formalized Vanguard dies out of itself along with the class struggle much the same way as the State, not by intention but by erasing its foundations, as it must do so if we adopt a Marxian view of economics.
To not formalize the Vanguard in a party structure results in serious danger of informal and thus unaccountable structures becoming entrenched with informal power. A great essay on the subject is The Tyranny of Structurelessness, I highly recommend it. The necessity, therefore, is to formalize the Vanguard and set it up along the principles of Democratic Centralism and adherence to the Mass Line.
I won't comment on Trotskyism or Permanent Revolution here, as I don't think this discussion needs derailing, but I wanted to acknowledge it as I didn't want you to think I ignored it.