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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Our institutions are not the problem, our policies are the problem. I want to see a transition to UBI, but a dramatic overhaul that dismantled WIC and SNAP before we got UBI in place would be an unmitigated disaster for the very people we were intending to help.
It's not the reform that I'm skeptical of. It's the lust for revolutionary destruction as a path to reform that I'm skeptical of. It's emotionally satisfying without regard to its actual efficacy in accomplishing the proposed reforms. Because history does not show us evidence that this works out well in the short nor the long run.
I'm proposing a revolution entirely led by the people, as that is the only true kind of revolution. The people who would then rule themselves with no intermediaries. Real grassroots organisation.
Well, it better have some kind of mechanism in place to keep the grocery stores full or it's going to fail on its face.
Couple things for you to look up:
These two things would likely do it.
Do what? Just saying "we'll have farming and transport" is not a plan.
I'm not saying there isn't any other way to accomplish food production and distribution. I'm saying that just overthrowing our current systems without an explicit plan to keep food on the shelves is going to result in regular working class people starving. That has happened in every revolution except the American, and that's because the American revolutionaries already had the Continental Congress in place making plans about how to administrate the country, if they managed to win the war.
But most revolutions were just pure chaos with no plan that resulted in regular people starving to death. I 100% agree we need new systems. But I'm not terribly interested in living through a violent revolution.
Is the people's assembly in session right now? No? Then save the details for when it matters. These decisions are made by people on the ground in response to material conditions.
I'm not in charge, so don't burden me with the responsibility of making the decisions all by myself.
But, simply put, make food according to estimations of what's needed, decided at regular meetings. Decide amongst assemblies from population centers which towns need how much.
Does that make the picture clearer?
And I'm just saying be careful of who and what you support and make sure they're planning to have these things covered.
There is no one promising this, and I wouldn't trust anyone saying they did. I would only trust a movement that started from the people.
Then the people have to be organized enough to keep the food going! It's not magic, the world doesn't just run without any planning or direction.
Of course they have to be organised. Who expects things to be done with no effort?
I'm just explaining that there isn't some politician or pundit who said this to me verbatim for me to nod along like a thoughtless chicken. I heard bits and pieces here, read others there, and over years formed an opinion through research and conversations. This isn't a campaign promise of some party asking for votes.
They didn't have farming and transport in Bolshevik Russia?
Yes, but they also had a dogmatic and limited view of the theories they adapted. This inevitably led to corruption and revisionism.
Ah, so they weren't true Scotsmen?
That fallacy only holds when it's a retroactive and also incorrect claim of category error. This is neither retroactive nor incorrect. The USSR is not communist by any definition, not now, or before it existed, either. Marx himself wouldn't have been a fan.
To oversimplify, there are three criteria for communism:
The state must be abolished. That means no government, no class of rulers, no individual or group with a monopoly claim on force to achieve their ends. People self-manage and organise their affairs and business by common agreement and consent based on mutual aid and co-operation.
Classes must be abolished. There can be no class distinctions remaining; specifically, no owners who can exploit workers. All are workers, and all commonly own all materially productive components of society. Nothing is privately owned by individuals (meaning nothing is gatekept for the purposes of gaining materially from doing so), but is democratically organised on the basis of need.
Money itself must be abolished. Once democracy has prevailed over the economy, the common ownership of the means of production has been achieved, and thus everyone has reached the stage where they can freely consume what they need and want without worry of whether they can "afford" it, money will be seen as the arbitrary constraint that it is, and cease to be useful, and disappear completely.
None of these things happened under the USSR. If Marx were a teacher and the USSR his student, they would get a failing grade.
No true "no true Scotsman fallacy" fallacy?
We have to go deeper!
Well? You not gonna acknowledge that definitions exist?
Dude... definitions exist. Sometimes things don't meet them. Are you gonna deny that? Does "no true scotsman" just mean "any claim that a thing is not a true example of some category" to you? Is a bicycle a true example of a sandwich? Is a Frenchman living in Paris a true Scotsman?
Did the USSR meet even one of those standards? Answer this if you only answer one.
Much like the kleptocratic-fascist China and North Korea is a republic by name only. Read up on your fallacies