barsoap

Guess Wikipedia is “tankie” now.

You did not read the article. It makes a clear distinction between council democracy itself (soviet means council), and what was implemented in the USSR. There did exist some democracy on lower levels that were not of immediate interest to the higher-ups, but that was also the case under monarchism.

Your next paragraph is worse, when you rely on “any East European.” Nostalgia for the Soviet Union is well-documeneted. 66% of Russians polled in 2015 want Socialism back,

Russians have neither a liberal democracy nor a social market economy. They're also not terribly educated about the outside world. Ask Poles, ask Ukrainians, ask Romanians.

and this number is actually a good deal higher in many post-soviet sattelite states.

That asks specifically about the economic situation. Probably due to current factors such as affordability of rent, you won't see me arguing that there's work to do in those areas. Oh wait Hungary tops the list yep that's not surprising they just got EU funds cut due to democratic backsliding and they were very much a net recipient. Fidez is a bunch of corrupt fascists. We'll have to switch stereotypes around, Romanians are supposed to be the thieves I guess it's ok they can still be the drunks.

As for your defense of Imperialism, I’m quite happy to be proven right, you’re a neoliberal at heart with an Anarchist coat of paint. No Anarchist I have ever spoken to, regardless of their opinion of the USSR, has said Imperialism is fine once it has been pointed out.

Which imperialism did I defend? I said that we stopped sailing cannon boats up rivers. I'm fucking European don't dare blaming shit Seppos do on us.

Unless you mean the "pressure companies abroad into not using slave labour" thing in which case yes I'm completely fine with us throwing our big economic dick around. Do you have any issues with us using our economical power to combat slave labour and other forms of exploitation, even against the will of governments in the global south?

And, no, we're not the "same economic bloc" as the US. This is our bloc. Mercosur is likely to come into force soon, US is way unlikely to ever happen. Things that may puzzle you: It actually includes Vietnam.

The Third World is not poor. You don’t go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich! Brazil is rich! Mexico is rich! Chile is rich! Only the people are poor.

...then elect better governments? It's your countries, your responsibility. Do something with those riches, like for starters distributing them fairly, and growing them. Are we supposed to swoop in and direct you in how to do it? We'd very likely do a better job this time around but generally lost the taste for imperialism so the answer is no.

Why do you keep replying? What is your goal?

To save your soul.

Your bits on the USSR translate to “I said it wasn’t democratic” as well as “state and public control is totally different and in the USSR it wasn’t public” so they can be safely ignored, given the books I already linked proving otherwise.

Noone but tankies considers the USSR to have been democratic. You can use a different, non-standard, sectarian, definition of a common concept all you want but don't be confused if people don't agree with your equivocation tactics.

As for Imperialism, I mean you specifically who said you wanted to live in a Social Democracy in the Global North rather than Socialism.

No. I said I do not want to live under what you call socialism, which is, in the best case, red-painted oligarchy. I'd love there to be actual socialism but in the meantime, until material conditions are created which actually allow a revolution, and that includes resilience against a Bolshevik counter-revolution, a liberal democracy with a social market economy is adequate. It is an improvement over your red-painted oligarchy, ask any East European.

As to your implied accusation of colonial exploitation: First off, there's no cannon boats of ours sailing up your rivers, we gave that up long ago: If you don't want to sell us stuff, then don't sell us stuff. Secondly, this. The USSR never cared about the conditions the people producing their imports are in, somehow a social market economy does manage to.

Please explain how a democratic, publicly owned economy is “feudalism.”

Democratic is not what the USSR was, and that style of thing is the only thing Marxists ever achieved. There's also a difference between public ownership and state control, doubly so in non-democracies. Also you're leaving out a model not really seen anywhere outside of liberal democracies and that's foundations, that is, self-owning companies. Zeiss is a good example. Their purpose, according to statute, pretty much say "We do optics and funnel some money to the University of Jena", no shareholder interest at all.

As for prefiguration, it doesn’t seem to be possible in a Capitalist state so far either, so again you just approve of Imperialism and Capitalism so long as it’s your state that sits on top of the Global South.

Dude Latinos are the most vocal and active in the prefigurative space. There's a reason we use a Portuguese term, "especifismo", for a basic organisational principle. It's the failure to think outside of the vanguardist box that makes Marxists not achieve anything but regression: Don't dilute yourself to be better and more enlightened. You are not, you're also a mere human. Anarchists understand we need to eat humble pie when talking to people, that we do not have all the answers, that all we have is a good compass and a toolbox that can help people to walk into that direction, on their own terms, at their own pace, organically, without coercion, which is crucial because the end goal does not contain any coercion.

Labour vouchers being used to buy goods and services from the social fund isn’t money, because they are destroyed upon use.

How do you eat if you don't have a labour voucher? How is that "to everyone according to need"? It's the same "bow to the bosses or starve" tyranny as capitalism without welfare state.

You’d rather have Capitalism, warts and all, than Socialism.

No. I would rather have liberal democracy than regress to feudalism with a different coat of paint. Actionism is a trap, the system is begging you to oppose it in certain ways because doing so will only reinforce it. If you want to sit on the long end of the leaver, you might need to walk some distance.

their jobs are extremely dirty and toxic, risk their health and safety, and most do so because they need to make a living

Then get them safety equipment and robots.

You want things to be de-commodified, don't you? "A stateless, classless, moneyless society". You say currently sewerage workers are compelled by money, I take that to mean that you think they only do it because they need money because otherwise they'd starve.

But they would be supplied for in communism whether they do that job or not. So why would they still choose to do the work? For the greater good, of course. This isn't something that's unique to Anarchism. You're trying to saw off a branch that you yourself are sitting on.

Moreover, this “prefiguration” phase would be be better accomplished in a Socialist state, would it not?

In a soviet-style state: Definitely not. You need freedom of association to be able to get people used to the necessary modes of organisation. The USSR did not tolerate such things, China does not tolerate such things. The reason is simple: They do understand that it is in direct contradiction to the centralisation of power, and thereby the privileges of the party. To do prefiguration, you have to eat humble pie.

What happens between now and that level of automation?

We already do have robots that clean sewers, cleaning sewers isn't actually the point but doing things "people don't want to" and, duh, what'll happen is inventing all automation that might be necessary, as part of prefiguration.

In the meantime I would much rather have a socdem government than a tankie boot in my face. Ask anyone from a post-soviet country as to why.

You’re making assumptions about me

No. I'm drawing conclusions from your choice of argument. What, in your mind, and be honest now, is the social standing of people doing such jobs? Are they respected? Do you respect them? Investigate the value attached to those things, and where those judgements really come from. Did you form them yourself, after careful analysis? Do you have them because it is socially expected that you have them? Is it fantasy to value the sewer worker next door more than Elon Musk? Do you think a society, at large, might be capable of doing that?

You want this now,

When the fuck am I supposed to have said that? Did you, *drumroll*, assume?

...ok you got me. I want this now. I also want bedtime to be abolished. But I'm also an adult, old enough to understand that actionism does not lead anywhere as the socio-psychological component of the system is furnished to prompt exactly that unreflected actionism that reinforces it. Your rebellion has been factored into the equation and is being used against your dreams. It is not sufficient to swim against the stream, you have to get out of the river. It's nice here, btw, I have dry socks.

You'll have plenty of protective equipment. That's not the issue. You'll even have robots.

The issue, I think, is that you don't know what it's like to be part of a tribe, never have felt the solidarity and the motivation to contribute according to your abilities that comes along with it.

A lot of necessary jobs go undone if nobody wants to do them, like garbage disposal, sewer maintenance, etc.

Do you want to clean your toilet?

And if it's going to be full-blown AGI then we'll become AI psychologists.

Not Scholz in particular, all Seeheimer hate the term but they were not successful in removing it from the programme, here it is.

they used opposite genders

Not necessarily. For IBM PCs that was true, but my UltraSPARC had a differently-gendered serial port which was very annoying because neither standard straight nor null-modem cables worked. It was a DB-25, carrying two ports.

Those connectors were used for a lot of different things, with no autonegotiation no nothing. At least the pinout for port A was compatible with the standard DB-25 one-port pinout, just with different gender.

They want to go home earlier, they don’t care enough, they don’t think it’s important enough, etc

And why would workers want that? Or, differently put: If they don't care, why are they working in the first place?

Any job worth doing is worth doing right. That's the intrinsic value of work, those things you mentioned only come into play when work is compelled by external factors. Convince people to work instead of compelling them and there will be intrinsic motivation and yes they're going to do it right.

"Marxism isn't proper socialism" is a story as old as Marx, btw. There were always people who disagreed with him, vehemently so, and he didn't found the worker's movement.

Or do these limits only kick in for platforms above a certain size?

That's how it's in the EU, the DSA only applies to large providers. It's kinda like the fairness doctrine in broadcasting but in the digital domain, e.g. TikTok is currently in hot waters over the Romania elections because they did not take sufficient precautions to make sure that everything's fair and square.

And in that case, why would the same principle not apply?

Because size obliges. If I want to smelt some cans in my backyard I can just do that provided I have a "fireplace" -- which is just an area set up to be suitable to have a fire. If I want to build an industrial-scale aluminium smelter I have to get permits and everything. The public interest in the latter is much larger, that's why I have to jump through hoops and follow regulations.

(I can't burn garden waste though, gotta give it to the municipality to compost. A matter of waste of perfectly fine organic material and unnecessary emissions).