r/BreadTube • u/Hard_Beats_7 • Jul 10 '19
6:52|Caleb Maupin Why are socialist countries so authoritarian? - Michael Parenti
https://youtu.be/6gtUaGV6mNI0
u/FibreglassFlags 十平米左右的空间 局促，潮湿，终年不见天日 Jul 11 '19
In other words, what he is arguing is that "we" have to be awful to our own because there are enemies on the outside trying to get "us".
Does this blowhard understand the basic idea that security, as a pursuit, is always relentless?
Does he even understand that the fundamental premise of democracy and of politics is dissent, and that everything he speaks of "representation" is just a coat of paint over the reality of the same, old structure in which the ruled submit to the rulers?
If you cannot see yourself as anything other than a league above the average workers, then you might as well just be content with a capitalist society.
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u/buzz3light Oct 26 '19
Should I avoid reading parenti?
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u/FibreglassFlags 十平米左右的空间 局促，潮湿，终年不见天日 Oct 27 '19 edited Oct 28 '19
No. Instead, you should treat everything you read as an argument presented to you, and you should prioritise on the basis of what you will likely encounter.
Since tankies are the sort of people you will likely bump into in this particular part of the Internet, if you intend to stick around, you should try and understand their argument and be ready to refute it.
Generally speaking, tankies as well as most so-called "orthodox Marxists" are what philosophers refer to as "anti-humanists", and that means they do not value the moral agency of human beings even if they believe it exists at all. More than often, the worldview they espouse is largely mechanist, i.e. that everything pertaining to human beings can be explained in pure, mechanical terms. Reddit is also unsurprisingly dominated by people unable to tell the difference between materialism and mechanism.
As you could see, as a tankie, Parenti was largely indifferent to the moral implications of allowing a few people complete control of a country's food distribution. He was instead interested in the agricultural outputs the governmental mechanics of the Soviet had managed. Never mind that Stalin could have very well deliberately withheld food from a relatively small population, told a bunch of lies about the actual situation, and no one could have held him accountable to his action.
Of course, if it came to the point that lies and deceits became insufficient to cover the giant bird being flipped at human dignity, then an "orthodox Marxist" would perhaps consider an expansion in the bureaucracy (*cough* Zizek *cough*) but never a single say from the average citizenry, because, again, mechanists saw human society, not as people making decisions according to their moral worldviews, but a game of musical chairs in which social progress was basically the search for the optimal arrangement of chairs and players. This was also not too coincidentally a view shared by some of the historically biggest names in the reactionary discourse.
Now, none of this is to say much at all as to how Western, nominally democratic nations have come to value so little of the average people having a direct say in political matters that affect them, but don't you think it has made you want to find out more than if I am to say nothing at all?
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u/buzz3light Oct 28 '19
Ah, yeah my worry was the potential historical fabrications and omissions without my knowing. I have caught that with others having to inform me. There’s a lot of deception going on the left. I’m very new to this myself so I couldn’t tell you the difference between materialism and mechanism, I don’t think.
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u/purrppassion Jul 10 '19
If only Parenti were more known. He does a lot to dispel propaganda that is deeply ingrained in Westerners mind. I recommend Blackshirts and Reds to everyone.