[sreque]

So you sound like you are probably a lot more educated about politics than I am, so hopefully I can learn something from you, but I think one problem in practice is that collectivist views always seem to end in authoritarianism. Even in the U.S., the unions that resulted from collectivism became authoritarian and corrupt in their own right, the teacher's unions of America being a prime example of corruption and authoritarianism. Similarly, the auto workers unions have been a death knell to the American auto industry.

Anarchism isn't really a valid practical stance. Once you burn down the existing system, something has to replace it, and, to my limited knowledge, that has always been a dictatorship of some kind. Maybe that's just the simplest government one can form. Similarly, collectivist organizations always seem to result in top-down totalitarian regimes when they win the government.

America worked because the original founders were willing to give up power even though the people wanted to make them kings. At the same time, they established a system that made it hard for any one person or group to quickly amass political power. It seems like the left have, for the past century, been successfully dismantling the separation of powers, starting with Woodrow Wilson.

[wrycoder]

The problem is that people who can successfully enact a revolution or who aspire to become the decision makers of the collectivist society (it's never run democratically) are not temperamentally individuals who would actually govern with a light touch.

Once people like that are in charge, it can take many generations for government to become more liberal (in the classical sense). When individual rights are lost, they are very hard to recover.

[r00fus]

Amusing you seem to have some idea of consequences of politics movements - however, so-called conservatives (and libertarians), by unseating government power (which is the only organization large enough to challenge corporate power) leaves a power vacuum for wealthy/corporations to usurp that power.

So anti-government-reguluation leads to a different flavor of fascism by corporate elites (all owned by the very wealthy).

[sreque]

I'm glad you find me amusing, but I actually agree with you that the concept of power decentralization needs to be applied to corporations as well. I definitely don't claim to have the answers to how to accomplish this, nor did I think the U.S. founders would ever imagine the power that corporations would eventually wield.

[r00fus]

Well, perhaps your considerations should take that into account. Many (not all - there are some authoritarian ones) leftists are about seeing the threat to any centralized power. As the saying goes, "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Currently, the USA in an oligarchy and that power is actually vested in corporations who essentially control the government because they've infested all the regulation agencies.

The best way to fight that is with protests, strikes (there are dozens going on right now - tens of thousands at picket lines) and transparency (FOIAs and investigations to see where corporations control the government and vice-versa).

If the founders never understood the power of the uber-corporation, then they must've been blind. Dutch East India Company was a complete powerhouse in that era that controlled many countries.

[wrycoder]

It's great that there's a lot of activism.

But leftists vote Democratic (to the extent they vote for one of the two major parties), and I don't see the Democratic party doing anything whatever to rein in either big government or big business. In fact, these days the Democratic party is the party of big government and the Fortune 500, as is surely obvious.

Lots of activity, but little action forthcoming, I'm afraid.

[wrycoder]

Somehow, I don't think that the best solution is to promote a governmental and economic structure where a massive central government spends much of its energy battling massive corporations, while they both collaborate to surveil, regulate, and control the citizens.

[r00fus]

Sure, just let the corporations win. Lots of them already get 0% effective tax rate, some get billions in subsidies.

But they will always want more.

[wrycoder]

Big corporations lobby big government to get big subsidies.

I'm for small, local government and small business. And to get all the corporate money out of politics.

But the trend is always to go big, if the law allows. It seems to be very difficult to reverse that trend.

[NoGravitas]

> Similarly, collectivist organizations always seem to result in top-down totalitarian regimes when they win the government.

Substantially, that's a matter of history rather than ideology. Collectivist organizations that aren't top-down organized tend to be unsuccessful in overthrowing states and remaining in power in the face of more authoritarian opposition. The fact that the Russian revolution led to Stalinism is more survivorship bias than anything else.

You may also be underestimating the authoritarianism of right-wing institutions in US society just because they seem natural and normal to you.

[_ivvf]

I have to say, I find your "survivorship bias" argument novel, but also a bit ridiculous, considering that Karl Marx openly called for violent, bloody revolution:

“there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."

So the ideology claims violent overthrow of government is needed, but it's not the ideology's fault when the overthrow leads to a murderous totalitarian regime arguably far worse than the government it replaced? I don't know how you can seriously hold this world view.

[NoGravitas]

Violent bloody revolution is fine! It's what comes afterward that leftists disagree about. Compare, for example, Revolutionary Catalonia (unsuccessful) with Soviet Russia (lasted 70 years, never achieved communism).